US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4275

The Republican Party, as it prepares for its convention next week has checked off item No. 1 on its housekeeping list — drafting a party platform. The document reflects the conservative views of its authors, many of whom are party activists. So don't look for any concessions to changing views among the broader public on key social issues.

Four years ago, the platform called state court decisions legalizing same-sex marriage "an assault on the foundations of our society." Since then, the Supreme Court backed the right of same-sex couples to wed. But in two days of deliberations this week, platform committee members rejected all attempts to sound a more moderate tone on the matter.

"A man and a woman family is the best, ideal vehicle for raising children," according to James Bopp, a GOP delegate from Indiana, and a prominent conservative attorney.

Bopp and most other delegates supported language in this year's platform that says children "deserve a married mom and dad," and refers to "natural marriage" as between a man and a woman. Bopp says delegates' concern "has nothing to do with whether or not gays are getting married." Rather, he says, it's that 40 percent of the births in the U.S. are by girls and women who are not married.

A handful of platform committee members unsuccessfully sought to eliminate language like "natural marriage." Among them was Rachel Hoff, a delegate from Washington D.C., who is the first openly gay member of the platform committee.

Hoff says the platform is not only a statement of principles but a marketing device for the party. And as such she says its failing.

"I certainly think we're alienating the LGBT community who might consider voting Republican," she says. "We're certainly alienating members of the Republican Party who are in the LGBT community and bravely out in that way. But were also alienating young voters."

Still, delegate Leslie Rutledge, who is Arkansas' attorney general, says gays and lesbians are welcome in the party. She says delegates who spoke out against amendments by Hoff and others were not speaking out against the LGBT community.

"It was including any specific groups," Rutledge says. "I have many friends, close friends who are LGBT and that we must reach out to. They are Republican and so we are a big tent party."

Polls show a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, and allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice. And presumptive nominee Donald Trump has expressed more moderate views on those issues as well.

On July 14 2016 08:54 Plansix wrote:

In this controlled study under less stress than in the field, we only kill unarmed people around 13% of the time. Everything is fine. Except that we kill unarmed people more than 1/10 times. And this does nothing to address existing racial bias in all other forms of police work.

As much as I love these studies, until we get the legit data on police use of lethal force nation wide, its all speculation based on models and simulations.

On July 14 2016 09:04 zulu_nation8 wrote:


you mean like social science?

“It suggests that police officers are far more circumspect than they’re usually given credit for,” Dr. Weitzer said. “But at the same time there’s the age-old problem of the lab studies versus the real world.” Officers may be tired, afraid or unable to see clearly, or all of those things, when a partner starts firing.

“Or let’s say officers might respond to a situation and suddenly are surrounded by onlookers, bystanders who are yelling at them; that is going to make you more tense,” Dr. Weitzer said. “It’s not possible to capture all that in a study like this.”

On July 14 2016 09:15 Plansix wrote:

Yes, which freely admits its own limitations, especially when trying to draw a conclusion nation wide from a sample set. I do not dispute the findings of the test at all. I am simply acknowledging the limitations as state the article itself.

On July 14 2016 09:29 Ghostcom wrote:


Those limitations only pertain to the number of times they would have shot - one would have to stretch rather far to argue that this bias is discriminatory and thus the finding of no racism is probably pretty sound.

SAN DIEGO — Donald Trump's lawyer cited a laundry list of legal precedents Wednesday as he fought in court to keep potentially embarrassing deposition videos of the presumptive GOP nominee from going public, but one of those points seemed to resonate a bit more than others: an invocation of the litigation over Hillary Clinton's private email server.

Arguing to shield the recordings of Trump enduring more than ten hours of questioning in class-action fraud lawsuits over his Trump University program, attorney Daniel Petrocelli urged U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel to follow the example of a fellow judge in Washington who ruled against public access to videos of Clinton aides testifying about the former secretary's use of a private email server.

"We have an almost identical situation that just came up in the Hillary Clinton email case," Petrocelli said, noting that the judge in Washington decided to sequester the videos at the request of former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.
"But she's not a candidate for president," Curiel chimed in.

Petrocelli acknowledged that, but noted that the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit at issue is exploring Clinton's actions as secretary of state, while the Trump University lawsuits relate solely to events that occurred while Trump was promoting the now-defunct real estate seminar program as he worked in the private sector.

"The conduct was about a public official and the discharge of her duties while in office," Petrocelli argued. "The case involved alleged misconduct by a sitting secretary of state. This case involves no such allegation of misconduct by a sitting public official. This case involves purely private conduct by a company and people who bought a ticket to these events and signed up for these courses."

Curiel did not rule immediately on Trump's request to protect the videos or a related media request to lift all restrictions on the videos' release, so it was difficult to tell whether he bought into Petrocelli's what's-good-for-the-gander-is-good-for-the-goose argument about Clinton.

On July 14 2016 09:27 Plansix wrote:
The over all refrain of finding articles that show police do shoot black people any more that white people in controlled tests is informative. But it also neglects the larger point that police seem to shoot a lot of unarmed people. We had a in depth discussion about police training yesterday and the lack of mediation and negotiation training.

