Opinionated Blogs (1,909)

The Democratic Party is navigating a crossroads in realtime. The left, more broadly, has chosen its path. Joe Biden is now an unlikely bulwark.

It all comes down to one viral video. The relevant clip documents Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a progressive Democrat, paying lip service to George Floyd protesters before being booed out of the crowd for meekly refusing demands to defund the police. Throw all the national polls and focus groups away—that constituency may soon be the only one that matters.



Democrats have lurched leftward for years, and their drift is certainly accelerating. That’s also true of the cultural left, which bypassed this crossroads sometime in the last decade, as evidenced by the media’s conduct last week, from the shameless double standard on pandemic protests to the New York Times’s institutional meltdown over an innocuously reasonable op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

#DefundThePolice recalls #AbolishICE, a far left campaign that quickly caught steam on the cultural left, forcing the political left to appease activists. But there’s a key difference. Democrats had no immediate way to “abolish ICE” when the movement found momentum. While some far-left lawmakers were certainly serious, it was much easier for others to go along with the hashtag for the sake of political expediency when the threat was less immediate.

Democrats are, however, in charge of major cities around the country. Police departments could actually be “defunded,” to whatever extent satisfies the party’s loudest activists. Minneapolis is already proof.


If one major political party accepts #DefundThePolice, it will lead to rapid, sweeping changes around the country. That, of course, is the left’s point. I fully understand their frustrations with corporatist Democrats. But this is a ridiculous idea that sounds good to campus radicals who traffic in abstractions from Ivory Towers. It’s not practical, it’s dangerous and, ironically, it will mostly benefit elites.

If they get their way on this, a proposal so radical it tests their ability to resist nonsense, the crowd that booed Frey will be the only focus groups national Democrats have to please. And as Frey’s failed attempt to quell the crowd illustrated, it’s not an easy group to please. Picture every Democrat presenting every part of their platform to the crowd of protesters in Minneapolis, then modifying it leftward until they pass the test. The crowd is small but growing; it already controls Hollywood and the media, and is loud enough on social media to inflate its influence.

At some point, academia’s exportation of inflexible cultural leftists into the working world hit critical mass. Abstract poststructuralist notions like “silence is violence” became mainstream because the left accrued enough cultural power to enforce the radical binary: progressivism or bigotry. It’s intimidating, from the classroom to the newsroom to the boardroom.

We’ve seen Democrats in power create sanctuary cities and deny the realities of biological sex. Defunding the police would complete the party’s transformation, which would be an ironic development during Joe Biden’s time as nominee, given that much of his constituency is averse if not hostile to the far left.


Full story:

HEY!! I thought this was a well organized site.Was here for 5 yrs. It was nice. When you could SEE who emailed me or when I could actually find most of my profile.
I`d like to know why clients have to plow through HUGE ADS, & even give remarks for it. when all a client wants is to connect with a male or female , we now have to find out where we put things.
THIS is NOT fair. I know the site is free. But we the ads do not have to dominate ALL THE SPACE THEY STARTED TO HAVE. We have to read the ads, if we like it or not. I don`t want to .I keep telling the question offered, it is shutting the space out for my profile.
CS. started to put ads in, while we had some choice to read them. BUT THESE are full blown / Absolutely a turn off for myself trying to have some organized direction & pleasure to fill out things, send mail & check out people. We can not fathom why SO BIG. It changes the whole idea of a pleasant site the way we joined.... Annoying NOW is at it`s best, when a client has to look through a field of ads. 'Take a poll of who likes this "CHANGE".
Why the change or need?
Some art form? Is the getting broke or what? Tired of being artistic?Someone got lost in space?
PLEASE. Consider what is right here. THIS ad stuff is WAY out of line.
Sincerly - A veteran client. But maybe not for long.
Nessie Gray

This ought to work really really well.
What could possibly go wrong ?
Minneapolis just kissed good bye to any tourism dollars they ever hoped of having again.

If you’ve been tuned into the Minneapolis public safety scene, you know that for years, Reclaim the Block and other grassroots community groups have been asking the city to do one thing: stop investing in policing.


Budget meeting after budget meeting, they’d turn out with their petitions and signs, demanding the city put less money into its police department and more money into programs that stop crimes from happening in the first place – affordable housing, addiction counseling, violence prevention programs.

The council's been listening.

“I think we’ve had a vision for a while of wanting to see another kind of city response to those calls,” says Council Member Steve Fletcher, whose Ward 3 covers parts of downtown.

Calls about mental health crises could be answered by mental health professionals. Calls about opioid abuse could be answered by addiction experts. Instead, both get cops, usually armed.

But it’s one thing to think that’s a good idea and another to get it done. The city has “struggled” to put any of these reforms in place in a substantial way, Fletcher says.


Then George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police.

Now the council members are listening to a city that is wounded, angry, fed up with decades of violence disproportionately visited upon black and brown residents. Various private and public bodies – from First Avenue to Minneapolis Public Schools – have essentially cut ties with the police department. Council members are trying to figure out what their next move is.

Their discussion is starting to sound a little more like what groups like Reclaim the Block and the Black Visions Collective have been saying for years. On Tuesday, Fletcher published a lengthy Twitter thread saying the police department was “irredeemably beyond reform,” and a “protection racket” that slows down responses as political payback.

