caulfield12

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 9, 2017 -> 02:55 PM) Here's a question. Are these two ideas compatible? 1. Police officers can be afforded some leeway, in the words of several posters here, given that use of deadly force is very possibly warranted in their day-to-day work and would be warranted much more frequently than the justifiable uses of force are for typical civilians. 2. Police officers, as an important part of the criminal justice system, should be expected to give the benefit of the doubt to the people they confront even if it entails risk of bodily harm to the officer. This is because the least desirable outcome of an encounter between a citizen and police is a death, regardless of how innocent or guilty the citizen is because that cannot be known definitively until the other arms of the justice system have decided. This is also not to suggest that cops shouldn't defend themselves, sometimes with deadly force, when there is no margin for a benefit of the doubt. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/video-shows-ma...y-shot/?ref=yfp And here’s the perfect companion video. Officer overrun, taser fails...another officer basically has to come to his rescue. You almost get the feeling they were too patient. So then it comes back to the Greg comment of why do you have to shoot to kill instead of just to “take him down”? The first officer was getting the worst of it, but was his life in imminent danger? Nevertheless, we all know that if you don’t back down (lucky to get even one warning) and you’re assaulting an officer of the law, you’re assuredly going to to end up being shot. He had multiple opportunities to back off (the victim). Would have to see the toxicology results to find out if the victim had any drugs or alcohol in his system that might have exacerbated the situation.

Trump argued last night that stricter gun laws in Chicago have made no difference, So...what is the nuanced solution to all these confrontations that doesn’t take a side? Republicans would argue that all we have to do is build a wall, block chain migration, end DACA, sanctuary cities, hire more ICE and Homeland Security/Border Patrol officers, pass Kate’s Law, stop M-13, problem solved! But what about addressing the training and conflict resolution/threat mediation and de-escalation skills of modern-day police officers? Why does every video come across like the officers are dealing with alleged criminals like they’re confronting non-humans in a video game environment...with zero empathy or compassion or consideration, just cold-hearted brutality? There was a time when the relationship between police and the neighborhoods they protected was not 100% adversarial. Maybe every member of Congress needs to sit through at least one season of The Wire so they can start to have a broader, more realistic perspective? Perhaps they could also watch The Interrupters (2011 documentary about Chicago) and see that not every single minority in the inner city is the enemy, just like the majority of police officers are not the enemy? But that’s asking way too much. We talk so much about gun control and the police, but hardly ever address real issues like endemic poverty and the woeful state of public education today.

Yankees, Red Sox, Indians, Astros...Hahn has at least 50% of his work cut out for him still. For the next two years, those are the AL teams to beat, with the Angels (Omani/Trout) and Twins interesting as well. Rangers aren’t going to play dead, either.

Medicare, which specifies reimbursement rates for all the doctors who compete to serve its enrollees, is in fact the most efficient healthcare delivery system in the nation, with the lowest administrative costs. Far from suppressing innovation, Medicare has been a fount of innovation. The program has been a leader in testing new models for healthcare payment and new approaches to, yes, "patient-centered" care. Ryan just wants to cut costs, but his prescriptions, such as they are, won't do that. Medicare and Medicaid can't actually be "reformed" from within; they're both prisoners of overall healthcare costs. That's what needs to be reformed — how we pay doctors and hospitals, how we judge the value of medical outcomes, and how much we allow drug companies to charge patients for their products. None of those factors is on Paul Ryan's agenda. He's just talking about shifting the embedded costs of healthcare from government to individuals, and in a way that will drive costs up, not down. As long as he chooses his interviewers carefully, his lies and misrepresentations aren't going to get the scrutiny they deserve. But since's he's threatening to turn them into policy, it's time they did. http://beta.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/l...1208-story.html

After listening to Trump’s Pensacola speech and giving up after one hour: Wait until insurance policies across the country continue to rise, partially due to the ObamaCare mandate being shoved aside. As long as the middle class/lower middle class continues to stagnate economically (they’re not all heavily invested into the stock market like all of Trump’s buddies), Trumpism will wither on the vine. Those are the families in Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan earning $30-75,000 per year. The ones who won’t receive any or much benefit from the tax cuts and will see health care and higher education costs continue to be more and more unaffordable. Any economist worth his salt knows that giving them tax relief would be the best way to stimulate the economy even more. Injecting money into small and medium sized companies, instead of the Fortune 500 behemoths. The problem is none of those people I’m talking about employ lobbyists, or accountants who enable them to (legally) pay lower taxes than Warren Buffett’s secretary. The economy is already humming along at 3.3%, and probably closer to 3.5-4.0% if you factor in those three major hurricanes (Florida, Texas, PR). Now is the time the government should be paying down debt...through increased capital gains taxes and lower estate taxes. This is also largely what led to balanced budgets under Bill Clinton his last 2-3 years in office. Tax relief should be going to the middle class, infrastructure repair, strategic defense/military and breathing life into small and medium sized businesses. Everyone else will be able to take care of themselves just fine. When you help the middle class, eventually you can address extreme poverty. Right now, the middle class is being pushed in that direction, so we have to start fixing the problem there first.

