The Daunte Wright Murder
Policing the Police
April 12, 2021


What are we now — the Florida of the North?!?

“Oh Shit! I just shot him!”

Yes, officer, you did. That's what pulling the trigger at point-blank range does. And what was this all about? An air-freshener?!?


Yesterday, a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota police officer shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black father, during a traffic stop by confusing a gun and a tazer.

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Music Association: B.J. Thomas - Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song
Movie Association: Police Academy
Acronym Association: WTF




 





The George Floyd Murder
The Trial Of Policing
April 11, 2021


Two weeks have passed in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Witness and body cam videos provided front row seats to the murder of George Floyd. Witness testimonies have shown bystanders seeing Chauvin's suffocation of George Floyd and they spoke up but have felt guilty for not having done more to stop Chauvin.

Ranking police officers testified repeatedly that Chauvin was acting outside of police procedure, as if Chauvin was one bad apple in an orchard of sweet, unblemished fruit.

Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said there was nothing reasonable about Chauvin keeping his knee on the handcuffed suspect’s neck for 9½ minutes. “Once Mr. Floyd had stopped resisting, and certainly once he was in distress and trying to verbalize that, that should have stopped,” Arradondo said. Lt. Richard Zimmerman, who leads the Minneapolis Police Department's homicide unit, said Chauvin's use of force while George Floyd was already pinned down and handcuffed was “totally unnecessary.”

Los Angeles Police Sgt. Jody Stiger testified that Chauvin was inflicting pain on George Floyd, while he was handcuffed and pinned on the pavement. Stiger said officers' body-worn camera video showed Chauvin using “his right hand and appeared to use a pain compliance on Mr. Floyd's hand.” Chauvin appeared to be “squeezing fingers or bringing knuckles together, which can cause pain or pulling the hand into the cuff, which can cause pain as well.” Sgt. Stiger pointed out that “the handcuffs were not double-locked; they can continue to ratchet tighter as the person moved” while George Floyd was in the prone position and not resisting.

Many commentaries have said that the Police are not on trial here in Minneapolis. But it is. Black lives matter and should even to the police. Far too long, the blue wall of silence has gagged any decency and destroyed evidence of police misconduct. A compost heap of bad apples have been shielded behind police badges.

Maryland has just canceled its police bill of rights.

The police should have liability insurance and licensing, not their own bill of rights and not qualified immunity.

The trial continues tomorrow.

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Music Association: The Osmond Brothers - One Bad Apple
Tv Association: “See that sign? It says, Apple sauce.”









The George Floyd Murder
The Trial Of Derek Chauvin
March 29, 2021


Opening statements began today in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.

A bystander video was played by the prosecution. The defense tried to sell the idea that George Floyd happened to die of unrelated medical issues while Chauvin kneeled on Floyd's neck.

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Music Association: Van Halen - Right Now












The George Floyd Murder
Jury Statistics
March 12, 2021


On Tuesday, three jurors were selected. On Wednesday, two jurors were selected. On Thursday, one juror was selected. Today is Friday.

If I were designing a bar chart, the X axis would be days of the week, the Y axis would be number of jurors, and the bars would be represented by jury chairs stacked on top of each other.

Jury selections continue today in Minneapolis for the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

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Music Association: Badfinger - Day After Day











The George Floyd Murder
Jury Selection
March 9, 2021


Jury selection began today in Minneapolis in the case of the George Floyd murder, the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

The voir dire of potential jurors has two fundamental problems: bias due to lack of diversity and a required ignorance about a case.

One of my favorite movies is 12 Angry Men, a 1957 jury room drama filmed in 19 days. It has everything: expert cinematography, dynamic characters, a study of arguments, rationale of emotion, actors wearing their own clothes, a knife fight -- it has everything, except diversity. The cast was quite white and male. The jury room has a men's room and a women's room off of it, not that they needed a women's room.



The murder case before the 12 Angry Men didn't have video from multiple sources like the George Floyd murder. It didn't have national attention or (to a point) global attention. It didn't have a jury representational of Minneapolis.

