President Obama came out this week and endorsed the core message of Black Lives Matter by stating that:
“The African American community’s not just making this up,” Obama said. "It’s real, and there’s a history behind it, and we have to take it seriously," he went on to say. Obama said Black Lives Matter, the criminal justice reform movement sparked by police killings in recent years, has been touted as a group opposed to police and that in saying “black lives matter,” some have said that suggests they don’t believe all lives are important. “Whenever we get bogged down in that kind of discussion, we know where that goes, that’s just down the old trap,” Obama said. “I think everybody understands all lives matter. Everybody wants strong effective law enforcement, everybody wants their kids to be safe when they’re walking to school.” ... “The criminal justice system should treat people fairly regardless of race, wealth and station,” Obama said Thursday afternoon. “There has to be consistency in the application of the law.”
By saying that, he once again single-handedly turned a bunch more conservatives into Grumpy Cat. Thanks, Obama. Because he was, of course, far beyond the pale for some who clearly need to believe that black people are "just making shit up" in order to play the oh-so-effective and obviously invincible "race card." It's just like Kryptonite, didn't ya know? Even though what he said was quite clear to all, these other people—let's just call them "deluded wingnuts" because it's not name-calling to use a clinically accurate description—have all decided that what the president really meant was quite obviously "KILL WHITEY! KILL COPS! KILL THEM NOW!" More or less. Obama just doesn't have the courage of his convictions, like say, Trump or Carson, to say what he really thinks. Even if it's totally bat-shit or may seem like a Birth of a Nation blue-meth fever dream to most of us, it nonetheless makes perfect sense to the likes of these...
Details and much, much debunkery down below.
First off, it's worth noting that 2015 is shaping up to be one of the safest years for law enforcement in the last 25 years.
According to the Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), which keeps data on officer deaths going back over 100 years, 24 officers have been shot and killed by suspects this year. This puts the US on pace for 36 non-accidental, firearm-related police fatalities in 2015. Each one of such deaths is a tragedy for the officers killed, their families and the communities they serve, but this would be the lowest total in 25 years, aside from 2013 which saw 31 such deaths.
So the entire theory that Black Lives Matter's rhetoric led to actual dead cops is pretty much a load of un-recycled garbage, but it's still exactly what GOPers keep on spouting anyway. Not a surprise. Starting with the smallest mind, first we have Sarah Palin, who basically called Black Lives Matter "dogs," arguing that they have caused Obama to "abandon police and first responders."
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She continued: “Oh and you know, since your president won’t say it, since he still hasn’t called off the dogs, we’ll say it. Police officers and first responders all across this great land, we got your back! We salute you!” [Emphasis added]
The President "won't say it?" The President has said it, many times, most recently following the shooting of Deputy Goforth.
This afternoon, on my way to Alaska, I called Kathleen Goforth, the widow of Harris County Deputy Sheriff Darren Goforth - a veteran law enforcement officer who was contemptibly shot and killed over the weekend. On behalf of the American people, I offered Mrs. Goforth my condolences, and told her that Michelle and I would keep her and her family in our prayers. I also promised that I would continue to highlight the uncommon bravery that police officers show in our communities every single day. They put their lives on the line for our safety. Targeting police officers is completely unacceptable - an affront to civilized society. As I said in my State of the Union Address, we've got to be able to put ourselves in the shoes of the wife who won't rest until the police officer she married walks through the door at the end of his shift. That comfort has been taken from Mrs. Goforth. So we must offer her our comfort - and continue to stand up for the safety of police officers wherever they serve.
So yeah, said that. Then we have yet another person who won't be president or vice president: Chris Christie, mouthing off that the president doesn't support police.
