US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4193

On July 08 2016 05:59 OuchyDathurts wrote:


Honestly I think this is part of the problem. Being a cop is basically a job that no one is really qualified to do and no person in their right mind would want. What person really wants to wield that kind of power? I think the fact that we have a lot of very ordinary people doing a job that is extraordinary in nature leads to a ton of problems. The average Joe just isn't cut out for that line of work and yet they're out there doing it anyway and when the rubber meets the road weak people crumble and the shit hits the fan. To do the job properly calls for extraordinary people.

On July 08 2016 06:11 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


I agree that's part of the problem. It's by no means an easy job, especially when the communities you police despise you because someone else couldn't handle the pressures of the job and fucked up. They have to work as positions of authority in cultures where 'police are out to assassinate us, they're all racist, fuck the po-lice' is commonplace and there is no respect for the authority conferred upon their position. Then they have to go out and put their lives on the line serving these same people.

On July 08 2016 06:11 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


I agree that's part of the problem. It's by no means an easy job, especially when the communities you police despise you because someone else couldn't handle the pressures of the job and fucked up. They have to work as positions of authority in cultures where 'police are out to assassinate us, they're all racist, fuck the po-lice' is commonplace and there is no respect for the authority conferred upon their position. Then they have to go out and put their lives on the line serving these same people.

On July 08 2016 06:11 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


I agree that's part of the problem. It's by no means an easy job, especially when the communities you police despise you because someone else couldn't handle the pressures of the job and fucked up. They have to work as positions of authority in cultures where 'police are out to assassinate us, they're all racist, fuck the po-lice' is commonplace and there is no respect for the authority conferred upon their position. Then they have to go out and put their lives on the line serving these same people.

On July 08 2016 06:15 zlefin wrote:

respect has to be earned, and in some cases, the police haven't, and have shown themselves unworthy of it.
Quite a difficult issue to fix of course.

On July 08 2016 05:42 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


The vast majority of police are just ordinary people doing their job.

On July 08 2016 06:15 zlefin wrote:

respect has to be earned, and in some cases, the police haven't, and have shown themselves unworthy of it.
Quite a difficult issue to fix of course.

On July 08 2016 06:26 biology]major wrote:


I enjoy seeing the irony when the left says oh it's only small minority of Muslims that are terrorists, but then fail to apply their own logic to the police. What you are seeing is a very small portion of the whole picture, and the vast majority of cops do their jobs to protect civilians. The actual problem lies in the fact that there is no one to hold the police accountable when the bad apples act up and that has created this environment, but for the most part I respect em

On July 08 2016 06:31 Gorsameth wrote:

'Muslims' are not tasked with protecting the population
Police don't get a lot of slack because of the function they serve.

Your comparing apples with vending machines.

My father-in-law is not an anti-Semite.

It’s that simple, really. Donald Trump is not anti-Semitic and he’s not a racist. Despite the best efforts of his political opponents and a large swath of the media to hold Donald Trump accountable for the utterances of even the most fringe of his supporters—a standard to which no other candidate is ever held—the worst that his detractors can fairly say about him is that he has been careless in retweeting imagery that can be interpreted as offensive.

I read the Dana Schwartz piece that appeared on Observer.com. As always, there are thoughtful points but journalists, even those who work for me at the Observer, are not always right. While I respect her opinion, I want to show another side to explain why I disagree.

In my opinion, accusations like “racist” and “anti-Semite” are being thrown around with a carelessness that risks rendering these words meaningless.

If even the slightest infraction against what the speech police have deemed correct speech is instantly shouted down with taunts of “racist” then what is left to condemn the actual racists? What do we call the people who won’t hire minorities or beat others up for their religion?

This is not idle philosophy to me. I am the grandson of Holocaust survivors. On December 7, 1941—Pearl Harbor Day—the Nazis surrounded the ghetto of Novogroduk, and sorted the residents into two lines: those selected to die were put on the right; those who would live were put on the left. My grandmother’s sister, Esther, raced into a building to hide. A boy who had seen her running dragged her out and she was one of about 5100 Jews to be killed during this first slaughter of the Jews in Novogrudok. On the night before Rosh Hashana 1943, the 250 Jews who remained of the town’s 20,000 plotted an escape through a tunnel they had painstakingly dug beneath the fence. The searchlights were disabled and the Jews removed nails from the metal roof so that it would rattle in the wind and hopefully mask the sounds of the escaping prisoners.

My grandmother and her sister didn’t want to leave their father behind. They went to the back of the line to be near him. When the first Jews emerged from the tunnel, the Nazis were waiting for them and began shooting. My grandmother’s brother Chanon, for whom my father is named, was killed along with about 50 others. My grandmother made it to the woods, where she joined the Bielski Brigade of partisan resistance fighters. There she met my grandfather, who had escaped from a labor camp called Voritz. He had lived in a hole in the woods—a literal hole that he had dug—for three years, foraging for food, staying out of sight and sleeping in that hole for the duration of the brutal Russian winter.

I go into these details, which I have never discussed, because it’s important to me that people understand where I’m coming from when I report that I know the difference between actual, dangerous intolerance versus these labels that get tossed around in an effort to score political points.

The difference between me and the journalists and Twitter throngs who find it so convenient to dismiss my father in law is simple. I know him and they don’t.

