Today we should all be thinking about Gladys Sicknick, the mother of fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
She begged Republicans to do the right thing, told them how important it was to her son's memory and was turned away or (worse) ignored by the majority of Senate Trumpublicans' offices.
Sad for her; sad for Officer Sicknick's family. But also for our country to realize that these GQP members don’t want the truth. The realization that they are so obviously complicit in what happened is both nauseating and terrifying. Our country deserves better.
I never want to hear another Trumpublican claim patriotism or a love of country. They were afraid of cleaning their own house for fear of what it would uncover and discovering who aided the January 6 homegrown terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol.
I don’t want to hear from a single Trumpublican senator on Memorial Day about how important those who protect and serve are to this country. They no longer have any credibility.
“ 'Turns out, things are much worse than we expected,' Daniel Ziblatt, one of the 'How Democracies Die' authors, told me this week. He said he had never envisioned a scenario like the one that has played itself out among Republicans on Capitol Hill during the past few months. How could he have? It’s hard to imagine anyone in America, even when “How Democracies Die” was published, a year into Trump’s term, seriously contemplating an American President who would unleash an insurrection in order to steal an election that he clearly lost—and then still commanding the support of his party after doing so."
From left: Ryan Kelley, Jason Howland, Angela Rigas, Audra Johnson and Jon Rocha — seen here in video footage and social media posts — were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to protest an election lost by former President Donald Trump.
"Ryan Kelley climbed on scaffolding, helped a man moving a police barricade and repeatedly waved fellow protesters toward the Capitol riots in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.
Now, he’s running for governor of Michigan.
Kelley’s ally in organizing rallies against pandemic orders in Michigan, Jason Howland, was there that day too, just feet away from a clash between protesters and police. He made it inside the Capitol with hundreds of others, many of whom now face criminal charges.
Howland is now running for state House."
Also at the Washington, D.C. protests were congressional candidates Audra Johnson and Jon Rocha and state House candidate Angela Rigas. They say they weren’t on the front lines of the insurrection and were simply exercising their rights to demonstrate and protest.
By Peter Wehner, A few weeks ago former "President" Donald Trump referred to the 2020 election as the “greatest Election Fraud in the history of our Country.” By the end of the week, he had issued a statement saying, “As our Country is being destroyed, both inside and out, the Presidential Election of 2020 will go down as THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!”
What else is new? These are the ravings of a 74-year-old sociopath, isolated and banned from social media, living in Mar-a-Lago, where he is crashing wedding parties and delivering rambling monologues.
Or at least, that would be the right way to look at things, if not for the fact that the GOP remains fully in Trump’s thrall, with its leadership more committed than ever to spreading his foundational lies and conspiracy theories. Under Trump’s sway, the Republican Party is becoming more fanatical, venturing even further into a world of illusion.
Trump’s grip on the Republican Party was on display once again last week, when Representative Liz Cheney was ousted from her leadership post as conference chair. Her fireable offense? Refusing to remain silent in the face of Trump’s ongoing efforts to undermine our constitutional system. She wants to “relitigate the past,” it’s said, despite the fact that it is Trump, not Cheney, who is obsessing over the 2020 election.
No former president, and certainly no president defeated after only one term, has so dominated his party after he left office. So Trump’s words matter. They mattered in the lead-up to, and on the day of, the deadly attack on the Capitol on January 6. They still matter. And if the Republican Party doesn’t counteract these lies rather than indulge them, political violence will become more acceptable and more prevalent on the American right.
THIS ASSESSMENT ISN’T based on mere speculation; we know that many of the people who participated in the violent assault on the Capitol believed that they were acting patriotically, foot soldiers in the 21-century version of the American Revolution, doing what they understood their leader was asking of them. As a Washington Post story put it, “The accounts of people who said they were inspired by the president to take part in the melee inside the Capitol vividly show the impact of Trump’s months-long attack on the integrity of the 2020 election and his exhortations to supporters to ‘fight’ the results.” The Post story points out that a video clip of rioters mobbing the Capitol steps caught one man screaming at a police officer: “We were invited here! We were invited by the president of the United States!”