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“The problem is this, there’s lawlessness in this country. The president encourages this lawlessness,” Christie told CBS host John Dickerson. “Encourages it… by his own rhetoric. He does not support the police, he doesn’t back up the police. He justifies black lives matter.” “Black Lives Matter shouldn’t be justified at all?” Dickerson asked. “Listen, I don’t believe that movement should be justified when they’re calling for the murder of police officers, no,” Christie insisted. “But they’re not calling for the murder of police officers,” Dickerson pointed out. “Sure, they are,” the Republican presidential candidate said. “They’ve been chanting in the streets for the murder of police officers.” “Well, individuals have, but the Black Lives Matter movement hasn’t,” the CBS News host observed. “That’s what the movement is creating,” Christie quipped. “And the president of the United States is justifying that. But not only that, he hasn’t backed up police officers from the minute he’s gotten into office. And we can cite instance after instance.”
"Instance after instance," eh? You mean when he said "police acted stupidly" to arrest Harvard Professor Skip Gates for the highly dubious crime of breaking down his own stuck front door? Let's not even get into the numerous lies on that officer's police report about the incident. Or when he said if he had a son he would've "looked like Trayvon [Martin]" because that's such a huge affront to "Officer" Zimmerman. Or rather, not. And as we all now know Christie himself followed up this performance on Face the Nation and showed his respect for authoritay by getting himself kicked off the quiet car on an Amtrak train for yelling and shouting at his handlers and obsessively yacking on his phone. That's an act which could be otherwise described as "lawlessness." Now it's true that both of these politicians probably shouldn't be totally blamed for their cluelessness, because Fox News has staged a veritable campaign to support the idea of Black Lives Matter as a "Murder Movement" and falsely claimed that President Obama hasn't said anything in support of police when in fact he has. Exhibit A: Sean Hannity who says that "Black Lives Matter is racist."
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Not all lives matter, black lives matter,” Hannity told Fox News contributor Juan Williams. “Your Democratic Party is going to allow the ‘pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon’ group to host a Democratic forum?” “What’s wrong with your party?” the host asked. “Why don’t you let the Klan host a party? Talking about killing cops, fry them like bacon.” “You guys make this into that this was the anthem of all Black Lives Matter,” Williams pointed out. “Let’s get to the politics of it. They are a special interest group and they are saying they want attention for their issue.” “Right,” Hannity quipped. “The ‘pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon’ group.” “How in this day in age can you say black lives matter — all lives matter — and just say black lives,” the Fox News host continued. “Hispanic lives don’t matter, Asian lives don’t matter, white lives don’t matter, the unborn lives don’t matter. That, to me, is racist!”
That, sir, is all in your head because no one, not one person, in Black Lives Matter has suggested anything like that. That is totally, completely missing and obscuring the point. More than one can play the "fill in the words of your choice" game Sean. If you wanted to know and report what they really meant by that phrase, which is clearly open to interpretation, you could have done something news people do and ask them! The fact is that unarmed black men are twice as likely to be killed by police. In general black people are about 4.2 times more likely to be killed by police—whether armed or not, according to Mother Jones.
And the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that black people are three times more likely to experience non-lethal use of force by police. Additionally, murder cases with black victims are nearly twice as likely to go unsolved. And the cold hard fact is that black people do not commit most crimes, not even most violent crimes. When you look at all the facts, they tend to add up. It's not that police violence against whites and others isn't a problem, because when over 1,100 people are being killed by police each year and the greatest single percentage (46 percent) of them are white, it very definitely is a problem. It's just not quite as urgent a problem for them as it has become for black people, who are 24 percent of those being killed by police so far this year, despite only accounting for 12 percent of the population. Exhibit B: Bill O' Reilly, who says Black Lives Matter is "hijacking the Democratic Party."
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“The Democratic Party right now has been hijacked, and is trying to undermine federal law, undermine law enforcement in general and upend our capitalistic system,” he said. “It’s hard to believe that a sitting president is sympathetic to a group that’s calling for violence against American police officers,” O’Reilly said, showing footage of protesters in New York City last December chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops” and saying that Black Lives Matter leaders had not condemned the rhetoric.
But of course, it's not true that Black Lives Matters leaders have not condemned violence. They have. Exhibit C: Deray Mckesson on the shooting of Deputy Goforth.
