I have believed for a long time that Barack Obama and Eric Holder are deeply evil men. I could go on and on about the evidence of this, but what's the point? Those of sense know it, and even a disgraceful episode like Ali Musa Daqduq won't change minds.

It is sad to see police vilified in America via unfair attacks. It is corrosive to our justice system, and where unjustified, the knock-on effects are just tragic. What's utterly repulsive is to see someone like Eric Holder, who is apparently cool with sticking guns in the faces of innocent Gibson Gultar employees, all militant about a police officer defending his life from a guy who tried to take his gun.

Decency evolves: Siimilar unsupported claims against the President regarding this issue by Rudy Guiliani were given Four Pinocchios by the Washington Post;

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/23/giulianis-claim-that-obama-launched-anti-police-propaganda/

I'd be interested to read specific examples of such anti-police statements rather than characterizations of the President as "anti-police"

Decency: Holder's comments on the police don't really dovetail with the federal government's raid on Gibson Guitar. Care to comment on that hypocrisy? I notice you generally don't comment when you're challenged.

Matthew: Obama and Holder's comments on Ferguson were certainly one-sided (which is irresponsible), and as far as Obama is concerned fall into a disturbing pattern: Jena, Louis Gates,Trayvon Martin and Ferguson. Then, of course, there is the welcoming of Al Sharpton into the WH given his anti-cop statements. Obama, having chosen to weigh in, has undermined the respect for the police. It's a problem.

Yes, politically motivated prosecution--and for good measure, they pulled guns on the employees. That raid pretty much removes any ability of Obama & Co. to whine about police actions anywhere. Then, of course, there was the Park Police keeping Japanese tourists locked up in a hotel room during the shutdown. Obama & Co, seem to have more problem with police defending themselves against criminals than the use of force against innocent people.

That's a problem.

Decency evolves: I thought we were talking about Barack Obama and his alleged responsibility for cop killing. That's what your headline implies, and that is what you have been arguing in successive posts and comments, so that was what I was addressing. Before you mentioned it, I knew nothing about Gibson Guitar's dispute with U.S. Fish and Game over Gibson's alleged violation of the Lacey Act, although an article in Politico noted that Gibson eventually admitted the violation and paid a $300,000 fine:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79410.html

What that has to do with whether the President incited violence against police officers is beyond me. I'm assuming that your failure to cite a single statement that supports your contention that the President has done so means you are unaware of any.

Decency:

Obama's comments about the GJ decision were deplorable:

"There are Americans who agree with it, and there are Americans who are deeply upset, even angry. It's an understandable reaction."

Why is it "understandable?" Are white cops not allowed to defend themselves? Given Obama's earlier comments about the police and race, it's fair to ask whether Obama thinks that this white cop should be put through the wringer of a trial simply because he defended himself? Obama has a pretty sorry history on these sorts of things--as a presidential candidate, Obama characterized a vicious, racially-motivated assault in which a white student was sucker-punched, knocked unconscious and stomped while prostrate by 6 antagonists as a "schoolyard fight." The drive to euphemize there seems to be very similar to his all-but stated view that Darren Wilson somehow did wrong because he defended himself against a guy that tried to grab his gun. Where was the even-handedness?

Obama is contributing to the general distrust and dislike of police and unfairly so. This divisiveness has consequences. I am not blaming Obama for the execution-murders of the two cops, but divisiveness leads to a lot of bad things. We should expect more from POTUS.

As for Gibson, Decency, it seems to me that if Obama is going to talk about police violence, he should clean his own house. The current Lacey Act enforcement position is something I thought liberals hated--an unclear law, a recent aggressive enforcement beyond what appears to have been contemplated. But I wasn't really getting at that--I was talking about the raid by armed federal cops which was way way over the top. If police use of force is a problem, certainly, the Gibson raid is an exemplar, and it's hypocrisy on stilts for Obama to yap about police use of force. And I am not even getting into the Park Police during the shutdown.

Oh, and Decency, perhaps you recall Obama saying that Al Sharpton is the kind of guy you can do business with. Nice. Do business with a guy who called a rape victim a "whore" and who fomented murderous riots.

That's Obama.

