General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 459

Most American leaders have explicitly said that they will not refuse a nuclear first strike, so I guess we have to, once again, look into what Trump would actually be capable of, which, in my estimation, isn't that much different from the current foreign policy. This is the first candidate in which members of the military have openly said they'd disobey their orders. Regardless of whether that may be the case, it should give us pause before we descend into hysterics because, like Obama, the historical tendencies point more towards mutual accommodation within a Trump administration, rather than radical alterations or open conflict with the department of defense. Quite honestly, I feel as though we are getting to the same point I found myself in in 2004, where I had people reiterating to me that Bush was a fascist and will never leave office. We need some actual perspective on what we're facing when dealing with Trump. He COULD do a lot of things. Will he be able to or want to do them once in office? I highly doubt it. Why? Because institutional support isn't just referring to a one way exertion of power, it is also a reference to those that have immense influence on the presidential policy. See: Wall Street and the Obama White House

 

I'm honestly outraged by some of the things I have seen people say about the Tulsa shooting, but I probably shouldn't be surprised about the disgusting comments they are making. Here is a few examples:

"Hands up, clearly ignoring commands (there's no way that they were telling him to walk away and try to get to / in the vehicle), put his hands down and tried to open the vehicle door; shot dead before he could make it to a potential weapon. Clean shoot, justice served.
How could this have been avoided?
1) Don't do whatever crime that had the police stop him and point guns at him.
2) When 5 guys are pointing guns at you - DO WHAT THEY SAY.
No sympathy at all..."

"It kills me how people fail to realize that he was not complying. Sure he had his hands up but was walking back to HIS OWN car. After being told to stop, the cops had no idea of knowing what he was doing. How do they know he didn't have a gun in his car? Simply having your "hands up" doesn't mean your innocent, especially if your not complying with police orders."

It should never be okay to shoot and kill someone who isn't armed and does not pose an immediate threat, even if they aren't complying. There are so many others ways they could have taken him down without using lethal force. According to these people, it seems that if you don't comply, you deserve to die.

 

The police have already reported that he had PCP in his car, as though the possession and usage of drugs warrants someone being murdered.

 

The most disturbing part to me was the fact that they shot him first, tasered him second... and then let him bleed out while the officers backed away. No CPR, no bit of comfort attempted, and all police acted in the same manner. The helicopter pilots commentary was disgusting as well but if roles were reversed and it was Black cops shooting a white man, what would that response look like? Infuriating.

 

Also, of course, lots of Inconsistencies in the police explanation of what happened.

Crutcher family atty: Drugs or not, lethal force not necessary for Terence Crutcher

 

It's incredible to me that we're going to let this fucking imbecile be President of the United States because we're all too content and not indignant enough to stop him.

 

Honestly, I zero percent believe that there were drugs that weren't planted.

The public blindly believing all these police accounts, a good portion of which we can absolutely infer were straight up lies given our insights into how often police have done similarly, is unbelievable.

 

EDIT: Holy shit, the PCP rumor originated with the cop's defense attorney. He said "well, she clearly believed he was under the influence of some narcotic....maybe PCP."

"Well, I'm going to infer an unexpressed impression or belief.....and then conclude the worst possible incarnation of that belief." What a scum bag.

 

I had no idea he actually reads that at his rallies, that's seriously fucked up.

 

"One of the key points made by opponents of the disparity had been that all cocaine starts as powder cocaine; crack is derived from powder. The result was that street-level crack dealers were punished more heavily than their suppliers. As the Washington Post’s Jefferson Morleyexplained:

Imagine two drug dealers, one a supplier and one a street dealer. The supplier sells the street dealer three grams of cocaine. The street dealer mixes the drug with baking soda, cooks it in his microwave oven, producing six grams of crystalline smokeable crack cocaine. If he gets arrested and sent to federal court, he faces a mandatory minimum of five years in jail. The supplier has to get caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine — about 1.7 pounds — to face that much time in federal prison.

Clinton’s response to this was to concede that it was unfair — then to insist that the supplier be punished just as heavily. At every point, Clinton openly attempted to fudge and equivocate on the issue, so that black audiences would think he wanted to fix the disparity, while he simultaneously told white audiences that he would have no mercy when it came to the scourge of crack in American cities, and did not believe in being soft on drug dealers.

In 1997, the sentencing commission tried again, issuing a recommendation that the disparity be reduced to a mere ten to one. This time, Clinton signed on and promised to support the plan in his dealings with Congress. But the Congressional Black Caucus sensed Clinton’s commitment was anemic, and insisted that having ten-to-one racist sentencing was only somewhat better than having one hundred-to-one racist sentencing.

Ultimately the Black Caucus’s view didn’t matter; the proposal went nowhere and the law remained unchanged. As the CBC predicted, Clinton did not follow through on his promise to pressure Congress.

Still, Clinton now uses his tepid support for the ten-to-one plan to portray himself as a crusader for reform. Asked by Democracy Now! in 2000 to defend his record on drug crime, Clinton used it to boast that “I did my best to persuade Congress to get rid of the discrepancy between crack and powdered cocaine in the sentencing guidelines.” To another journalist, Clinton blamed the Right, saying that “by the time we got to this issue, the Republicans were in [the] majority and we just couldn’t do it.” He did not mention that when he was afforded the unrestricted opportunity to eliminate that discrepancy entirely, he had chosen not to."

Kool-Aid and Cyanide | Jacobin

 

I want to leave this here, since liberals were rejoicing about the increase in household income under Obama:

Wage gap between white and black Americans is worse today than in 1979

 

Calling Syrian refugees like me Skittles would be funny if it weren't so cruel | Shadi Martini

 

"Think of how dangerous it'd be if Trump were president..."

Report: Disabled Black Man Shot Dead by Police While Reading in the Car

 

It would be much more dangerous for minorities if Trump becomes president.

 

Not a great look, David

 

We're currently being murdered with impunity under a democratic administration. Trump's America doesn't, then, doesn't look much different than Obama's America.

 

What does Obama have the power to do to end police violence that he hasn't done?

Has the Obama presidency, helped, hurt or had no notable effect or BLM and other related movements to end police violence?

 

Pretty sure Obama called for body cams. Which we all know has no effect