Rob's House

I mean, I hear you. I just don't know how anyone could read my posts and assume I'm saying otherwise.

The problem with your data (aside from it being an estimation based on a simulation) is that it doesn't distinguish between justified shootings and wrongful shootings. As such it is meaningless. Violent crime is disproportionately committed by black people (incidentally, the overwhelming majority of their victims are black). Therefore, it necessarily stands to reason that a higher percentage of blacks would be shot in police encounters just as a higher percentage of black people are in prison for violent crimes. The relevant number - wrongful deaths - is conspicuously absent. What I takeaway is that even based on your agenda-driven simulated estimation, a black man has better than a 99.9% chance of going through life without getting shot by a cop, and it follows that the number jumps up significantly if he doesn't engage in a life of crime.

Both. I'd have to look up the specifics, and there are many, but one that sticks out in my mind is a Harvard study several years ago that found that on a per police encounter basis, black people were actually less likely to be shot than white people. On the other side of that equation, the reason you never hear the real aggregate numbers is because they betray the narrative. Yes, innocent people, black and white, are killed by cops every year for a variety of reasons. But the odds of being the victim of one of those incidents is roughly on par with the odds of being killed by lightning. That's why we're still hearing about the "murder" of a guy who died of a heart attack while being arrested 6 years ago. The evidence is pretty sparce.

Consider the possibility that the problem being addressed does not exist. There is no empirical evidence supporting the theory that black men are disproportionately subject to violence at the hands of police and/or white people. The theory is supported only by a running narrative born out of a bygone era, and the occasional selectively and sensationally reported anecdotal example that appears to confirm the preconceived notion. In other words, it is supported exclusively by confirmation bias. This incident is a statistical anomaly. Of course a police officer who kills someone without legal justification should be subject to criminal prosecution, but contrary to popular belief that is usually what happens. Of course the police officer has some inherent advantages based purely on the circumstance of his position, but the increasingly standard use of body cams remedies much of that, and independent investigators and prosectors are routinely assigned to these cases to avoid conflicts of interest. That is not to say that everything is perfect, that no black people are ever victimized, or that nothing could or should be improved, but the narrative that black men are systematically and disproportionately victimized by police and/or white people on a broad scale is a fantasy. More accurately, it is a pernicious lie that is propagated, not for the benefit of the purported victims, but to advance the interests of those who benefit from internal conflict, racial tension, and civil unrest. Those are the truly dangerous people.

There were multiple points being made, some more nuanced than others.

The point is not that the cops should be exonerated. The point is that the incident does not support the broader conclusion that it's open season on black men across the country.

The public response and media coverage of this is absolutely disgusting. I can't recall ever having seen such a widespread rush to virtue signal. Trayvon Martin doesn't hold a candle to this guy. My FB feed is filled with uber sanctimonious LAMPs, even from people I wouldn't expect it from. An incident involving the use of excessive force by police that leads to the unnecessary death of a citizen is a terrible thing. Exploiting that death to create the false impression that there is a national trend of racially motivated violence against black men is also a terrible thing. While we don't know the exact details about how this transpired, it seems clear the officers' actions were unwarranted. It seems equally clear that to this point we have seen no compelling evidence to suggest this was racially motivated or that there was any intent to kill. The lack of evidence is irrelevant to the ignorant masses because the contrived media narrative fills in those gaps and cognitive bias confirms it. No further evidence is necessary. The bigger point is that even if this was clearly and unquestionably an intentional killing motivated solely by race it would still fail to support the premise being pushed. The general public is now accepting the false narrative that black men face a statistically substantial threat of death at the hands of white men/police based on two relatively ambiguous anecdotes in a country of 350 million people. There is no empirical data to support this premise, but it is treated as fact based on anecdotal evidence, which is inherently unreliable. A fact that everyone knows, but few will say, is that if George Floyd or the "jogger" were white you'd never have heard about them. We know this to be true because examples of white people being killed by police (or black men, for that matter) exist but never spark national outrage. A few years ago body cam footage was released of an officer gunning down a young unarmed white guy at point blank range while he was surrendering and trying to comply with the officer's incomprehensible orders. It barely registered with the national media. No mayors gave crocodile tear filled speeches decrying the inhumanity of his "murder," nobody rioted in "protest", and no news outlets declared that it established proof of a national crisis. The danger in creating the false perception of a crisis when that crisis does not exist is that it results in detrimental measures intended to address a situation that can never be remediated. When anecdotal evidence passes for empirical evidence the charade can effectively be continued into perpetuity because with such a large sample size it is statistically impossible to create a society in which the rate of similar incidents is zero. One might ask what objective those perpetuating this myth seek to accomplish. It is hard to conceive of a positive outcome arising from this. This looks like another move in the media's unending quest to divide Americans along racial lines. Perhaps they seek to divide so that they may conquer. The real questions raised by this incident are: whose conquest are they facilitating and for what purpose.