Decency evolves:

Okay Federalist, I'll chase your rabbits. On the topic at hand, rather than wrench a few words out of context to make an unfair criticism, let's look at what Obama actually said in the wake of the Ferguson grand jury decision, in context:

"First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law. And so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make. There are Americans who agree with it, and there are Americans who are deeply disappointed, even angry. It’s an understandable reaction. But I join Michael’s parents in asking anyone who protests this decision to do so peacefully. Let me repeat Michael’s father’s words: “Hurting others or destroying property is not the answer. No matter what the grand jury decides, I do not want my son’s death to be in vain. I want it to lead to incredible change, positive change, change that makes the St. Louis region better for everyone.” Michael Brown’s parents have lost more than anyone. We should be honoring their wishes.

I also appeal to the law enforcement officials in Ferguson and the region to show care and restraint in managing peaceful protests that may occur. Understand, our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They’ve got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law. As they do their jobs in the coming days, they need to work with the community, not against the community, to distinguish the handful of people who may use the grand jury’s decision as an excuse for violence -- distinguish them from the vast majority who just want their voices heard around legitimate issues in terms of how communities and law enforcement interact."

If you think that's divisive, or deeply evil or deplorable, Federalist, you are wrong and I'm sad for you.

Your next reference is to the Jena Six case, a horrendously complex muddle, as a quick look at the Wikipedia article describing it reveals:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jena_Six

Lots of people may or may not have gotten that one wrong, and I would be loath to try to unwind that snarl without a lot more knowledge. The New York Post, a quite conservative newspaper, stated in a September 23, 2007, editorial, "it's impossible to examine the case of the so-called Jena Six without concluding that these black teens have been the victims of a miscarriage of justice, with a clearly racial double standard at work."

On to Gibson. There appear to be two sides to that story too. From a different Politico article:

"Justice and Interior officials said that during the raid, officers carried side arms and wore badges and clothing to identify themselves as agents. But they said no SWAT teams were used in the search, as Juszkiewicz later suggested.

To suggest that officers shouldn’t have executed a search warrant during an investigation of a possible crime is ludicrous, said Andrea Johnson, forest campaign director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nongovernmental organization that probes environmental crimes and launches public campaigns against them. 'It undermines the seriousness of the idea that environmental crimes can be crimes,' Johnson said. 'The underlying message is "it’s just wood." … The reality is illegal logging is a crime.'"

More to the point, all of this, apart from the first bit, seems like an effort to throw the discussion in some direction away from supporting the ludicrous argument that the President fomented violence against the police, a slander no one seems interested in demonstrating.

As for Sharpton, people in and around politics have a habit of reinventing themselves after doing awful things. James Kilpatrick was a fiery segregationist who led a campaign of massive resistance that closed down Virginia's schools over desegregation in the 50s and 60s. Yet he came back, as a conservative columnist on 60 Minutes and in political columns over decades and decades before his death in 2010. William F. Buckley, he of sainted memory, published articles and wrote columns defending segregation in extraordinarily ugly ways.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/28/national-reviews-ugly-civil-rights-history/195638

Is anyone conservative politician who praised either of these individuals at any time racially divisive? Or is it only liberal African American politicians who must reach such a pure standard to avoid being characterized by you as deeply evil?

An oops covers a multitude of sins for conservatives. Closing down public schools for years to keep African Americans out of them, depriving tens of thousands of kids of a public school education is ok if you say, "my bad" years afterwards. And we can continue down this road endlessly, with bad actors on left and right.

The attempt to change the subject is a diversion from where the orginal post started, a baseless claim, repeated again and again on this site, that the President incited violence against police officers.

By the way, the not quite apology of Kilpatrick for segregation was weak as hell. Mr. Kilpatrick told a Roanoke newspaper in 1993 that he had intended merely to delay court-mandated integration because "violence was right under the city waiting to break loose. Probably, looking back, I should have had better consciousness of the immorality, the absolute evil of segregation."

Total garbage, given the fact that at the Richmond Times Leader, Mr. Kilpatrick wrote editorials that thundered support for "massive resistance" to race-mixing in public schools, an effort pushed by the political machine of U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr. that worked to shut down public schools rather than integrate them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/16/AR2010081602555.html

All this is to say that, we really can go back and forth with this, and it gets you nowhere, certainly no closer to proof that the President incited violence against police officers. Wasn't that the point?

Obama and Holder are guilty of inciting violence but too shrewd to be caught at it. They drummed up anti-cop hysteria that led to the death of these officers: incendiary comments admittedly, but you said that above and in another thread and don't need to shy away from them now. I know you and Federalist would rather talk about Al Sharpton. It want to blame the President, or the Attorney General, or anyone other than the murderer of those policemen for their deaths, don't let me stop you.