Yet here we are again, back at the beginning again. Talking about a study that shows police shoot armed people 13% of the time and forcing of if racism is a problem.

Edit: in the effort to moving on, lets all accept that police used excessive lethal force the exact same amount for all races. Now that we have accepted this, it only validates the complaints current complaints and shows that whites should also be protesting police violence and excessive force. Demanding that they be held accountable.

Police have shot and killed a young black man (ages 18 to 29) — such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. —175 times since January 2015; 24 of them were unarmed. Over that same period, police have shot and killed 172 young white men, 18 of whom were unarmed. Once again, while in raw numbers there were similar totals of white and black victims, blacks were killed at rates disproportionate to their percentage of the U.S. population. Of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40 percent of them were black men, even though black men make up just 6 percent of the nation’s population.

About 13 percent of all black people who have been fatally shot by police since January 2015 were unarmed, compared with 7 percent of all white people.

On July 14 2016 09:40 zulu_nation8 wrote:


This is straight up wrong:



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?utm_term=.a30570d10534

Donald Trump told Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday that he witnessed people call for a moment of silence for the man who killed five police officers and wounded eleven other people at a Black Lives Matter rally last week.

Asked by the Fox News host if there was a divide between blacks and whites in America, Trump used this as an example of how “there would seem to be."

“It's getting more and more obvious and it's very sad, very sad,” Trump went on. “When somebody called for a moment of silence to this maniac that shot the five police, you just see what's going on. It's a very, very sad situation.”

There were no media reports about anyone calling for a moment of silence for gunman Micah Johnson, though groups from Congress to the New York Stock Exchange held moments of silence for the victims of last Thursday's mass shooting. Searches on social media for people making such calls also came up short.

Despite this lack of evidence, Trump reiterated the claim at a rally in Westfield, Indiana on Tuesday night, where he criticized Black Lives Matter for holding rallies across the country the weekend after the Dallas shootings.

“The other night you had 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage,” he said. “Marches all over the United States—and tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac! And some people ask for a moment of silence for him. For the killer!”

On July 14 2016 09:44 Plansix wrote:

The article you just cited showed the use of lethal force, but not if it was excessive or not. Rather than rushing to google to try and prove someone wrong by posting a link, maybe engage with the discussion. Also, my suggestion was a hypothetical to move the discussion forward and not based on any specific data.

On July 14 2016 09:46 zulu_nation8 wrote:


Wait, fatally shooting an unarmed person is not an indicator of excessive force?

On July 14 2016 09:50 Ghostcom wrote:


No, there are situations in which such a shooting might be warranted (person tries to grasp the officers gun for example - that is registered as shooting an unarmed). Further is there an actual statistical difference between the numbers you cited? I can't run the numbers currently.

The results provide evidence of a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average. Furthermore, the results of multi-level modeling show that there exists significant heterogeneity across counties in the extent of racial bias in police shootings, with some counties showing relative risk ratios of 20 to 1 or more. Finally, analysis of police shooting data as a function of county-level predictors suggests that racial bias in police shootings is most likely to emerge in police departments in larger metropolitan counties with low median incomes and a sizable portion of black residents, especially when there is high financial inequality in that county. There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.

On July 14 2016 10:08 Plansix wrote:
It is difficult to discuss anything with people who sole purpose in the thread is to combat the the mythical "narrative" by posting links to articles over and over and over. And then when people point out that the article doesn't represent what you claim, you adopt the "Sure, but let me tell you why it proves me right anyways."

If anything, with both view each other as disingenuous, so further discussion is fruitless.

Hillary Clinton could campaign much more aggressively against climate change than any US presidential candidate before her, under a draft platform adopted by Democratic party leaders.

The leaders committed the presumptive Democratic nominee to a carbon tax, a climate test for future pipelines and tighter rules on fracking – all stronger positions than those held by Clinton herself at the start of the race.

The Clinton camp said, after the platform was adopted, that she does not support a carbon tax and the draft still needs to be ratified at the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia this month.

But the draft platform reflects the influence of Bernie Sanders and other liberals on the 2016 race, and the recognition by Clinton of the need to win over those supporters in swing states such as Colorado, Florida and Virginia where there is strong concern about climate change.

The bold stance could also help Clinton define Donald Trump as a climate denier who is out of touch with reality.

The draft platform calls for putting a price on carbon, making approval of pipelines contingent on a climate test, stronger regulation of fracking – especially concerning water – and giving priority to renewable energy over natural gas power plants.

Campaign groups claimed the platform as a win for the environmental movement – despite a much publicized failure to gather support for a ban on fracking, which had been a key goal.

Josh Fox, the maker of the 2010 documentary Gasland who was on the platform committee, said campaigners had won a “monumental victory” in putting pipelines to a climate test, and giving priority to wind and solar power.

A similar consideration was used by Barack Obama to reject the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

On July 14 2016 10:04 zulu_nation8 wrote:
Here's another study that uses data from the independently compiled U.S. Police-Shooting Database (USPSD). Let's see how quickly the people who tried throwing mud on the NYT Harvard black economics professor study will agree with this. And how many will have bothered to read it.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0141854#sec005