The trial of Derek Chauvin, facing murder and manslaughter charges, has video and witnesses of him kneeling on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes. George Floyd and Derek Chauvin both worked event security for the El Nuevo Rodeo nightclub with Floyd working security from inside while Chauvin worked security outside. The videos include more than 18 minutes from Officer Alex Kueng's bodycam and 10 minutes from Officer Thomas Lane. They were the first two police officers to arrive on the scene after a complaint that Floyd had attempted to pass a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at Cup Foods, a store in the Powderhorn Park section of Minneapolis.

George Floyd is lying on the road with Chauvin's knee pressed on his neck with Lane and Kueng helping to restrain Floyd.

He says he can't breathe over and over again and calls for his mother but his voice slowly gets weaker as his life drains away.

“Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead,” he says at one point.

Kueng is seen nonchalantly picking a pebble from the squad car tire with his right hand as he restrains Floyd's legs with his left.

As his knee presses the life out of Floyd, Chauvin, the most senior officer on the scene, asks rookies Lane and Kueng if they are okay. “My knee might be a little scratched but I will survive,” Lane answers. When Floyd continues to wail that he can’t breathe, Kueng is heard telling him. “You’re fine. You’re talking fine.’

 Floyd replies: “I'll probably just die this way.”

“I'm through,' Floyd says. “I'm claustrophobic. My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. I need some water or something, please.”

“Then stop talking. Stop yelling,” Chauvin replies. “It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.”

As Floyd stops moving Chauvin keeps his knee on his neck, despite complaints from a small crowd that has gathered.

“Check his pulse,” one man says repeatedly. “You call what you are doing okay?!?”

But the other officers do little to stop Chauvin. At one point Lane asks: “Should we roll him on his side?” But Chauvin replies. “No, he's staying where we've got him.”

“Okay,” Lane says. “I just worry about the excited delirium or whatever.”

“Well, that's why we got the ambulance coming,” Chauvin says.

By the time EMTs arrive, George Floyd is dead.

 

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Music Association: The Police - Every Breath You Take
Transcript from Daily Mail











Texas Troubles
Cruz To Mexico!
February 20, 2021

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Music Association: Bob Seger - Travelin' Man











-19 degrees F in Minneapolis
What's Cooler Than Being Cool?
Ice Cold!
February 15, 2021




Cold Cranking Amps! It is cold out when it is minus 19° F—in Minneapolis.


It was so cold in Minneapolis —

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

my degrees key got stuck, and it looked like bubbles.

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Music Associations: Foreigner - Cold As Ice & Outkast - Hey Ya















GameStop Games Continue
Wall Street Loses Its Shorts
February 1, 2021


Let's say we started a corporation, called it Hopes and Dreams Capital Investments, Inc. or HADCAP for short.

HADCAP provides investment services information for a price. The cliché Time Is Money has everything to do with the business.

If you want the hottest news before it will even effect the stock market, then you will have to pay a premium. What (you might ask) would investment news be that has not even effected the market? It is not really news because nothing has actually happened. It is rumors. Theories. Lies. If you can afford the premium price, you get a HADCAP text message about the hot tip that is so hot that it has not yet caught fire — oxygen hasn't touched it.

If you can't afford the steepest price, maybe you can afford the next level of HADCAP message, the “look what's happening, you are almost too late” email. This only happens if enough activity occurs based on the original, premium news (that was not yet news). By the time the news is in a newspaper or magazine or on CNBC, the investment ashes are smoldering and the HADCAP vice-president in charge of tisk-tisking the general public about what could've happened tells the stories in a told-you-so voice and mentions the recent lottery numbers for all the good that does anyone.

That's how Wall Street works.

Reddit's WallStreetBets has been making plans and decisions out in the open, investing in GameStop (GME) for a variety of reasons, having little to do with the fundamentals of a brick-and-mortar retail dinosaur in the age of gaming downloads. But how much of Wall Street investment advice has anything to do with the realities of business?!? The market stopped making sense a long time ago, if it ever had.

