Another Black Man Dead: Florida's Stand Your Ground Law

I don't have a problem with people using deadly violence to defend themselves anywhere from the threat or reality of deadly violence. Whether you are in your home, car, or walking the street I don't think that you must let someone initiate and continue felony violence on you and wait and see what their intentions are. I have little sympathy for the carjacker who gets shot in the face by his would be victim, for the rapist who gets stabbed in the yarbles by a woman armed with a knife, for the burglar who gets ripped to pieces by the homeowner's trained Rottweilers, for the mugger who makes the mistake of trying to assault an unassuming kung fu expert..Those criminals knew the risks of their trade; they paid the price. So it goes.

But "Stand your ground laws" ,at least in the case of Florida, seem to be something different. Self-defense should be about using defense proportionate to the attack AND making sure that there is an attack. If someone steps on my shoe, depending on both our moods that day, I may just keep moving and say nothing. I may say something. The offender and I both may end up yelling obscenities at each other or worse. Stuff happens. But whatever happens most people would agree that even if the person deliberately stepped on my shoe I would be (no pun intended) jumping the gun to pull out my firearm and shoot him dead. 

Even if I thought that this person might be a later threat at the time that I used deadly force against him he was no threat. So self-defense doesn't apply. Also I shouldn't be able to go around deliberately stepping on people's shoes and shooting the first person who responds physically, claiming I was standing my ground. In practice however, Florida's stand your ground law gives the benefit of the doubt to the shooter, regardless of the circumstances, especially if the shooter is white and the decedent is black.

LARGO — Prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump stood in front of the Pinellas County Justice Center on Thursday and demanded justice for the family of Markeis McGlockton.
Flanked by the slain man’s parents and girlfriend, Crump told reporters that McGlockton’s shooting death last week was "cold-blooded murder ... by the self-appointed, wannabe cop Michael Drejka."

Samantha Bee Spoofs Dana Loesch

The NRA has largely won the national debate on gun restrictions for now. Things have trended away from tighter restrictions since the House and Senate decided not to pursue another Federal Assault Weapons ban. Especially since the election of Trump and appointment of presumably Second Amendment friendly federal judges, the NRA has walked an unsteady line between gloating triumphalism and its more natural default state of paranoid fears of gun confiscation and Caucasian extermination. You can't really drive up financial support for your agenda if you admit you've gotten most of what you want. So, the NRA in the presence of one Dana Loesch, recently put out an ad that was simultaneously a cultural and literal call to arms, a grievances list, a threat, a warning, and a reason why you [stink] rant aimed at anyone to the left of say Tucker Carlson. The ad was as much hilarious as it was a disturbing insight into the minds of those who would find the ad emotionally validating and intellectually convincing. 

The NRA released this ad before it became widespread public knowledge that Russia was supposedly attempting to use the NRA and other right leaning or conservative groups to sway American political and cultural opinion, or at least American right wing political opinion in a direction more amenable to Russian interests. Some white racists have indeed responded favorably to these overtures. One Russian who allegedly accepted this task was Maria Butina.

Maria Butina, whose years-long mission to build ties between Russia, the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party led to her arrest this week, has ties to Russian intelligence, federal prosecutors alleged on Wednesday.

Movie Reviews: The Equalizer

The Equalizer 2
directed by Antoine Fuqua

This film is the first time that acting icon Denzel Washington has acted in a sequel. This sequel, like most sequels, wasn't as good as the preceding film. It was still enjoyable, just predictable. And when it wasn't predictable it was confusing. I think this was a function of the writing. If you intend to make someone's demise look like an random accident or crime that is unrelated to their family or work do you then subsequently attempt to murder their relatives or co-workers? No. You don't do that because even the slowest bear in the woods will realize that the previous incident was no accident. 

There are a few other head scratching moments like that throughout the film but as with most good action films the viewer can ignore most of them. This film has to do more heavy lifting than the first insofar as in the first movie, the viewer is surprised to see Denzel set his stopwatch to test his reflexes and skills before badly injuring or killing people who have chosen to harm innocents. In this movie all of that is already expected. It's baked into the cake. The director uses that technique a few times just to remind people of what a bada$$ Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is, but the balance of the film is really a detective movie in many aspects.

Police Officer Sexually Assaults Black Man in Washington D.C.

What exactly is the proper protocol to use when someone attempts to sexually assault you? Well there isn't any one correct response for every situation. Some victims may fight back; others may try to escape or run away. Still others may freeze and just attempt to survive. 

