StrangeSox

Holy s*** the police ended the stand off by blowing the suspect up with a robot bomb

Just saw an update on NBC 5, 12 officers shot, 5 dead, 1 suspect dead, 2 in custody. No mention of other suspects still out there.

God damn Joe Walsh is an awful person http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/j...ticle-1.2703883

From Radley Balko, a guy who writes frequently on police abuse/violence/exploitation:

Whenever I wake up to a dozen AP news alerts on my phone, I know it won't be good

This is one of trumps main TV surrogates

http://jewishinsider.com/8694/advisor-as-m...emitic-support/ Trump Advisor: Jews Can’t Expect Swift Rebuke of Anti-Semitic Support

bmags' meltdown over the delayed flight is my favorite part of the NBA offseason so far

I think the potential issue he's worried about is that he'd be changing jobs and his commissions from his new job technically wouldn't count towards his income if he were to apply for a loan after switching. I don't know if it's an issue, but it's not like the bank would or could do anything if I were to lose my job tomorrow and then got a new one with substantially lower income than what I originally qualified with. So long as I'm making my payments, I don't think they'd care (or even know).

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 02:19 PM) LOL it's like another Saturday Night Live skit. Why did they bother with this charade? Clinton's are above the law and that is scary considering she has 8 years of Presidential Power coming up. Hillary needs to borrow somebody's phone to call Comey and set up a party in a plane on a tarmac somewhere to toast his support of her. It's scary what so many people will do in support of somebody as unimpressive and outwardly elitist as Hillary Clinton. 8? Haha, we all know they'll repeal that crappy amendment so that hillary gets 12 before Chelsea gets the next 21 (she will resign in disgrace a year into her glorious fifth term).

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 02:16 PM) I think everyone on the Supreme Court should be as close to a centrist as possible. I don't want liberals or neocons on the bench. Ever. And I want term limits introduced to an appointed position of such awesome power. Our Supreme Court system sucks. What is a "centrist" isn't a well-defined position but is instead defined by what position other people take. And there's always going to be sharp scholarly ideological legal disagreements on what's even the appropriate way to interpret the Constitution, case law, bills, administrative rulings etc. Long term limits for federal judges, something like 25-30 years might make sense, but then that's only going to politicize those positions more explicitly. This year's election is a little odd because we know there's a SC right now (there shouldn't be, the Senate should do its damn job and hold a vote on the President's nominee), but if we knew that Judge A's position was up in 2017, you're more explicitly making the Presidential election about filling that judge's spot.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 02:13 PM) If the Democrats cannot capitalize on this Trump hijack of the republican party, let's just declare both parties dead. Presidential systems like ours don't handle rigid ideological parties very well. Up through the 60's, we didn't have strictly liberal and strictly conservative parties. That, plus the hugely unequal senate representation that greatly favors rural conservatives plus the House which does so to a lesser extent and is also very heavily gerrymandered by a 2010 Republican wave means the Democrats have the same sort of uphill battle that Republicans do to try to win the White House. IIRC in 2012 in aggregate vote totals Democrats had millions more votes for the House but Republicans ended up with a decent majority of seats. Clinton being a less inspiring candidate herself in many ways doesn't help, either. Obama running for a third term would be absolutely crushing this race even more than Clinton's current +5-6% poll average and would have longer downticket coattails.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 02:07 PM) It's the same government we had with Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama, etc...it's the safe choice...it's the wall street choice...but I thought we wanted change in this country? Or, is it really that we want to talk about change...but don't actually want it? Locking in a liberal supreme court for the next generation is the most important thing in this election imo. The court has been conservative for a while now. Replacing Scalia with even a moderate like Merrick Garland would be a massive ideological shift. RGB probably leaves the court within the next four years as well, so replacing her with another solid liberal keeps that balance. If Kennedy, the next oldest, also leaves the court, suddenly we've got a relatively young 6-3 liberal court that will be in place for decades. Winning Congress and the Presidency is important, but if you have a SC dead set against you, your policies can be struck down with some terribly convoluted arguments (e.g. Shelby County being one of the worst in recent memory). Obamacare with a slightly more conservative court is DoA, Obamacare with a slightly more liberal court means the Medicaid expansion isn't gutted and millions more low income Americans have access to health care.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 02:07 PM) Here is one place I'll agree with you on, because in the interest of being fair, Sanders did not fully support Clinton's health reform efforts in the 1990's. He's always been very adamant about single payer. Clinton is clearly the more flexible politician...does that make her a better politician given our system? Perhaps...but is it what we really want...again? Also, keep in mind Sanders was just a jr. senator back then...he wasn't a very important person -- and I guess it could be argued he's still not. He was in the House until the 90's, so even less important (1/435) than a Senator (1/100). I think he'll get some nice committee chairs at the start of the next Congress, assuming the Democrats ride Donald's Downticket Disaster to a Senate majority.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 02:06 PM) NRA not commenting on this. I'm actually mildly surprised but probably shouldn't be. Gun rights aren't for those people.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 01:14 PM) You guys have no clue Take from a fellow American living in Mexico, in fact, there are many in which American citizens say they feel safer in Mexico than the US. We're getting on a bit of a tangent here, but I'd imagine most Americans' exposure to news from Mexico (including my own) is just the latest sensationalist crime/murder/cartel bulls*** story and little else. Similar to how I'd imagine most of this country hears about Chicago based on the several times I've been asked "so do you carry a gun when you go to the city?" while traveling to other parts of the country for work.