Wall Street investment firms felt obligated to short sell GameStop, betting against WallStreetBets remaining invested in GameStop. At this point, the short sellers have generally lost (had to cover their orders).

The takeaway should be amusement. I never started HADCAP and do not give out investment advice. Editorial cartoonist Daryl Cagle had a cartoon last week showing Reddit clubbing Wall Street using GameStop.

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Music Association: Spinners - Games People Play











Over 400,000 Deaths
Bye - Don
January 20, 2021  


The inaugurations of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and Kamala Harris could not have happened fast enough.

The four years of Bizarro-President Trump are over. Trump politicized the pandemic and preventative measures. Who would politicize a pandemic and preventative measures? Only Trump. And his cult.

The United States has surpassed 400,000 deaths due to Covid-19, about as many Americans that died in World War II.  Many of those deaths are on him.

Over half of people who recover from Covid-19 report lingering symptoms two and a half months later. Some of those are long-haulers with severe, unshakable symptoms.

Last night, Trump pardoned 143 felons, including Steve Bannon, who was indicted by the Trump Justice Department for defrauding Trump supporters over a fake Trump wall.

Trump wanted a big military send-off this morning because the military would have to be there for him, even though he was never there for them. But the military couldn't be there because it's defending the Capitol from his cult.

It's the end of an error.

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Music Association: Grand Funk Railroad - Bad Time









Definitions
Sedition & Terrorism
January 8, 2021  


18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy

“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”

28 CFR § 0.85 (l)

Terrorism includes “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

United States Constitution - 25th Amendment (1967) section 4

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office of Acting President...”

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Music Association: Natasha Bedingfield - These Words










Trump's Treason
Trump Terrorists Attempt
Armed Coup At U.S. Capitol
January 6, 2021  
2:30pm CST


At the urging of President Trump, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol, and armed Trump terrorists broke into the Capitol using flag poles as battering rams, over-running Capitol security.

The terrorists raided the U.S. House Of Representatives and Senate chambers and ransacked desks, that had been used only minutes before. A Trump terrorist has occupied the office of Speaker of the House Pelosi.

The Governor of Virigina has sent members of the Virginia National Guard to the District of Columbia. The Governor of Maryland has also sent the Maryland National Guard.

The D.C. National Guard was absent. Washington Mall security was absent. All of that was under the control of the President.

This is a dark day in United States history.

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“Find Votes”
Dangerous President
January 4, 2021


President Trump and crew called Georgia Secretary of State  Brad Raffensperger on Saturday, January 2nd to whine and bully him into changing the results of the election towards Trump, specifically to “find 11,780 votes.”

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Music Association: Charlie Daniels Band - The Devil Went Down To Georgia












Year in Review & Movie Review (Spoiler Alert)
Crowd Mentality
January 1, 2021


Every first snow of winter in Minnesota, drivers seem to forget how to drive in snow. They end up in ditches and spinning out. And while it seems like collective amnesia, it's not.

All Minnesota drivers don't forget how to drive in the first snow, just some drivers. Taking arrivals since last winter and adding the new drivers since last winter, you can easily account for all the spin outs and ditch parkers, without any overall problem of crowd mental deficiency.

Crowds don't behave with one mind.

That sums up several lessons of 2020.

A pandemic should not be a political issue. Health care had become a political issue and President Trump took that to the next level by politicizing Covid-19.

Protesters of police violence and racial inequities are not all alike. Most are nonviolent. A few are only there for the violence.

President-elect Biden received more votes in 2020 than any president in the history of the United States. But on the other hand, President Trump received the second most number of votes in the history of the United States, despite all that he has done the past four years. People have their own ways of thinking and not-thinking.

Crowds behave without like-mindedness.

I say that not to just review 2020 but to review Wonder Woman 1984.

Comic book movies have comic book crowds. They are all alike. Wonder Woman 1984 made cartoons out of male crowds, female crowds, and everybody crowds. It's my number two pet peeve about movies besides two-dimensional female characters, which they also had. The movie was a list of clichés.

One of the toughest things to do with characters like Superman or Wonder Woman is come up with challenging adversaries without resorting to:

If your character is too powerful, what challenge can the writer create?

