Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Robert Roaldi]

Were there also any white men shot lately? I haven't read this year any reports about white victims killed by police. Is it due to selective reporting or selective killing?

This is a very long and complex discussion of this topic, https://samharris.org/can-pull-back-brink/. It is the transcript from a Sam Harris podcast and the link to the podcast itself is given in the intro, if you prefer to listen.

Conversations about these things turn emotional rather quickly, understandably so, and this podcast was the best discussion I've seen/heard. About the only personal comment I can make, based on my limited exposure via the media, is that it seems to me that the police in the USA, so far as I can judge, pull their guns out pretty quickly and use them a lot. And the USA seems to have a lot of people in prison. None of this seems very healthy to me.

[faberryman]

So this looks like it might be an interesting development. Everybody has probably already left town by now.

Trump calls on Congress to approve $2,000 stimulus checks, hinting he might not sign relief bill without changes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/22/trump-stimulus-video-bill/

Here is Trump's video address. It is only a couple of minutes long.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1341537886315950080?s=20

I don't know why he objects to all the pork barrel spending in this bill. There was more in the first COVID relief bill and he didn't seem to mind. Isn't it a little late to be getting religion now?

[Robert Roaldi]

Addendum: The USA death toll rises to 330,824 as of today.

[Robert Roaldi]

So this looks like it might be interesting.

Trump calls on Congress to approve $2,000 stimulus checks, hinting he might not sign relief bill without changes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/12/22/trump-stimulus-video-bill/

Here is Trump's video address:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1341537886315950080?s=20

And Alan's worried about China?

[TechTalk]

My Godmother (and my mother's best friend growing up) was an Army nurse in World War II and Korea, and eventually retired in the 60s as a Lt. Colonel. I don't know if she was in any great danger, but she was in Europe during the fighting. She was also an interesting woman.

I appreciated your mention of nurses in your post as it brought back some fond and valuable memories. I'll mention one other thing.

Later in life, the army nurse that I knew specialized in geriatric nursing for the rest of her career, first at a conventional nursing home and later at a veterans hospital. As a child and later as a teenager, I would occasionally pay a visit at the nursing or veterans home where she worked. Not to visit with her, I visited with the patients. Everyone acquires interesting stories in their life and I loved listening to them—and they enjoyed having someone new to tell them to who hadn't heard them all before. I already had a love of history and the visits added a personal touch to what I read about in books.

If you love history, go sit and talk to patients at a nursing home. Just wait until we're past the current Covid situation to do it.

[TechTalk]

Were there also any white men shot lately? I haven't read this year any reports about white victims killed by police. Is it due to selective reporting or selective killing?

Selective reading. I've seen stories this year of white people shot by the police. None immediately spring to mind in which they were unarmed, though it undoubtedly happens occasionally.

[LesPalenik]

Addendum: The USA death toll rises to 330,824 as of today.

At this rate, it will be 400,000 deaths before the Inauguration Day.

[digitaldog]

So this looks like it might be interesting development.

The guy is deranged. He can't help screwing up things enough with a month to go. Some interesting developments:

Trump's position could threaten to torpedo the carefully drafted bill, which his own administration helped negotiate -- a move that could lead to a government shutdown and send the economy into a tailspin if he carried through with a veto.

My understanding is, there is enough bipartisan support so the veto goes nowhere but still...
Why deranged:

The extraordinary message came after he largely left negotiations over the measure to lawmakers and his Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump did not explicitly threaten to veto the bill, but said he was dissatisfied with its final state.

So it's all about him, he needs the attention. Despite the citizens needs.

At the moment, the hope among some on Capitol Hill is that Trump won't veto the bill, since he never explicitly said he would. The President has in the past said he would sign the bill, and earlier Tuesday the White House publicly defended the bill.

What a friggin mess he's making again.

[digitaldog]

Great quote from a Republican on Trumps handling of the bill, love it!

“This is what happens with a president who places more trust in conservative fever swamp Twitter than his own Treasury Secretary. His administration helped negotiate this bill, and he just pulled down the pants of every Republican who voted for it,” said Brendan Buck, a former top aide to onetime House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). Ryan and Buck often struggled with the president changing his mind.

[Robert Roaldi]

Selective reading. I've seen stories this year of white people shot by the police. None immediately spring to mind in which they were unarmed, though it undoubtedly happens occasionally.

