StrangeSox

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 11:03 AM) She could have punched him the first time he asked her to get up and then he walked away. Who knows. I think it's fair to assume if a high ranking person is making a statement about another video that needs to be looked at, that other video is going to show something different. If that's not the case, that's not the case. I really don't even know what you're clinging to at this point. Absolutely nobody is making the claim that she started the physical altercation. The sheriff mentioned a video that shows her punching him during the confrontation, and we see her hit his face as she's being thrown to the ground. It's not about pegging anyone as "a racist," and it's not even really about discrete actions being driven by consciously racist thoughts. I would bet that there's an underlying racial element here, but really I'm more pressing you on why you think we should dismiss it out of hand. We're probably pretty much all 'racist' to some extent, and that's regardless of our own racial background. There's been a lot of recent work on implicit bias.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:50 AM) Whitewater? More or less the same as the S&L stuff. Years of Whitewater investigations never really amounted to anything, though.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:51 AM) Maybe that's the third video there. Look at the "second angle" and tell me if your assumption that she provoked the violent assault still makes sense.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:45 AM) Well right, fine, i'm assuming there's an importance to the sheriff saying she punched him. Again, why else say that at all? And again i'm just commenting on this "other video." I don't know what it shows. You don't know what it shows. We have two cell phone videos of the incident that are short. And what do you mean "there's been nothing about some other video." Yes there has, that link i just sent quoting the sheriff as saying there's a third video showing her punching him. I have no idea how or when that happened, i'm just responding to that report. As your link clearly states, it's not clear what the sheriff is referring to, and three videos have already been released publicly. What I'm saying is that, other than the sheriff's one sentence, there's been nothing about some other video. There hasn't been any alternate series of events. Nobody has claimed that she hit him first. All you're going on is that the sheriff says there's a video that shows her punching him, and you can already see her punching his face as she's being thrown to the ground in the other videos. Since making the comment, the sheriff has also fired the deputy. I'm also asking you to explain how her hypothetically throwing the first punch could even fit in with what we see on the available videos. Throwing your hands in the air and pointing to an unspecified video the sheriff mentioned isn't making much of an argument. Well, that's sort of how institutional racism works. Think of the effort to prove tobacco causes cancer--you can't point to one particular case of lung cancer and say "this was caused by smoking!" But you gather data in the aggregate that shows the racial disparities. Did "Office Slam" act this way towards other black students? Only or primarily black students? How does it fit in with the disciplinary picture at the school overall? That's not really how things like institutional racism work though. Plus, please stop your terrible argument style of jumping to ridiculous extremes nobody has come close to saying when you disagree with something. I'm disagreeing with your desire to dismiss the racial angle out of hand, not claiming that every case of a white cop doing something to a black person is an example of them individually being a racist. I'm not even claiming that every time a white cop does something to a black person it's an example of institutional racism, which is not the same thing as the officer "being a racist!" It's highly probable that this guy is terrible at his job. It's pretty probably that he's also an authoritarian jerk. It's also possible that he disproportionately targets minorities in his job, and I don't see why we shouldn't even consider the role that plays.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:34 AM) I'm not assuming anything. QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:13 AM) I'm assuming the punch/punches came before he became physical, The videos that have been made public show her swinging at his head as he's throwing her to the ground. There's been nothing about some other video that shows anything different than what we already know. No students, no one in the police department and no one within the school is saying that she swung at him first. You're trying to downplay what the video clearly shows based on one comment from the sheriff who has since fired the deputy. The investigation appears to be over. We've got a violent, unprovoked assault on a black teen. What more info are you waiting for? Why should we keep ignoring signs of institutional racism? Why do you seem so sure that racism doesn't play a part in who asshole cops target or why they target them? eta there has been extensive research on the racial discipline disparity specifically in schools, why assume it plays no role here?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:30 AM) I don't think a "reasonable person" would believe that a cop trying to effectuate an arrest is putting a person in danger of imminent death or great bodily injury. If that's the standard you want to go with, we'd have a lot of dead cops on our hands. I think a reasonable person would believe that a cop slamming a student to the ground and dragging her across the floor for not immediately obeying his command is putting that student in danger of great bodily injury. What if she cracks her head open on the ground as he's throwing her around? Why would a reasonable person believe this man who just launched into an unprovoked violent assault of a teenage girl would stop once he's slammed her to the ground and dragged her around?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:23 AM) The report makes it sound like there's a third video that hasn't been released yet. I don't really see any punches in the two videos on that page. It looks more like she was trying to grab his hands. The sheriff mentioned a "third video" that would play a role in the investigation, the reports indicate it's not clear exactly what he's talking about, and the sheriff has since fired the deputy over this incident. Why are you assuming that the teen probably did something worthy of provoking Officer Slam's rage? Is there anything in the videos available (and there have been three released already) that would even make it plausible that a punch was thrown before the first video was recorded? It shows her already sitting down calmly and the officer walking up to her.

