Never believe the initial police reports of shootings

Take a moment to read this initial police report filed immediately after an incident.

On Monday evening, shortly after 8:00 pm, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department responded to the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South on a report of a forgery in progress. Officers were advised that the suspect was sitting on top of a blue car and appeared to be under the influence.

Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.

At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has been called in to investigate this incident at the request of the Minneapolis Police Department.

No officers were injured in the incident.

Body worn cameras were on and activated during this incident.

[Read more…]

Newsmax apologizes for election fraud allegations

The right-wing media organization that is owned and run Christopher Ruddy, a close friend of Trump, has withdrawn its claim that Dominion Voting System’s head of product strategy and security Eric Coomer colluded with Antifa to rig the elections results so that Trump would lose. Coomer has been subjected to death threats as a result and had for a while gone into hiding. He had sued Newsmax for defamation.

Coomer sued Newsmax in December in state court in Colorado over false claims that he took part in an “Antifa conference call” to rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. He revised his lawsuit in February to bolster his claims against Newsmax, as Insider previously reported.
…

Coomer first became the subject of conspiracy theories after Joe Oltmann, a right-wing political operative, claimed without evidence that he was a member of “Antifa” — a loosely linked group of left-wing activists who oppose fascist movements — and worked to rig the 2020 election.

[Read more…]

A funny TV series about soccer

On the lighter side, the funny Apple TV+ comedy series Ted Lasso features Jason Sudeikis as a US college football coach, hired by the owner of a lower division English football team to coach a demoralized and dysfunctional team desperately trying to avoid being relegated to an even lower division. The owner Rebecca had acquired the team from her husband Rupert after a bitter divorce. Why she hired an American who has no knowledge of soccer and why he accepted the offer so that he is hated by the team’s loyal fans are plot points that are not really that much of spoilers but I will not reveal them here.
[Read more…]

‘Spanish laughing guy’ Juan Joya Borja dies

I am sad to report that the Spanish comedian, better known by his nickname El Risitas (which means ‘Giggles’), has died at the age of 65.

A video of him and his interviewer laughing uncontrollably over something he is saying in Spanish is so infectious that you laugh along with him even though you may not know the language.

The famous clip of him came from Spanish late-night show Ratones Coloraos, where he was interviewed by the host about his ill-fated experience working as a kitchen helper.

In the clip, uploaded on the show’s YouTube in 2007, Borja told Quintero how he once left 20 paella dishes in the sea overnight to clean them, only to return the next morning to find the tide had swept all but one away.

The story left him and the host slapping the desk in fits of uncontrollable laughter – with Borja’s signature wheezing and almost-toothless smile stealing the show.

That clip became a meme and people have taken it and added their own subtitles, in the manner of the Hitler Downfall parodies.

This is my favorite, perhaps because I own a MacBook and have the sneaking suspicion that this parody is close to reality.

Trump’s predictions were all wrong

In Trump’s final days in office, he seemed to relish the idea that things would fall apart in the US after he was out of office. He must be seething that none of his dire warnings have come true.

In October 2020, he had warned that the stock market, the only economic indicator that he cares about, would crash if Biden were elected, wiping out people’s wealth. But that has not happened. The stock market keeps rising to record levels. This does not mean that most people are doing well, but just that the investor class and the very wealthy are doing just fine.
[Read more…]

Boris Johnson’s sleaze catches up with him

It never ceases to amaze me when politicians who are by no means poor, get caught doing sleazy things in order to get luxuries that, in the grand scheme of things, seem quite petty. As someone once wisely said, what is astonishing is not that politicians can be bought, it is that they can be bought so cheaply.

In the UK, prime minister Boris Johnson seems to have got caught getting people to give him money to redecorate the apartment that he lives in in Downing Street, an episode now referred to as ‘Cash for Curtains’. (In the US, this would have been given the label ‘Curtaingate’, a tiresome practice that really should be retired.)
[Read more…]

Samantha Bee blasts Biden’s handling of refugees at the border

While Biden’s policies at the border are not as bad as Trump’s, that is an appallingly low bar and cannot by any means be trotted out as an excuse for the conditions that continue to exist at the southern border. Bee is to be commended for calling out the administration for its lack of swift action to correct the conditions under which children are still being held.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Racist, and proud of it

Kiauna Larkins was delivering food in Akron, OH as part of her job with DoorDash. She was with her two-year old son in the car when she encountered James Rhodes who apparently did not like the presence of a black woman near his apartment building and let loose a threatening, racist, and profanity-laced tirade in the presence of the child.

[Read more…]

An unusual case of identity crisis

We have all heard of stories from fiction and real life of infants switched at birth. But the radio program This American Life had a true story with an unusual twist to this familiar tale.

Jason and Randy are identical twins, with Jason being born first and Randy emerging five minutes later back in 1972. Randy had to spend the first few days of his life in an incubator but after that the twins were identical, so similar that even their parents could not tell them apart. To keep track of which was Jason and which was Randy, their mother Annette dressed Jason in blue and Randy in red. As a backup, she would use blue diaper pins for Jason and pink for Randy.

All went well until they went for their six-week check up to the doctor. Annette dressed them in identical fancy outfits an aunt had sent them but kept the diaper pin system in order to tell them apart. But then the nurse took them from the mother, presumably for weighing, and when she returned she proudly told Annette that they had just started using pin-less disposable diapers (disposable diapers that used adhesive fasteners only came out in 1968) and she had put the boys in them, thus making them indistinguishable to their mother
[Read more…]

An amusing monologue by Jimmy Kimmel

Last night he covered several topics that have been in the news these past few days.

At the 4:45 mark, he mentions anti-mask zealot Fox News’s Tucker Carlson’s calls to people to report the parents of children who wear masks to the police or Child Protection Services for child abuse. I think we have to conclude that at this point Carlson has deliberately chosen to become a parody of himself so that he can gain attention by generating ridicule for the things he says. (Having scorn rain down on you and being seen as an idiot is, for some inexplicable reason, viewed as some kind of victory by right-wingers and is known by them as ‘owning the libs’.)

I cannot believe that even his loyal audience will follow his advice. If some do, I would love to listen to their conversations with the police and CPS dispatchers as they try to convince them of what abuse the children are being subjected to by wearing masks.