megaplayboy

Not sure whether to run in terror or get my pokeball ready.

2012 Republican presidential nominee and current United States Senator Willard Mitt Romney(R-UT), marching with protesters in DC and saying the words "black lives matter" may not seem like a big deal, but it's a hell of a signal as to where the country has moved.  It's not all bad news folks.  Minneapolis is heading towards disbanding their municipal police department and replacing it with a new model.  If that works out, police unions around the country are going to have some tough decisions ahead of them.  I'd recommend that they change their policies in order to let the "bad apples" all go.  But that's just me.  

2012 Republican presidential nominee and current United States Senator Willard Mitt Romney(R-UT), marching with protesters in DC and saying the words "black lives matter" may not seem like a big deal, but it's a hell of a signal as to where the country has moved.  It's not all bad news folks.  Minneapolis is heading towards disbanding their municipal police department and replacing it with a new model.  If that works out, police unions around the country are going to have some tough decisions ahead of them.  I'd recommend that they change their policies in order to let the "bad apples" all go.  But that's just me.  

2012 Republican presidential nominee and current United States Senator Willard Mitt Romney(R-UT), marching with protesters in DC and saying the words "black lives matter" may not seem like a big deal, but it's a hell of a signal as to where the country has moved.  It's not all bad news folks.  Minneapolis is heading towards disbanding their municipal police department and replacing it with a new model.  If that works out, police unions around the country are going to have some tough decisions ahead of them.  I'd recommend that they change their policies in order to let the "bad apples" all go.  But that's just me.  

2012 Republican presidential nominee and current United States Senator Willard Mitt Romney(R-UT), marching with protesters in DC and saying the words "black lives matter" may not seem like a big deal, but it's a hell of a signal as to where the country has moved.  It's not all bad news folks.  Minneapolis is heading towards disbanding their municipal police department and replacing it with a new model.  If that works out, police unions around the country are going to have some tough decisions ahead of them.  I'd recommend that they change their policies in order to let the "bad apples" all go.  But that's just me.  

2012 Republican presidential nominee and current United States Senator Willard Mitt Romney(R-UT), marching with protesters in DC and saying the words "black lives matter" may not seem like a big deal, but it's a hell of a signal as to where the country has moved.  It's not all bad news folks.  Minneapolis is heading towards disbanding their municipal police department and replacing it with a new model.  If that works out, police unions around the country are going to have some tough decisions ahead of them.  I'd recommend that they change their policies in order to let the "bad apples" all go.  But that's just me.  

But muh energy stock portfolio!

This depresses and discourages me in ways that a pandemic and recession never could.  Over and over and over again for, what, 50-60 years?  And we're going to pretend to do something about it, and then a few years later there's another string of dead bodies of people of color strewn about by people ostensibly employed to protect and serve them.  ENOUGH.  

With respect, we have a double selection bias here. For a person to die in police custody, they have to be, first, called to the attention of the police. And, second, to have experienced more serious consequences from that encounter. The first suggests that most of these individuals will be apprehended while committing crimes or crime-adjacent activity. They will be "felons resisting arrest." The second is an issue because these cases have to come before us. Plenty of people experience police brutality and extricate themselves without much harm. Their cases do not come before the public because it is very hard to interest the public in a case in which a coed complains that the officer who cuffed them in order to charge them with shoplifting (but then changed their mind when it became clear that there was no shoplifting), put on the cuffs too roughly. A dead body is usually our starting point, and for there to be a dead body suggests some fragility in the victim, most often due either to either mental health or substance abuse issues. 
 
In short, your police brutality cases will normally involve someone who can be cast as  having "deserved it." And that's leaving aside cases where juvenile records are dragged into the case. We take our injustices as we find them.
 
