Politics And Current Events

[CBear3]

Does anyone find it strange that a certain someone has declared their candidacy for President for almost a week now and still has not had a single on the record interview with anyone?

Cause she's a total unknown at this point, isn't she?

[columbia]

Does anyone find it strange that a certain someone has declared their candidacy for President for almost a week now and still has not had a single on the record interview with anyone?

I can imagine her reading this and saying, "Bless his heart."

[tifosi77]

Wasn't sure which thread to post this to, but I found this to be a very compelling read from someone whom I hold in the highest regard.

Why I require FBI agents to visit the Holocaust Museum

The Holocaust was, as I said, the most horrific display in world history of inhumanity. But it was also the most horrific display in world history of our humanity, of our capacity for evil and for moral surrender.

And that second significance is the reason I require every new FBI special agent and intelligence analyst to go to the Holocaust Museum. Naturally, I want them to learn about abuse of authority on a breathtaking scale. But I want them to confront something more painful and more dangerous: I want them to see humanity and what we are capable of.

I want them to see that, although this slaughter was led by sick and evil people, those sick and evil leaders were joined by, and followed by, people who loved their families, took soup to a sick neighbor, went to church and gave to charity.

Good people helped murder millions. And that’s the most frightening lesson of all — that our very humanity made us capable of, even susceptible to, surrendering our individual moral authority to the group, where it can be hijacked by evil. Of being so cowed by those in power. Of convincing ourselves of nearly anything.

In reading this, I think it is important to remember that this is the man who stood up to White House counsel and future Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez in early 2004 when he tried to get a John Ashcroft to re-certify the NSA's domestic surveillance program as kosher. Ashcroft was in the hospital for emergency gallbladder surgery, and was in a reduced mental capacity thanks to heavy meds; Comey was acting AG.

[Factorial]

I don't own a suit.

[Factorial]

Does anyone find it strange that a certain someone has declared their candidacy for President for almost a week now and still has not had a single on the record interview with anyone?

If you are comparing her to the other declared candidates who are desperate for attention to stand out in a crowded field, then yes. She doesn't need to do that and is pursuing a different strategy.

[MR25]

Not to beat a dead horse, but I saw the picture of the dress/skirt combo thing she wore, and while I would consider that "nice" in terms of dressing up, I don't think a skirt with the waistband at stomach level is work appropriate/professional attire.

I honestly can't say I've ever seen that in a professional environment. Only places I can definitively say I've seen outfits like that have already been described: clubs, sorority marches, etc.

[AuthorTony]

This showed up on my facebook feed today:

This should silence the racist hate mongers like al sharpton, but it wont....

Umm, forget about "race" for a minute, is anyone else alarmed that US police killed nearly 1000 people last year?

[tifosi77]

I don't know how Fatal Encounters compiles their data, but a study of the police homicides in St Louis that looked at 10 years of data where the race of the target could be ascertained showed that 9 in 10 victims were black. Similar looks at federal data show that blacks are shot by cops at something like 30 times the rate of white people.

That being said, it should be noted that, at present, there is no truly reliable source for statistical and demographic data on police shootings.

[PFiDC]

That being said, it should be noted that, at present, there is no truly reliable source for statistical and demographic data on police shootings.

I find that hard to believe.

Was it a police shooting? What was the race of the person shot? Seems like data that would be easy to keep...

[Factorial]

The ratio of white to black in the US is roughly 5:1 so if everyone had an equal opportunity to be killed by police, those 233 blacks killed would be 1165 whites killed.

[shmenguin]

it's a meaningless statistic regardless. blacks are shot at a higher rate. blacks live in poor communities at a higher rate. poor communities commit violent crimes at a higher rate.

really ground-breaking stuff, i know.

[Factorial]

it's a meaningless statistic regardless. blacks are shot at a higher rate. blacks live in poor communities at a higher rate. poor communities commit violent crimes at a higher rate.

really ground-breaking stuff, i know.

That was my point.

[shmenguin]

it's a meaningless statistic regardless. blacks are shot at a higher rate. blacks live in poor communities at a higher rate. poor communities commit violent crimes at a higher rate.

really ground-breaking stuff, i know.

That was my point.

yeah, i was sort of building off of that.

it's just a funny thing that anyone would find that compelling in either direction. it's not exactly rocket science to figure out the state of things.

[tifosi77]

That being said, it should be noted that, at present, there is no truly reliable source for statistical and demographic data on police shootings.

I find that hard to believe.

Was it a police shooting? What was the race of the person shot? Seems like data that would be easy to keep...

