I Am In Charlottesville...

@farmerman,

Sure diverted from rioting ,huh? Good. You must be ( may be )thinking of a gear-drive for the cam where a gear on the crank turns the cam. Anyway, I guess the guy got his truck started. Never heard from him.

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@Ponderer,

I stand much corrected. Ive always used INSURE for everything that guarantees and ENSURE for the diet drink..

Trunk v Boot. Hood v Bonnet

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@farmerman,

Does that mean my grandmother wore a hood? Really, I like those terms. They sound so wire-wheeled.

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@farmerman,

So. Back to domestic tranquility. My grandparents had a hundred-acre farm in East Texas. Long, straight dirt road that led to the kind of house with a porch as wide as the house. Tin roof ( sounded great in the rain ) Barn with old saddle, chickens, pigs, one cow, sometimes watermelons in one field and corn in another. Garden with peas, string-beans, tomatoes. Tire swing, big pool for swimming and fishing. Big Dipper and Sputnick at night. Feather bed. Lightening bugs. Crickets.

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There is considerable overlap between the meaning and use of insure and ensure. In both British and American English the primary meaning of insure is the commercial sense of providing financial compensation in the event of damage to something (e.g. property); ensure is not used at all in this sense.

For the more general senses, ensure is the more usual word, but insure is also sometimes used, particularly in American English, for example:

Bail is posted to insure that the defendant appears for trial.

or:

The system is run to ensure that a good quality of service is maintained.

... Oxford Dictionaries.

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@centrox,

We need your help with the "comma" question.

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Domestic tranquility among a2k folks..

To start out with the important bit first, Walter is in my a2k top list.
We started out pissed off after Chicago, back in the days a2k people wanted to meet. (what happened to that?)

He is a good and proud photographer, and I was fattish then. He posted a photo of me - this was at an early a2k time, but an earlier time than that on a2k had us early people think that we should getting permission to post a photo from the subject.
I thought I looked like an obese slobish swan and reacted. He might have just being funny.

Years have passed, and I care about Walter and his views.

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@ossobucotemp,

Quote:

We started out pissed off after Chicago, back in the days a2k people wanted to meet. (what happened to that?)

Yea. I sort of miss those a2k gatherings. I used to be pretty active, and even organized gatherings in San Francisco, Austin, Houston, New York City, Germany (w/Walter) and England. Many of those that attended are no longer active on a2k. Even made friends in Russia and Mexico. Those days seems to be gone for good.

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@cicerone imposter,

Maybe not for good!

Cycloptichorn

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@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

...as some of you know. I would sometimes say, in jest, the center of the universe.
It has been an eventful week here. I have been trying to get my head around it all. I guess I am sad, angry and have had many other feelings.

I imagine it has. Not the way you want your city to make the headlines.

A number of people, on the left and the right, have questioned the city's preparation for and response to the event. Can you offer any insight from a local perspective?

Am I mistaken that Charlottesville has been the site of at least one past white supremacist demonstration, and the results of that one were nothing like what happened this weekend?

It's unfathomable to me that greater efforts weren't made to keep the demonstrators and counter-demonstrators apart. Obviously the police couldn't create an impenetrable barrier between the two, but it appeared to me that from the git go, the two groups were permitted to go nose to nose.

What's the local buzz on the apparent stand down order for the police once the fit hit the shan? I can't believe that the city and state police took it upon themselves to flee the area when things got hot. Whatever one thinks about police, there aren't whole forces of them made up of cowards. I feel certain that if they had been ordered to intervene and disperse the warring groups, they would have done so without hesitation. Few people want to put themselves in harm's way, but police do it on a daily basis and quite bravely.

I also have an extremely hard time imagining a mayor (regardless of his or her politics) who would be willing to let the city explode to further some ideological or political aim, and lean towards one the following two explanations:

1) I have been misinformed about the reaction of police
2) Incompetence and misjudgment at one or more levels of the municipal government were the primary, if not sole causes

Would appreciate your take as you are probably seeing more detailed coverage from local sources than the rest of us outside of your city.

Thanks

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@Finn dAbuzz,

The (new to Charlottesville) Police Chief held a news conference last night. He denied that they had deliberately adopted a hands-off strategy of policing (police non-brutality, as it were (my words not his)). He said that they started out in normal police attire, switching to riot gear as the crowds on both sides got more unruly.
You are correct that there have been complaints from both sides that the police were too passive. The mood of the public two days on is, I think, very favorable
towards the police.
He did single out the protesters from the right over one thing. There was an agreement of sorts that they would enter the park from one corner. The police would guide them in. Instead, the chief claimed, the protesters entered the park from numerous sides at the same time.
Market St and Water St run E-W. The pedestrian mall is between them and also runs E-W. There are 3 side streets running N-S that cross the mall. They are narrow and are usually just used by delivery trucks and, of course, people walking to/from parking garages on Market and Water.
Those sides streets were supposed to be closed to cars on Saturday. But at least one was not, the chief said.
The result of that was the fatality.

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@realjohnboy,

What do you know about Wes Bellamy, the vice-mayor of Charlottesville, if anything?

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@realjohnboy,

Well, I'm glad the police aren't taking flak. Whatever they did or did not do was as a result of the orders given.

Eye-witness accounts are hardly iron clad but I did read of at least two in which they described that when tear gas began to blossom, several cops left the area in which they were standing. When they questioned the cops the answer was "It's too dangerous."

