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On Sunday I speculated that the Dems will use a George Floyd-like psychological operation to increase Democrat turnout in the election. Today, Kamala issued a statement about Sonya Massey, a black woman killed by police whose body cam footage was released recently:
The body cam footage shows two police officers answering a call from Massey about a prowler in her yard. Massey acts mentally unwell throughout the encounter, answers that she is on medication when asked about her mental health, and has a difficult time telling the officers what her last name is or retrieving her photo ID. The officers are somewhat friendly if impatient, but the vibe changes when Massey grabs a pot of boiling water after the officers requested she turn off the stove. The officers say they are stepping back while she grabs the boiling water (crazy people may use boiling water as a weapon, something that has lead Starbucks to ban giving patrons boiling water), and Massey says “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus”. Either because of this statement or because of a physical sign we don’t pick up on the body cam, an officer points his gun and demands that she drop the boiling water. She does not drop the boiling water but instead continues to hold on to it. Right before she is shot the body cam just barely picks up Massey throwing the boiling water toward the officers, with the water landing on the ground and steaming where it landed. I want to thank Twitter user Fartblaster4000 for turning that moment into a helpful gif.
Massey’s death is certainly not the preferred outcome of the encounter. Once the officers picked up on Massey being crazy, they should have mentally decided to leave her house if she did something like equip a plausible weapon. The three seconds that the officer gives for Massey to drop the pot of boiling water was insufficient — of course, the pot was in her hand and thrown toward the officer before the officer shot. Springfield is the third most criminal city in America, so perhaps the officers did not believe they had the resources to call mental health professionals in their place. In any case I do not think that the officers should have moved toward her but instead left the premises until they felt she did not pose a threat. Sadly, it’s not uncommon for crazy people to attack police officers with whatever is around, and it’s rational to be afraid of a crazy person who has a pot of scalding water in their hands, able to disfigure you for life.
According to a UPenn study, BLM may have been the political ingredient that shifted the election toward Joe Biden:
If the relevant voters are swayed more by victimhood narratives than Covid, this explains why Republicans are bringing up the topic of migrant rapes. I predict we are going to see more victimhood narratives in the coming months!
This'll be an easy and rightful murder conviction. Hopefully the shooter will get the max sentence due to their betrayal of public trust. Here's the video with sound. and here is the official unedited version
Understatement of the century. I suppose it's true, in the same way that me getting stabbed in the eye with a pencil is 'not the preferred outcome of the encounter' when I pass my neighbour in the street.
Actually the vibe changes when she says “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus” in what I read to be a jokey tone and at least one of the cops takes mortal offense, and responds "you'd better fucking not or I'll fucking shoot you right in your fucking face"
It's really quite difficult to see what she does from the cam footage because the cop's arm (and gun) is in the way. But it looks to me like after apologizing for the (literally) mortal insult she flinches and cowers until she is shot dead.
One of a thousand choices that would have been better than spraying her brains all over her kitchen backsplash. two well muscled physically fit men can't handle a tiny woman in her nightie any other way than by shooting her in the head? I doubt she weighed more than 120 lbs.
Oh no, wait. She had a pot of hot water. How terrifying.
Oh fucking please
This was in fact very dangerous.
I wonder how people's thoughts on this case correlate with their thoughts about the McDonald's Hot Coffee lawsuit.
The McDonalds Hot Coffee lawsuit continues to be a travesty and the "fact sheet" from the American Trial Lawyers Association which all the contrarians swallowed whole to say otherwise was nonsense from the start.
Could you elaborate in specific detail on why it's nonsense?
Critics of the McDonalds judgment usually point to the fact that the lady spilled the coffee on herself. Which I understand, it’s like suing Black and Decker for someone bonking themselves on the head with a hammer. People who agree with the McDonalds judgment point to the fact that the coffee served at McDonalds back then was extremely hot: McD’s used to keep their coffee a few degrees short of boiling at time of service. This is far too hot to drink for an extended period of time. In fact if you tried to drink it at the time of service you would probably injure yourself. People generally expect hot coffee to be hot, and that you should be careful with it. But I don’t think they expect it to be so hot that it literally melts your genitals off your body (which is what happened in the case), and that you should exercise the same extreme caution you would use for handling molten iron slag at an industrial plant.
But they should. That's what boiling water does, any adult should know how to handle boiling water, and you should expect any hot beverage you ordered to be just a few degrees short of boiling.
...We just had a thread where a lot of people seemed flatly dismissive that a pot of boiling water could be a seriously threatening weapon. Inspired by this comment, I did a quick google search and confirmed that boiling water attacks are routinely charged under "attempted murder" without controversy.
I think "is boiling water dangerous" is a pretty good example of an opinion that is observably functionally meaningless, due to specific emotional valiances swamping all factual considerations.
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Iron melts at 2800 degrees Fahrenheit. The McDonalds coffee temperature was somewhere between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit. They were not the same.
I think that's an unnecessary nitpick, and we should encourage colorful metaphors because they're fun to read.
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