unixknight

I wonder if it was that quote that was paraphrased in a Maxx comic book issue: "A Liberal is just a Conservative who's never been mugged." I guess to bring this back on topic... I try to analyze all these shootings and be patient and wait for the facts to come out but... it's exhausting, and I feel overwhelmed. It seems like every week there's a new incident and I honestly don't know if it's because it's happening more often, or if it's just always been that way and the media is reporting it more... and I don't know which one scares me the most.

I once heard a saying. "If you're young and not Liberal, you have no heart. If you're old and not Conservative, you have no brain." I don't really agree with that, but I understand what it's saying. Like @MormonGator I was more Conservative when I was younger, but that had a lot to do with me being insulated from other perspectives. I do think reality leans Conservative, but you need both perspectives to really understand issues in a useful way.

@MormonGator That's because people with strong introspection skills tend to become moderates.

You are too kind, sir.

Which is exactly the benefit of these discussions. Echo chambers are boring. When somebody I respect has a different view of things, I'm interested in hearing it, which is why I'm glad you posted this. I agree with this statement. Remember I live in an area where black people are the majority, so I benefit from being exposed to that perspective. It's so complex. You have the generation who lived through the Civil Rights era who know have experienced full-blown institutionalized racism and tend to be more constructive in their views because they were heavily influenced by people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He had a very constructive and highly effective approach. The problem is that, as you said, they don't feel like the police will treat them the same as whites, partly because the media loves these kinds of stories but also because they remember a time when it was the police who enforced racist laws. Some people can put that behind them, some can't. This mentality is naturally going to affect the younger generations, and that's the tragedy, because this is why these attitudes are perpetuated. "**** the police* is as much about frustration from today's issues as it is about issues from 50 years ago. So what's the solution? Well the black community isn't going to be able to solve it alone, because this isn't just a black community problem. It's an America problem, and all of us are going to have to bear the responsibility. I find it irritating and destructive when I see police cars being burned in riots, or hear extremist protesters calling for killing cops, but what's just as destructive, in my opinion, is the attitude that local governments and police departments don't have to do anything and are completely blameless. It doesn't MATTER what the proportion of blame is. Obstacles: Racism (on both sides. Yes, black people can be just as racist as whites.), history (which we all share), the media (which delights in stirring up trouble) and government (where political leaders stir up trouble too so they can have a platform to run on). It's a big poop sandwich and we all have to have a bite.

"Every nation gets the government it deserves." -Joseph de Maistre

Hate of Trump may be a factor here, but I don't know how much. A friend of mine was a big Sanders supporter and absolutely excoriated Clinton every time we talked politics. Now he says he'll vote for her, even though he hates her, because he feels like it's necessary to keep Trump out of office. I suspect a lot of people feel the same, and Clinton knows that. It's why she doesn't need to do damage control.

I'm still completely stunned that, with a major scandal like this, Clinton is still a viable candidate and isn't being crushed in early polls. The inmates run the asylum indeed.

I think that, right there, is the problem. BLM only reacts to black people dying when it happened during a confrontation with police, then they ALWAYS call it a murder regardless of any other factors. Meanwhile the highest source of incoming bullets killing black men is other black men, but nobody from BLM says a word about it. Meanwhile that very same phenomenon is glorified and romanticized by popular rap music and he whole "thug" image trash. The results is that BLM looks more like an anti-police movement than a movement with any positive goals.

I can appreciate both sides of this one. Maybe it seems odd, but I think both @LeSellers and @LiterateParakeet are right. The black community is indeed the cause of many of its own problems, but at the same time, racism is still demonstrably a problem in some areas, and it naturally affects local police departments. What I think magnifies all of this is, unsurprisingly, the media. It distorts things in order to keep us fighting with each other and tuning in for the latest. But then, he media has its own racial bias at times. A white girl goes missing and it becomes a national media story. A black girl who lived a block away goes missing and he story doesn't even make the front page. Is it racism, or does the media just figure more white people are tuning in? I dunno. But the more we fight over it, the less progress gets made.

