All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[BeastieRunner]

If a statement can't be taken at face value, it's also a golden opportunity for people on the other side of a topic to define your side.

Why do you focus on the perfect wording?

Would "Reform The Police" make you feel better?

EDIT TO ADD:
As an aside since I didn't quote your whole post, I did acknowledge your views vs. comments in my last post.

[Jack Dracula]

oh the head of the NY Police Union is very very upset

The comments tho.
I need a drink.

And the start of the Trump's great white plutarchy.

Molotov cocktails anyone?

[Kirby101]

As your quote shows, the Republican secretary of state sent voters mail-in ballots.


If anyone is deliberately slowing down voters, that would be voter suppression. The article doesn't prove this. It just states the speculation.

Administrative problems aren't necessarily a conspiracy.

As if on cue.

[Jack Dracula]

Why do police need to use choke holds in the first place?

They absolutely don't. It's the influence of MMA and Crav-Maga on police training. once someone is on handcuffs and on the ground, a choke isn't necessary.
Something that isn't pointed out much is that while Chauvin had his knee on the neck of his victim, other officers were holding his legs and arms. There was no need for a choke.

[aja_christopher]

^^^^ So much this. ^^^^

I was just talking with a bunch of people about this today.

I had a black educator ask me, "What's it like working with white kids?" They don't have any white kids at their school.

We had several white educators asking what it's like having latinx or black kids in classes because they don't have anybody that is non-white in their district (not just a single school).

There are kids that grow up with literally the only white persons in their lives being their teacher and the officer that pulled their daddy over.

There are kids in America that have never seen a black person.

We have kids in America that have never heard another language spoken on a bus or on the street or in the store.

We have large segment of children in America where their only view of another race is via media.

I see you dude and feel your message. It's real.

It's even more real when you go overseas and white people in another country -- like England -- don't interact with you based on the stereotype.

I'll be blunt and say a lot of them were more educated as well -- I once almost got attacked by an old guy at a pub for being a "Yank" but that's it.

Widespread de facto segregation based on residential zoning (redlining) and reinforced by income inequalities and other forms of systemic racism.

And a historically racist and brutal police force.

------
"40 Percent of Whites Don't Have Black Friends"

"According to a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos, 40 percent of white Americans don't have non-white friends, while 25 percent of non-white Americans have no friends outside their racial demographic. Suprisingly—given legal segregation ended 60 years ago—schools are still extremely racially divided. According to 2009 data from a UCLA Civil Rights Project, the schools attended by 40 percent of black and Latino students are 90 percent black and Latino. While white students go to schools that are 77 percent white."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats...-black-friends



"Diversity of the White House interns in the previous administration vs the current one"

One looks like it represents Americans while the other looks like it represents white Americans.

Because they do.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

They absolutely don't. It's the influence of MMA and Crav-Maga on police training. once someone is on handcuffs and on the ground, a choke isn't necessary.
Something that isn't pointed out much is that while Chauvin had his knee on the neck of his victim, other officers were holding his legs and arms. There was no need for a choke.

Oh, there was a need all right....a need for brutality. Nothing more complicated than that.

[Powerboy]

They absolutely don't. It's the influence of MMA and Crav-Maga on police training. once someone is on handcuffs and on the ground, a choke isn't necessary.
Something that isn't pointed out much is that while Chauvin had his knee on the neck of his victim, other officers were holding his legs and arms. There was no need for a choke.

Yeah I just skimmed some asinine Conservative article about Floyd's criminal record and that he was passing a counterfeit bill- as if that somehow made murder okay. J**** F***** C*****.

I'm a cashier. You never even assume the person handing you a bill knows it's counterfeit. You just get security over there, verify that it is counterfeit, apologize for the unfortunate situation and explain that you have to confiscate the bill and hand it over to the authorities. If they ask to have the bill back, you explain politely that we can't do that once we know it's counterfeit. The customer is free to leave. They don't have to give their name. They don't have to wait for the police. There is zero assumption that they knew it was counterfeit.

The whole situation was steeped in racism from the start (which we all know) and, apparently, this all happened before they even knew for sure if it was a counterfeit. Not that it has anything to do with anything. It was just an excuse.

I believe the Minneapolis Police Chief just tried to use the "He had a criminal record" argument which is equivalent to saying you can shoot jaywalkers. The plan seems to be to literally eliminate the police department completely and substitute other things, the most sweeping change ever done and the Minneapolis city council seems to have such a majority that it cannot be blocked.

[Dalak]

It's even more real when you go overseas and white people in another country -- like England -- don't interact with you based on the stereotype.

I'll be blunt and say a lot of them were more educated as well -- I once almost got attacked by an old guy at a pub for being a "Yank" but that's it.

Widespread de facto segregation based on residential zoning (redlining) and reinforced by income inequalities and other forms of systemic racism.

