Excuses

I've seen several excuses offered as a way to try to life the responsibility that is currently the centered in the Corcoran neighborhood in MPLS, but which extends as far away as N MPLS.    This carnage includes, but isn't limited to, recreation of a food desert after years of trying to correct that imbalance, destruction of @400 units of affordable housing in a city that has a massive deficit of affordable housing, the removal of public transit which many depend on, the removal of virtually all drug stores, denying the sick access to prescription, and finally the destruction of a large number of small businesses owned by POC.   I'd like to list those here than look into them all later.

1.  The "Bricks and mortar isn't as valuable as one human life" defense.

2.  The "Well, white people in MI protested because they didn't want to wear masks." defense.

3.  The "Riot is the language of the unheard" defense.

4.  The "Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple." defense.

5.  The "75,000 agitators are coming from out of state to disrupt the peaceful protests" defense and the corollary, the "Don't believe the video you see of "black folks" rioting, looting, and damaging things, it's really white supremacists." defense.

6.  The Boston Tea Party defense.

I'm sure there are some others, but for now these are the ones that predominate.

I may also take on the "The police exist to protect our lives and property and to prevent things fallacy."

I'm not going to allow comments on this, I will on the individual posts. 

Big News

Walz, decided that it was expedient to try to appease the protesters by throwing the elected Hennepin county DA under the bus and to appoint Kieth Ellison in his place.  

While I think that it's a tacit acknowledgement that the current county and state prosecutor system is corrupt and that Walz, Ellison, and the County commissioners have failed to either discipline or replace Mike Freeman who has been the Hennepin County DA for 23 of the last 29 years.    After being reelectd by an "wide margin in  2006".

On a purely political level, the optics of an apparently popular and well respected DA being yanked look like the governor overturning the will of the voters.    Having said that, I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of the Hennepin county residents protesting him and his corruption have voted for him multiple times.  One wonders why a people being oppressed by a particular elected official would continue to vote for him.  But that's neither here nor there.

Ellison on the other hand, has (along with his son) come out supporting or appearing to support ANTIFA, which doesn't seem like a particularly good look, but who knows.  

My personal experience with Ellison a fairly extensive audience with him in his DC congressional office, left me unimpressed.  But again, that's neither here nor there.   As is Ellison's checkered legal history.  He's had documented problems with campaign finance irregularities, failure to pay traffic tickets, and failure to pay income taxes.  In addition to the highly publicized domestic abuse charges.

I'll have to look, but I suspect Mike Freeman was involved in the decision not to investigate/prosecute Ellison.  

For all of this grandstanding, and attempts to appease the crowd, this decision is pretty meaningless.  The actual work of the investigation and prosecution will likely be done by experienced, professional investigators and attorneys.  The only real difference is that, in the event that there is no conviction, Ellison is much more likely to escape with relatively little political damage.  The only box Ellison doesn't check on the protected class bingo card is "woman", and as we know that can change instantly if it's necessary.

I think that History shows what happens when appeasement is tried, and we'll have to wait and see how this goes.  I do think that given the fact that the "system" that everyone is complaining about is the same "system" that gave us Ellison, Frey, Carter, Walz, Ellison, etc.  Sure looks like a fox/chicken coop situation to me.

Horrible

George Floyd died last night in an encounter with a Minneapolis police officer.   Video shows the officer kneeling on the neck/back of his head and the victim died after him doing this for an extended period of time.

There appears to be no reason why Mr Floyd died during this encounter, and no apparent reason for the officer to have acted as he did.

This is absolutely a horrible tragedy and there is nothing in the video evidence that gives any justification for the actions of the officer.

The mayor has turned the investigation over to the BCA and the FBI, which is a totally appropriate action given the history of the MPLS police and city government for what has been labeled "institutional racism" in the city government and police department.   It is absolutely critical that the investigation be undertaken by entities not in the control of the city of Minneapolis to give the appearance of an independent and unbiased investigation.

It's being reported that the two primary officers involved have been fired.  I'm not saying that they shouldn't have been fired at some point, but it seems like this action (which isn't the standard response) could be problematic at their trial.   I'm 100% on board with investigating, charging, and trying these officers.  However, if their firing (as opposed to a suspension pending the outcome of the investigation) ends up causing problems at trial, the conspiracy theorists will be out in full force.

One last thing.  I realize that a lot of folx are going to be riled up, especially since we have partial video of the incident that is incredibly damning, although possibly incomplete.    What we don't have at this point (or what I haven't seen) is evidence of motive.  Given that reality, it seems reasonable to be angry at what actually happened without injecting unknown factors into it.   

Not consistently pro choice

“If you are a church that is opening back up after Trump’s political ploy today, take some time before you preach your next sermon on being pro-life. Your actions in this are too loud for us to hear you on that.”


This was from a personal friend of mine, who posted it on his FB page.

1.  If you accept this logic then it seems you would need to stop calling yourself pro-choice.

2.  If you’re a pastor, and are posting this sort of political content on your public social media, where you identify as a pastor of a specific church, it seems like your tax exempt status should be in jeopardy.

Who?

Who elected Biden as the final arbiter of who is black or not?

How is Biden’s comment not racist?

Feeling entitled much Joe?

RIP

This week we lost Ravi Zacherias to cancer.    While I'm sure that his family will mourn his loss, we know that he is with Jesus.   He will be greatly missed.

A link to WK with a timely post.


 https://winteryknight.com/2020/05/20/how-do-you-explain-the-gospel-to-a-non-christian-in-two-minutes-4/

Woman

"To protect women's rights, we must be able to say what a woman is.  If postmodernism is correct-that the body itself is a social construct- then it becomes impossible to argue for rights based on the sheer fact of being female.  We cannot legally protect a category of people if we cannot identify that category."

Nancy Pearcy