StrangeSox

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 11:07 PM) why the f*** would republicans allow cnbc to host a debate? Why not? On financial issues they're usually pretty aligned with the cut taxes, cut regulations mantra The moderation was pretty crap though. Here's some of the bigger absolute lies some of the candidates told yesterday. Does this sort of blatant disregard for reality make a showing at democratic debates? http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/1...dnesdays-debate

Lol that debate. The Republican party is officially crazy.

Old work done well but not to current codes is way better to deal with than hack-job work.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 04:52 PM) In regards to the bolded, Im genuinely curious if youre aware that both sides in this conversation are doing this. How many posts in this thread say things like "So youre saying its ok to kill minorities if they shoplift" and things like that when clearly there isnt a single person who is saying anything like that. So to see you keep bringing it up is again very hypocritical. Point to one time where I've done that. I can point to several times where you and others have done that to me. Alpha seemed to be making a lot of excuses for him. If you feel strongly that the cop should have been fired, then I misread you earlier and apologize. Yes, but there's a huge difference in the magnitude of how wrong they were and what their reactions were. She's a child who acted defiant over a cell phone. He's an adult with a badge who attacked a teenage girl. Over and over in cases of police abuse like this, we see the soft excuse of "well, if they weren't...." That she wouldn't hand over her phone or leave the classroom doesn't somehow lessen the awful actions that cop took.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 04:24 PM) Thats a lot of generalization. What is your solution. You have a negative budget, how do you propose to either 1) increase revenue or 2) decrease expenditures. Handing public money over to private charter schools doesn't decrease expenditures.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 04:06 PM) You do realize that article is talking about deals that Rahm inherited. Not sure how you can blame him for the parking meters, at least he tried to cancel the deal. The same thing with Park Grill restaurant lease. Just because something is "private" doesnt make it bad, just because something is "public" doesnt make it good or vice versa. But when you attack something, you have to start with the facts. The facts are Chicago has significant debt, something that Rahm didnt create. So given that debt, you have to make decisions that maybe you wouldnt make if it wasnt there. People want everything. They want a pretty city with amazing free stuff. Well it just doesnt work that way. Yeah some of that was definitely inherited, but he's proceeded full-bore with charter schools, privatizing CPS janitorial services, etc. The results of these actions are almost always 1) lower pay for workers 2) worse quality of services performed and 3) private companies enriched with public funds at the expense of public services and employees.

I'd imagine there's some pretty high-grade stuff on that blimp if its part of NORAD. eta “Prepare to engage enemy . . . bogey's airspeed not sufficient for intercept. Suggest we get out and walk.” is there any discussion in which there is not a relevant simpsons reference?

Also full-bore with privatizing education

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 03:19 PM) Andy Shaw 12 mins · Hootsuite · There’s mounting evidence that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and perhaps some top city aides have used private email accounts to conduct public business in secret – in an attempt to bypass public disclosure rules. Emanuel is the worst

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 02:05 PM) Again, law/rule breaking is something that can't be controlled apparently. I know I have a huge problem with it on a daily basis. I'm sure you do commit at least one moving violation a day if you're driving a car. If you're non-white, you're more likely to get pulled over for that. It's not that people have no agency--of course they do. It's that, because of institutional racism baked into our society over the past several hundred years, when racial minorities run afoul of rules and regulations at the same rate, they will be punished more frequently and more severely than white people. There's really no ground to even argue that point--it's crystal clear in all sorts of available crime and school data and studies that have reviewed them. So, should people overall commit less 'issues'? Sure. This girl should not have been talking on her phone in class, she should have turned it over, she should have left when asked. Nobody has said otherwise, despite a few people in this thread insisting that some have. But we also shouldn't have a system that is more likely to target and punish racial minorities. It's not due to individual racism or racists. Thankfully, the days of explicit white supremacy are gone. But it's due to all sorts of baked in institutional causes, and those absolutely should be addressed before we go laying the blame for disparate enforcement and punishment at the feet of the people who bear the brunt of it.