And a historically racist and brutal police force.

------
"40 Percent of Whites Don't Have Black Friends"

"According to a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos, 40 percent of white Americans don't have non-white friends, while 25 percent of non-white Americans have no friends outside their racial demographic. Suprisingly—given legal segregation ended 60 years ago—schools are still extremely racially divided. According to 2009 data from a UCLA Civil Rights Project, the schools attended by 40 percent of black and Latino students are 90 percent black and Latino. While white students go to schools that are 77 percent white."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats...-black-friends

While my school days were different, I'm sad to say I no longer have any minority friends outside the LGBT variety. Not like I had many to begin with, but most of my friends are online where their race just doesn't matter as much as what they say and do. This is not due to exclusion mind you, just that I've never been the most social guy to begin with and don't like going to bars/parties.

All in all I've had both good and bad experiences with folks of ALL races and creeds, with a majority of them coming from my fellows of the pasty variety. I've also seen that no one likes having their opinions or beliefs challenged, but the people who can accept when they are wrong and try to move past it are the ones worth keeping as friends.

[aja_christopher]

While my school days were different, I'm sad to say I no longer have any minority friends outside the LGBT variety. Not like I had many to begin with, but most of my friends are online where their race just doesn't matter as much as what they say and do. This is not due to exclusion mind you, just that I've never been the most social guy to begin with and don't like going to bars/parties.

All in all I've had both good and bad experiences with folks of ALL races and creeds, with a majority of them coming from my fellows of the pasty variety. I've also seen that no one likes having their opinions or beliefs challenged, but the people who can accept when they are wrong and try to move past it are the ones worth keeping as friends.

I've been fortunate enoough to have friends of all backgrounds from day one -- the rare times I lived in homogenous neighborhoods were an exception.

It's one of the main reasons the characters in my stories are so diverse -- a lot of them are based on the people I met both overseas and in different places in the States.

I see a lot more segregation when I teach as an adult than when I was a student -- my best friends in school were white, black, and Vietnamese respectively while my first roommates in college were Mexican, Black, and White.

Same with my different girlfriends -- nearly everyone I knew (including a lot of my white friends) dated someone of a different race as well.

Has a lot to do with where I live(d) -- Hollywood, Santa Monica and Venice Beach are basically a free for all for everyone concerned.

The least diverse period of my life was probably when I lived in England though that changed when I would visit London on the weekends.

Never felt singled out for my color in England like I did in America though I did see some friction between a few of them and my Pakistani friends.

[JCAll]

I can understand his frustration though. In my 20s I wasn't the safest driver so I got pulled over a lot and I didn't have a negative encounter. I think there are far more good cops than bad cops but the latter are the ones that are receive press.

I've said before, there are some places where the police are outright evil and some places where that isn't true. It's not like there's one bad cop with mostly good coworkers, whole towns or precincts will be bad and others won't. I'm happy for everyone that grew up in a better environment, but people who've never lived under corrupt cops always seem to have a hard time understanding just how bad it is living that way.

[InformationGeek]

Oh look. Tucker Carlson's latest enemy to attack: Elmo.


I refer to Miss Piggy's remarks.

[skyvolt2000]

^^^^ So much this. ^^^^

I was just talking with a bunch of people about this today.

I had a black educator ask me, "What's it like working with white kids?" They don't have any white kids at their school.

We had several white educators asking what it's like having latinx or black kids in classes because they don't have anybody that is non-white in their district (not just a single school).

There are kids that grow up with literally the only white persons in their lives being their teacher and the officer that pulled their daddy over.

There are kids in America that have never seen a black person.

We have kids in America that have never heard another language spoken on a bus or on the street or in the store.

We have large segment of children in America where their only view of another race is via media.

I see you dude and feel your message. It's real.

Here is something I found out later-in some Texas cities-as long as you were not BLACK-you could go to school with the white kids.

In fact most of those kids came from towns with large Hispanic populations.

They all got along.

It took awhile for them to "adjust" to having blacks around. Nothing violent or racist. it was more of getting use to see blacks NOT act in the way we have been stereotyped as. Especially since our sport teams only had 3 blacks on them. Everybody else was white or from Mexico.

[Mister Mets]

Why do you focus on the perfect wording?

Would "Reform The Police" make you feel better?

EDIT TO ADD:
As an aside since I didn't quote your whole post, I did acknowledge your views vs. comments in my last post.

How I feel doesn't really matter in terms of what makes for effective messaging on a controversial topic.

With "defund the police" it's a framing of the argument in a way that the other side wants. It is adopting the straw man, without necessarily making it clear that there is more to it.

I'll note "why do you focus on X?" can be a flawed line of questioning, because it evades the important question of what's right. And ultimately that is often the answer to what we choose to focus on; someone who thinks he's right on a narrow question, and gets pushback, is going to respond to points made about that topic.

