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[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Comments

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Bill in 2007: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

At least he seemed a little sharper then. ;)
Old age may be softening him.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

He's the racist uncle at family gatherings. The worst thing is that like Rush, he isn't so much softer as just more amnesia-prone

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

The real problem is when you are as intellectually disadvantaged as O'Reilly it must be difficult to imagine any group of which you are a member having any sort of privilege.

God really hates stupid people. But Roops, in his beneficent kindness, still finds a place on the telly for them...well someone needs to tell folk in the red states what (& how) to think.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Kristof has an interesting piece related to this.

~ ~ ~

Joshua Correll of the University of Colorado at Boulder has used an online shooter video game to try to measure these unconscious attitudes (you can play the game yourself (http://www.csun.edu/~dma/FPST/consent.html)). The player takes on the role of a police officer who is confronted with a series of images of white or black men variously holding guns or innocent objects such as wallets or cellphones. The aim is to shoot anyone with a gun while holstering your weapon in other cases.

Ordinary players (often university undergraduates) routinely shoot more quickly at black men than at white men, and are more likely to mistakenly shoot an unarmed black man than an unarmed white man.

I’m typical. The first time I took the test, years ago, I shot armed blacks in an average of 0.679 seconds while waiting slightly longer — 0.694 seconds — to shoot armed whites. I also holstered more quickly when confronted with unarmed whites than with unarmed blacks.

In effect, we have a more impulsive trigger finger when confronted by black men and are more cautious with whites. This is true of black players as well, apparently because they absorb the same cultural values as everyone else: Correll has found no statistically significant difference between the play of blacks and that of whites in the shooting game.

“There’s a whole culture that promotes this idea of aggressive young black men,” Correll notes. “In our minds, young black men are associated with danger.”

-- NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/opinion/nicholas-kristof-is-everyone-a-little-bit-racist.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region)

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

"....and we are public enemy #1....."

[telemann.livejournal.com]

This was an interesting statistic:

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

The 'poor people tax'. If you cut taxes,
you have to get funding somewhere, and
local government has its ways.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Fines and court costs are Ferguson's 2nd highest source of income for the town. 90 percent of those fined / or have warrants issued are African Americans. It turns out a lot of the warrants are for non violent crimes. During routine traffic stops or rolling stops, a police officer will cite them for what are called the three big poverty crimes. They're usually ticketed for driving with a suspended license, no proof of having car insurance, and failure to register a vehicle. The reason typically are they can't afford to pay for these things.


So once they're cited, they get brought into a magistrate, and a bond hearing typically sets with bail at the exact dollar amount of the fines, so the person who has no ability to pay the fine, or even get the things which would have prevent the citation in the first place, when they appear before a judge, even if they make a statement they can't pay the fine or the bond, they're often jailed.

On a personal note: I have seen that happen myself in a traffic court. A white woman in her 40s had been caught driving 3 times under a suspended license. She had a lawyer, and got off with only a fine and community service. In the afternoon court session: a 22 year old African male was caught driving with a suspended license. 1st offense. He was sentenced to 40 hours in jail, but he was allowed to serve time on the weekends.

A group of pro-bono lawyers in St. Louis have drafted a white paper (http://www.archcitydefenders.org/whitepaper.pdf)after a 5 year study of the court system, with some common sense solutions to this issue. They ask that the mayor overturn the warrants, and if he doesn't have the legal authority (the mayor's claim), then certainly the prosecutors and judges have the discretion not put these folks in jail.

http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/08/learning_from_ferguson_the_danger_of_criminal_debt.html

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

There is a damning history of the St. Louis area. Check out the history of Kirkwood (http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/378283.html), for example, followed by what happened with Cookie Thorton (http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/378552.html).

bradhicks seems to have moved to Google+, so I haven't been keeping up lately. I might poke about soon and see what he has to say about Ferguson.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Ok, that would be great, thanks.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Just checked out his stuff. Yikes! (https://plus.google.com/107025831300576738492/posts) Un-fucking-deciferable.

Edit: I meant Google+, not the dude.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Way less bad if you read it in your stream. Of course, reading it in your stream means chancing missing it. Also he doesn't post a lot.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Google+? But why?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Because it's got a number of simple social networking features that LJ lacks, integrates with as many things as Facebook does, and *isn't Facebook*.

I know a whole lot of people who've moved their personal-life blogging to G+ for pretty much exactly that reason. I'm not a huge fan myself - way too easy to lose a post since G+ aped the idiotic "not a sequential chronological list of posts" friends list format - but I get it. People use G+ for the same reason people use Facebook, except G+ is run by Google and thus isn't actively maliciously out to ruin your life.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The jury's out on Google's motives (life ruination or no). All I can say is they have consistently avoided the kind of poop-eater comments and actions that mar the likes of F&c@Book.

Perhaps they are still too subtle for users to notice the ruination action.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

"Google is not yet actively, maliciously, obviously trying to make you suffer, the way Facebook always does and always has".

Better?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Much, though I would prefer ". . . not yet obviously acting maliciously. . . ." This gives, I feel, more accuracy in describing the malicious activity that is not yet obvious.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I still got my fingers crossed for a LiveJournal revival. :D

[blackdwarv.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping Yahoo buys then spins off a unified product with Flicr, Tumblr and LJ, combining the best aspects of all them all.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

I can go for that dream. However, after establishing itself and Flicker, I don't think they have really done anything very smart and successful, but merely trying to hold on to what success they had, trying to keep from falling into oblivion, where LJ seems to have already fallen.

[blackdwarv.livejournal.com]

Presisely. This is something fairly easy they can do with products they (more or less) own, yet don't seem to have figured out.

LJ exists in a fairly unique niche... not quite blog, not quite social network. It's by nature conversation-based and longform... something that FB and G+ do not have (and Twitter... ugh.)

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Because shiny.

[warrickwilson.livejournal.com]

he's just an angry voice for people who can't speak for themselves or turn their misgivings into something reasonable. misleader and trickster.