Distance from cop? Speed of approach? Is it a military knife/K bar or Swiss Army knife? What other ways does he have to de-escalate the situation short of deadly force, like a taser? Is he alone or does he have backup, and how many? There’s no one size fits all answer to that question.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 8, 2017 -> 12:47 PM) Holy s***! kimberly kindy‏Verified account @kimberlykindy Exclusive: As Conyers weighed resignation, former intern stepped forward saying he brought up Chandry Levy case when she rejected his advances Fits right in with Franks’ desire to relive The Handmaid’s Tale, Judge Moore’s to recreate Gone With the Wind and Representative Farenthold to pay out over $80,000 over a mere legit difference of opinion.

QUOTE (KagakuOtoko @ Dec 8, 2017 -> 12:20 PM) King is an absolute disgrace. Tough call between him and Grassley. Branstad even seems somewhat tolerable compared to those two.

Breaking News: Department Of Defense hasn’t been able to pass an audit since the Clinton Admin ordered one in the late 1990’s http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3614:de...n-audit-by-2017 http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/politics/nav...ents/index.html A spate of deadly US Navy incidents in Asia since Trump became president Of course, we can blame it all on Obama. Except for the rising stock market, unemployment numbers and GDP growth. That’s all me, big time. Plus now, I can ask for billions more in defense spending than the 4 branches actually requested (don’t forget our amazing Coast Guard, they’re doing great things in Puerto Rico right now as we speak...I mean, lisp “United States”) while preparing to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security by 25% across the board in 2018. Oh, and I have no medical problems despite gorging on Vienna Fingers, Oreo’s, KFC, McDonald’s (two Fish Filets and two Big Macs and one large chocolate shake)...that’s Weak Ass Hillary, or Fainting Hillary. The Diet Coke keeps me healthy enough to play 14 rounds of golf per month and even outdrive Justin and Tiger.

QUOTE (Jerksticks @ Dec 7, 2017 -> 10:01 PM) Not saying this applies to anything going on, but as a young man I "played the field" and wouldn't commit to a woman because I just wanted to experience what was out there. This led to a lot of bitter young women who made up plenty of false claims to slander me. I think their motives were often "well this will get his attention and scare off other women at the same time". A scorned woman is a powerful weapon and I was smeared like crazy for loving and not committing. Not proud of my actions looking back but I had plenty of false info spread about me that I had to unfairly answer for. I'm sure many of you experienced the same thing. Not saying this applies to any of these famous cases, but that level of scorned & crazy is certainly out there in droves, men and women. Can't help but wonder. I'm proud of the women who were assaulted coming forward and i'm sorry for the men who are innocent. And we'll never know who is who since they are all guilty first. Human beings. The problem is that it's increasingly difficult to differentiate between "scorned," "legitimately scorned/aggrieved" and the victims of real abuse/harassment/violence. They're all starting to blend in together. For example, if a man's a "player" and, let's say, has slept with over 100 women in his lifetime, does that mean that by some "law of numbers" that he's an abusive personality because most of mainstream society believes that we should be limited to a "reasonable" number of partners in a lifetime? Of course, there's a pretty clear line between abusing/harassing and just being merely "insensitive/detached or unemotional/self-centered." Are men now expected to be the opposite of what I just described...and, if they're not, they're guilty of being somewhere on the spectrum of abusive behavior? Seems so many definitions are starting to get blurred in the last 2-3 months.

Still nothing to follow-up this story? According to the time/date stamp, that was 7 hours ago. Michael Trujillo‏ @mikehtrujillo SOURCES: @CNN and @washingtonpost working on exposing 20-30 congressional members 4 sexual harassment. #DC https://twitter.com/mikehtrujillo/status/938815136571129856 Here we go.

