This summer has been a public relations nightmare for the Columbus Police. It is hard to get the public to believe that you are doing good things when your number one copsplainer is in jail awaiting trial on multiple child pornography charges. Seriously uncomfortable questions might be asked if they promote the 2nd shift Special Victims Terry McConnell who pays minors for sex, or maybe not.
Senate Democrats, powerless against a 51 to 49 margin in with Mike Pence ready to be a plus one, have been leaking what documents they think help them discredit Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh's views on contraception and abortion are at the forefront of the narrative they feel is most likely to win the uphill partisan fight they are in.
An anonymous tip came early yesterday morning. They concealed their identity. A special quick school board meeting was to be held at 7pm. I checked. It had been legally announced, barely. The law requires that all public bodies must publish the time, place and agenda of any meeting for it to be a legal meeting. The Yellow Springs School Board does not regularly meet on the first Thursday of a month. If it requires a special meeting, those usually happen on the 4th Thursday.
The yearly festival that New Yorker Magazine, for those readers who, like myself, do not attend, is a $40 an hour set of presentations on Art, Literature, Culture, Politics and “everything in between.” Looking at the past lineups and current presentations it seems to be what happens when a Ted Talk and NPR's All Irrelevant Things Considered made babies in a radioactive clone vat. Thanks to this year's gaff one can finally understand why the iconic covers only actually appear as bathroom wallpaper: Looking at all this can help you poop.
The often used adage that police can lie whenever they want and get away with it is in a sense legally true. This stems from the legal concealment of truth, the literal blinding of justice and strident defense of the laws that make this possible. There are politicians on both sides of the shrinking aisle that seek every chance to extend rather than curtail the secrecy. It is not vampiric America that simply does not appear in mirrors, but Medusa America that would certainly petrify if confronted with it's own horrific gaze.
On Tuesday August 14th, Amy Hess was appointed as the new head of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch.capabilities She previously Executive Assistant Director of Science and Technology. Prior to that she was Special Agent in Charge of the Louisville Office and the head of the FBI's “Citizens Academy” which teaches business leaders about the role of federal law enforcement in society.
In my studies of military history and human conflict, which I consider vast but not yet comprehensive, I have come up with a single original saying that I consider to be an actual quotable profundity. “In all conflicts, regardless of power, technology or even sides, the battlefield is going to get it's ass kicked.” If you think about it you will instantly find it to be always true. A field full of cavemen with clubs and stones knives will get trampled and ruined. Europe was flattened by World War II.
I call it screaming to the right while punching to the left. It is the central concept of movement and firepower in Democrat martial arts. It is performed by deploying vague rhetorical acts and platitudes against Republicans and than attacking any and everyone inside and outside their own party who is not completely in line with their Center-Right soft billionaire policies when their elitist posteriors are not immediately seated in the desired chair.
I've lived in Berkeley. I know the complicated tapestry of policing in the North Oakland Berkeley area. I've seen them maliciously wound friends. I've buried a friend and roommate they killed. The racism runs deep and blue there. Context is needed to view the events of August 5th in Berkeley because no social space is neutral and nothing happens in a vacuum.
This article is, in addition to an opinion editorial, an update on other articles.
Watching from the police department from Mills Lawn, the Meister affair feels like a drama playing out on a stage. However, the only actors are Chief Carlson and Sergeant Watson playing the roles of impartial law enforcers with Corporal Meister privy to the reality of the situation and the audience watching in horror.