“This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history,” Donald Trump said, complaining about the multiple probes into his business practices. That was in an online statement practically no one seems to have read.
Truly, of all the former president’s problems, his greatest woe has to be that Twitter ban. As The Washington Post cruelly reported, the new website he’s put up as a replacement has 'attracted fewer estimated visitors than the pet-adoption service Petfinder and the recipe site Delish.' Well, yeah. Take your pick: a new puppy, a new pasta recipe or a new post-presidential whine."
Conservative writer, George Will: "I'd Like To See January 6 Burned Into The American Mind As Firmly As 9/11"
"We have something new in American history," Will said. "We have a political party defined by the terror it feels for its own voters. That's the Republican Party right now."
Donald Trump's supporters stormed into the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the election results, and Will said GOP lawmakers were afraid of their undying loyalty to the twice-impeached one-term president.
"Every elected official is frightened of his voters," he said, "therefore doesn't respect his voters and doesn't like his voters and is afraid that a vote for this would be seen as an insult to the 45th president."
Will said the riot was under investigation by law enforcement and journalists, so much of the truth will come out about the deadly assault, but he wanted a commission to memorialize the event as an American tragedy.
"I would like to see January 6th burned into the American mind as firmly as 9/11 because it was that scale of a shock to the system," Will said. "I think there will be a commission, but it is controversial for that reason."
Asking people to keep masks on during a pandemic is NOT like the "steps the Nazis took to control the Jewish population during the Holocaust."
Not even close.
And anyone who uses the Holocaust as a comparison to anything during this pandemic is unquestionably insane and evil.
Mask requirements are not like rounding up Jewish men, women, and children, putting them on trains to concentration camps to be used as slaves, used in medical experiments, and ultimately gassed to death and then cremated in ovens.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is just another uneducated rabble rousing mutton-head who is admired by the same group of people who admired Donald Jobless Trump, a liar, a cheat, and a fraud.
But don't just take my word for how deranged MJG is and how she is a perfect representation of where the GQP is today. Read this:
Simply because McCarthy and his henchmen sound less loony than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is no reason to treat them like normal politicians.
Greene is a quintessential Republican — not an outlier — in her resort to nutty conspiracy theories. When she recently declared that covid-19 restrictions were akin to the Holocaust, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) called this “evil lunacy.”
Cheney is right, but she might also acknowledge that this is an apt descriptor of a party that tolerates MTG, as Greene is known, and spreads its own hateful falsehoods (e.g., the rioters were tourists, not scary like those Black Lives Matter protesters). It is evil lunacy to try to bring down a democracy by resorting to lies about elections."
"President Trump directly asked Georgia's top elections officials to overturn his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden in the state during a Saturday phone call, according to audio posted Sunday by The Washington Post.
During the conversation, the president repeatedly asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to "find" more than 11,000 ballots needed to overcome the gap between Trump and Biden in the state, thereby flipping the state in his favor."
"The Georgia Secretary of State's office has formally launched an investigation into former President Donald Trump's phone calls to state election officials in which he sought help to overturn the results of the election after President Joe Biden's narrow victory was certified twice.
The investigation, which follows a series of formal complaints filed by a law professor alleging that Trump violated the law during those calls, marks the first formal investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election in the state."
The law-breaker below tried to strong-arm Georgia officials into giving him the electoral votes that Joe Biden won. It's all on audio tape; it's also a criminal act:
Direct effort by POTUS to interfere in an election through corruption and influence over elected officials certifying the election -- criminal. And abuse of power.
(The rest of you rational folks already know this.)
Masks work. Masks work by keeping the spread of germs to a minimum. That's why there were so few recorded flu cases and NO flu deaths during the COVID-19 mask-wearing wars during 2020 and so far this year.
The usual suspects (Trump cultists) made up all sorts of foolish excuses for not wearing masks:
1) Wearing masks took away their "freedom!"
2) Only "sheeple" wear masks. "We think for ourselves, we're not fearful, and we don't believe anything the CDC tells us!"
