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Voltaire2

Voltaire2's Journal
Voltaire2's Journal
May 4, 2020

'Here, I'll use this as a mask': Man wipes nose on Oakland County worker who asked him to wear mask



HOLLY, Mich. – A man wiped his nose on the shirt of a woman who told him he was supposed to be wearing a mask inside a dollar store in Oakland County, police said. The incident was caught on video.

The incident happened around 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Dollar Tree on North Sagniaw Street in Holly, according to authorities.


https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/05/04/here-ill-use-this-as-a-mask-man-wipes-nose-on-oakland-county-worker-who-asked-him-to-wear-mask/

Another Freedumb Warrior.
April 21, 2020

Georgia to re-open movie theaters

Just curious, would anyone here go to a movie theater before there is a vaccine for this crap?

As a follow up question: do these idiots really think that everything is going back to before covid?

February 28, 2020

Finally we know what word he misspelled.

#covidfefe

Turns out the stable-genius is clairvoyant.

February 17, 2020

Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins


Scientists have dismissed suggestions that the Chinese government was behind the outbreak, but it’s the kind of tale that gains traction among those who see China as a threat.


The rumor appeared shortly after the new coronavirus struck China and spread almost as quickly: that the outbreak now afflicting people around the world had been manufactured by the Chinese government.

The conspiracy theory lacks evidence and has been dismissed by scientists. But it has gained an audience with the help of well-connected critics of the Chinese government such as Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist. And on Sunday, it got its biggest public boost yet.

Speaking on Fox News, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, raised the possibility that the virus had originated in a high-security biochemical lab in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the outbreak.

“We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there,” the senator said, “but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html

Apologies for the paywall.
February 17, 2020

BERNIE BREAKS OUT OF THE PACK


LAS VEGAS — Bernie Sanders is becoming harder to stop. Nevada is where his opponents are starting to realize it.

Advisers to three rival campaigns privately conceded over the weekend that the best anyone else could hope for here is second or third. Some of them gape at the crowd sizes at Sanders' events — like the swarm of supporters who accompanied Sanders, his fist raised, to an early caucus site in Las Vegas on Saturday, the first day of early voting in the state.

While few expect that Sanders can carry more than a third of the vote in Nevada, nearly everyone believes that will be enough to win in a field where the moderate vote remains splintered. It is becoming a source of celebration for Sanders' supporters and an urgent problem for those who want to prevent him from claiming the nomination.

“He’s going to win with 28 percent of the vote. We’re not talking about him getting 50 percent of the vote,” said Andres Ramirez, a Nevada-based Democratic strategist and former vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s Hispanic Caucus. “But the rest of the field is so fragmented, and he has his base locked, that he can continue winning just by holding onto his base.”


https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/17/bernie-sanders-nevada-breaks-pack-115450
February 15, 2020

Deep cracks emerge in Biden's firewall

One South Carolina lawmaker says she switched allegiances after warning several Biden staffers that their grassroots approach was outdated.


CHARLESTON, S.C. — His message is uninspiring. His ground game is flawed. After Iowa and New Hampshire, they’re no longer convinced he can beat Donald Trump.

Interviews with two dozen South Carolina lawmakers, consultants and voters here suggests there are deep cracks in Joe Biden’s firewall state, where his campaign expects to turn his misfortunes around with a robust victory that highlights his broad-based support — particularly among African Americans.

No one denies the state has an affinity for the former vice president to Barack Obama. Biden boasts endorsements from nearly 200 black South Carolina community figures and state and national legislators, a testament to his decades-long relationships with many leaders here. And he’s led in every single public poll in the state over the past year.

But his advantage has gradually eroded. In a state where African Americans cast 61 percent of the primary vote in 2016, a February Quinnipiac poll showed Biden's support among African-Americans at 27 percent — a 22-point slip from before the Iowa caucus. While almost no one is willing to predict a Biden defeat here, many point to worrisome signs about the state of his campaign.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/15/joe-biden-south-carolina-firewall-114862

February 11, 2020

Landmark Decision: Judge Rules NYPD Stop and Frisk Practices Unconstitutional

Landmark Decision: Judge Rules NYPD Stop and Frisk Practices Unconstitutional, Racially Discriminatory


August 12, 2013, New York – In a landmark decision today, a federal court found the New York City Police Department’s highly controversial stop-and-frisk practices unconstitutional. In her thorough, 198-page ruling, Judge Shira Scheindlin found the NYPD’s practices to violate New Yorkers’ Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and also found that the practices were racially discriminatory in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To remedy the widespread constitutional violations, the judge ordered a court-appointed monitor to oversee a series of reforms to NYPD policing practices and also ordered a Joint Remedial Process which will solicit input from a variety of stakeholders, including New York communities most directly affected by policing. The court’s ruling follows a 10-week trial that concluded on May 20. The class action lawsuit, Floyd v. City of New York, was brought by the Center of Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the law firms of Beldock, Levine, and Hoffman and Covington & Burling, LLP.

Said CCR Senior Staff Attorney Darius Charney, “This historic victory is the result not only of our 14 years of litigation, but of decades’ worth of efforts by activists, grassroots and legal organizations, and affected communities. The NYPD is finally being held to account for its longstanding illegal and discriminatory policing practices. The City must now stop denying the problem and partner with the community to create a police department that protects the safety and respects the rights of all New Yorkers.”

In 2011, the NYPD reported a record 685,724 stops -- a 600 percent increase since Raymond Kelly took over as NYPD Commissioner in 2002. Eighty-four percent of those stopped were Black or Latino, and 88 percent of the people stopped were neither arrested nor received summonses. Despite the stated purpose of the policy, weapons and contraband were recovered less than 2 percent of the time.

In concluding that the City is liable for a widespread pattern and practice of stops and frisks in violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of all New Yorkers, the Court explained:

“[The City has] received both actual and constructive notice since at least 1999 of widespread Fourth Amendment violations occurring as a result of the NYPD’s stop and frisk practices. Despite this notice, they deliberately maintained and even escalated policies and practices that predictably resulted in even more widespread Fourth Amendment violations. . . . The NYPD has repeatedly turned a blind eye to clear evidence of unconstitutional stops and frisks.”
The court found the NYPD guilty of violating both the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits racially discriminatory policing, and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.


https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/landmark-decision-judge-rules-nypd-stop-and-frisk-practices

Posted here as it is entirely relevant to the Bloomberg campaign, and their surrogates, attempts to whitewash what happened in NYC.
January 16, 2020

Joe Biden's Vote for War

In October 2002, he was one of 77 senators who gave President George W. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq. He is still trying to explain that choice.

Mr. Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, had been scrambling to draft a bipartisan resolution that would grant Mr. Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq, but was more restrictive than the war authorization that the president had sought.

As he often had in his long career, Mr. Biden sought bipartisan middle ground — this time, between those opposed to potential war and the White House desire for more open-ended power. Some antiwar members of his committee resisted his effort, worried that it would still pave the way to conflict. “We disagreed very strenuously,” said former Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.

Mr. Biden’s plan ultimately did not succeed, and he chose to focus on Mr. Bush’s reassurances of a diplomacy-first approach.

“At each pivotal moment,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Bush, “he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation, and I believe he will continue to do so. At least that is my fervent hope.”

On Oct. 11, he was one of 77 senators to authorize the use of military force in Iraq. Twenty-three colleagues, some of whom harbored grave doubts about the danger Iraq posed at the time, refused to back the president’s request.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/us/politics/joe-biden-iraq-war.html

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