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Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? Bernie Sanders wants to know who owns America?

#15601 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2020-June-05, 18:11

View PostWinstonm, on 2020-June-05, 17:48, said:

The confederates lost the last time they went to war. This time will be no different. Small minds, cold hearts, and evil intentions cannot trump the good will of the majority.

Black Lives Matter.

The confederates won in 2016 :o
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#15602 User is offline   Chas_P 

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Posted 2020-June-05, 19:22

View Posthrothgar, on 2020-June-05, 03:29, said:

Chas, I'm not sure how to read this post, but it sounds like you are

1. Planning on attending the protest
2. Planning to bring a gun

This is unbelievably stupid

If you really expect that you might need a gun, don't show up.
Regardless of what you are hoping to do or say, its not worth what might happen.

Not at all. What I'm saying is I'm just as opposed to police brutality as anyone else. I think what happened to George Floyd was reprehensible; Michael Brown, not so much. But I'm also opposed to looting, violence, burning buildings, and murdering merchants trying to protect what they've worked for all their lives as a "solution". And if you show up at my house with evil intent I'll be ready for you.
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#15603 User is offline   Trinidad 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 03:24

View PostChas_P, on 2020-June-05, 19:22, said:

And if you show up at my house with evil intent I'll be ready for you.

I think this is exactly where the problem lies. The continuous fear that "someone might show up at my house with evil intent". And the silly idea that you need to be ready for that continuously.

We are not cavemen, we are not continuous victims of mammoths or sabre tooth tigers. We are not continuously getting raped and murdered by enemy tribes or nomadic gangs.

And, yes, rape, murder, looting, burglary, it all does happen. But, it is rare. What a waste of a life to be continuously worried about that.

Go out and look around (okay, maybe not now because of Corona) and look at the people you see. How many of them will be axe murderers or rapists? If the crowd you are looking at is large and dense enough, there is a chance that one of those people is a pickpocket. The whole rest of them are normal people who are busy persuing happiness. Hurting you is not even the last thing on their mind. It is simply not on their mind.

So, to be concrete. How ready does Chad need to be? How likely is it that Richard will show up at Chas' door step with an axe?

Rik
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#15604 User is online   Cyberyeti 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 05:02

View PostChas_P, on 2020-June-05, 19:22, said:

Not at all. What I'm saying is I'm just as opposed to police brutality as anyone else. I think what happened to George Floyd was reprehensible; Michael Brown, not so much. But I'm also opposed to looting, violence, burning buildings, and murdering merchants trying to protect what they've worked for all their lives as a "solution". And if you show up at my house with evil intent I'll be ready for you.


Just be glad you're white, so the police won't show up at your place on a drug bust where they've got the wrong address, and the suspect they're trying to find is already in custody anyway, then when they don't shout "police" and batter your door in as you think you're being robbed and fire a couple of shots, they put 8 bullets into your sleeping partner.
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#15605 User is offline   hrothgar 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 05:26

View PostTrinidad, on 2020-June-06, 03:24, said:


So, to be concrete. How ready does Chad need to be? How likely is it that Richard will show up at Chas' door step with an axe?



I do have a very nice Danish axe

A friend of mine who is a blacksmith made it for me.
I was able to get inlay added last time I was in Morocco

https://ibb.co/FHtw5dv
Alderaan delenda est
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#15606 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 05:33

+ a gazillion to cyberyeti's post.
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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#15607 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 06:12

There is a huge difference between on the one hand, acknowledging that some people in some circumstances, hopefully temporary circumstances, might need a gun for protection and then, on the other, saying I am locked and loaded. I feel very secure where I am right now. If I lived in a different area I might wish to have fencing about my yard, perhaps with spikes at the top, I might wish to have spotlights that are sensitive to motion, and alarms that let me know if someone is prowling. I might like to have bars on my windows. If I had all of this, and I still felt the need for a gun, I would either be thinking I needed some psychiatric help or if I really thought the fears were realistic I would be wondering how in hell I ever ended up in such a situation and I would be making plans to move as soon as possible.