Hillary released her college plan today that's pretty close to Sanders. I'm disappointed in the turn his campaign took starting in about May, but I'm glad that there was at least someone there to provide some resistance to Clinton and that he's pulled her and the Democratic platform leftward. Now he just needs to endorse her and rally his holdouts.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 01:06 PM) Chicago happens to have a violent gang problem that accounts for 95% of the violent crime (likely more than 95%, but I'm being generous). Apples to Apples, please. I can easily say it depends on where you live in the US, too... Also, I didn't "attack your opinion", I attacked your "facts"...you cannot have an opinion on which is more dangerous as data exist to back that up. Mexico is either safer than the US, or it isn't...this isn't an opinion. And, as the facts show, it isn't safer in any regard. His home town has a substantially lower crime rate than Chicago (not where he's at right now anyway) or San Antonio (where he is actually at). Either way who cares, he's talking about how he personally feels as a minority around police in this country, and there are plenty of statistics to show that minorities do have reason to be more fearful of police than white people do.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 01:01 PM) Fact is she did lie. A lot. Comey can sugarcoat what he feels is a lie, but practically everything she said he refuted...and if that was almost another else (not a member of the elite class), they'd be in f***ing jail...and you know it. No, they'd probably be fired from their job after being stripped of their clearance. As Comey himself said, there's no precedent for charging someone for what Clinton did.

Given that the whole thing* was political theater in the first place, they didn't get the responses they wanted and that one sentence cuts against their narrative. eta they're getting predictably increasingly histrionic, now with Issa calling for a government shutdown until Clinton is indicted http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/07/...illary-clinton/ *thing=Comey's testimony today

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 12:23 PM) How so? I think they let her off easy because the elite are under a different set of laws than the rest of us. Comey was pretty unequivocal in his responses to them that there was no indication that she had lied and there was no basis for prosecution.

Also the House GOP's neverending need to drag out investigating Clinton appeared to blow up in their face today.

From Trump's meeting with GOP leaders earlier today: yeah, probably would be a good idea to get to substance at some point with your nominee for President. more from the meeting: more: https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/7...src=twsrc%5Etfw I seriously want to know how anyone can look at this campaign and think "yes, this man seems to have what it takes to be President"

Note that being a police officer may be a stressful job, but it isn't actually a particularly dangerous one: Most of the danger comes from the fact that much of their time is spent driving around which leads to car accidents (e.g. taxi drivers and chauffeurs being ranked higher).

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Jul 7, 2016 -> 10:24 AM) So can Republicans do something about this or have they given up? There's still some swirling rumors of really long-shot attempts at the convention to block Trump from getting the nomination on the first ballot, but then what are they left with? Ted Cruz? Someone else who'd have 0% support of their horrible base that nominated Trump and Cruz #1 and #2? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-po...oming-up-short/