My response is: don't get me started. There are an infinite number of things to write about being powerful. I'll ask you something. Have you ever broken something because it was not made to be strong enough? Whatever your answer, there. That's part of your story. Women and men break things all the time. Now imagine being in a confined space with someone who could easily break everything around you. Oh, I don't know, let's say it's a fighter jet, and you're the pilot. Wonder Woman was in a situation just like that, but she didn't break anything. Maybe because she was already losing some of her powers in a gradual way that kept all the components of the fighter jet safe from her.

The scene could have illustrated the relationship between the pilot from another era and Wonder Woman. They could have learned to fly the plane together by reading the manual under the seat. He would have needed some help from her.

There are huge categories of things that powerful characters would lack knowledge and experiences in order to relate to everybody else. Like understanding tired people or experiencing bad hair days. Those differences could be more interesting than lost powers.

The big message of the movie was -- be careful what you wish for. Great. Thanks. Aladdin, Shrek, I Dream Of Jeannie, and Bewitched already covered that concept. Wonder Woman 1984 just took reckless wishing to a global level.

The magic lasso scenes of the first movie were crowd favorites. By making ten times more lasso scenes in Wonder Woman 1984, the movie becomes more about the lasso and less about the woman holding it. While there was nothing wrong with the opening act, other than the queen's focus on her daughter, it was a bit of a repeat of the last movie. It hardly adds to Diana's background unless the plan is to slowly tell her origin story over the course of three or four movies, for a better box set experience.

There is nothing new about a sequel that doesn't live up to its predecessor. After a favorable first movie, I didn't think a good second movie would be so tough.

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Music Association: Bruce Springsteen - Tougher Than The Rest











Do You Hear What I Hear?
Christmas Music Musings
December 26, 2020


This Christmas was different. Quieter. Not rushed. It was good. Christmas to me is not about lawn decorations or about wishing people a Merry Christmas, because I almost never say that -- it isn't meaningful. It's more about music, but most Christmas music isn't.

I listen to Christmas concerts and wonder about the conductors.

Three possibilities come to mind. Either they hate music and want every note to be a tortured mix of tones. Or they cannot hear and have great imaginations. Or they love the possibility that one of their students might just might surpass all these painful melodies to go on to become a virtuoso or at least popular.

And that's concerts with tickets that were bought with real money.

Everyone in the music industry knows Christmas music has the potential to make artists rich. That's music history. Every now and then, a song comes along that adds (right or wrong) to the catalog of most listened to Christmas songs.

Ask people if they like Christmas music, they might say yes.

Ask people if they like the entire catalog of Christmas songs, they would probably say no.

I like Christmas music like I like TV shows -- a la carte. I like some Christmas music, definitely, selectively, but if you ask a blanket question: do I like Christmas music yes or no? My answer is no. Too much of it chants or grates or tries too hard or doesn't try at all. Earlier this month, I was in a retail store, call it the Red Bulls Eye. A song was being played. I didn't know it, but I liked it. My mask was partly covering my ears, but one line in the chorus was, “I've got your back.” I liked the song. Weirder still, it wasn't a Christmas song.

If I went back to that store today, it still wouldn't be playing Christmas music because nothing stops Christmas music like December 26th. That makes this a most wonderful time of the year.

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Music Association: Andy Williams - The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
Movie Association: Pixar - Soul










In The Dark
Wisconsin Attacks!
December 10, 2020


An F-16 fighter jet belonging to Wisconsin crashed into Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Wisconsin has their own F-16s?!?

It was a training exercise at zero twenty-hundred hours. Had it been a full-fledged attack, Wisconsin would've attacked Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

Here's the report:

Uh-hmm.

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Music Association: Korsakov - Flight of the Bumblebee












George Floyd




Covid-19




Trump Timeline (PDF)



Voter Suppression


Music Videos

Landmine Hopscotch


Superman


Impact Investing



Holiday Gifs of Cats and Kittens Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5  




Southdale Hennepin Library,  Edina Library  


Wonder Woman


Food Fraud