I thought one of the most important aspects of the 2nd amendment was to protect us from a violent, oppressive state? Yes this comment is half-snark but why wouldn't self-defense or defense of another being attacked be justified here?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 28, 2015 -> 10:13 AM) So take out the throwing her to the ground part, you think he was wrong to put his hands on her to begin with? I'm pretty sure that's his job - if someone is being unruly (arguable, but that's what he's going on) and she's not leaving per his orders, he has to get physical at some point. So if he's doing that and she starts wailing on him (we don't know) then yeah, he still went overboard and became way too physical by throwing her around, but at the same time she also asked for a physical response from him. I'm assuming the punch/punches came before he became physical, otherwise why are the news reports referring to a third video that shows something that is not in the first two? Maybe i'm missing something. Did you watch the video in your own NBC link? At the start of the video, she's sitting at her desk as he's walking up to her. Unless she swung at him, walked back to her seat, calmly sat down and then officer friendly approached slowly, then the alleged punches came in self defense as she was being assaulted by a violent thug. There's no good reason to assume that she just must have done something to provoke his violent action. edit: go to about 55 seconds in this video clip, and you see where she swings somewhat blindly at her assailant as he begins throwing her to the ground. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sherif...officer-n452481

Plus, you know, the massive corruption swirling around him.

Yeah, she swung at the guy who was throwing her to the ground for no reason. Sounds like self defense to me. Too bad the teacher wasn't armed so she could have stopped this assault before it went any further.

I thought the issue was that she was f***ing around on her phone, refused to hand it over to the teacher and then refused to leave the classroom when asked. They also arrested the student who recorded the incident. eta: even if she had hit the teacher, it's still pretty much "white cop beats black teen for no reason!" eta2: and he was fired for it

A "small loan" in 1968 which would be the equivalent of almost $7M today plus tons of connections in real estate. Born on third and thinks he hit a triple. It's almost as sad of a story as Mitt and Ann having to part with some of their stock portfolio to pay their college tuition.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 27, 2015 -> 12:56 PM) I think we got lucky. We bought the place from the family that built it and they did a good job maintaining everything. One thing my wife wants us to do is replace all the trim in the house. It's got the dark oak or whatever. She wants all white. She has no idea (1) what that would cost, (2) what a huge project/pain in the ass that would be. Cost would be minimal really. Gallon or two of white trim paint from Ace (by far the best trim paint imo) plus maybe a couple hundred dollars in trim. Little bit of a pain in the ass to paint everything but it really wasn't too bad. We have a place we're really interested in. We're hoping our house can move quickly enough to work out the timing but you never know. Worst case scenario, we end up having to move in with her parents for a couple of months. Luckily they have plenty of space so it wouldn't be terrible. The other option we need to talk to a bank about would be potentially carrying a second mortgage to buy the house we're interested in while ours is still on the market, but then we'd need to scrape together the down payment from somewhere. We wanted more space/less of a neighborhood so that wasn't really an option for us. Plenty of houses in the area have had that done though.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 27, 2015 -> 12:36 PM) Because of issues or looks? We have a smallish house, a 1,500 sq ft one story ranch, so it's not like there's a lot of house to fix up, but other than painting just about every room, we haven't done anything to the bedrooms or bathrooms. The kitchen is super outdated (original oven/cook-top, but still functional), and we probably should have tackled that first before finishing the basement, but those are the two big projects thus far. I repainted our big deck last summer. Other than landscaping, that's about all we've done in ~5 years. Now, my wife will tell you that there's a million more things we should be doing (replacing some doors, modernizing at least one of the bathrooms, etc), but a lot of that seems like wasted money to me. It's functional and not too ugly (i.e. a salmon or baby blue tub/toilet/sink set). I'd rather throw that money into the investment account and be happier about the gains 30 years from now. So far i've been winning those arguments for the most part. Some issues, some looks and our house is roughly the same size. Kitchen went pretty much right away as the original kitchen was literally falling apart. We replaced every door in the house. We rebuilt the landing/staircase that was falling down in the back. We tore down the dilapidated old shed and built a new one. Re-landscaped everything. Gutted the main bathroom upstairs down to the studs (we were redoing pretty much everything else and the drywall looked horrible so why not?). New tile, vanity and paint in the downstairs bathroom. New pergo-type floors, paint in the basement. New trim throughout the house. Refinished the main stairs and re-tiled the entryway landing. Everything except the kitchen we did ourselves. Partially it's value added to the house, partially it's just what we like doing. Of course now that we've essentially done the entire house, we're getting ready to list it and do it all over again, this time in a bigger house. re: bolded ugh no that'd be gone immediately.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Oct 27, 2015 -> 12:23 PM) I'm so glad I bought a home built in the 1960's that so far has required zero dollars in work, only what we wanted to update (finished basement and an ongoing kitchen facelift). Reading your guys' story and listening to a couple of friends who bought older homes...sounds terrible. We've remodeled pretty much every room in our 1960's house.

