busdriver

The crime itself is still victimless and the result of a consenting adult being a consenting adult, the secondary effects are typically already crimes themselves. As a society we've waged war on the supply side of the drug question for decades, zero impact, shitloads of money spent, and the cartels have literal armies. Our solution to the demand side is to just lock people up once their lives get shitty enough that they self destruct. At what point do we stop doing the same thing over and over expecting a better outcome? If for no other reason than taking money and power away from cartels and stop throwing money away trying to outspend them.

They also suck at shooting. ETA: Roland Fryer did a pretty exhaustive econometric deep dive into the racial disparities in police encounter outcomes. The short version is there isn't a significant disparity between races in fatality rates that isn't explainable by non racist means. There is a disparity in the rate at which officers use force below the lethal threshold.

I don't think I can make my first point in a way that you wouldn't see him as anything by a law-breaker. So we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't really disagree with your points about training and people in general. My point is the overstated risk without a confidence boosting level of training to deal with the risk just leaves fear and an inability to think. It's like that IP that tells you about all the shit that can kill you but doesn't give you any tools to avoid those things. My brother is a cop, I get the sport smashing of police in general is demoralizing. I'm also well aware of how little time there is to process things, and quite frankly how crappy training shrinks that. The idea that criticism can only be levied from a former or current officer to another is nothing be a recipe for authoritarianism. So I'll pass on the ride along, I'm already well aware of how to hide to get caught up on paperwork. It's basically what I do now.

Point 1: The only way it would be relevant is if his intoxication level directly impacted his ability to comprehend what the officer was telling him. Which is possible, but as yet not what I'm seeing here or elsewhere. Otherwise, it's a non-sequitur. Point 2/3: The threat to officers is something like 150-200ish killed in the line of duty a year, right? So in the millions of officer interactions that happen in this country.....just like the threat of civilians getting killed by errant cops, the various sides of this argument overstate the severity of what is going on. I agree the media malfeasance is gross. That said, the overall crime rate has gone down a lot in the past couple decades, but the number of civilian deaths from officer involved altercations has not matched the decline. So something is out of whack. I'm not saying they're running around maliciously murdering people. The entire framing of the discussion (cops vs criminals, "sacrifice safety in the name of propping up criminals" or "I don't care if it's an 11 year old, I'm going home tonight!" ) guarantees problems. I don't think completely eliminating qualified immunity is a good idea. However departments get away with terrible policy and practices, reference the SWAT raid that fucked up an infant when an officer lobbed a flash bang (which landed in the crib) instead of rolling it along the floor. Officer acquitted. Maybe that officer should have been acquitted if he was following his training. But that technique is negligent, and that isn't news to people who actually know what they're doing. I do appreciate that policing in the country has come a long way since the days of the stake out squad. That doesn't mean there isn't room to improve. And yes, I do expect police officers to assume risk on behalf of the civilians they are sworn to serve.

As I said, "but otherwise legally armed." His weapon and his ID were co-located, which he expressed. I went back and re-watched the video, for whatever reason I thought he had said that, but didn't see it. I don't think he is guilty of murder. I think he could have led that situation to a better outcome. My personal opinion is as an armed agent of the state, that is his responsibility. I understand that the law doesn't support my opinion, it is just my opinion. Castile clearly fucked up by not telling the cop where his wallet was located. He could have done better to not get himself killed, but he is not an armed agent of the state. I get that it's a hard job and their life is potentially on the line, I get that demanding perfection is unrealistic. I get that cops are not evil assholes trying to fuck up people's lives. But they are armed agents of the state, they should have a higher level of responsibility. Officer safety has been used as rationale for changes that help cops and not the public for a very long time. I've seen the attitude among family and friends that are police officers.

Think about what you posted for a second. Assume Castile was a 100% honest, just high, but otherwise legally armed. He told the officer he was armed and where the gun was located. Was the officer reasonable in the way he handled a legally armed citizen? I would contend, no. Smelling weed is not an indication that the dude is a violent junkie. It's weed not PCP. The training is the problem. And I'm well aware of what gets taught.

He was kneeling on the side of his neck not the windpipe, so half of a carotid choke. I would guess the other side artery was likely restricted to some degree, but not fully since he knelt there for a long fucking time before he became unresponsive. Watch the Tony Timpa video. Died the same way, no knee on neck. The knee is a red herring, the confounding factors (for both cases, in my estimation) is a prone restraint and drug related physiology. So not being able to breath is true, but it had nothing to do with the knee. Qualified immunity is a problem. I'm not convinced just erasing it is a good idea, but it's something to look at that could allow better accountability of department policy within the current system. Having higher standards for police officers in general is warranted. With that comes a need for more money not less however. More training time requires more officers on the pay-role to cover the additional requirement. Want higher caliber people? Be prepared to pay them more. Etc. etc.

2nd shot did in fact suck. But I didn't die.

I doubt anti-vax theories running wild in the Republican base is solid theory for the disparity. More likely in my mind is a general difference in the perceived level of risk of the actual virus and a good dose of tribal politics on top of that. "The risk is overblown by left wing media" turns into "the risk is actually very low." The left was jumping up and down about how getting a vaccine out anytime soon was impossible not three or four months ago. So now that they're pushing it, the tribal instinct is to fight back regardless of the logic or illogic behind it. I'm actually curious what the narrative would be if Trump had actually won the election.