"It is sad that some have chosen to politicize this tragedy by falsely attributing the officer's death to a movement seeking to end violence," Mckesson wrote. "I do not condone killing," he added later. He also argued against using the slogan "All lives matter," or "lives matter," in place of Black Lives Matter, as the Houston sheriff suggested.
And lastly, we have the dreaded "dead cops" chant issue, which I've long suspected was a falsified and doctored video like those we've seen used against A.C.O.R.N., Shirley Sherrod and more recently Planned Parenthood, but alas, Buzzfeed has a report from both the actual videographer and several who actual did—once—shout those words an hour after the official protest had actually ended in New York last December. Exhibit D: The Chant.
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BuzzFeed News on Friday spoke to one person who participated in the Dec. 13 chant heard on the video, along with two other people who marched with other radical contingents involved in the protests that day. All of them claimed that, despite the literal words of the chants, they weren’t actually advocating for the murder of police officers. “There’s this sense that the lives of people who get killed by cops don’t matter,” the person who participated said. “The chants express that those people’s lives matter just as much as the lives of cops or anyone else.” The unplanned chant, the person said, was to distinguish a more radical message from the vast majority of the protesters. “The larger march … had a liberal, reformist agenda. The people who wanted a broader transformation, they were gravitating toward whatever chants could express that,” the person said. “In that moment of outrage, the chant was the only way to express that we wanted to separate ourselves from people who just want to get a guy fired,” the person added. “We wanted to see the police disbanded.”
So according to this guy, a guy who was actually there—y'know, a "witness"—the main thrust of the actual march that day was really just about the police officer who wasn't indicted or disciplined for his use of an unauthorized choke-hold that led to the homicide [according to the medical examiner] of Eric Garner, not police in general. This was actually a counter-protest to the protest, if you will, and what that subgroup who splintered off from the larger group wanted to express was a much more radical level of outrage, but even they didn't literally want "dead cops." Some, according to Buzzfeed, were even laughing as they said it, as if they really didn't mean it seriously at all. It's not like someone in a moment of passion and drama might overreach and say something completely radical and over the top, like say when Ted Nugent said we should "chop [Democrats] heads off." And then when prominent Republican politicians like Mitt Romney refused to disavow such violent rhetoric, we really shouldn't take that as tacit endorsement of violence, should we? Tell me Sean, should we?
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Clip [1:13] criticizing Obama for inviting Rapper Common to Poetry Night at the White House.
Hannity: If this was the guy who used the same types of rhetoric, of violent against President Obama [as Common allegedly said about Pres. Bush] I would be against it.
Clip [3:05] Ted Nugent ranting on stage.
Nugent: Hey Obama, you might want to suck on one of these [holds up two machine guns], ya punk. He's a piece of shit.
Clip [4:05] Hannity, petard hoisted.
Bob Beckle: Are you prepared to disavow this low-life? Hannity: No, I like Ted Nugent he's a friend of mine. He's a rock star. And if you don't like it don't go to the concert. Don't buy his new albums.
Psst. Sean, Nobody buys his new albums. No-body. But hey yeah, if you don't like it,don't listen. When it's Ted Nugent threatening to chop of someone's head at an NRA event or make someone suck on a machine gun in between songs about pedophilia and sexual assault he's just being an "entertainer," he just means it "all in fun." He didn't mean it literally. Right. Fine. Then neither did those guys in New York last December. How'd ya like dem apples? Just as we saw when Fox News shat a brick when one Black Panther showed up at a polling place with a stick—yes, a stick— but then you get not even peep from them about the open carry supporter who was charged with intimidation for bringing a gun to a polling place, it's all theater. "Magic," as Larry Wilmore likes to say. Otherwise known, IMO, as 100 percent bull crap! This is one reason why we haven't seen anyone in any other Black Live Matter protest repeat this chant. It's not what they're about. It's not who they are. They have, in fact, compiled a ten-point plan of agenda items for police and justice reform. None of BLM's ten agenda items call for the harming of any police officer. Then again, actually looking at and reading the specifics of what Black Lives Matter is really about isn't on the agenda of Fox News or the Republican Party. Only fear-mongering about them is.