I don't think there's a thriving alcohol black market even though taxes are pretty high.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 02:01 PM) True or false, if the crimes didn't occur, would we have the statistics we have? If racial minorities were hypothetically perfect and committed no violations, infractions or crimes, no. In the real world, they get targeted for enforcement more frequently and punished more harshly for the same violations/crimes.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 01:32 PM) Those studies do little more than place the blame on how people react to criminal/rule breaking behavior. None of it addresses the actual criminal/rule breaking behavior. Michael Brown committed a crime and attacked a cop? Who the f*** cares. He got shot by a white dude! Eric Garner was selling illegal cigarettes? And then he resisted arrest? Who the f*** cares, he was killed by a white dude! This student was breaking the rules, wouldn't listen to her teacher and then wouldn't listen to the cop who came to take her away? Who the f*** cares, she was assaulted by a white dude! Racism, racism, racism. Who cares about the fact that crime and rule breaking actually occured. Yes, pointing out the fact that minorities can be targeted in certain cities and certain neighbors for minor traffic offenses or whatever is an important thing to learn about, be wary of and fix. But guess what, fix your s***! And don't drive in a manner that gets you ticketed! And then you won't have a problem. In EXTREME situations i'm sure some of that is unavoidable and/or extremely difficult. But not in 99% of cases. 99% of cases you have someone that actually commits the wrong and then gets "excused" by being able to scream "i was unfairly targeted because of my skin color and therefore it's wrong!" Instead of focusing on why people are arrested/detained/whatever as they are, why not focus on why people feel the need to break the law/rule to begin with? Isn't that a much easier wrong to fix? This puts the blame for institutional racism on the victims of institutional racism. eta: If white people and minorities commit infractions and crimes at a similar rate, but minorities get disproportionality disciplined/ticketed/arrested for these same things and get disproportionality harsher sentences, why wouldn't the most important thing to look at be those institutional problems rather than saying "well black people should just commit less crimes!" It's saying that, to get roughly equal treatment, minorities need to be 'twice as good' if not better. Otherwise, they are targeted more frequently and punished more harshly.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 01:13 PM) Obviously the answer is to get rid of the cops and teachers that discipline. Whatever we do, DO NOT question what the students are doing. Getting in trouble is a must. There's no way around it. Students have no choice. Here is a tip: if you are starting your response with "obviously," stop, because you're just going to make up a bunch of stuff nobody is actually saying in order to avoid actually discussing something.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 12:57 PM) I do agree with jenks on the racial angle here. It doesn't exist. There is no evidence whatsoever (that I've seen or heard anyway) that this was racially motivated. It's about how this incident fits into the larger pattern, not that this specific incident was provably racially motivated. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_pol..._of.single.html

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 12:54 PM) http://fox40.com/2015/10/27/florin-high-sc...dents-arrested/ OMG! They were just a couple of 15 year old kids! Why do you imagine this is relevant? Should every defiant teen immediately be slammed to the ground and dragged across the floor by the police? If not, why do you seem to think it's okay in this case?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 12:23 PM) And when she starts kicking and punching you while you do that.... Then there is more justification for physically restraining her. She's still a teenager and he's still a grown-ass man. There'd still be no excuse for throwing her backwards in her desk like he did and then dragging her on the ground. Why do you think immediate escalation to violent assault is the appropriate course of action?

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 12:19 PM) OK, just how should he have handled it? Sat there and waited her out? Stun gun? Go away and just forget it? NSS already commented on it, no reason why the bolded wouldn't work either. Attacking her as he did or with a stun gun is absolutely not the right way to handle it. QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:17 AM) School officers are supposed to get specific training on this sort of thing. You don't pick her up and throw her on the ground in any case. You try to talk to her, understanding she is a child - you can't just bark an order then use big force. If the talking - and I mean a real effort - doesn't work, then heck, drag the desk out of the room with her in it. Or hand cuff her and pick her up - carry her out. At worst.