I took a look at this article and while it is making an effort to point out bias, it's a biased article in and of itself, just the other way. (It's impossible to avoid bias, let's just be honest about it.) It did make some points that I'd like to comment on. If the officer took this man's life unjustly, calling him "murderer" isn't vile, it's the truth. It makes no difference whom he loves or who loves him. (This is an example of the article's own bias. The officer's personal life is completely irrelevant, but is being mentioned here to generate sympathy from the reader.) The simple truth is that until the facts come out, neither side has any right at all to make claims like these. Did he come close to dying? How do we know that? Have these facts come out already? Also, the author is literally telling the audience that we should feel more compassion for the officer who pulled the trigger than for the dead man. (This is what bias looks like, brothers and sisters. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.) People call the police for all sorts of reasons, justified or not. His comments here seem to suggest that the accusation alone justifies Sterling's killing. I find it utterly bizarre that he's questioning someone's assertion that Sterling didn't deserve to die on the grounds that the facts aren't clear, but seems perfectly comfortable citing a few facts of his own. Again, his own bias is pretty severe. Good questions that should be discussed. So far, this is the only reasonable point made in the article. This strikes me as a semantic argument, and correctly calls out the bias from the words used, but again I'd rather have had it come from a source a bit closer to neutrality. I'm not sure what his response here has to do with officer body cameras. Is he saying the second video was from an officer's body cam? Some clarity would have been helpful here. If he had a felony record and a history of domestic violence then yes, he was breaking the law by even having a gun. People on both sides will rush to judgment. You'll have people on one side rushing to accuse the officers of racism, and you'll have guys like this rushing to defend their actions fervently, all without waiting for more information. Does the same "innocent until proven guilty" line apply to Mr. Sterling? This article doesn't read like it does. So basically, he just proved claim #11 to be absolutely true. Again, he's perfectly comfortable asserting facts even though he earlier admitted that "I’m just saying it’s about as clear as mud at this point." This is one of those times when people interpret statistical data differently and I'm not interested in commenting on it. So basically he says at the beginning of the article that he generally doesn't comment on these things until the facts come out but then goes on to say he's making an exception this time. Why? Probably because he was emotionally riled up and responded. This article is just garbage if he thinks he's somehow being more objective than the people he's criticizing. Personally, I won't take a side on this particular incident because I don't know enough about it. I'm not willing to just assume the cops were racists and I'm not willing to just assume they were knights in shining armor. The truth is somewhere in between anyway. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no apologist for HuffPo. I think it's garbage filled with mostly propaganda. The reason I'm attacking this article is because it isn't any better than the HuffPo article it attacks, and I feel like we, as Conservatives, have to do better if we're going to cast aspersions on openly biased journalism and try to grab the moral highground.

... you haven't been paying attention. I think this can reasonably be called an act of terrorism. This was absolutely predictable. Too many people have been blowing off these concerns and eventually a psycho acted on it. Let the blame game and political exploitation begin!

So apparently Clintons' getting off with a gentle slap on the wrist is now setting a precedent for others to be careless with classified E-mails and expect little or no punishment. Just read the story of Major Jason Brezler. When I worked as a contractor for the military the penalties were pretty stiff for doing this sort of thing. I guess it's a new era now.

Wheat and tares.

Wheat and tares.

That's how it was at the job I mentioned. I'm sure it will come as no surprise that the guy I was talking about also couldn't get his work done, and felt persecuted when I had to give him a written warning that his productivity needed to improve.

I agree, but the fridge logic here is that he was only late because of traffic on the last time... and still found it outrageous that he was being reprimanded for it.

I agree, but the fridge logic here is that he was only late because of traffic on the last time... and still found it outrageous that he was being reprimanded for it.

I'm inclined to agree with the person who answered the post... firing them all outright seems extreme, so maybe there were already other issues at work that pushed the decision over the line. Special snowflakes rarely get this. I once had a guy on my team I had to chastise because he'd been late to 5 staff meetings in a row. He felt like my criticism was unfair because THIS time it truly wasn't his fault, he got held up in traffic. As if the previous tardiness shouldn't be a factor at all. I explained to him that when you're generally on time, they're understanding of the occasional traffic delay, but that he was being spoken to because of the latenesses collectively. He walked away grumbling that it was unfair. This guy was like 32 years old, too. Go figure.

My 16 year old daughter is in Germany right now and tells me everybody there is talking about Brexit with anxiety. It seems they feel that with Germany being the only EU nation that still has any economic power, it'll be on them to prop up everybody else and they're not thrilled about it. ... The historical hilarity of that is almost palpable.

It's the result of a backward work ethic that thinks jobs exist for the sole purpose of providing workers with an income, and the quality of the work is completely secondary.

THISTHISTHISTHISTHIS. It's about class envy. Period. I do not care in the slightest how much the richest people have. I don't care whether they got it by earning it or inheriting it. I don't care if they make 200 times more money than I do. I just. don't. care. And then I see stuff like this that screams in my face that apparently this is some kind of awful injustice and I should be enraged. Where's the injustice? Some people work harder, are more talented, better educated, or just born in the right family. I'm supposed to be outraged by that? What difference does it make to me how much money Warren Buffet has? And who am I to judge whether his income is fair? The problem is that people who are the most concerned with income inequality are people who think wealth is a zero sum game. In other words, for one person to be rich, someone else must necessarily be poor. While it's true that resources are finite, economies expand and national wealth is measured by more than just how much gold is in at Ft. Knox or how much cash is in circulation. Does anyone think the U.S. economy is the same size now as it was in 1816? Anyone? Growth is growth. Some will benefit more from it than others, but I don't know why some being wealthier than others is inherently unfair. Money isn't what makes life good. Think Paris Hilton has a better life than you?

Because typically a kidnapper goes to a place where there's someone to kidnap. As the article said, this woman came home to find the intruder already there.

Bingo. There's a troubling bloodthirsty feel to the idea that anyone who trespasses automatically forfeits their life no matter what their reason is for being there. That's not a Christian attitude. I acknowledge that sometimes you have to use deadly force to defend yourself or your family, but I don't want to have blood on my hands and have to explain to the Savior on the Day of Judgment that I took the life of one of my earthly brethren because he might have been in my home to steal my sweet SONY TV set...

Who has claimed otherwise? Not sure how CTR teaches us that deadly force should be the default setting when we find a cat burglar in our home. And who is apologizing for evil behavior?