3) Dr. Fauci recommended wearing masks, so that had to be WRONG! Fauci is EVUL!
4) Former POTUS, Trump, made fun of people wearing masks; so, Trump Sheeple didn't wear masks!
Did any of Trump's Anti-Mask Sheeple ever get wheeled into an OR and see the doctors, anesthesiologists, and nurses WITHOUT masks? No. Of course not.
Do the Trump Cultist Anti-Maskers Sheeple ever ask themselves WHY that is?
I don't think so.
Trump made fun of mask wearers, so the Trump Sheeple decided Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and good medical practices in the OR were all a conspiracy to take away their freedumbs!
The Trump Sheeple actually believe wearing masks has no affect on keeping one safe from communicable diseases like flu, SAR-viruses, and other dangerous, air-borne-by-droplets illnesses!
Trump and his Sheeple politicized wearing masks and, therefore, caused the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Americans.
Don't be like Trump and his sheeple. If you want to continue to wear your masks even though you've had your shots, by all means DO IT! And ignore the anti-science, anti-masker Trump Sheeple!
"We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA. We have no additional comment at this time," Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the office, said in a statement.
Whether the president's business had inflated the value of its assets for the purposes of tax breaks and loans has reportedly been the key issue.
That investigation will be in addition to the commission that the House will approve which will examine the January 6 insurrection against the government of the United States, incited by the former POTUS, Donald J. Trump.
Trump is going to be a busy little "Person of Interest" over the next few months. His corrupt behavior is finally catching up with him, and he won't be able to invoke the protection of the Office of the Presidency to keep him from being indicted for any of his crimes.
BTW, you know who isn't being criminally investigated?
"A photo emerged of a GOP lawmaker who last week downplayed the Capitol siege and compared the rioters to tourists barricading the House doors with furniture on January 6.
Rep. Andrew Clyde said during a House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday that it was a "bald-faced lie" to call the riot an insurrection. He said the riot, in which hundreds of Trump supporters breached the Capitol, resembled a "normal tourist visit."
After Clyde's comments, a photographer shared a photo he had taken of Clyde using furniture to barricade the House against rioters trying to force their way in to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden's election victory.
Several people died in the riot. "The normal tourist visit."
Trumpublican Representative Clyde also falsely claimed that police officers had not confiscated any firearms from people who breached the Capitol.
When your leader is a known LIAR, cheat, and fraud, you are compelled to out-lie him any chance you get. So Trumpublican Rep. Clyde told a rotten lie about what happened on January 6, and a photographer who captured him barricading himself along with other House members, exposed Clyde for the lying liar that he is.
That, dear friends, is Trump's legacy for the party once known as the GOP. It is no longer The Party of Lincoln, but has become, under Trump, the Party of Liars, Cheats, and Frauds.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth"- George Orwell
Former President Donald Trump's blog crashed on Saturday after he posted about an Arizona recount.
His post alleged massive fraud in the form of "broken seals on boxes, ballots missing, and worse."
Trump launched the "From the Desk of Donald J. Trump" blog earlier this month.
A great day will be when this liar, cheat, and fraud is behind bars. He's an expert on fraud; he's built his career on fraud. In most contemporary unabridged dictionaries of the English language, his picture appears with the definition of "fraud." He's been a source of hate and misery to our country, and has shown no sign of remorse or responsibility for what he did on January 6.
And yet there are Americans who still believe in him and his lies, who still believe he won in 2020, and who believe in unicorns that poop rainbows. (I made that last part up.)
This was found in Broome, Western Australia and is an anemone. More specifically, Dofleinia armata, the armed anemone. Also called the striped anemone. It is considered extremely dangerous as it can inflict painful stings that take months to heal.
Over 100 former Republican officials will sign a letter on Thursday declaring that if the Republican Party does not break with former President Donald Trump and change course, they will back the creation of a third party.
The letter, headlined: "A Call For American Renewal," is an exploratory move toward forming a breakaway party, two of its organizers said. The group is dismayed by what it says is a modern Republican Party driven by its allegiance to Trump, who continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from him.