What does everyone make of the Warren Moon case? Seems the pendulum is going to swing back the other direction...that no married men (especially) dare hire any woman that's slightly attractive because the potential for things to blow up is too high to take a chance. From reading some of the background, it seems like the woman in the case was very ambitious (which is fine, in and of itself, for men or women)...but that she allowed herself to be put in situations that would potentially be compromising, that she had some sort of inappropriate relationship with Moon, she traveled with him/stayed in a resort or hotel room on at least one or more occasions, it went south, she was demoted and then she's now seeking revenge/compensation. After any workplace relationship goes wrong, does that mean that "sexual harassment" is now the umbrella for anything that's remotely inappropriate happening at work? Moon's got a very spotty track record, I think there was a case of domestic violence/battery in his past (already)...my point is more along what PTAC's been arguing, these cases are very hard to "prove" one way or the other in a court of law, so what's going to settle in as the accepted standard? Is there one standard for celebrities/elite/rich/athletes/politicians (usually settled out of court), and another for "regular" workers?

The Kochs, Mercers and Adelsons all pull in different directions. Fwiw, this was passed all the way back in 1995, when Bill Clinton was president. It's just that they haven't thought it was beneficial to the peace process to go forward with the actual physical move.

I just can’t see a legal mechanism for proving or disproving any of these things in a court of law. Pictures? Yearbooks? Signatures? Graphic notes/letters from the past that may or may not be forgeries? The thing that brought down Lauer was supposedly incontrovertible photographic/visual evidence that got him fired within 24 hours of disclosure. Same thing with Rep. Joe Barton’s photographic scandal, or Anthony Weiner, for that matter. As the first couple of Franken cases showed, there was bad optics but at least the possibility of explaining part of that away due to the comedic sketch element. That argument eventually disappeared when a pattern developed. With Moore, you have physical/sexual conduct, but not rape. Yet one wonders how many GOP Senators or Reps would allow their daughters to be left unchaperoned with that guy? How can you be a US Senator and uphold the Constitution when your morality is clearly being questioned by even your own party?

What "good deals" has Trump actually negotiated so far? For someone who argued that his business background was one of his key advantages as a candidate, there's almost no evidence to support this. No bilateral trade agreements, for example. TPP up in smoke. NAFTA? Mexico and Canada aren't giving in to US demands. North Korea? Iran? ISIS? Syria/Russia/Assad? Lowering prescription drug costs or getting insurance companies to take a lesser profit? Now we're almost deliberately setting the entire Middle East on fire...along with our travel ban being enforced, finally. And you can guarantee Trump won't take responsibility for a single death that this policy reversal is going to bring about.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-lousy-...-191316112.html Trump Is Doing a Lousy Job Selling Tax Cuts Most of those people who think their taxes will go up are wrong. Third-party analysis by the Tax Policy Center shows that, under the House tax-cut plan, 76% of taxpayers would get a tax cut averaging $1,900 the first year the plan goes into effect. About 7% of taxpayers would face a tax increase, averaging $2,100. For the other 17% there’s likely to be no major change. Under the Senate plan, 75% of taxpayers would get a tax cut in the first year, averaging $2,000, according to the Tax Policy Center. Seven percent of taxpayers would face tax hikes, averaging $3,100. The other 18% would see no major change. So, under the best independent estimates, roughly three-quarters of taxpayers would enjoy an immediate tax cut, and only 7% would see a tax hike. Yet the public has a completely different impression, according to the Quinnipiac poll. The portion of people who think their taxes will rise is six times larger than those who will actually see a tax hike. And less than one-third of people likely to see a tax cut think it will actually happen. If the GOP tax-cut plan were an ordinary product marketers had to convince consumers to buy, it would be a total bomb. Imagine Apple selling a phone consumers thought would be unable to place phone calls. Or Coke selling a beverage people expected to taste terrible. This is how bad the GOP’s sales pitch is for a tax-cut plan they’ve been developing for years. fwiw, not sure if that's also accounting for expected rises in health care insurance directly attributable to ending the ObamaCare mandate to buy insurance or pay a penalty...with many young people (25-35) expected to sign up for minimal coverage or dropping coverage, increasing the amount of unhealthy individuals in the risk pool and pushing up rates for the remaining individual market participants by another 15-30% beginning next year

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labo...e-idUSKBN1DY2JH They snuck this one in about redistributing tips from servers to the business owners during the holidays when they will receive far less blowback. Imagine having money taken away via taxes for credit card tips while it’s simultaneously being redistributed...and just as likely business owners using it to subsidize lower wages for back of house staff than actually raising the pay of any of those workers. Winning.