Often the result of a confrontation with guns is that one person ends up dead and the other in prison. Or maybe both dead. It seems worth the effort to avoid such a confrontation. Waving a pistol, physically or rhetorically, is not the way to do that.
Ken
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#15608 User is offline   hrothgar 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 07:26

Trump refused to wear protective gear during yesterday's visit to a PPE manufacturer

As a resut, the manufacturer needs to throw away all the gear that he exposed himself to


https://www.newscent...97-3a1a367ca3ed
Alderaan delenda est
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#15609 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 08:16

View Posthrothgar, on 2020-June-06, 07:26, said:

Trump refused to wear protective gear during yesterday's visit to a PPE manufacturer

As a resut, the manufacturer needs to throw away all the gear that he exposed himself to


https://www.newscent...97-3a1a367ca3ed


Everything Donald Trump does with each breath he takes is to try to alter peoples' perceptions of him - to create impressions. It is amazing so many people fall for his shtick.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#15610 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 10:27

View Posthrothgar, on 2020-June-06, 07:26, said:

Trump refused to wear protective gear during yesterday's visit to a PPE manufacturer

As a resut, the manufacturer needs to throw away all the gear that he exposed himself to


https://www.newscent...97-3a1a367ca3ed


He reminds me of myself when I was in high school.. Well, when I was a sophomore in high school. For the first half of the year.
I grew out of it.
I thought he would be bad. Then I saw that he is worse than I thought he would be. Now he is beyond comprehension.
Obscenities are inadequate to describe him.
I'm being swabbed tomorrow (a precaution, I expect negative). I hope he doesn't visit the testing center.


I don't know what to say.
Ken
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#15611 User is offline   cherdano 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 15:34

Two 59 bad apples in Buffalo. https://www.theatlan...buffalo/612781/

I have to say, one aspect that improved quality of life when we moved back to Europe is that I no longer instinctively worry a little when I see a cop. I don't want to diminish racism. But it's also a problem that so many cops don't seem to be able to handle any challenge to their authority without drastically escalating or resorting to violence. And that their brothers and sisters believe in total impunity.
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#15612 User is offline   johnu 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 15:51

View Postcherdano, on 2020-June-06, 15:34, said:

Two 59 bad apples in Buffalo. https://www.theatlan...buffalo/612781/

I have to say, one aspect that improved quality of life when we moved back to Europe is that I no longer instinctively worry a little when I see a cop. I don't want to diminish racism. But it's also a problem that so many cops don't seem to be able to handle any challenge to their authority without drastically escalating or resorting to violence. And that their brothers and sisters believe in total impunity.

Sometimes there is more to the story.

EXCLUSIVE: Two Buffalo Police ERT members say resignation was not in solidarity with suspended officers

Quote

The officers we spoke with said the Buffalo Police Benevolent Association’s statement asserting all 57 officers resigned from ERT in a "show of support” with the two officers that were suspended without pay is not true.

“I don’t understand why the union said it’s a thing of solidarity. I think it sends the wrong message that ‘we’re backing our own’ and that’s not the case,” said one officer with whom we spoke.

“We quit because our union said [they] aren’t legally backing us anymore. So why would we stand on a line for the City with no legal backing if something [were to] happen? Has nothing to do with us supporting,” said another.


Quote

“Some of them probably resigned because they support the officer,” said another officer with whom we spoke. “But, for many of us, that’s not true.”

Hardline police union officials seem to be using hardball tactics to pressure the city and DA to walk away from disciplining their members. So the bad apples may be some of the union leadership and not necessarily the street cops.
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#15613 User is offline   Chas_P 

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Posted 2020-June-06, 18:17

Appreciable thoughts.
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#15614 User is offline   shyams 

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Posted 2020-June-07, 05:47

View PostChas_P, on 2020-June-06, 18:17, said:


Oh no. I cannot believe this *&%$^! mess of an article.

I mistakenly assumed it was Spectator USA (an associate website of the Spectator magazine in the UK) so I read it. What a waste of my time!
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#15615 User is offline   hrothgar 

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Posted 2020-June-07, 05:56

View PostChas_P, on 2020-June-06, 18:17, said:



This article is at best irrelevant distraction and almost immedietly veers into racist stereotypes.

It's only value is to show the type of conversations that old sheltered conservative whites have with one another.