These Republicans are preparing to release a letter this week threatening to form a third party if the Republican Party does not make certain changes, according to an organizer of the effort.
The statement is expected to take aim at former President Donald J. Trump’s stranglehold on Republicans, which signatories to the document have deemed unconscionable.
“When in our democratic republic, forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism arise, it is the patriotic duty of citizens to act collectively in defense of liberty and justice,” reads the preamble to the full statement, which is expected to be released on Thursday.
The effort comes as House Republican leaders are expected on Wednesday to oust Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from their ranks because of her outspoken criticism of Mr. Trump’s election lies.
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This is the best idea I've heard coming out of the mess called the Republican Party, but it's actually the only positive, pro-active idea I've heard coming from them for a very long time.
To me and other Americans, the GQP is the party of "NO!" -- negative, entrenched, and certainly not practical or visionary. This move will obviously split the vote in the existing party, which some of us consider a step in the right direction if the net effect is to lessen the vitriolic grandstanding we currently listen to every day.
And it will finally put the lie to Trump and his cultists yammering about a "stolen election."
Trump and his cultists will have to finally face the fact that a majority of Americans rejected him, his disastrous incompetence, and his proto-fascist ideas!
House Republicans ousted Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership post Wednesday because she continues to challenge former president Donald Trump over his BIG LIE about election fraud and his role in the Jan. 6 attack, according to several GOP members.
Biden's overall approval rating is buoyed by his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, health care and the economy, according to the poll.
On the pandemic, 71 percent of Americans approve of Biden's performance, including 47 percent of Republicans. Biden has made it the centerpiece of his administration's agenda since taking office, pushing for economic relief measures and ramping up vaccine production and distribution.
Fifty-seven percent of Americans, meanwhile, approve of Biden's handling of the economy, while 42 percent disapprove. And 62 percent approve of Biden's work on health care so far, where he has prioritized expanding access to the Affordable Care Act.
Sixty-three percent of American approve of President Biden's job performance thus far, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll released Monday, up 2 percentage points from late March.
The poll found 96 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of independents and 23 percent of Republicans surveyed approve of Biden's work in his first three full months in office.
The survey also showed Americans with a growing sense of optimism about the direction of the country, with 54 percent saying the nation is on the right track, compared to 44 percent who believe it is on the wrong track.
The 54 percent mark is the highest of any AP-NORC poll response to the question since 2017.
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Anti-democratic and proto-fascist Trump could only dream of those numbers.
Trump never made it past 50% approval and spent the majority of his miserable 4 years in the low 40s for job approval.
The MAGAcultists' hero spent most of his presidenting term with historically low approval numbers, and it's eating them up to see President Biden so popular with the American people!
"She [Stefanik] voted against Trump’s singular legislative achievement — his 2017 tax reform bill — and against making his tax cuts permanent. She voted to block Trump from withdrawing from the Paris climate accords. She voted to condemn Trump for calling on the courts to invalidate the Affordable Care Act. She voted to overturn Trump’s emergency declaration at the southern border so he could fund the border wall, and then voted to override Trump’s veto of a bill that reversed his emergency declaration. Trump calls Cheney a “warmongering fool” who wants to “fight ridiculous, endless wars,” but Stefanik voted with Cheney to oppose Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria."
Also:
"Stefanik voted to certify the election results in Arizona (though not Pennsylvania)." --Marc Thiessen
Is Stefanik more conservative than Cheney?
No, Cheney has an 80 percent lifetime rating with Heritage Action for America compared with a 48 percent rating for Stefanik.
So what's going on? We can see that Cheney is more conservative than Stefanik. What's the difference here?
Trump values loyalty to himself rather than to conservative ideals, and Stefanik has shown herself to be be less of a supporter of Trump's policies, but a supporter of TRUMP HIMSELF, which to him is far more important.
