Joe Wilson the Thief Part II
Okay, so just check out Memeorandum today. I think my thesis still holds.
by Erik Kain · September 11, 2009
Okay, so just check out Memeorandum today. I think my thesis still holds.
Erik Kain
Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.
September 5, 2019
November 26, 2014
[caption id="attachment_361266" align="alignnone" width="640"] Screengrab from WIVB Buffalo Channel 4 News[/caption]
Still a developing story, but what we know so far points to an utterly depraved act of violence at a Buffalo supermarket.
Comment →Ten people were killed and three others suffered non-life-threatening injuries and were transported to local hospitals after a mass shooting at a supermarket on Buffalo’s East Side Saturday afternoon.
The shooter was an 18-year-old white male who was heavily armed with tactical gear and was live-streaming during the mass shooting, officials said. City of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the shooter is not from Buffalo and traveled “hours” from outside the area.
“This was pure evil,” Erie County Sheriff John Garcia said. “A straight-up racially motivated hate crime.”
The shooter was identified in court Saturday evening as Payton S. Gendron of Conklin, New York, about 200 miles southeast of Buffalo.
Gendron was arraigned on one count of first-degree murder without bail.
The 18-year-old will be back in court on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. for a felony hearing.
When Gendron exited his vehicle at the supermarket, authorities said, he shot four people in the parking lot. Three of them died and one is in the hospital. The shooter entered the store and opened fire on customers.
Twitch deletes shooter’s live-stream video of Buffalo mass shooting
A retired Buffalo Police officer, Aaron Salter, who was working as a security guard, shot Gendron but he was unharmed because he was wearing armor, Gramaglia said. The retired officer was shot and killed.A law enforcement source told CBS News that the gunman had a racial slur written on his weapon. The attack is being treated as a hate crime.
Erie County District Attorney John Flynn will not confirm the existence of the shooter’s manifesto. He said they believe there was a “racial component” to the attack but won’t say more.
This attack is being investigated by the FBI as a hate crime and as violent extremism.
Police officers could frame people, file bogus charges, conjure evidence out of thin air—and, in most of the U.S., they would still be immune from facing any sort of civil accountability for that malicious prosecution. Until yesterday.
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Yesterday, the highest court in the country struck that requirement down, ruling that Thompson should indeed have a right to sue the officers at the center of his case. "A plaintiff such as Thompson must demonstrate, among other things, that he obtained a favorable termination of the underlying criminal prosecution," wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court. "We hold that a Fourth Amendment claim…for malicious prosecution does not require the plaintiff to show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence."
From THOMPSON v. CLARK ET AL.:
Held: To demonstrate a favorable termination of a criminal prosecution for purposes of the Fourth Amendment claim under §1983 for malicious prosecution, a plaintiff need not show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence. A plaintiff need only show that his prosecution ended without a conviction.
Thompson has satisfied that requirement here.
Thompson v. Clark was decided 6-3. (Alito wrote the dissent, with Thomas and Gorsuch joining.)
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Andrew Sullivan was busted for possession? Is that what you intended to link to?Report
I scrolled up and saw a couple of items devoted to Obama’s speech and Healthcare… and scrolled up a little bit more and saw a metric buttload of items devoted to (no, the other) Joe Wilson.Report
Linked to the wrong section of memeorandum – sort of fixed it now. The top is devoted to Joe Wilson, Joe Wilson, Joe Wilson. How do you link to specific items at memeorandum? I don’t get it.Report
What does whatever Memeorandum have up prove?Report
First – what is your point of disagreement?
Second – memeorandum reflects what is being discussed most across the web at any given moment. Joe Wilson is currently being discussed more than the speech. That is the point of my initial post and this follow up.Report
From their about language:
It doesn’t claim to be a quantitative reflection on what is being most discussed, but maybe you know something I don’t.
In any case, the mere fact that it is being discussed more doesn’t show that it is distracting from or having a greater impact than the speech. (To be clear, I have said I thought the potential impact of the speech on public opinion was minimal even in theory.) But the outburst being much discussed could equally be having the effect of keeping the speech fresh in peoples’ mind longer, allowing generally unexamined positive feelings about the speech (as contrasted to the outburst) to have a more extended, and thus larger impact on feelings about the health plans, Obama or both. I can’t prove that theory; I’m not even sure I think it’s likely, but it’s equally plausible and equally likely as yours.
Hm. The more I think about this new theory, though, the more I dig it. Better to have the speech stay with people longer, sane and reasoned by contrast to the opposition’s incivility, than simply to be forgotten. Also, and I say this with a wry smile, the memorableness of the outburst allows those positive contrasted impressions of Obama to remain the primary memory of the speech, rather than the many good questions reasonable people would have had about his arguments that he largely left unanswered Weds.Report
Allowing myself a slight emendation:
“…the memorableness of the outburst allows those positive contrasted impressions of Obama to remain the primary *non-outburst* memory of the speech…”
You probably understood what I meant.Report
E.D. Joe Wilson’s a hero in these parts! Shouting liar at a democrat is kind of a redundancy but Big Jim Trafficant is out and though he’s a bit of a wacko I believe he smacked down the IRS in such a way as to benefit all Americans!
Resist Marxism!Report
You don’t even have the foggiest idea what Marxism is, do you? It actually isn’t simply defined as “economic policies Bob Cheeks doesn’t like”.Report