That raises a question. The stats that I hear are that blacks represent about 13% of the US population and that young black males commit crimes at roughly double the rate of young white males. I have no idea how accurate those numbers are, I'm merely repeating what I see on public media. I think the understanding is that these numbers will be imprecise.

If shootings by police of people behaving in criminal-like ways, whether the person is armed or not, are random with respect to skin colour, then it must be the case that there a lot of unreported shootings of white guys.

I would find it easy to believe that the media would only play up police shootings of black males, if for no other reason than that of click bait, but still it seems to me that something needs to be explained here by someone. By that I mean this, the police are either not shooting white guys in proportional numbers, or they are and no one is reporting this. Either way, it's a bad sign. For these purposes, I am making no distinctions here between justified shootings, mistakes, and criminal shootings by police, all of which I assume to exist.

[faberryman]

That raises a question. The stats that I hear are that blacks represent about 13% of the US population and that young black males commit crimes at roughly double the rate of young white males. I have no idea how accurate those numbers are, I'm merely repeating what I see on public media. I think the understanding is that these numbers will be imprecise.

If shootings by police of people behaving in criminal-like ways, whether the person is armed or not, are random with respect to skin colour, then it must be the case that there a lot of unreported shootings of white guys.

I would find it easy to believe that the media would only play up police shootings of black males, if for no other reason than that of click bait, but still it seems to me that something needs to be explained here by someone. By that I mean this, the police are either not shooting white guys in proportional numbers, or they are and no one is reporting this. Either way, it's a bad sign. For these purposes, I am making no distinctions here between justified shootings, mistakes, and criminal shootings by police, all of which I assume to exist.

Well, it is a pretty contentious issue so I have been laying low hoping someone would post some statistics so I could become better informed. Back during the George Floyd protests, I went looking for them, but couldn't find them. I came to the conclusions that they don't keep statistics on how many unarmed black/white men the police shoot, and in particular how many unarmed black/white men the police shoot, and it turns out it wasn't during the commission of a crime after all. I do see what to me seems like a relentless flow of stories in the news media of unarmed black men being shot, and not just shot but shot dead in a hail of bullets. I cannot recall reading a story about an unarmed white man being shot by the police, and my newsfeed has plenty of Fox News stories in it. So while I can't swear to it, and maybe it is fake news in the commie/lib news media, it sure seems to me that the police shoot unarmed black men on a regular basis, and rarely shoot unarmed white men. So if anyone has some relevant statistics, please post them, because I try to keep a open mind about things.

[LesPalenik]

I looked it up. Number of white people, killed by police is roughly twice as many as of black men. Per million, black men were the most numerous.

Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 864 civilians having been shot, 192 of whom were Black, as of November 24, 2020. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004. Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 33 fatal shootings per million of the population as of November 2020.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

[digitaldog]

I looked it up. Number of white people, killed by police is roughly twice as many as of black men.

But the number of whites in this country is far greater than blacks. 
White people constitute the majority of the U.S. population, with a total of about 234,370,202 or 73% of the population as of 2017. "Non-Hispanic Whites" make up 60.7% of the country's population.
Further:
What percent of the US is black 2020?
There were 37,144,530 non-Hispanic blacks, which comprised 12.1% of the population.
Not even close.
As to this last shooting of a black man, anyone alarmed the cop turned on his video AFTER he shot the guy? 

[faberryman]

I looked it up. Number of white people, killed by police is roughly twice as many as of black men. Per million, black men were the most numerous.

Right, those are the statistics I read, but they don't indicate whether the black/white men were armed or unarmed, or whether the armed or unarmed black/white men were shot during the commission of a crime or by mistake, or whether the armed or unarmed black/white men were shot or killed by other means like a knee on the neck, etc. There doesn't seem to be a lot of transparency. I certainly don't object to the police shooting armed men of any color during the commission of a crime. That's their job. And I don't object to giving the police the benefit of the doubt, because it is a dangerous business, but you see the news stories and then can't find relevant statistics, and it sure looks like there is a problem. If there is no problem, the police are doing a poor job of educating the public that the problem doesn't exist. And it certainly doesn't help when the police play hide the ball. Like the guy that did or did not kill George Floyd by holding him down with a knee on the neck for eight or nine minutes. He had something like eighteen prior disciplinary write ups, and they won't tell you what they were about, so you don't know whether he just didn't like to shine his shoes, or he used excess force when apprehending unarmed black men on a serial basis.