Let's look at one of the very first sentences

"But 99.9 percent of the blacks killed violently in this country are killed by other blacks."

First and foremost, this is gross hyperbole (The actual number is about 90% so this value is off by a couple orders of magnitude)

More importantly, the overwhelming majority of violent crimes and killings are committed within social groups. As I recall, in the United States something like

20% of all killings in the US are committed by family members
60$ of all killings are committed by friends / acquaintances
20% of all killings are committed by strangers

So, its not at all surprising that you have large amounts of black on black crime
The United States is a very segregated society.

And, for much the same reason, this is why we see that 83% of whites who get killed are killed by other whites.

Simply put, this whole article is ignorant, racist nonsense.

The fact that you consider this in some way convincing or worth sharing is quite telling.
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#15616 User is offline   kenberg 

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Posted 2020-June-07, 06:33

I have told this story before but I think it has relevance.

When I was 21 my wife and I were going out to a movie. The car was about to die but it had not yet done so. A cop didn't like what he saw of the car and stopped me and really laid into me, although only verbally, about my irresponsibility. That was until I mentioned that my wife and I were going to a movie. That had the effect of a magic wand transforming Cinderella. I was no longer a young irresponsible punk, I was a young struggling family man. No ticket, just a suggestion that I get some things fixed. I junked it, as I had already decided to do.

Cops, at least some of them, put people into categories. i suppose all of us do to some extent. I could change categories bt saying"wife". A black person can not change categories so easily.

I am sure that in predominantly black neighborhoods, just as in predominantly white neighborhoods, the police have an essential role to play in controlling crime. This has to be done without treating people as trash. In particular without choking them, but I hope we can do better than that.

The article is simple minded.
Ken
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#15617 User is online   Cyberyeti 

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Posted 2020-June-07, 07:08

View PostChas_P, on 2020-June-06, 18:17, said:



If you read ***** like this then I understand where your views come from. As has been pointed out above, the writer has already decided his conclusions and is distorting the facts massively to fit.

Almost everybody who considers a foetus to be a human being is doing so on the basis of religion and forcing their beliefs on people who don't share them, all credibility gone instantly with me.
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#15618 User is offline   hrothgar 

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Posted 2020-June-07, 07:29

View PostCyberyeti, on 2020-June-07, 07:08, said:

If you read ***** like this then I understand where your views come from. As has been pointed out above, the writer has already decided his conclusions and is distorting the facts massively to fit.

Almost everybody who considers a foetus to be a human being is doing so on the basis of religion and forcing their beliefs on people who don't share them, all credibility gone instantly with me.


You should hear what Ben Stein has to say on a variety of subjects

For example, here is Stein opining on the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson

"The idea of calling this poor young man unarmed when he was 6'4", 300 pounds, full of muscles"

Or take a look at his claims about "Darwinism"
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#15619 User is offline   Winstonm 

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Posted 2020-June-07, 08:51

Quote

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump told his advisors at one point this past week he wanted 10,000 troops to deploy to the Washington D.C. area to halt civil unrest over the killing of a black man by Minneapolis police, according to a senior U.S. official.

The account of Trump's demand during a heated Oval Office conversation on Monday shows how close the president may have come to fulfilling his threat to deploy active duty troops, despite opposition from Pentagon leadership.





Donald Trump shows the same instincts as Erdogan, Duterte, Mohammed bin Salman and other authoritarian anti-democratic leaders and as such has no business occupying the White House and the reins of U.S. democracy.

Regardless of political bias, this much should be understood: this man must go.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
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#15620 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2020-June-07, 12:12

Michael Bender at WSJ said:

WASHINGTON—Americans by a 2-to-1 margin are more troubled by the actions of police in the killing of George Floyd than by violence at some protests, and an overwhelming majority, 80%, feel that the country is spiraling out of control, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The poll also reveals striking partisan divides in how Americans view a pair of unfolding national crises, including the unrest sparked by the killing of Mr. Floyd, the black Minneapolis man who was in police custody, and the coronavirus pandemic, responsible for more than 109,000 fatalities in the U.S.

Nearly three-quarters of Democrats, 74%, said it may take the next year or even longer to curb Covid-19 and return to work as normal. By contrast, among President Trump’s strongest supporters within the Republican Party, 32% said the coronavirus is already contained.