Obama and Holder are guilty of inciting violence but too shrewd to be caught at it. They drummed up anti-cop hysteria that led to the death of these officers: incendiary comments admittedly, but you said that above and in another thread and don't need to shy away from them now. I know you and Federalist would rather talk about Al Sharpton. If you want to blame the President, or the Attorney General, or anyone other than the murderer of those policemen for their deaths, don't let me stop you.

Decency, I love how you tapdance. Sharpton is ok, because he "reinvented" himself? You kidding? But let's put the Reverend Al to one side and focus on Obama.

Whether or not one agrees with the charges in the Jena Six case (and by the way, stomping an unconscious person can easily lead to death), the issue is Obama's characterization of the violence. The "schoolyard fight" was a euphemism. And the question is, why did Obama minimize a vicious, racially-motivated black on white assault? You tapdance around the question, Decency. And it's part of a pattern--people have a right to be angry at the "no bill" from the Wilson GJ? Why? In both cases, Obama appears to be playing some racial favoritism (much like the race-based giveaway that was the Pigford settlement). And you have no answer for it, Decency. None. Can you articulate why it's understandable that someone would be angry that Wilson would not be put through the wringer of a trial for exercising his right to self-defense?

As for Gibson, the raid, I think everyone agrees, was over the top. Even if they were looking for wood---less than 1% of the employees were involved in procuring it. Did they really need to be confronted with a raid? Politico aint a great source, by the by.

As for Obama being evil--I didn't say that the speech he gave was the sole reason for calling him that. Ali Musa Daqduq clinches it for me, but there are so many other reasons. Calling Sharpton a "go to guy on race" is one of them.

You can bring up nobodies like Kilpatrick or stuff dead guys said. And segregation--that's a Dem issue, not a conservative one.

The bottom line, Decency, is that this stuff is indefensible. You know it; I know it. And no, the context you provide doesn't contextualize the quote, any more than a lethal dose of poison isn't made inert by mixing it with sweet tea. Obama thinks that anger that a guy doing his job and defending himself against a big thug who went for his gun will not have to face a ruinous trial is "understandable." When you unpack that, it's bad. The only defense is that it was a throwaway line. But even that doesn't wash--his speech takes it as a given that Brown was wrongfully shot, when the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. More is expected from POTUS.

Decency evolves: We aren't likely to agree on any of this. I think this President is cautious to a fault in his dealings with issues of race and under constant scrutiny from a battalion of conservative media sources that subject him to withering scrutiny. The right doesn't want to acknowledge that institutional discrimination against African Americans is a lingering problem in law enforcement, housing, election laws and elsewhere.

The electoral bulwark of the GOP consists of former Southern Democrats who migrated, en masse and over time, to the Republican Party. This is the certain bloc of electoral votes for GOP Presidential candidates and the surest place for a GOP Senate candidates to prevail.

The mildest attempts to address problems of lingering racism against African Americans brings virulent charges of reverse racism from people who think that the primary problem with racism is racism against white people. African American youths are 21 times more likely to be killed by the police than white youths are:

http://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white

This problem isn't a fantasy and the President's mild acknowledgement of this real problem isn't intolerable, inexcusable or evil.

There is so little we agree on. Darren Wilson escaped trial, and that is understandable given the likelihood that a jury would very likely have failed to find behind a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of unlawful homicide, although you yourself admitted it was indictable. That doesn't mean that the spate of publicized questionable killings of African Americans by the police (Garner, Crawford, Tamar Rice, and yes, according to numerous witness accounts, Michael Brown) isn't cause for concern. That is all the President said, in a measured, even handed way.

As for what you said, is the quote, "Obama and Holder are too shrewd to say anything that could be construed as an incitement to violence" direct enough for you?

As for the GOP, here are there electoral vote totals for the past four elections. I think it's fair to say that they skew towards former slave holding states:

Confederacy and border states/others

2012 159/47
2008 129/44
2004 184/102
2000 212/59

Denouncing the President for expressing concern about recent questionable publicized killings of African Americans is an example of the kind of racial politics that lead to such lopsided results.

Once again, why would it be understandable to be angry?

Oh Federalist, where to start. Well, here's an example. Imagine you were an African American man and the Reuters article reflected below reflected your reality, or that of your 17 year old son. How would you feel?