It is what a cult of personality leader wants and demands from his followers. It's about him: Trump the malignant narcissist:
"This is not about ideology or public policy. It’s not even loyalty to Trumpism. It’s about loyalty to Trump. And even though Cheney supported Trump’s agenda in Congress, she must be purged because she supported impeachment and the certification of the election — and refuses to apologize for it." --Marc Thiessen
[skip]
"One anonymous GOP House member told the Hill, “This isn’t about Liz Cheney wanting to impeach Donald Trump; this isn’t about Donald Trump at all. It’s about Liz Cheney being completely out of synch with the majority of our conference.” But it is Stefanik who is out of sync with the majority of the Republican conference on the issues. Cheney is being ousted by her Republican colleagues, and replaced by someone who opposed much of Trump’s agenda, for one reason and one reason only: because she is not sufficiently obeisant to the former president."--Marc Thiessen
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Trump cared no more about the pandemic nor national security than he did about tax reform or environmental regulation.
Trump who puts loyalty to himself over the good of the Republican Party is the same Trump who put Putin's flattery over the good of the country.
Trump who called up Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to demand that he "find" 11,780 votes is the same Trump who called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to coerce him into smearing political rival Joe Biden.
The Big Lie that the election was stolen from him is just one more falsehood on top of the 30,000 false and misleading statements he has made since his administration began.
The "leadership" he is showing now from Mar-a-Lago is the "leadership" he showed his entire term. Trump didn't become the mendacious narcissist he is when he lost the election.
The Trump who demands loyalty to himself over loyalty to our Constitution and rule of law has been in front of our eyes for the past four years.
In public statements again this week, former president Donald Trump has repeated his claims that the 2020 election was a fraud and was stolen. His message: I am still the rightful president, and President Biden is illegitimate. Trump repeats these words now with full knowledge that exactly this type of language provoked violence on Jan. 6. And, as the Justice Department and multiple federal judges have suggested, there is good reason to believe that Trump’s language can provoke violence again. Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this.
How quickly they forget! Trump and his enablers are just adult versions of crybabies. In the video below, you'll see Trump telling his thugs to throw some guy out of a rally because he doesn't like what the guy said.
Trump and his crybaby enablers, supporters, and sycophants want "free speech" for him, but not for those who disagree with him.
Just look at what they're doing to Rep. Liz Cheney. They're working to take away her leadership role in the House because they don't like what she says.
Really. Trump and his cultists have ZERO self-awareness. The best thing for us to do is ignore their toddler tantrums, get on with our lives, and enjoy a TRUMPLESS facebook and Twitter!
And then for The Former Guy to incite an angry mob of armed thugs to attack the United States Capitol Building to interfere with the certification of the electoral college vote is evidence enough to show that Donald J. Trump is a danger to American democracy.
Facebook’s Oversight Board, which acts as a quasi-court to deliberate the company’s content decisions, said the social network was right to bar Mr. Trump after he used the site to foment an insurrection in Washington in January. The panel said the ongoing risk of violence “justified” the suspension.
But the board also said that Facebook’s penalty of an indefinite suspension was“not appropriate,” and that the company should apply a “defined penalty.” The board gave Facebook six months to determine its final decision on Mr. Trump’s account status.
William P. Barr acted as Trump's personal attorney instead of the Attorney General of the United States. Barr disgraced himself by his lying about what the Mueller Report contained, and shielded Trump instead of being truthful to the American people, as his job demanded.
Judge Jackson called former AG Barr disingenuous about his assertions that the Mueller Report found no obstruction of justice by Trump. That was a lie!
I hope they drag Barr's corrupt posterior into court, along with Trump's, so that the American people can hear the truth in the Mueller Report: TRUMP, AS PRESIDENT, OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE.
"The decision by Barr and senior Justice Department leaders to clear Trump of obstruction, even though special counsel Robert Mueller and his team pointedly did not reach that conclusion, was a significant moment for the president that he touted as vindication."
You've all either heard about this or seen it. I'm putting on my blog to document what too many LEOs do while "serving the community."
There are no words for the depravity on display here. These people are not fit to work at a sewerage plant let along being employed as the guardians of the public trust.