It all depends on the victim's perception of his or her circumstances. It's all very easy to say what someone should have done if you're not that person, weren't in their situation, and have never been so violated. Sheep can talk a lot of nonsense about what they would do to the wolves...right up until the time that the wolves show up. 
Stop fingering me though, bruh!” That’s what one Washington, D.C., man told a metro police officer during a body cavity search on Sept. 27, 2017, according to the ACLU. Now the civil rights group is helping him sue the police department, calling video of the incident “shocking and unjustified.”

The lawsuit says it began when officers drove up to 39-year-old M.B. Cottingham and friends as they sat on folding chairs on a public sidewalk. There was an open bottle of alcohol nearby, and they were celebrating Cottingham’s birthday, according to the lawsuit.

Officers pulled up and asked whether the group had weapons, and they said they did not. The lawsuit says it was not clear why the officers pulled up in the first place, as the open bottle of alcohol was “was on the ground at the curb behind a parked car” and not visible from the middle of the street.

Waitress Body Slams Groping Customer

Don't hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself!
-The Georgia Satellites

One Mr. Ryan Cherwinski was evidently so infatuated with the backside of one Miss Emelia Holden, a waitress at a restaurant that he was patronizing that he decided to reach out and touch it. Well that turned out to be a very bad idea, not only morally but consequentially. Holden reached out, grabbed Cherwinski and body slammed him before giving him a piece of her mind. Cherwinski was later arrested and charged with sexual battery. Now, not only will Cherwisnki get his fifteen minutes of fame as a man who's unable to keep his hands to himself, but he will also be known as a man who got his butt kicked by a woman. 

Emelia Holden, 21, didn’t hesitate to take matters into her own hands when a man groped her during her shift at Vinnie Van Go-Go’s in Savannah, Georgia on June 30.
In surveillance footage of the incident, 31-year-old Ryan Cherwinski is shown grabbing Holden’s backside as he walks behind her. Holden immediately turns around and grabs him by his collar and slams him into a counter.

Movie Reviews: A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place
directed by John Krasinski

A Quiet Place is a thriller/sci-fi movie starring a real life husband and wife. This is an intelligent, well acted, empathetic film that makes judicious and limited use of special effects. This is the type of scary yet dramatic film that showcases the best that Hollywood can do when good writing, directing, and acting all come together. Most stories explain or question who we are, why we exist and how will we survive. A Quiet Place does that. 

Another thing which A Quiet Place does which is rather unusual in today's zeitgeist is to show equal respect for the different and complementary traditional family roles played by men and women even as the film winks at us by having both men and women step into the other's role during emergencies. A father is no less manly for nurturing his children while a mother protecting her family can be just as dangerous as any man and yet still feminine. The film focuses on a small number of characters in a limited environment, but the viewer never feels bored. This works because this isn't just a monster movie. This is a a drama about a family. The quirk was that a family that has a tremendous amount of pain, love, and other primal emotions to share can't speak to each other. Now for someone like me who thinks that most people talk way too much anyway, this would initially sound like a pretty good idea. 

Sickly Newark Grandmother Dies When Power Company Shuts Off Electricity

In the movie Goodfellas mobster Henry Hill, as played by Ray Liotta, explains in voiceover that the animating ethos of the Mafia, as exemplified by local Mob boss Paul Vario (Paul Sorvino) is "F*** you, pay me!!. The Mob exists to extract profit from its clients victims. There is no other reason. Utility companies on the other hand are not just only  supposed to make money from customers. These companies actually do have a charge to help people and provide a public service. Profit should not be the only or highest purpose. When the Mafia deliberately kills someone or is indifferent to a person's death as a cost of business no one is surprised. That organization is working as designed. It is after all a criminal organization.You don't blame the shark for biting you. You blame yourself for swimming with the sharks. When a utility company does the same, though, it is not acting in concert with its charter. 

NEWARK — Linda Daniels had fallen behind on her electricity bills, her meter run up by medical equipment going around the clock and increasingly hot weather. But on July 3, her family said, they pulled together $500 to pay down her debts, believing it would maintain her service. Two days later, her electricity was shut off. It was a sweltering day and temperatures in Newark soared into the 90s. Ms. Daniels’s house was stifling, the air so stuffy that her daughter said it was difficult to breathe. Even more serious: Ms. Daniels relied on an oxygen machine, and it required electricity. 

Ms. Daniels, 68, had various ailments, including congestive heart failure, her relatives said, and in recent months she had been placed in hospice care as her health declined. Her doctors had not given her any indication of how long she had to live, relatives said, but her family wanted her to be comfortable and to be at home.