(Reuters) - From the dingy donut shops of Manhattan to the cloistered police watering holes in Brooklyn, a number of black NYPD officers say they have experienced the same racial profiling that cost Eric Garner his life.

Garner, a 43-year-old black man suspected of illegally peddling loose cigarettes, died in July after a white officer put him in a chokehold. His death, and that of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, has sparked a slew of nationwide protests against police tactics. On Saturday, those tensions escalated after a black gunman, who wrote of avenging the black deaths on social media, shot dead two New York policemen.

The protests and the ambush of the uniformed officers pose a major challenge for New York Mayor Bill De Blasio. The mayor must try to ease damaged relations with a police force that feels he hasn’t fully supported them, while at the same time bridging a chasm with communities who say the police unfairly target them.

What’s emerging now is that, within the thin blue line of the NYPD, there is another divide - between black and white officers.

Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.

The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.

Desmond Blaize, who retired two years ago as a sergeant in the 41st Precinct in the Bronx, said he once got stopped while taking a jog through Brooklyn’s upmarket Prospect Park. "I had my ID on me so it didn’t escalate," said Blaize, who has sued the department alleging he was racially harassed on the job. "But what’s suspicious about a jogger? In jogging clothes?"

The NYPD and the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the police officers’ union, declined requests for comment. However, defenders of the NYPD credit its policing methods with transforming New York from the former murder capital of the world into the safest big city in the United States.

I was in LA during the sad and sorry tenure of Daryl Gates and I recall how his paramilitary style of policing ratcheted tensions up and up. I was in LA in 1982, when Gates provoked an outcry from civil rights advocates by claiming that black men might be more likely to die from choke holds because their arteries do not open as fast as arteries do on "normal people."

The Christopher Commission and the Webster Commission, headed by officials who served under both Democratic and Republican Presidential Administrations, both faulted the aggressive style Gates adopted and the excessive force it fostered and with good reason. LA became a better and safer place without him. Community based policing played a significant role in reducing tensions after the Rodney King riots. The primary beneficiaries of the new style were the police and the community, not criminals.

When African American off duty cops are complaining about being victims of profiling and police brutality, you've got a problem. I'm glad the NYPD is under court monitoring and I hope it ratchets tensions down there as well. To the extent the Obama Administration is trying to foster those kind of changes, I'm in favor of what they are doing.

Once again, Decency misses the boat. Apparently, because Daryl Gates said a bad thing and some black police officers have been racially profiled, Darren Wilson. whose actions had nothing to do with racial profiling, must be forced to go through the wringer of a trial because he defended himself. You must be a member of the Duke University faculty.

Barack Obama said that anger over the GJ "no bill" was "understandable." I have asked for a simple explanation of why Wilson should have had to go thru the wringer of a trial for defending himself. Decency points to Daryl Gates.

What are you going to point to in order to justify the euphemization of the Jena Six assault on Justin Barker--the Tulsa Riots of 1921? You have to come up with some unconnected injustice because "schoolyard fight" looks and feels like racial favoritism here.

You are quite excellent at mischaracterizing things yourself. The President said, "First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law. And so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make. There are Americans who agree with it, and there are Americans who are deeply disappointed, even angry. It’s an understandable reaction."

Which side is he taking--those who agree with it or those who are disappointed with it? Neither. To the protestors--he asks that they don't destroy property and show respect to law enforcement. To law enforcement, he asks that they show restraint. It is pretty milquetoast stuff and if you weren't such a partisan, It might be easier to see the speech for what it is.

It's a call for calm on both sides, which any sane administration is going to want: "Our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They’ve got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law. As they do their jobs in the coming days, they need to work with the community, not against the community, to distinguish the handful of people who may use the grand jury’s decision as an excuse for violence -- distinguish them from the vast majority who just want their voices heard around legitimate issues in terms of how communities and law enforcement interact."

He isn't saying Darren Wilson should face tria. That decision was for the grand jury to make, and they made it. The protests are going on and are gong to go on. A call for calm and an acknowledgement to the protesters AT&T their concerns are being heard and are going to be addressed, not by Wilson's indictment but in more systematic ways, was what they got.