QUOTE (Reddy @ Dec 6, 2017 -> 12:38 PM) I'm not interested in your semantics. Within the context of the American political system and the American Democratic Party, there are two factions - one that is more centrist and one that is further left. Stahp. Compare to Henry Wallace in the 1940’s or WJ Bryan. It just seems left wing, because someone has to be to the left of a party that has been increasingly centrist since the DLC days of the late 1980’s. The health care policies were passed into law by Obama were to the right of Mitt Romney or Jack Kemp. For a long time, it (the left) was basically Maxine Waters. Now you have a ton of progressives involved in local and especially state issues, like the nurses’ association in California.

The Royals obviously hadn’t planned on losing Ventura...they just made some woeful decisions. Ian Kennedy contract Soler for Wade Davis Alex Gordon falling apart Perez, Merrifield, Bonifacio...not much of an offensive core. Cuthbert and Mondesi will get extended playing time, Soler gets his last shot. Duffy and then Herrera has value if he can rebound in the first half and show more dominant stuff. Minor and Alexander will draw some interest as lefties out of the pen.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/05/opinions...lein/index.html Why Trump Is Still Winning When you sit at the top with an office in the Capitol and people lining up to tell you how wonderful you are, an academic on MSNBC going on about white privilege, toxic masculinity, and cisgender bias doesn't bother you. Nor does a school board that approves opposite-sex bathroom privileges for transgender students and casts concerned parents as "phobic." But if you're a small businessman or blue-collar worker worried about cost of living and with children to feed and educate, and who thinks little about identity issues, those charges grate on your nerves. Trump is your champion, not the lords in Congress. If Republicans don't follow his lead, more of them will share the fate of Sen. Jeff Flake, whose political career the President has called "toast."

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 10:06 PM) Just wait until they find out that Kushner and Soros were business partners. A Breitbart story in September about a “George Soros-backed organization attacking Roy Moore.” The story was actually about the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal group that’s received funding from Soros’ son, filing a complaint against Moore’s foundation for violating laws relating to charities. Just last week, Breitbart, a conservative website that serves as a platform for white nationalists, posted a story titled “Soros Army in Alabama to Register Convicted Felons to Vote Against Roy Moore.” In reality, the story was just about the American Civil Liberties Union helping register felons to vote in Alabama. Felons in the state recently regained a legal right to vote. The conspiracies are clearly affecting Moore’s supporters, some of whom told HuffPost last week that they think Soros is paying women to accuse Moore of sexual misconduct. https://www.yahoo.com/news/roy-moore-fuelin...-211204093.html Does the WH Believe That All Muslims Should Be Banned from Congress? http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/05/politics/tru...ress/index.html

George Soros' nefarious operatives are descending on Alabama in droves in the final week...guess we had to check the "anti-(bad) Jew" box this week. How many times have we heard that conspiracy theory repeated in the last decade or so?

Sanders' moment has passed, largely due to age and the fact that foreign policy issues are going to be even more and more critical with the way Trump is running the country (and that's Bernie's biggest weak point). That said, he's right up there in the "Holy Trinity" with Biden and the Obamas, with Elizabeth Warren arguably #4 in terms of national star power on the Democratic side. Biden also has more symbolic power...as soon as he starts to run an actual campaign, he manages to upset more and more with his "foot in mouth" moments. There needs to be new blood to contrast with Trump's physical/deterioration. Looking at the numbers, another woman makes sense, but right now the choice is far from clear. Still have at least 2 years for someone to emerge...whether the opponent is Trump, Pence or Ryan. It's most certainly NOT going to be Martin O'Malley or Tim Kaine.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 5, 2017 -> 09:54 AM) That was my personal favorite part of this. Hooray for fiefdoms. With extreme gerrymandering, why would it be a surprise that 80-85% of Congressional districts aren't even competitive every two years? This always works both ways. Many gathered inside Oak Hollow Farm's barn have dismissed the allegations (against Moore) as fake. Some didn't seem to mind them, even if true. "What girl hasn't been kissed at 17 years old?" asked Diane Myrick, 69, of nearby Bon Secour. "I know a girl who got married at 14." https://www.yahoo.com/news/moore-foe-fought...--election.html

Stronger, about Jeff Baumann and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was solid...much different way of telling the story than Patriots Day. Jake Gylenhaal was excellent. Only the Brave 3.5/4 Roman J. Israel, Esq. 2.75/4 Wonder 3.5/4