Showing posts with label racial violence.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racial violence.. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

They are still rioting in the heartland.


I find it interesting that the mugshots of the Ferguson "looters" were released to the public, but there is still no information on the police officer who actually started it all by killing an unarmed teenager.




They are all facing felony and burglary charges, and I am sure that the folks in the Ferguson police department are patting themselves on the back for good police work.


Maybe, though, they should be focusing their efforts on arresting the person who started this whole mess.




Sadly, it feels like the sixties all over again. But this, I suppose, was inevitable.


The Ferguson police department is almost all white, and the town itself is predominantly black. Racial tensions are not new in Ferguson. It looks like they have been down this road before.




"Racial tensions have run high for decades in this former railroad town that was once a mostly white St. Louis suburb until school busing and urban decay sent many families packing for more distant communities.


Today, Ferguson is nearly 70 percent black, but the law here is still enforced by a police department that is more than 90 percent white, a fact that helps engender widespread distrust of officers — never more so than last weekend, when a white officer shot and killed an unarmed young black man who was about to start college.


Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson said 50 of the city's 53 police officers are white. He said he made recruiting and promoting black officers a priority when he took over four years ago after a three-decade police career in St. Louis and St. Louis County." [Source]


Chief Thompson, why can't you just train the white officers to learn to do better community policing? Like these guys for instance. Your fellow officer across the state got it right. Sometimes just "busting a move" with the neighborhood kids can do wonders for community relations.




A dance move is better than a bullet every day of the week.




Finally, that darn Barack Obama just keeps taking vacations and American are sick of it.




Why can't he focus on his job and cut out all the vacation stuff like his predecessors?




Wait....




"As of August 12, 2014, Obama has taken 20 "vacations" lasting 2 to 15 days. He has spent all or part of 129 days on “vacation.”


And the president has made 33 visits to the official Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, totaling all or part of 84 days. (Knoller does not count Camp David trips as “vacation.”)


Obama’s morning round of golf on Tuesday brought his total since January 2009 to 186, with 22 of them on Martha’s Vineyard.


At this point in George W. Bush’s presidency, he had taken 58 trips to his Prairie Chapel ranch near Crawford, Texas, for all or part of 381 days. (Bush also frequently used the property to host world leaders).


Bush had also spent all or part of 26 days at his family’s oceanside compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, over the course of seven trips there.
And the former Texas governor had been to Camp David 108 times for a total of all or part of 341 days.


Bush played 24 rounds of golf as president. He later explained his decision to stop in the fall of 2003 by saying he felt it was not appropriate to be seen golfing while American troops fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. [See chart here]


Never mind.




*Pic from Art Maggot.