the attitude with arnie arnesen the wed edition Jan 21

[Arnie Arnesen]

The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen

opening thoughts: lyn ekedahl poem: The King of Hearts

producers: Dave Scott and Stephanie Collins

Chloé LaCasse (the best of the attitude)

streaming live at wnhnfm.org noon EST on the dial-94.7FM Concord NH

podcasts available at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/attitude-with-arnie-arnesen/id1634055179

opening thoughts:

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The King of Hearts
The King of Hearts picked up his darts
And aimed at many things.
“I’ll throw at anyone I like
Because I am the King!”

“If anyone gets in my way,
“I’ll say, ‘Off with her head!’ 
“For if they don’t agree with me,
“They might as well be dead!”

“That island there, the frozen one,
“Has got some metals fine.
“So easy way or hard way, Danes,
“I plan to make it mine!”

The Knave of Hearts, she too had darts,
And, for the King, rebuke.
“Stand off, Dear King, for, as you see,
“I’m sending troops to Nuuk!

The King of Hearts was angry then.
“Knave NATO, have a care.  If
“You send troops to Greenland,
“Through your heart I’ll shoot a tariff!”

The Knave of NATO did not flinch.
Her lesson she had learned.
Resist the King, cause otherwise,
You’ll constantly be burned!

The King of Hearts, he huffed and puffed.
So filled was he with rage,
That if he’d not been King and all,
They’d have put him in a cage.

reread from yesterday...too impt

This is message from a former police officer friend that I admire and respect, Jim Shepard. He is speaking truth.

He writes:

These aren’t my words but they capture my feelings on the Renee Goode situation prettty well

“I wore a badge long enough to know the difference between a dangerous situation and a manufactured one.

What happened in Minneapolis wasn’t split-second chaos. It wasn’t a tragic accident. And it sure as hell wasn’t “necessary force.”

It was escalation. Illegal, reckless escalation—and any law enforcement official who tells you otherwise is lying, or hasn’t done the job.

From what we’ve seen so far, the encounter didn’t begin with a threat that justified lethal force.

There was no imminent danger to officers or the public that required bullets. There was time. There were options. There were off-ramps.

And they weren’t taken.

One of the first things you’re taught as a police officer is that force is not a punishment. It’s not a tool to assert dominance. It’s not something you use because someone doesn’t comply fast enough or says the wrong thing.

Force is a last resort governed by law. Period.

The standard is simple: Is there an immediate threat of serious bodily harm or death? If the answer is no, deadly force is unlawful. Full stop.

What we’re being fed now—by Trump officials, right-wing media, and the same law-and-order grifters who never hesitate to excuse police violence—is a familiar script.

They cherry-pick moments. They speculate about “what could have happened.” They inflate fear after the fact to justify an outcome that was already decided before any real threat existed.

That’s not analysis. That’s propaganda.

I’ve watched this play out too many times. A civilian is killed. The facts are inconvenient. So the story gets rewritten—fast. Suddenly the victim is on trial. Suddenly we’re told the officer “felt threatened.” Suddenly every rule of policing bends to accommodate the result.

But feelings don’t determine legality. The Constitution does.

If a cop “feels” scared but the objective facts don’t support deadly force, the shooting is still illegal.

Law enforcement isn’t vibes-based. It’s rule-based. Or at least it’s supposed to be.

The Trump administration knows this. They also know that if they repeat the lie often enough—if they shout “violent suspect” and “split-second decision” and “officer safety” into every camera—they can muddy the water long enough for accountability to disappear.

That’s the real pattern here. Not law enforcement. Not justice.

Covering your ass cause you just did something morally abhorrent and don’t want to admit it.

As someone who has been in violent confrontations, who has had to make real decisions under real pressure, I’m telling you this plainly: restraint is part of the job. De-escalation is part of the job. Walking away alive with everyone still breathing is the job.

When officers abandon that responsibility—and when the federal government rushes to excuse it—we don’t get safety. We get impunity.

And when the state lies to protect unlawful killing, it doesn’t just dishonor the person who died. It poisons the legitimacy of every officer who still believes the badge means something.

This wasn’t a tragedy without cause. It was a choice.

And no amount of propaganda can change that.”

part one:

Timothy Noah is a New Republic staff writer and author of The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.\

Elizabeth Warren Is Right About the Democrats’ Big ProblemThe Massachusetts senator is right that her party is too beholden to the donor class. How on earth could anyone dispute that? And yet …    https://newrepublic.com/article/205365/elizabeth-warren-democrats-donor-class

This Is the Real SNAP FraudScammers steal billions of dollars in food stamps from needy people every year. Why isn’t Congress doing anything to stop them? https://newrepublic.com/article/204257/snap-targeted-benefit-fraud

part two: 

Wilson's research focuses on the historical sociology of empires and colonialism, through the case of the English East India Trading Company's presence in South Asia.  In addition, Wilson studies the methodology of interdisciplinary research, transformations in the historical category of corruption, the sociology of knowledge and morality, fiscal sociology, and the philosophy of social science.

Marco Garrido, Marina Zaloznaya, and Nicholas Hoover Wilson write in their upcoming book, “A Comparative Historical Sociology of Corruption,” the way that corruption is defined, and countered, says a lot about a society.As Dr. Wilson explained to me, even before Mr. Trump, the legal understanding of corruption in the United States had “taken us from the possibility of enforcing corruption laws against public officials – when they appear to have a conflict of interest – to considering ‘corruption’ only when a cartoonish level of explicit bribery can be proven.”That, he says, “takes us away from the common-sense idea that ‘corruption’ represents a kind of moral violation that is embedded in a time, place, political system, and economy.”

Defining ‘corruption’ defines usThis year, young people from Mexico to Madagascar to Nepal have protested corruption. But what, exactly, is corruption? And what can a society do about it?   https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/From-the-Editors/2026/0116/Defining-corruption-defines-us

In our edited volume, Comparative-Historical Sociology of Corruption, we develop an argument for analyzing corruption a socially embedded phenomenon. Rather than offering a new definition or typology, the volume advances a process-oriented approach that embeds corruption in social relations, traces its historical development, and compares cases by the dynamics that produce different corruption environments. The chapters span an unusually wide range, from early modern imperial formations to contemporary states and transnational governance regimes, showing how corruption takes different forms as configurations of power shift across time and space. Taken together, they demonstrate that corruption is neither a timeless pathology nor a problem unique to any one political system, but a historically situated mode of action shaped by changing relations between rulers and subjects, states and markets, and national and global authorities. Seeing corruption in context, we argue, is a necessary first step toward thinking more realistically and more productively about how to address it.

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KEEPING THE POT STIRRED SO SCUM DOESN'T RISE TO THE TOP -  Anonymous 

D. ARNIE ARNESEN
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