Shame on them. And shame on a police force that tolerates this sort of torture of elderly, demented people!
via Wonkette:
Hero Colorado Cops Share Laughs Over Video Of Them Beating Up 73-Year-Old Woman
Last June, Karen Garner, a 73-year-old woman with dementia, allegedly walked out of a Colorado Walmart with $13 worth of unpaid merchandise. Walmart is a mom-and-pop billion-dollar business that can't just let old ladies rip it off, so this was immediately reported to the cops. Austin Hopp of the Loveland Police Department found this threat to society wandering home, picking flowers by the side of the road. The confused Garner didn't immediately comply with Hopp, so she had to pay the price for her defiance.
“I don't think you want to play it this way," Hopp said, before eventually tackling the frightened old woman to the ground, handcuffing her and slamming her hard against his cruiser. Maybe it's possible she looked like a spry 63-year-old woman with dementia. Maybe Hopp thought she had "superhuman strength." That's a common cop go-to.
Garner's family claims that her arm was fractured, her wrist sprained, and her shoulder dislocated during the arrest. Officer Daria Jalali assisted Hopp with the beat down. At no point did the officers demonstrate any compassion or even the slightest awareness that Garner might have a mental impairment. (She also reportedly suffers from sensory aphasia, which impacts her ability to communicate or understand why uniformed thugs are attacking her.) Jalali angrily yelled, “Quit!" as Garner cried that she just wants to go home. She was only two blocks away.
This was all caught on the body camera footage, which was released this month. You need to watch the whole thing, no matter how difficult. This is what your tax-dollars fund.
“Are you finished?" Hopp said like he was a bad-ass action star taking out a terrorist. Garner kept repeating, through her pain, “I'm going home." Jalali barked, “Stand up! We're not going to hold you." Young people today. When I was a kid, the cops would hold the door open for the old women they beat up.
A concerned citizen stopped to ask if the cops “have to use so much aggression," and Hopp snapped, like a gangster caught disposing of a body, “What are you doing? Get out of here! This is not your business." But agents of the state abusing their authority is the public's business, at least in a free society. (At this point in the body cam footage, you can see the absurd in context slogan “Protect and Serve" on the side of the police cruiser.)
Jalali was asked if she's okay (because she's the one to worry about) and after examining her hands, Officer Lady Macbeth declared, “Little bloody, little muddy. That's how it works." This was Garner's blood.
The Loveland police didn't take Garner to the hospital or call her family. Instead, they let her sit in a cell, handcuffed, for six hours, while she cried out in pain.
Here's where things get really sick. Garner's attorney, Sarah Schielke, released surveillance footage that shows Hopp, Jalali, and Sergeant Phil Metzler watching this literal gag reel and laughing like ghouls.
"Ready for the pop?" Hopp said to Jalali and other officers while they gathered to watch the footage of the violent arrest. "What popped?" another officer asked. "I think it was her shoulder," Hopp replied.
Hopp can be heard saying, "I can't believe I threw a 73-year-old on the ground," while Jalali comments: "It's like live TV... Body-cams are my favorite thing to watch, I could watch livestream body-cams all day." The third officer can be heard suggesting "The Body-Cam Show" as a title for a proposed television special, and says to Hopp, "Impressive, buddy."
These people are sociopaths. They claimed the arrest "went great" and mocked Garner as "ancient," “senile," and "flexible."
"We crushed it," one of the officers says.
Garner's family filed a federal lawsuit against the officers involved earlier this month. The suit alleges that they knew Garner was hurt but didn't give her medical care for the six hours she was in custody. Hopp, Jalali, Phil Metzler and community service officer Tyler Blackett are currently on administrative leave pending an investigation into how gross they are.
In case you were worried about the struggling Walmart corporation, the staff apparently retrieved the valuable soda and laundry detergent from Garner before she'd even left the parking lot. She tried to pay but they wouldn't let her. This was all over $13.
Schielke, speaking for everyone with a human soul, said: "This is utterly disgusting. These videos cannot be unseen or unheard. I am sorry to have to share them with the public. This will be traumatic and deeply upsetting for everyone to see."
Police departments across the country are either failing to screen out violent monsters who get off on hurting people or police training deliberately turns cops into monsters. That's the question we have to answer before any meaningful reforms can occur.