Awful lot of excuses for a grown-ass man violently attacking a teenager for not obeying him.

QUOTE (DrunkBomber @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 11:36 AM) Hes also hilariously hypocritical, but he probably knows that much. *Video doesnt show exactly what happened to cause altercation* *Cop is racist, school is racist despite no proof of exactly what happened* *Student did nothing wrong, doesnt have to follow school orders or police orders and if you disagree youre racist* Those are a bunch of things I haven't said. *The videos seem to show the majority of the confrontation. Nobody has claimed that there is more to the story or that she started the physical confrontation. The sheriff mentioned a video that shows her punching the officer, but we already see that in several of the available videos. *I explicitly said I didn't care if this cop "is a racist," and I'm pretty sure that I didn't say "the school is a racist" because that doesn't even make sense. I did point out that there are clear patterns out there of racial disparities when it comes to both policing and school discipline, and that those patterns are why people would discuss the racial aspect to this specific case. *The student shouldn't have been messing with her phone, she shouldn't have defied the teacher, she shouldn't have defied the administration and she shouldn't have defied the officer. I also definitely did not say you're a racist if you disagree with those things I didn't say or with things I actually did say. No, there is definitely a victim here. The student not turning over her phone and not leaving the classroom when asked do not even come close to justifying the violent assault. If the officer in question was not a violence-prone authoritarian asshole who could not even handle a teenage girl defying his commands without physically assaulting her, none of this would have happened. He's the adult here, he's the professional with a badge while she's a bratty kid. He should absolutely have been fired for assaulting a teenager.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 11:26 AM) So again, using this logic, you yourself are a racist because 11,487 other white people have done racist things to black people. You can't take data from what 50 or 500000 individuals do and use that as evidence for what one person did or why that one persons did it. You can't make those assumptions/claims when dealing with human behavior. I think we're talking past each other. I don't particularly care if "Officer Slam" is "a racist" or did this because he is "racist against black people." I'm explaining how this individual incident ties into the broader patterns, and why people discuss the racial aspect of stories like this. I can't take data from 50 or 500,000 individual cases of lung cancer and use that as evidence that this one particular case was caused by smoking, but we can take that data and build a strong case about the underlying causes, risks etc. That's what is going on here, I think, or at least should be, not pretty much useless questions of "is individual X a racist?"

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 11:17 AM) YOU aren't saying this. I'm talking about how this story, and others like it, are reported and have been reported the last couple of years. CNN isn't saying "look at this racist cop!" They're saying look what this cop, who's white, did to this student, who's black. And oh yeah! He's got this complaint against him accusing him of being racist. He's got a shady past! They're purposefully making a racial component where there is no reason to. And they do it because it gets people on both sides upset. I'm asking, why can't we just report that an asshole cop went too far? Period. End of story. Because if it's part of a pattern of racial disparity, it's not "Period. End of story." It's "chapter 11,487" in an ongoing saga.

Senate passes controversial cybersecurity-cyberspying bill 74-21

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 11:14 AM) Because there's literally no evidence of that here other than he's white and she's black. So why is that an appropriate assumption or outright accusation (even if indirect) to make right off the bat? Well, there's also the general evidence of racial disparity in both policing and school discipline, plus there are accusations against this particular officer from other people. But you seemed to be rejecting the notion completely, asking why we can't just go with "he's an asshole/bad cop" and not even consider the racial aspect.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 11:07 AM) How is that an extreme? That's exactly how this story is being reported. It's white cop beats black teen and oh look he's been sued for it before! Why else bring that up unless you want to stir up that fire? I'm tired of the every cop is racist and that's the only reason they do x, y and z story. Why can't we assume, firstly, that he's just an asshole and bad at his job? And then if the FACTS (not criminal accusations in a complaint) come out that he DOES target blacks, then you can come up with that angle. That's all i'm saying. You bringing up the "well studies show racism!" line means you're doing the exact same thing. If you think this: is a fair interpretation of what I'm saying, either I'm communicating very poorly or you're not reading very well.