Your earlier comments suggest that systematic reforms of police forces, which is what the Administration has been talking about, favor criminals, which is what I was addressing above. I disagree strongly with that position. Daryl Gates had far bigger problems that one comment and the NYPD has bigger problems than just Eric Garner. Single incidents bring up whole chains of bad feeling. Effective, community based policing can help departments navigate such iincidents with a minimum of unrest.

You are quite excellent at mischaracterizing things yourself. The President said, "First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law. And so we need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make. There are Americans who agree with it, and there are Americans who are deeply disappointed, even angry. It’s an understandable reaction."

Which side is he taking--those who agree with it or those who are disappointed with it? Neither. To the protestors--he asks that they don't destroy property and show respect to law enforcement. To law enforcement, he asks that they show restraint. It is pretty milquetoast stuff and if you weren't such a partisan, it might be easier to see the speech for what it is.

It's a call for calm on both sides, which any sane administration is going to want: "Our police officers put their lives on the line for us every single day. They’ve got a tough job to do to maintain public safety and hold accountable those who break the law. As they do their jobs in the coming days, they need to work with the community, not against the community, to distinguish the handful of people who may use the grand jury’s decision as an excuse for violence -- distinguish them from the vast majority who just want their voices heard around legitimate issues in terms of how communities and law enforcement interact."

He isn't saying Darren Wilson should face trial. That decision was for the grand jury to make, and they made it. The protests are going on and are gong to go on. A call for calm and an acknowledgement to the protesters that their concerns are being heard and are going to be addressed, not by Wilson's indictment but in more systematic ways, was what they got.

Your earlier comments suggest that systematic reforms of police forces, which is what the Administration has been talking about, favor criminals, which is what I was addressing above. I disagree strongly with that position. Daryl Gates had far bigger problems that one comment and the NYPD has bigger problems than just Eric Garner. Single incidents can bring up whole chains of bad feelings. Effective, community based policing can help departments navigate such iincidents with a minimum of unrest.

Obama speaks in lightly disguised code. Sure, there's a little something for everyone, at least in haec verba, but he leaves no mistake about where his sympathies lie.

With Al Sharpton -- a man you conspicuously (and honestly) decline to defend against the race hustler label he has spent years earning, is Obama's hand-picked "go-to guy" on race.

Really, what else do you need to know? What would you think if Ronald Reagan had picked George Wallace -- a flagrant, national race baiter -- as his "go-to guy" on race?

None of this is a big secret. Obama favors blacks because they're an indispensable part of his constituency (do you disagree?), but I truly do not think it's all opportunism and political advantage that fills his thinking. I think he believes, as his long-time spiritual mentor Rev. Wright has often reminded us, that whites are the Devil and need to get what's coming to them for their years of cruel oppression.

This is one reason others who hate police -- like, say, Radley Balko -- simply cannot bring themselves to say the two NYC assassinations were even wrong, much less horrific, or even that they should be mourned. It's not politics with them. It's true believerism.

White cops have been so dreadful, so appalling, so racist for so long that, look, if one or two get offed, it might be a bit difficult for the family, but, hey, c'mon, what did a racist cauldron like Amerika expect, anyway? Sweetness and roses?

I suspect, Decency, that you buy into a significant part of those sentiments. Like Obama and Holder, you're smart enough to get it through in code rather than saying it straight up, but little doubt is being left about the message.

Indeed the message, lustily chanted by dozens of (I'm sure they were just "civil rights protestors") was this unforgettable number: "What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? NOW."

Like most supple and successful movements, the movement to humiliate, intimidate and weaken the cops operates with different levels of sophistication and tactics. You have the street chanters to make sure the threat of violence gets made explicit; you have the Brinsleys who're warped enough to do it; and you have the more cerebral types (and I think of you as cerebral) to play the good cop (as it were) to Big Al's bad cop, and to assure the kneecapping of the cops ability to contain thugs, druggies, child rapists and the other "downtrodden of the earth" will merely be subject to not-very-specific "reform," not torn to shreds by some ultra-Leftist commission left to its own devices when the lights get dim in a few months.

There was a point in my life, probably 45 years ago, when I would have fallen for it. But 45 years is a long time. The mendacity, ambition, self-aggrandizement, aggressiveness and greed that has displaced MLK with a tax-cheating, gutter-trolling, race-hustling con man like Big Al tells me all I need to know about what the Movement has become.

You're not a stupid man, and I expect it tells you a lot, too. In a quiet moment, long away from the Internet, perhaps one day you will whisper it in my ear.