-Trump

Some increased spending, split roughly evenly between military and non-military. Paid for by cuts to SSDI and Medicare.

Seems like a realtor may be your best bet. They would know (or could look up) comparable homes for sale and recently sold in the area. They could look at homes that are fully updated versus ones in your parents' condition and see where it might make the most sense to upgrade.

The strongest hurricane ever recorded is making landfall in Mexico right now http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/23/americas/hur...icia-live-blog/

The BENGHAZI #NEVERFORGET hearings have been a continuing embarrassment, but they reached new lows yesterday. http://www.vox.com/2015/10/22/9600096/clin...enghazi-hearing

That doesn't say "future president after Hillary," it says Hillary should drop out of the race now.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 07:59 AM) I think there are a few undergoing this right now, good start of a new thread. I am in the beginning stages of architectural drawings on changing my roofline as well as adding a closet, bathroom and bedroom on my second story in a house built in 1883. We're looking at a house on Sunday that would require something similar. We're bringing a contractor along to see how much some of the changes we have in mind are even feasible for our price range because this house is on an awesome piece of property.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Oct 23, 2015 -> 07:52 AM) This may be way too general, but has anyone ever remodeled their kitchen? We are talking about taking out a wall to make the 1st floor more open, new sink, new cabinets, new counter tops. Possibly adding an island and/or a breakfast bar. First of all, do you need to get a permit for interior work only? We were hoping to get stuff done for around $10-12K. Just wondering if anyone has experience going through it and if that is a reasonable expectation. We don't need super fancy or top of the line everything, we're buying a house in pretty good shape except the kitchen is straight out of 1955. Just curious about other's experience here. Thanks! Edit: We already have a brand new dishwasher and would not immediately replace the refrigerator so those would not factor in to costs. The house we bought five years ago had a kitchen that was literally falling apart. Luckily the dividing wall was already taken down, so that saved some costs. But we did a complete gut of the kitchen and added an island. Replaced all of the appliances but the fridge since it was pretty new. All together it was probably 13-15k including labor. This was with "semi custom" cabinets and quartz countertops, redoing the plumbing and electrical, and removing the soffit. If you're removing a wall, you're probably going to need an engineering evaluation to determine if it's load bearing. This is speaking pretty generically, but a quick way to tell if a wall might be load bearing is to determine if the wall runs parallel or perpendicular to the ceiling joists above and below it. If it's parallel, it's almost definitely not load bearing. If it's perpendicular, it might be and would require someone knowledgeable (and for permitting purposes, probably a licensed Professional Engineer or Structural Engineer) to evaluate it. Edit if you're taking down walls, I'd get a permit. Helps make sure the work is done properly. We didn't get a permit for any of our interior remodeling though, even though they were probably required. Not getting a permit for our she'd could come back to bite us some day because I unknowingly built it over a utility easement, but the village didn't say anything when I turned in the plans for a couple of other permits.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Oct 22, 2015 -> 09:32 PM) This might be the best post of all time. Agreed