This is only two accounts and I wouldn't bet my life on them but I have seen other reports that a "stand down" order was given.

The news coming from scenes like these right after the incidents is always confused and rarely reliable...doesn't stop the media from broadcasting it though. It will be several more days, at least, before the facts are cleared up. If there was a "stand down" or "evacuate" order given, one or more of the cops will reveal it.

Right now, everyone (including me) should be careful about accepting any of the news reports or drawing conclusions based on them. This sort of thing happens every time there is an event like this and yet the same results of misinformation and even disinformation always arise and are swallowed. I'm as guilty as the next person. We're conditioned to believe what we hear on the news even though we've been frequently burned before.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn: Your 2nd paragraph was new(s) to me.
BUT I would add quickly that our local news media are...um...not too good. The reporters are typically right out of journalism school with dreams of getting a major job at a major newspaper or network. They tend to merely report based on press releases which of course are biased.
Layman: I intend to get back to your question shortly. It's time now for my nap.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

Quote:

Law enforcement was on hand at the dueling demonstrations on Saturday, decked out in riot gear and looking prepared for the worst. Except they weren’t allowed to do their job. Police on the scene were reported to have been ordered to “not intervene until given command to do so,” according to the ACLU. That kept them from suppressing the numerous scuffles that broke out.

Both sides of the rally have been critical of police inaction in the rally, putting blame on them for the out-of-control violence that occurred on Sunday.

“There was no police presence,” Brittany Caine-Conley, a minister-in-training who protested the alt-right rally, told The New York Times. “We were watching people punch each other; people were bleeding all the while police were inside of barricades at the park, watching. It was essentially just brawling on the street and community members trying to protect each other.”

When police were ordered to disperse the alt-right rally, that act directed the white nationalists into the antifa demonstrators, leading to further street brawls. Police didn’t seem to try to get in between the two groups or suppress the fights.

As ProPublica reported, state police and National Guardsmen mostly stood aside and watched as the violence grew worse. This appears to be a direct result of what appears to be a stand down order from higher-ups. According to ProPublica, the militia members seemed to be the only ones breaking up fights and trying to keep the peace in the tumult.

That absence allowed for a female reporter who was an eyewitness to the intentional crash to be allegedly punched in the face by antifa. The reason: because she was press.

Curiously, this attack on a journalist hasn’t netted much attention.

Both McAuliffe and Signer should be taken to task for police inaction in Charlottesville — and blaming militiamen isn’t going to cut it as an excuse.

Given all the reports, and other attending events, it's hard for me to refrain from believing that the "powers that be" actually wanted a bloody riot, Finn.

Anyone remember what was later determined to be a "police riot," during the '68 democratic convention in Chicago? This kinda **** does happen.

That event was believed to engender a great deal of support for the protesters (and their cause). I wouldn't put it past any politician with a radical agenda to try to re-create such an atmosphere on behalf of their "cause."

Predictably, Charlottesville's mayor said Trump was to blame for it all, ya know?

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

Taken from Trump's comments on Charlottesville.

Quote:

We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation and true -- really, I say this so strongly, true affection for each other.

This guy really graduated from college?

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@cicerone imposter,

naah. He went to Warton Laughing

They only teach one to count there

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There are five people on City Council, elected for a term of two (?) years on an at-large basis. Pay is around $20K a year. They typically meet once a month, but also are expected to show up at other times, such as the Planning Commission or Board of Architecture meetings when there are other issues being discussed.
Council selects one of its members to be Mayor and another to be Vice Mayor. Those positions have no special power.
The current Council are all Democrats. The most recent Republican to serve was about six or eight years ago. He was, if I were to characterize him, a moderate on social issues and a fiscal conservative (pledged to rein in the other members on spending tax money on their penchant for hiring consultants).
One mayor a few decades ago joked she was selected because she happened to be out of town on business when the vote was taken.
One of our recent mayors was a Sikh. I have known him for years because of his day job in the Planning Department while I owned a building on West Main St., on the mile or so between downtown and the UVA grounds. It was a pretty sad stretch of land dominated by used car and parking lots. There were two or three nightclubs featuring fights, usually outside, on Friday and Saturday nights.

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@realjohnboy,

You are such a good writer, johnboy.

Has that area changed in recent years? We were only there for part of a day, so my memory of the street is blurry, though I somewhat remember your dealing with an architecture board.

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WES BELLAMY (Vice Mayor) and JASON KESSLER (Right to Unite organizer)

I try not to use words or phases like Racist, Nazi, Socialist, Unpatriotic Enemy of the 1st or 2nd Amendment, Liberal Cheese Eater.
Suffice it to say that Bellamy is on my least favorite people list.
I dislike him a lot. He strikes me as a opportunistic man who, like Kessler, is out to rile people up.
He was interviewed twice on NPR and once on BBC.
One comment he made on all three occasions was that Charlottesville was/is a racist town. He cited as evidence the fact that the town closed its public schools in 1959 rather than integrate them as ordered by the Supreme Court.
I won't go into the details about events that were happening at the time, but his comments were totally ignorant. Bellamy was a high school teacher, a profession that seems unsuitable for someone like him.
Bellamy and Kessler are just bit players in the Charlottesville events that have occurred in the past few days, Layman. Of far more import are the waffling comments by Mr Trump and the words and actions of the other real leaders of our country.

1 Reply

I Am In Charlottesville...

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