“Several of us on the council are working on finding out what it would take to disband the Minneapolis Police Department and start fresh with a community-oriented, nonviolent public safety and outreach capacity,” he wrote.

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Before you comment please watch the entire video. If you are going to blindly comment without watching this video I will know it as will others who watch and your comment will be taken with a grain of salt.

1. Why does one photo from behind show the man on the road is not handcuffed and the video from the front that he is handcuffed?
2. Why is the cop car in the restaurant surveillance video different than the one Floyd was lying behind (different car numbers)?
3. Why were the cops in the surveillance footage that arrested him different than the police in the actual incident?
4. Why does the video show the diesel fuel price as 99 cents instead of the regular price in the area of $2.49?
5. Why does the Police Car have a non-Municipal license plate with "Police" on it?
6. Why does Derek have a completely different police badge on top of a second police badge matching his partner's if they work for the same precinct?
7. Why is it not odd that both Officers Tou Thao and Derek Chauvin have both previously been investigated for excessive use of force and not charged by State AG Amy Klobuchar?
Additionally, Officer Derek Chauvin is married to his partner's sister Kelli.
8. Is there any cop dumb enough to continue kneeling on someone’s neck for 8 minutes when surrounded by people and being video recorded?
9. Is it possible for the deceased’s cousins and fiancé to be completely tearless during interviews?
10. Why does the main cop have one hand in his pocket most of the time he’s kneeling?
11. Why did the kneeling officer appear completely cool and calm, as if he was posing for the camera?
12. Doesn’t it seem strange that Floyd and the officer that kneeled on his neck worked security together on the same shift at the El Nuevo Rodeo Club, the officer for 17 years (both were laid off because of the Covid Virus)?
13. Why do the neighbors of this officer say they didn’t know he was a cop and never saw him in uniform?
14. Why has the same attorney been hired as with all the other big supposed police killings of blacks? Attorney Benjamin Crump. The same attorney that worked on previous cases that resulted in busses bringing in rioters from outside the city?
15. Why does store surveillance video show Floyd calmly and submissively walking with the officer and not resisting arrest while the officer gently allowed him to sit down on the side walk, and multiple officers calmly chatting with him? Is this the kind of suspect that a police officer would feel the need to put on the ground and place his knee on his neck
16. Why did the EMT workers (wearing Police Uniforms including bullet proof vests) roughly handle and dump the unconscious George on the stretcher? This is not how trained emergency workers lift a person with a possible neck injury. Why did they not attempt triage or try CPR?
17. Can someone really not breath when someone kneels on his neck and is the victim really able to speak for considerable periods of time if he can’t breathe?
18. Post killing: Why is a white man that looks like an undercover (St Paul) cop in black and a riot gear mask carrying a black umbrella walking around breaking windows (and others dressed similarly starting fires) and instigating a riot? Is this reminiscent of “umbrella man” during the JFK shooting?
19. Why were almost all the rioters leading the destruction of the neighborhood at the beginning of the riots “white” and not from Minneapolis... in a black neighborhood after a police killed a black man?
20. Why did the Chief of Police make it a point that those Inciting the Riots and Arsonists were not from Minnesota?
21. Why was a CNN News Crew not only detained but also Arrested?

What did I miss?

Someone sent me a message asking if I am watching America. I wasn't.

Anyway.. With all due respect to George Floyd and sympathies to his family, I am finding it difficult to digest what I see.

As all the other previous times, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner or any other black life lost at the hands of a law enforcement personnel, the protests, riots and vandalism will come to pass.

After the fires go down, the body joins the dust, the lives will go on as usual for all the protesters. Even his family will carry on, with a void in their lives.

While it is quite obvious there is racial discrimination towards black people in some parts of the world, by some individuals, I really don't know if it would change, or if there is a way to change things with laws and bills.

As months and years go by, other than the officer/officers standing trial, and being convicted, would there be any real change?

Is that enough?

Can ideological supremacy or racial discrimination be uprooted from a society ?

I have no answers but questions.

All I know is, every life matter. We all feel the same fear and cry when we leave the comfort and safety of a mother's womb. We all breathe the same air. We all walk this earth for a God given time, with nothing but death at the end of our journeys.

Respect, justice and equality for another life can't birth anywhere else better than our own hearts. I wish your death opened more hearts than all the fires started.

Rest in peace George Floyd.

God bless the USA.

I haven't seen the mugshot. I think something is wrong with that.
Photo, yes but mugshots I've seen have a front and side view along with case numbers.
The photo I've seen looks like a passport photo.
Maybe they stopped doing that... otherwise how would you know a real photo from a faked mugshot photo?
Counterfeit 20 dollars. This whole thing started over an alleged counterfeit bill. That's a case for the FBI and should be in the police report.
Four officers were fired and only one (knee man) was arrested and charged with third-degree murder, currently out of $500,000 bail. Oddly, I read today he was in jail under suicide watch. Something is wrong with that.
If the other 2 officers who aided knee man weren't considered accomplices and charged, something is wrong with that.

Only in America during an election year can you go from a nationwide lock down with the country at a standstill to full blown ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter rioting and anarchy in one week.