Social out groups exist in every society, and their experience is a continuum. They're not just arrested, or killed while resisting arrest, in disproportionate numbers. People just simply treat them worse, and this is something everyone has to deal with, from school principals to HR to grocery store managers. Unless that's done, they will fail school for no reason, be turned away for jobs, and be arrested for shoplifting in circumstances that quickly go south. As a supervisor, I take it for granted that some of my cashiers, most of whom have issues of their own, will fight with out group customers on a regular basis. I take it for granted that some who aren't normally bullies will slip into bad habits and have to be reined back, or have bad days and need to be removed from the situation. I take it for granted that these things will happen to me.
 
People can, and will, deny the very existence of out groups, and rationalise their treatment. Korean-Japanese, Canadian First Nations, Roma, Irish --every society has out groups and we can almost infallibly predict disproportionate rates of death in police encounters, adverse economic and educational outcomes, elevated rates of substance abuse. It's  human nature, and it's on socially dominant groups to keep these trends in check. Giving into them is disastrous for a police force, an economy, a grocery store.  

And yet I'd still peg him as among the five best Republican presidents in US history.  
 
(which might also say something about most of the field of competitors...)
 
To the extent that there was a Reconstruction Era, Grant was president while most of it was happening, and that's to his credit that he didn't abandon the project.  It's to the detriment of the 19th Century GOP that they were willing to abandon it in 1876 in order to hold onto the presidency...

This depresses and discourages me in ways that a pandemic and recession never could.  Over and over and over again for, what, 50-60 years?  And we're going to pretend to do something about it, and then a few years later there's another string of dead bodies of people of color strewn about by people ostensibly employed to protect and serve them.  ENOUGH.  

America.exe appears to have stopped working.  I tried turning it off and on again, and reinstalling the operating system.  Nope.  What now?  My monitor is starting to smoke...

Congress can pass a law that overrides or overwrites some of the now clearly excessive protections for police officers found in union contracts.  The DOJ can sue cities in order to set up consent decrees regarding police conduct.  They could even tie federal funds to standardized mental health/personality and background screening processes for police and sheriffs departments.  And Congress could end or curb qualified immunity for police officers as well.  Really, all it takes is(in practice) for 60% of white people and 60% of white politicians to agree that this is a serious problem worth a lasting, effective solution, and let the chips fall where they may. 

Congress can pass a law that overrides or overwrites some of the now clearly excessive protections for police officers found in union contracts.  The DOJ can sue cities in order to set up consent decrees regarding police conduct.  They could even tie federal funds to standardized mental health/personality and background screening processes for police and sheriffs departments.  And Congress could end or curb qualified immunity for police officers as well.  Really, all it takes is(in practice) for 60% of white people and 60% of white politicians to agree that this is a serious problem worth a lasting, effective solution, and let the chips fall where they may. 

I have said, repeatedly, that cynicism and apathy are the natural enemies of progress.  Because it takes hard work, persistence and a willingness to deal with resistance and setbacks, to achieve real social progress.  And a LOT of optimism!

Biden isn't the (presumptive) nominee because a small cabal of party insiders considered him the, "most electable" - it's because he got more votes than any other candidate.

With 100k dead (and not seeing the peak yet), I'm curious what you would consider "too much destruction"...

It's a world of laughter
A world of TANKS
It's a world of hopes
And a world of TANKS

No, I'm aware of the limited utility of IQ tests, the shady historical ties between IQ testing and the eugenics movement, and so forth.  My question was more along the lines of where these extraordinarily high scores are coming from when the standard tests don't really warranty any validity beyond maybe a 180 at most.  Elsewhere I've seen that a 200 is the highest score hypothetically possible, since exactly one person in the entire global population would have that score.  My impression is that there is nobody with an adult score in the 200 plus range, using any of the 6 or 7 standard tests used.  But if I'm wrong, I assume someone out there might be able to tell me.

A crackdown on the various flavors of armed nutjobs out there--white supremacists, sovereign citizens, various militias--is long overdue.  Put a federal/state/local task force on it and shut them all down.  Run them to ground.  It's gone beyond tiresome and ventured into the real of the frightening and threatening.