SAR #14342

'Cruel and unusual' doesn't seem to mean what it used to.

Presents Dangers: The Republicans, ever alert to threats to our way of life, promise to extend corporate tax breaks so that their profits – which are already at record heights – can continue to grow, along with corporate contributions to GOP coffers. Wages? Yeah, wages are down. That's a danger.

Is There An Echo In Here? Real white guilt and mythic white fear have deformed our police into cops who are terrified of black people, all black people. Cops who know that prosecutors elected to preserve white privilege will shield trigger-happy cops, like the officers in Utah who fired six shots in Darrin Hunt's back, & etc, etc. Then commentators and politicians and FOX defend this by blaming the black community for not doing something about those Bad Blacks. And when they're called out on these crimes, the cops whine about the lack of community support while retaliating against those who complain. Where are the good cops? Those who oppose turning jaywalking into a capital crime, who don't think playing with a toy pistol justifies murder? I'm sure they are out there. They may even be the majority. But of late they've been nearly invisible.

Living on Their Prayerchecks: The working poor can mostly scrape by; unless something happens. Almost anything that sets them back $100 or $200 is a life threatening disaster. The pampered American middle class has no clue as to what the lives of the increasing numbers of American poor are like.

Goldilocks Economy: If wages aren't keeping up with corporate profits and housing is limp and you're still swamped with debt, why that just means there is more growth ahead!

BCC NSA: NSA routinely snoops on the emails and internal messages of major cellphone network operators and developers in order to find and exploit network weaknesses and to insert their own flaws to make hacking all communications, anywhere in the world, easier for America's electronic police.

Negligent Suicide: The police union in NYC maintains that Eric Garner was complicit in his own death. If he had not been overweight and in poor health, he could have survived being choked for more than eight minutes, easy.

Baby Steps: The US took another few steps towards armed confrontation with Russia over Ukraine – where the compelling interest of US corporations is at stake – when 98% of the House voted to ship 'lethal aid' to Ukraine. 
 
We're Sorry For Any Hurt Feelings: Jon Stewart's Daily Show has apologizedj for including a man that San Bernardino police tasered to death on a list of people police had shot to death.

Package Dealing: Arkansas' Democratic governor, Mike Beebe, plans to pardon his son for his 2003 marijuana conviction. It isn't clear if the other 5,875 people arrested for pot possession in 2003 will also be pardoned, much less all of the tens of thousands of Arkansas arrested for marijuana possession every year since then. Probably one size won't fit all.

First On The Block: In the next couple of years the Arctic may be ice free in the summer. The last time the Arctic was ice-free in summer, modern humans didn't exist.