As for Governor Nixon, he’s a conservative Democrat so has his own ideological blind spots the size of a freight train. But yes, he does seem to be wanting to do the right thing. It’s just that, in Missouri, doing the right thing seems pretty much impossible, leaving only doing the least wrong thing as a possibility. (And someone in the National Guard pretty much tells you what their own mentality is, using the N-word outright and blatant to a member of the press).

Nixon is caught between a rock and a hard place, and seems to be at least trying to do something right, but he is getting his information from local officials who have been less than truthful so far.

If state officials are giving the Guard their orders, there is a chance they won’t be a bigger problem, but if the locals have control all bets are off.

The only way there is going to be a prosecution of any kind is if there is prosecutor willing to try the case, and I wouldn’t bet on that. Then you have the problem of finding a venue for any trial, and that will be a major problem given the publicity surrounding the case.

Badtux did a nice piece on Mo’ne. A Sports Illustrated cover will certainly be a good filler for her college applications and make the people in her neighborhood proud.

They certainly aren’t helping themselves by ‘detaining’ journalists along with all of their other stupidities that has reached the point that Amnesty International has sent a team to monitor the situation at Ferguson. Of course, Iran, China, and Russian are using the situation to attack the US complaints about human rights violations in other countries, and the Europeans won’t be too far behind with the harassment of European journalists.

The National Guard might be an improvement if they aren’t taking their orders from local officials. The local officials who do pay the police have been very obviously missing from reports. No one seems willing to admit that this started by police conduct, and exploded for the same reason. The local police are the problem.

You absolutely identify the trouble makers. That is basic to riot control. Whenever possible you should publicly identify people you recognize by name, to break the anonymity of the mob, and you control the groups, you don’t compress them. You leave open an outlet to avoid panic.

The local police don’t know the local Black leaders, they don’t know much of anything about the 70% of their jurisdiction that isn’t white, so there is no connection they can use. They are an outside occupying army for all intents and purposes.

Here’s the latest stupidity, from Mashable:
Missouri Governor Calls for ‘Vigorous Prosecution’ in Michael Brown’s Death

And this:
Missouri National Guard Has Its Own History of Racial Tension

*shrug*

But, here is something truly wonderful! And will really piss off the likes of bigoted assholes that fill the USA. 😀

Little League Star Mo’ne Davis Hits Sports Illustrated’s Cover

What an amazing young lady! And she even put the media on notice! LOL Love her. 😉 😀

Not only are the Ferguson police not identifying the troublemakers / ringleaders and focusing their efforts on that small minority of people, not only are they punishing the good with the bad, but they’re doing nothing else right. They’re disorganized, they’re undisciplined, they don’t follow orders, they blatantly use racial language in front of national press, they treat everyone not in police uniform that they encounter as enemy combatants rather than citizens that they’re sworn to serve and protect, and they have managed the impossible of making the media view sympathetically a bunch of black people who’d otherwise be dismissed as looters and race-baiting whiners.

Frankly, at this point the National Guard is probably the best solution that the State of Missouri has. At least the National Guard has training and discipline. The local cops are just a disorganized mob whose lack of discipline and training means that even when there’s well-meaning leaders who know what it takes to control this kind of situation, they can’t get the local cops to do what they say to do. As a military organization, the members of the National Guard are accustomed to following orders and there are consequences if they do not. If a St. Louis County cop decides he isn’t going to follow the order of a State Police captain, what’s the State Police captain going to do? The State doesn’t pay the St. Louis cop’s salary and has no power to fire him, after all… whereas a National Guardsman who fails to follow orders faces court martial and imprisonment.

We’re now at the point where there are no good options. When the National Guard is the least bad option, you know things are FUBAR.

They are attacking journalists and people gathering to protest government actions. They only have religion left to have violated every provision of the First Amendment.

You might appreciate the title of this post by Fred Clark, at his blog “Slacktivist”

Police again foiled in their quest for a bloodbath, will try again tonight

Link

Jim