As if on cue.

This doesn't address the substance of anything I've said, that incompetence isn't necessarily a voter suppression conspiracy, and that the article doesn't demonstrate voter suppression.

This also a tactic that you wouldn't accept from someone you disagree with for good reason. Sometimes a response is going to be predictable because it's correct. If a Trump fan predicts a positive response to Joe Biden's address at George Floyd's funeral, it could be because it's a situation Biden can be expected to handle much better than Trump.

[worstblogever]

Just for sake of posing a hypothetical question I’m going to make a completely erroneous assumption...

Let’s imagine the Donald has a shred of realism about assessing his chances of re-election. Then he must realise he will very likely lose, quite possibly by a record margin.

If he wanted to avoid that...how late in the process could he decide not to stand against Biden to let another Republican the take the beating instead?

He won't do it. The minute he's not president, he's got sealed indictments waiting for him back in New York for tax fraud and illegally paying off a porn star during the 2016 election. They can't charge him now because he's president, but the minute he isn't, he's in cuffs. So he's going to cling to the presidency as long as he can.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Tom Ganley, a former used car salesman and candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives to represent Ohio’s 13th Congressional District back in 2010. The GOP named him one of their “Young Guns” despite of the fact that he had a history of his car dealerships being sued for age, race, and gender discrimination and an African American employee who won a lawsuit against him in a racial discrimination case. His poll numbers were holding up fairly well though, until five weeks before the election, when a woman reported that she was sexually assaulted by Ganley at one of his car dealerships while she was dropping her van off for repairs, while giving her $100 and telling her to buy lingerie and high-heeled shoes and to come back so he could “dominate her, parade her on a leash”, and have sex with her in front of his “play friends”. Four weeks after that, and within a week of the election, a second woman came forward to report a similar incident of Ganley acting like Jabba the Hutt. Before all was said and done, Ganley was the first (but not last) of the Republican “Young Guns” to be indicted for a crime, and that was 7 counts that included kidnapping, abduction, solicitation, and menacing by stalking. And that… is definitely a way to end a political career.

In 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of Georgia State Senator Fran Millar, who has served in the state legislature since 1999, making the jump from the Georgia House to Georgia Senate back in the 2010 elections. In his time in office, he has voted for the death penalty to be applied even in non-unanimous jury rulings, voted for welfare drug testing, voted for a requirement that the Georgia State Capitol needed to have a monument of the Ten Commandments, voted to try and make picketing a corporation illegal, voted for bills to require English to be the official language of the state, and voted for a law to allow for Christians to legally discriminate against gay people. Pretty much, he’s supported any and all the unconstitutional ideas that conservatives have pitched for the past fifteen years or so. But Millar arrived on CSGOPOTD’s radar a few months prior to the 2014 elections, when he decided to volunteer some interesting opinions about African Americans using their legal right to participate in early voting on Facebook when he wrote, ”Now we are to have Sunday voting at South DeKalb Mall just prior to the election. Per Jim Galloway of the AJC, this location is dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist. Galloway also points out the Democratic Party thinks this is a wonderful idea — what a surprise. I’m sure Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter are delighted with this blatantly partisan move in DeKalb. Is it possible church buses will be used to transport people directly to the mall since the poll will open when the mall opens? If this happens, so much for the accepted principle of separation of church and state. Interim CEO May says this election decision is an administrative matter and he can unilaterally make this decision. I don’t think this is necessarily true and we are investigating if there is any way to stop this action.” When called out on trying to disenfranchise African American voters by shutting down early voting that they (and anyone else in the state) use for convenience and insinuating they were somehow violating the Constitution to do so, Fran Millar found a way to say something even worse, writing, “I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters. If you don’t believe this is an efort [sic] to maximize Democratic votes pure and simple, then you are not a realist. This is a partisan stunt and I hope it can be stopped. Furthermore I don’t control where people are allowed to vote but am glad Brookhaven has been added for the last week.” So, he would prefer EDUCATED voters, and the African American ones simply can’t be educated, so they should be disqualified. Well, nothing racist about that, right? Well, let’s just say that Fran Millar doesn’t think much of the intelligence of any voter, as he was recorded on video commanding a constituent trying to ask him simple questions to sit, as if they were a dog. On April 15th, 2017, Millar gave the game away again with this quote about the special election to replace the Congressional seat vacated by Tom Price, and how Jon Ossoff was leading in the polls, admitting that the voting lines in the state were drawn to cheat Democrats out of wins. With the 2018 Blue Wave coming for him, and reports that Millar engaged in money laundering with Congressman Buddy Carter… and that was finally enough to ensure he was defeated by Democrat Sally Farrell, earning only 45% of the vote. As his career now seems to be over, we will retire his profile at this time and take a look at another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 878-45, since this was established in July 2014.)