[LesPalenik]

But the number of whites in this country is far greater than blacks.
White people constitute the majority of the U.S. population, with a total of about 234,370,202 or 73% of the population as of 2017. "Non-Hispanic Whites" make up 60.7% of the country's population.
Further:
What percent of the US is black 2020?
There were 37,144,530 non-Hispanic blacks, which comprised 12.1% of the population.
Not even close.
As to this last shooting of a black man, anyone alarmed the cop turned on his video AFTER he shot the guy? 

If you want to consider all the factors, you would have to look also at:
- ethnicity of the cop
- gender of the cop
- type of offense commited by the victim

[PeterAit]

The guy is deranged. He can't help screwing up things enough with a month to go. Some interesting developments:My understanding is, there is enough bipartisan support so the veto goes nowhere but still...
Why deranged:So it's all about him, he needs the attention. Despite the citizens needs.What a friggin mess he's making again.

Trump is intentionally doing whatever he can the screw the USA. The way he is specifically targeting protected lands and environmental restrictions and anything climate-change related is of particular concern to me. A lot of his actions over the past 4 years have been driven by his hatred and envy of Obama, who was (is) an intelligent, educated, literate, compassionate, articulate, and eloquent president. Trump is the antitheses of all these qualities, and at some level he knows it. And he is bitter and hateful about it. So he strikes out by trying to nullify anything that Obama has accomplished. We have had a petulant 5 year old for president, and may God protect us from the damage he will do before Jan 20. There being no God, I have no hopes.

[digitaldog]

If you want to consider all the factors, you would have to look also at:
- ethnicity of the cop
- gender of the cop
- type of offense commited by the victim

Why?
Are all shootings justified no matter those points? No. Some are.

[Robert Roaldi]

Trump is intentionally doing whatever he can the screw the USA. The way he is specifically targeting protected lands and environmental restrictions and anything climate-change related is of particular concern to me. A lot of his actions over the past 4 years have been driven by his hatred and envy of Obama, who was (is) an intelligent, educated, literate, compassionate, articulate, and eloquent president. Trump is the antitheses of all these qualities, and at some level he knows it. And he is bitter and hateful about it. So he strikes out by trying to nullify anything that Obama has accomplished. We have had a petulant 5 year old for president, and may God protect us from the damage he will do before Jan 20. There being no God, I have no hopes.

What is it with this current crop of so-called "conservatives" that they hate public lands and parks and environmental preservation? Is it just some culture war knee-jerk way of making "lefties" angry, because if that's what it is, it's self-evidently stupid and childish. Sort of like coal-rolling cyclists. That kind of behaviour is a generation or two away from sitting in tree branches flinging feces at each other.

And it's not as if the past 50 years of environmental safeguards have prevented the 1% from doing well or prevented the economy from growing or failed to produce jobs for lots of people.

There may be nothing that can be done about this retrograde view of the planet's resources except to wait for the old coots to die off. It's getting pretty old listening to the tired environment vs economy discussion. Without an environment, there is no economy. The environment is the economy.

[LesPalenik]

Why?
Are all shootings justified no matter those points? No. Some are.

Not all shootings are justified and sometimes the cops kill even without a gun. For example, George Floyd (who was no saint as painted by the media) was brutally asphyxiated.
There have been also situations where the officers were sleep deprived, fatigued by a string of 12-hour shifts, suffered by PTSD, or were under influence of opioids or painkillers.

Many officers perceive themselves as underappreciated. They hear criticism from citizens, read it in newspapers or see it on the nightly news. This ridicule has contributed to stress.

A report published in The Journal of Law Enforcement found external factors, such as the attitude of the general public, affect officers physically and emotionally. William Westley, a social scientist, wrote that many officers view their relationship with the general public as their most pressing problem.

“[A police officer] regards the public as his enemy, feels his occupational [responsibilities] to be in conflict with the community and regards himself to be a pariah,” Westley wrote in a study of police behavior. Handling such criticism can be difficult. Many officers find healthy ways to combat stress, such as running or lifting weights. Others turn to drugs or alcohol.

https://www.drugrehab.com/addiction/police/

[John Camp]

Cops have so many problems I despair that we'll ever be able to fix them. I think it more likely that we'll be able to fix society so that cops don't have to deal with the problems they now face, and that cop culture will then evolve to something better.