About half of all Republicans, 48%, said they were more concerned about the protests than the circumstances of Mr. Floyd’s killing, while 81% of Democrats held the opposite opinion.

Those crises appear to have had little impact on Mr. Trump’s standing. His job approval rating stood at 45%, down 1 percentage point from April, according to the poll. His 7-point deficit against Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden remained unchanged. Mr. Biden had 49% support, with 42% for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s biggest advantage over Mr. Biden continued to surround economic issues. When asked who would be best at cutting the unemployment rate and getting people back to work, Americans picked Mr. Trump, 48% to 35%. A similar share said Mr. Trump would be better at dealing with the economy. Mr. Trump held a slight advantage, 43% to 40%, on the question of dealing with China.

Since the midterm elections—a period that included the release of the Mueller report, an impeachment, a pandemic and civil-rights upheaval—Mr. Trump’s approval rating has never dipped below 43% and has never risen above 47%, according to 18 polls during that time.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democrat Jeff Horwitt, said Mr. Trump’s standing remained stable despite the political equivalent of getting repeatedly battered by Category 5 hurricanes.

“Those are remarkable findings that speak to the power of our partisan silos,” Mr. McInturff said.

Still, the poll contained some red flags for Mr. Trump, pollsters said.

One was the widening Democratic lead on which party the country wants to control Congress after the next election. Americans said they prefer Democrats over Republicans, 51% to 40%, an 11-point divide, up from 6 points in January.

A similar double-digit preference for Democrats prefaced the party’s gains in 2018, 2008 and 2006. If the finding persists, that signals it would be more difficult for Mr. Trump to close the gap with Mr. Biden, Mr. McInturff said.

Views of Mr. Trump’s handling of the contagion continued to worsen, according to the poll, while fewer Americans said they hold a negative view of Mr. Biden, despite a recent ad blitz from the Trump campaign that aimed to have the opposite effect.

Since the last week of April, the president’s re-election campaign has spent more than $13 million on TV and radio ads across eight battleground states and the District of Columbia, attacking Mr. Biden as soft on China while defending the president’s response to the pandemic, according to data from political ad tracker Kantar/CMAG. Over the same time, America First Action, a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, spent about $5 million on ads with similar messages.

But 55% of Americans disapproved of Mr. Trump’s handling of the virus, up from 52% in April and 51% in March.

Mr. Biden was viewed negatively by 38% of voters in the poll, down from 41% last month.

Americans said they believed Mr. Biden would be better able than Mr. Trump to end political gridlock in Washington and behave competently and effectively in the job. They also viewed the Democrat as better at handling coronavirus, dealing with health-care issues and addressing the concerns of minorities.

Mr. Biden’s biggest advantage over Mr. Trump, 51% to 26%, was on which candidate could bring the country together. That 25-point gap compared with a 14-point advantage on the same question for 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The political effect of a large majority of Americans saying the country was out of control was unclear, pollsters said. “Out of control—that’s America in 2020,” Mr. Horwitt said. He said it is “one of the few things Americans can agree upon, and the one finding that we can definitively state, given the tumult and torment.”

On coronavirus, nearly two-thirds, 63%, said they were concerned that they or someone in their family would catch the virus, down from 73% in April.

Two-thirds of voters in the survey said they were uncomfortable flying on a plane or attending a public event with a large group of people. Half said they were uncomfortable sending their children to school, and 54% said they weren’t ready to dine out at a restaurant.

More Americans, 51%, said Mr. Trump was too focused on the economy and not on keeping people safe, while 42% said he was striking the right balance.

Roughly two-thirds of Americans said they always wear a mask when they leave the house, compared with 21% who sometimes wear one and 15% who said they rarely or never do.

Those who always wear a mask, as recommended by the federal government, said they supported Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump in November, 66% to 26%. Those who never or rarely wear masks backed Mr. Trump, 83% to 7%.

“Public-health guidance is now a political fashion statement, or bumper sticker over our faces,” Mr. Horwitt said.

The Journal/NBC News poll surveyed 1,000 registered voters from May 28 through June 2. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Source: https://on.wsj.com/2UkyobN

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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