That's why I don't go to Patient First. I had the most severe illness of my life and on Saturday the idiot doctor told me it was strep. On Monday I went to my PCP and after 30 seconds he correctly diagnosed it as mono. I don't trust anyone based on authority. I listen to the reasoning, run it against what I know, and see what makes the most sense. The doomsday scenarios here just don't seem to hold up. And again, if it really is as bad as you say, there doesn't seem to be an end game. Hiding in seclusion for years on end to avoid a virus with a 99+% survival rate doesn't make much sense. Better to seclude the high risk population and let it run its course on the rest of us. Herd immunity among the masses is the only way the high risk population ever gets to re-enter society.

I don't think so, and I've seen no credible evidence to support that theory. I doubt anyone has gotten it from passing by someone several feet away who was simply breathing. If it really is that contagious we're all going to get it anyway and all these measures are just delaying the inevitable, unless of course we're going to go on like this forever. In that case, I wasn't being sarcastic when I said I'll take my chances. I don't trust anything I see on TV because everyone has an agenda, but I do trust my doctor, and he thinks this "quarantine" has gone too far.

I'm probably an at risk person myself. I'm not ripping anyone else for wearing a mask, I just don't have one. When I'm in public I avoid people like the plague (pun intended) since this hit. If it's so contagious that someone could get it from me at the grocery store, we're all f***ed anyway.

I'm pretty good at holding it back. It sucks because I love the feeling of a good sneeze, but these are the sacrifices I make for my fellow man.

I don't even know where to find a mask, but I take more than sufficient precautions. If I have to wrap myself in plastic and hide in seclusion indefinitely I'll take my chances. If I catch Kung flu and die, so be it. I had a good run.

Assuming for a second there was some legitimate reason for investigating anything about President Trump, you can thank your fellow leftists for the deaf ear your complaints fall upon. You can only cry wolf so many times before people tune you out.

Where are y'all buying these f***ing masks? I can't even find ass wipe on the shelves. Even if I had a mask I doubt I'd wear it. Not for any principled reasons, it just seems like an unnecessary hassle. I keep my distance from others, I don't cough or sneeze in public, and I want to give people a reason to stay the hell away from me. Plus, I'm pretty sure I don't have the Kung flu, but even if I do, if a stranger gets close enough to me to catch it, he deserves what he gets.

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that these guys acted properly or shouldn't be arrested, just that the video, as you stated, doesn't show enough to draw a conclusion either way. The reports giving it context have been inconsistent and still leave a lot of questions unanswered. It's entirely possible if I was on the jury I'd vote to convict, but given the lack of reliable evidence, I could also see a reasonably plausible scenario where I would not. I can't say with any confidence which way I'd fall at this point. I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the decision to engage in a fistfight with a man carrying a firearm, much less multiple armed men, regardless of who's in the right. Perhaps he figured they were going to shoot him anyway and that was his only chance, but I don't get that from the video, and it seems extremely stupid to me. Not suggesting stupidity warrants a death sentence, but Darwin does not always concern himself with justice. And even if you're not justified in drawing your firearm, when someone who's likely stronger than you is taking the firearm from you, it is understandable why you may shoot even if you had no intention to do so in the first place. It doesn't necessarily justify the action, but it certainly complicates the matter. The more interesting part to me is how willing people are to jump to conclusions based on woefully insufficient evidence and mold the fact pattern to conform to their biases by filling in the gaps with their preconceptions, then accept that narrative as incontrovertible fact.

I do believe that masks reduce the spread of the virus, but if the border wall debate taught me anything it's that any measure that isn't 100% effective isn't worth doing at all, so I won't be using a mask.

From the first of your posts that I quoted: "... so don't forget that the if the progressives do take power, you'll know exactly how the other half felt when they were left out."

This is one of the most pathetic attempts at moving the goal posts while attempting to tear down a straw man I've seen in some time. You've completely abandoned your position and are now sarcastically mocking an argument that no one made. You really should feel ashamed.

If the best example you have is the bogus impeachment process, you're really not making your case. We hashed that issue out in great detail at the time and I'm not going to relitigate it here other than to say that there was zero compromise on the part of the Democrats, and there was no basis for giving them a second attempt to manufacture evidence after they determined that the evidence they developed in the house was overwhelming. And comparing the Senate impeachment trial to a criminal trial is not a discussion worth having. If that's the best example of Democrats attempt to meet the "needs" of the people being blocked by the refusal of Republicans to compromise, it appears this problem is not much of a problem after all. It appears the Democrats' decision to focus on politics over addressing the "needs" of their constituents may be the bigger problem.

I agree that impeachment was a circus, but your example runs counter to your position. Yes, the Democrats ran a sham impeachment for political purposes rather than addressing the needs of the country, but where have they been prevented from meeting the needs of the country due to the Republicans' refusal to compromise?

That's exactly where I am. After watching the video I still don't know enough about the situation to draw any strong conclusions one way or the other. It seems to me to be another case of manufactured outrage supported by the confirmation bias of the SJW left to push their white privilege/oppressed minority theory of America. Anyone who says with great certainty that they saw a racially charged murder based on watching that video is telling you a lot more about their bias and credibility than about what they actually saw.

Obviously impeachment was a political sham, but I don't see how it relates to compromise to meet the needs of the people. What "needs of the people" are the Democrats trying to meet where the Republicans refuse to compromise?

That's a non answer, but that's what I expected. What "needs" aren't being met?

What do you want/need that you're being deprived of? What are you being "left out" of?

Scrappy-Doo