Blah blah blah. Repeal the 17th amendment. Popular vote of senators is dumb.

Expelling an elected congressman for things said /believed before their election (aka known to voters) would be counter productive, anti-democratic, and just plain creepy. Dumb fuck or not, she was elected. Just like the open socialists, pandering assholes, and the rest.

You guys realize that roughly 30% of the population is greater than 1 standard deviation (about 15) from the mean on IQ right? So about 15% of a 330M population is below an IQ of 85. Since you could probably justifiably say that about 8M of those people are actually mentally handicapped (2x standard devs), the other ~40M are just good old fashioned dumb.

Dawson Precision is the standard by which all target sights are judged in the action shooting world. That's not really true. Everyone just uses Dawson, no point in trying other stuff.

I was naively hoping Trump in the white house would piss off the Democrats enough for them to strip powers from the executive. Joke's on me, the hate kabuki got him out and set them up to ramp up the EO party.

Republicans: There is massive voter fraud! Democrats: There is massive voter disenfranchisement! Same old story.

Did you guys know chemicals in the water are turning the frogs gay? An inter-dimensional alien told me.

It always cracks me up how everybody in the chain of command can find a way to justify the thing they already wanted to do based on the latest strategic guidance laid down by the CSAF.

Formula 1 will eventually be electric. That's the whole point of formula E. Right now there's a lot of restriction on battery tech, to control cost. An actual unlimited electric powertrain formula series would actually be pretty cool.

You'll be just as busy completing more years of college, residency, fellowship, etc. as you will in pilot training, upgrades, etc. Congratulations, you've found yourself interested in two careers that both require a lot of dedication to be good.

Want to slash American carbon? Build nuclear power plants.

This is interesting. Have you guys read/watched any of Jonathan Haidt's work on personality traits and political leanings? It's a lot like men are from mars, women are from venus. Basically, people will tend to lean one way or the other politically, and it strongly correlates to personality traits. Here's one: Haidt's TedTalk Or dumbed down to a very rough generality for discussion: What animates liberals/conservative/libertarians? Brett Eric Weinstein would say: unfairness, abandoning long successful systems without good cause, and coercion, respectively. Which also make the two main teams bad and good at different things. Dan Crenshaw has said, liberals are good at spotting unjust and unfair outcomes, but bad at figuring out how to actually fix them. Instead preferring to tear down and replace. Conservatives tend to be good at nuanced systems and making small changes work, but bad at seeing the unjust second order effects of their processes. Anyway, nerdy pontification over. I'll depart now.

It actually been pointed out multiple times in this thread. You just don't agree with that view point. Just because you aren't convinced doesn't mean there isn't merit.

Which is exactly what you're doing in opposition. Of course it was and is a philosophical debate.

The complaint is gross of course, and CNN's "main" non opinion article on this one is actually pretty close, it's just harder to find. But it's still an anecdote laundry list without/before an investigation made by people who are trying to find this kind of stuff. Their sources are people who have been detained/in jail/in cages, which I assume is like every other situation like that that I've been in (deployments, SERE, etc) where some of the craziest shit is "known to be true." There's almost always a chunk of truth in all of it, but there's also a crap load of missing information and straight up fiction. But your comment makes it seem like you've already decided it's legitimate enough that you're willing to say that our government is currently, literally sterilizing detained illegal immigrants. If a single instance of a hysterectomy would validate your thought, then ok I guess. Put it this way: why is progressive taxation a thing? Because the "burden" of a flat 15% rate across the board would be higher the lower down the income strata you go. The policy is intended to consider the impact of it's implementation and "make it fair." Is it more fair to have every single person's vote be worth the same, or to attempt to ensure that rich or poor, urban or rural, big state or small state, majority or minority, elites or the common man; that each portion of the population will have it's concerns and viewpoint represented? The state of Wyoming is given a proportionally higher amount of electoral votes so that Wyoming isn't made irrelevant as compared to California. This is and was a state representation issue. Urban vs rural is just how the lines ends up shaking out as I think about it. Historically, a straight up democracy wasn't not done for technical reasons, it was an intentional decision as a matter of checks and balances in the design of the constitution. The founding fathers wrote hundreds of pages to advocate their positions. Granted over the years, we've killed some of those checks and balances, and some things evolved in ways that neutered others. I don't think any of them thought their original design would be stable forever. But a true democracy was a discarded idea, not an oversight. Ranked choice would certainly be interesting. I have a suspicion that they would have a similar problem as term limits. Namely that the people who know how to get things done in Washington would then become the career bureaucrats rather than the elected. Term limits for SCOTUS appointments is another interesting idea. I agree that something has to be done to break the control of the national parties, which I think is at the root of why our politics are driven by national level policy debates; and everything seems to get pushed to that level rather than allowing states to handle more things, which makes those policy decisions further further away from any real hope people have of influencing them. There's more to it obviously (taxation, monetary authority, etc.), but people are hugely emotionally invested in who becomes the president, and I'd say that level of emotion is vastly disproportionate to the actual impact the president has on any one person's day to day life.

Yes. And it was intentional. If the popular vote mindset won out, every national political decision would be decided by major metropolitan urban voters.