How many police shootings a year? No one knows

“The FBI’s justifiable homicides and the estimates from (arrest-related deaths) both have significant limitations in terms of coverage and reliability that are primarily due to agency participation and measurement issues,” said Michael Planty, one of the Justice Department’s chief statisticians, in an email.

Even less data exists for officer-involved shootings that do not result in fatalities.

“We do not have information at the national level for police shootings that result in non-fatal injury or no injury to a civilian,” Planty said.

Hundreds of Police Killings Are Uncounted in Federal Stats (FBI Data Differs from Local Counts on Justifiable Homicides)

When 24-year-old Albert Jermaine Payton wielded a knife in front of the police in this city’s southeast corner, officers opened fire and killed him.

Yet according to national statistics intended to track police killings, Mr. Payton’s death in August 2012 never happened. It is one of hundreds of homicides by law-enforcement agencies between 2007 and 2012 that aren’t included in records kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
-----
Police in Washington, D.C., didn’t report to the FBI details about any homicides for an entire decade beginning with 1998—the year the Washington Post found the city had one of the highest rates of officer-involved killings in the country. In 2011, the agency reported five killings by police. In 2012, the year Mr. Payton was killed, there are again no records on homicides from the agency.

The main problem appears to be that the police departments do not really keep that data themselves, and the FBI relies on them self-reporting. And they have no real interest in self-reporting the number of times they shoot people.

[PFiDC]

That is scary. You'd think something as big as a police shooting would be heavily documented. For crying out loud, our lab has to document every instance of a typo on a report...

[CBear3]

That is scary. You'd think something as big as a police shooting would be heavily documented. For crying out loud, our lab has to document every instance of a typo on a report...

Remin me not to ask fo a refrence.

[Kaiser]

http://killedbypolice.net/

340 so far this year.

[Reveutopique]

I used to agree with Hillary on some stuff in college, but not anymore.

I do still think she is amazing. She seems very ambitious.

I love that video of the guy asking her what her husband thought about something having to do with some foreign issue and she was like, my husband isn't secretary of state.

I thought it was Bad Ass.

I guess I've always been that way. Steve Jobs, Hillary Clinton. Not the nicest people but they get **** done.

[Freddy Rumsen]

Not to be partisan (I'm not GOP) but what exactly did she accomplish as Sec of State?

Russian reset?

Libya?

Syria?

Venezuela?

[AuthorTony]

I'm not overly concerned with the race of the deceased. I am overly concerned that US police killed nearly 1000 people last year (and are on pace to top 1000 this year). Doesn't that bother anyone else?

[tifosi77]

She didn't really accomplish much of anything, altho when she stepped down many lauded her as 'consequential'. But I, like you, cannot really point to something of note she actually did. I've read a couple different reasons for this, and both make sense to me: The first is President Obama has been described as the most micromanagerial president on foreign policy since Nixon. The second, and one probably with far greater impact, was 2016; she probably wasn't keen to tie her name to any one thing with an eye towards her presidential aspirations.

When you think about it, she really has nothing on her CV that should make anyone want to stand up and say, "That's my gal!" She polarized the healthcare reform in the 90s, effectively stalling the efforts for twenty years. She ran two largely easy Senate campaigns (she won her first campaign by 12 points, the second by a 2:1 margin). In the first election where she faced a real fight, she lost. She was incapable of even winning the nomination of her party. She is by no means a shoe-in.

[tifosi77]

I'm not overly concerned with the race of the deceased. I am overly concerned that US police killed nearly 1000 people last year (and are on pace to top 1000 this year). Doesn't that bother anyone else?

Of course it does. We've mentioned in the past that since 9/11 cops have killed far more Americans than al Qaeda has. It's a huge cause for alarm, all the more so because no one appears to know just how many people the police actually do shoot every year.

[AuthorTony]

We've mentioned in the past that since 9/11 cops have killed far more Americans than al Qaeda has. It's a huge cause for alarm, all the more so because no one appears to know just how many people the police actually do shoot every year.

Exactly. People get so caught up on the white vs black nonsense. A black man gets shot and many whites assume it was justified. A white man gets shot and many blacks feel like it's about time police kill a white guy. The public is being pitted against each other to distract them from the enormous shift of police from "public servants" to a military force which is growing more and more aggressive against US citizens.

[Freddy Rumsen]

I agree with why she wisely did not entangle herself.

[Z'MaattaU]

The public is being pitted against each other to distract them from the enormous shift of police from "public servants" to a military force which is growing more and more aggressive against US citizens.

They're prepping for the Communist state we're slowly being shifted into.