It doesn’t take a ton of courage to join a mob. It’s actually the easiest thing to do. What’s a little harder is to weigh carefully a person’s actions over the course of a long and exceptionally distinguished career. The best lesson I have learned from watching this election from the front row is that we are all better off when we challenge what we believe to be truths and seek the people who disagree with us to try and understand their point of view.

On July 08 2016 06:26 biology]major wrote:


I enjoy seeing the irony when the left says oh it's only small minority of Muslims that are terrorists, but then fail to apply their own logic to the police. What you are seeing is a very small portion of the whole picture, and the vast majority of cops do their jobs to protect civilians. The actual problem lies in the fact that there is no one to hold the police accountable when the bad apples act up and that has created this environment, but for the most part I respect em

On July 08 2016 05:59 OuchyDathurts wrote:


Honestly I think this is part of the problem. Being a cop is basically a job that no one is really qualified to do and no person in their right mind would want. What person really wants to wield that kind of power? I think the fact that we have a lot of very ordinary people doing a job that is extraordinary in nature leads to a ton of problems. The average Joe just isn't cut out for that line of work and yet they're out there doing it anyway and when the rubber meets the road weak people crumble and the shit hits the fan. To do the job properly calls for extraordinary people.

On July 08 2016 06:26 biology]major wrote:


I enjoy seeing the irony when the left says oh it's only small minority of Muslims that are terrorists, but then fail to apply their own logic to the police. What you are seeing is a very small portion of the whole picture, and the vast majority of cops do their jobs to protect civilians. The actual problem lies in the fact that there is no one to hold the police accountable when the bad apples act up and that has created this environment, but for the most part I respect em

On July 08 2016 06:11 GGTeMpLaR wrote:


I agree that's part of the problem. It's by no means an easy job, especially when the communities you police despise you because someone else couldn't handle the pressures of the job and fucked up. They have to work as positions of authority in cultures where 'police are out to assassinate us, they're all racist, fuck the po-lice' is commonplace and there is no respect for the authority conferred upon their position. Then they have to go out and put their lives on the line serving these same people.

On July 08 2016 06:28 OuchyDathurts wrote:


No one makes them take the job though. Its a hard job if they can't handle it don't sign up for it. The vast majority of cops shouldn't be cops. Police shouldn't be revenue collectors, their performance shouldn't be based on quotas, they need to be enforcing way way way less stupid laws, there should be a fraction of the total number of police now like way less cops total, there should be way more oversight, way more regulation, body cams, dash cams. They should be significantly better trained, constantly tested and evaluated, rigorous physical and mental fitness testing no tub of shit cops, they should be paid well because they should be the cream of the crop, they should be from the communities they serve. They're currently none of those things.

This country has some things all wrong and the criminal justice system is right up there. Police should be the Navy Seals or Delta Force of humans. The apex, the best of the best. But not at killing people, at being strong, smart, brave, but also kind and caring. People are always going to resent authority, they always have and they always will, nothing will change that. It's part of the job and the type of person we want as police should know that and totally get it. People are going to dislike them and it's understandable for them to. They still have a job to do though and that job isn't being done properly right now.

Trump's son-in-law under fire from family

Kushner, Ivanka Trump's husband, attempted to defend his father-in-law from what the campaign says is a journalistic mob driven by political correctness. In a piece published Wednesday, Kushner revealed his grandparents' story of survival during World War II because, he wrote, “it’s important to me that people understand where I’m coming from when I report that I know the difference between actual, dangerous intolerance versus these labels that get tossed around in an effort to score political points.”

But Kushner’s estranged relatives are angry about his decision to invoke their grandparents’ story as Holocaust survivors — and they let it be known on social media, complete with a few typos.

“I have a different take­away from my Grandparents' experience in the war,” Marc Kushner, a New York City-based architect and first cousin, wrote in a Facebook post Thursday morning with a link to his cousin’s Op-Ed. “It is our responsibility as the next generation to speak up against hate. Anti­semitism or otherwise.”

He also posted a link to a piece by Dana Schwartz, a Jewish woman who works for Jared Kushner at the New York Observer and who asked him point blank: “[H]ow do you allow this?”

Jacob Schulder, another cousin, went even further in a comment on Marc Kushner’s post, writing: “When an out of touch with reality nominee hires an out of touch with reality campaign manager, who is also a son­-in-­law, you get the BS Jared wrote. I don't think Trump is an anti­Semite; I think he's a lying idiot (among other things) with little to no experiences outside his teetering fiefdom of failed development projects, divorces, bankrupted sports leagues, fraudulent 'Universities' and golf courses (and the list keeps going). The very first thing a responsible campaign manager should do, I'd think, and I mean the very first thing, would be to take away his father-­in­-law's Twitter account. Even Joseph Kushner would've had the street smarts to figure that one out while living on boiled potatoes in the forest.”

He continued: “That my grandparents have been dragged into this is a shame. Thank you Jared for using something sacred and special to the descendants of Joe and Rae Kushner to validate the sloppy manner in which you've handled this campaign. From the references to 'Palestine' at the AIPAC conference (which got Donald jeered) to the justification of the itchy Twitter fingers your father­in­law has, you've managed to further prove what so many of us have known for many years. Kudos to you for having gone this far; no one expected this. But for the sake of the family name, which may have no meaning to you but still has meaning to others, please don't invoke our grandparents in vain just so you can sleep better at night. It is self serving and disgusting.”