US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2557

On November 24 2015 07:49 heliusx wrote:

Yes you should, depending on where you live of course!

Chicago police and community activists are carefully planning for the release this week of a video showing the shooting death of a black teen at the hands of a white police officer, with some city officials worried the video could spark civil unrest.

A judge last week ordered the Chicago Police Department to release by Wednesday dashboard camera footage of police officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting Laquan McDonald on Oct. 20, 2014.

McDonald, 17, was shot 16 times. Police have said he had threatened them with a knife and slashed at the tires and windshield of a patrol car. The patrol car’s “dash cam” video shows McDonald moving away from police at the time he was shot, according to a lawyer for McDonald's mother. The lawyer has seen the video.

Police and Van Dyke's lawyer, Daniel Herbert, have said other police officers were at the scene when Van Dyke shot McDonald, who police said had refused officers’ orders to put down the knife.

"I can't speak why the (other) officers didn't shoot," Herbert told The Chicago Tribune. "But I certainly can speak to why my client shot, and it is he believed in his heart of hearts that he was in fear for his life and that he was concerned about the lives of (other) police officers.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has pushed prosecutors to conclude their investigation, and said last week that it appeared Van Dyke had violated public trust. Van Dyke has been assigned to desk duty during the investigation.

Chicago has not witnessed civil unrest on the scale that other cities around the county have in response to several fatal police shootings of black men across the country in the past year. The Chicago Police Department, however, said it was planning for possible protests.

Supporters of police reform say the judge’s ruling is a victory for transparency.

On November 24 2015 07:52 GreenHorizons wrote:


Yes if you are a white person in America you should fear white folks (using this line of thinking). No one turns more white people into victims of violence than white folks. But rather than deal with the real threats to the safety of white folks politicians and bigots would rather focus on "the other".

On November 24 2015 08:06 heliusx wrote:
Its weird that "politicians and bigots" think like blm right? You know " using this line of thinking". Strange stuff.

On November 24 2015 08:08 GreenHorizons wrote:


You're really grasping at straws at this point.

On November 24 2015 08:09 heliusx wrote:

I'm not grasping at anything, I'm just "using this line of thinking" to point out some strange similarities. Its almost as if you're a hypocrite.

Call it the climate cliff.

On Dec. 11, Obama administration diplomats will be in Paris working to clinch a global climate deal that will hinge on whether they can back up a pledge to provide billions of dollars to help poor countries deal with climate change. That same day, Republicans back in Washington will be trying to hold that money hostage with a government shutdown hanging in the balance.

“We want to make sure that any of these countries that think they’re going to have a check to cash because of an agreement that the president may make in Paris — that they shouldn’t cash the check just yet," Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said of Republicans' strategy.

Congress must pass a new spending bill by Dec. 11, when a stopgap measure expires. The simultaneous deadlines on each side of the Atlantic Ocean give Republicans a tool to derail a legacy-defining pact for the president and score a rare victory on climate policy. They also significantly raise the stakes in this year's game of shutdown chicken.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told POLITICO that he sees the dueling deadlines as a "coincidence" and notes the Paris negotiations will likely go into overtime, perhaps for as long as two days beyond Dec. 11. He also said he is "confident" that the White House will not stand for any climate-related riders in the spending bill.

With few other tools at their disposal to upend a deal in Paris, Republicans are hoping to add riders to the spending bill to block Environmental Protection Agency rules and to deny any contributions to the Green Climate Fund, a U.N.-maintained account to transfer climate aid to poor nations facing drought, rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change. Developing countries like India have warned that their support for a deal in Paris will depend on industrialized nations making ambitious funding commitments to help them replace coal with renewable energy. President Barack Obama has pledged $3 billion for the fund, including a $500 million request this year, but Republicans have balked at the request.

"We’re going to have a say on whether they’re going to get their money or not,” Barrasso added. “So they shouldn’t be so anxious to come to the table and make commitments because the U.S. dollars are the linchpin of this entire climate conference.”

To bolster their strategy, Barrasso and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works
Committee, who also doubts mainstream climate science, sent Obama a letter Friday warning that "Congress will not be forthcoming" with climate aid unless a Paris deal is submitted to the Senate for ratification. Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) is collecting signatures for a similar letter to House Appropriations leaders urging a rejection of the funding unless Congress reviews the deal. In effect, the Republicans are setting up a Catch-22 for the administration, which has worked to keep the Paris deal from being classified as a treaty, knowing it could not win a ratification vote.

On November 24 2015 08:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
EDIT to include your edit:



How so?

On November 24 2015 08:07 KwarK wrote:
A citizen holding a knife is still a citizen who deserves protecting from the police. This would have been resolved non fatally in Europe. If he is an imminent threat to another person and lethal force is the lesser of two evils then it can be justified on those terms, although it is still a failure of policing (in the sense that while they tried their best they did not achieve what they set out to do that day).

On November 24 2015 08:18 heliusx wrote:


Oh I dunno gh , how about the fact that you're a bigot who spends his days calling everyone who doesn't agree with him a bigot? You might not see it, that's just cuase you don't understand tho!

Ikr going by statistics we should be afraid of black people... considering they're by far the most likely to kill in our
society.

There is no doubt Americans are shit at putting threats into proportion.

On November 24 2015 08:31 GreenHorizons wrote:


lol you jumped into the conversation with



In response to



Now you're calling me a bigot because I and others pointed out that was a stupid thing to say. Or does this have to do with Trumps Neo-Nazi propaganda and it not hurting him in the race for the Republican nomination?

On November 24 2015 08:43 Paljas wrote:
To clarify before this conversation completly goes to shit:
The point heliusx is trying to make is that, similiar how "a white person in America [...]should fear white folks (using this line of thinking)" and not black people, a black person should fear black folks, in contrary what blm is doing.

Or, to say it in the other way: heliusx is saying that black persons fearing white persons are just as bigoted as white persons fearing black persons.

Its an idiotic point to make, but w/e

On November 24 2015 08:47 heliusx wrote:

Yeah not even close.. I'm just mocking the inconsistencies in gh's "line of thinking".

On November 24 2015 08:50 Paljas wrote:

yes, and i pointed that out

Ben Carson told reporters on Monday that he has seen the news coverage of New Jersey residents cheering after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, a debunked rumor resurfaced by Donald Trump over the weekend.

He told reporters in Nevada that he "saw the film" of New Jersey residents cheering, later clarifying that he saw the "newsreels" of the cheering, according to ABC News.

Trump on Saturday claimed that he saw "thousands" of Arab Americans in
New Jersey cheering immediately following the 9/11 attacks, and reiterated the claim on Sunday.


"There are going to be people who respond inappropriately to virtually everything. I think that was an inappropriate response. I don’t know if on the basis of that all Muslims are bad people. I really think that would be a stretch," Carson told reporters, referring to the rumored cheering in New Jersey.

"There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down," he said on ABC's "This Week." "I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down, as those buildings came down, and that tells you something. It was well covered at the time."

The rumors Trump cited have been debunked by numerous fact-checkers. Some news outlets reported rumors of crowds cheering after the attack, but there was no evidence to support the few reports about Muslims cheering in New Jersey. According to CNN, some local news outlets showed images of Palestinians cheering after the attacks, but it does not appear that there are any photos or video of the events to which Trump and Carson are referring.