Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

I do believe the more people keep talking about "Defunding the police," the more you are going to scare away those who are in the middle/moderates. Elections are coming soon, and the majority of voters overwhelming votes on feelings, not facts.

 

Sorry, forgot about the paywall. It's the Post's own study, not a reprint of someone else's.
The salient points:

 

@ergopower It doesn't look like the control for number of interactions with police, or some proxy thereof. That varies by race.

 

Agreed, but is there reliable data for that anywhere? Some (most?) interactions aren't reported at all if they don't result in a charge or an official warning.
Edit: lots of people claim African Americans are subjected to a disproportionate number of interactions due to their race and that this is part of the problem. How would you adjust the risk of death by race if you knew the total number of interactions by race?

 

The goal is to replace police with something better. I might support a police force with the same powers they have today if we required police officers to complete four years of law school, pass a bar exam and they revoke their license when they break the law and/or have too many complaints on file.

 

Yes. That phrase is a problem, as it doesn't accurately describe what people mean when they say it.

 

I'd rather they take the money, give all the BLM folks and their rivals free transportation to Washington DC, and carpet bomb the whole f'ing District into oblivion. So many problems fixed.

We can relocate the capital to Texas, where at least people have the balls to shoot looters in the face.

 

The British tried that. Remember Australia?

Look up Ned Kelly. For instance here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly

Did you know he was so fed up with the police and the authorities in his time that he actually started a war with his gang? He was quite successful and it required an overwhelming siege to stop him and his gang.

After his death it was concluded that he had good reason to be angry with the police and the authorities (in short poor people were treated like shit and kept poor). The police played an important role in that process so guess what: the police had to make changes to piss less people off.

I could go on but I am already too grumpy right now. Check this out.



Done. Have fun learning something new.

 

The phrase is not a problem and people who say it mean it. But it is scaring reasonable people shitless so the "explaining" in the media is starting. "NOOOO, we really do not mean that stupid shit we are saying, we mean something entirely different and really harmless". It was the same with the Green New Deal. All the way back from rebuilding the US from scratch, abolishing air travel, getting rid of all the cows to... Tesla, more renewables, and clean air. Who would not agree?

 

Cynical, but believable. The older I get, the more I believe power determines who wins and loses, not ethics.

 

Most cynical person I’ve ever known worked as a staffer for Senator Stevens back in the 90s. He used his cynicism like a super power to predict the future. Every decision he made assumed that humans in large groups were foolish and predictable. He’s now quite rich- made his fortune playing derivatives in the stock market in 2008 and retired to Japan because of the inexpensive healthcare system.

 

It's not talked about as much now as it was 20 years ago, but soon technology will allow us to ditch our representatives and truly govern ourselves.

It would have been a logistical nightmare 250 years ago but now with everyone walking around with a potential voting machine in their pockets, nearly every decision can be a referendum.

 

I am a stern believer that we all are responsible for what we do and what we do not do. Nobody can take this responsibitily away from you.
The vast majority of us live in society. Societies are held together by a common denominator which is a set of customs, rules, heritage, does and don'ts (Rousseau's contrat social). Society has the right and the obligation to hold individuals accountable for what they do or what they don't do and we the indicviduals cannot argue with that because we are responsible.
That holds true for looters and that holds true for policemen they are no different.
If society fails to hold people accountable some will get dissatisfied with the society they live in, which in turn creates centrifugal forces which may lead to that societies failure.
I think at the moment there is unfortunately a tendency in this world to create dissent inside socities.

 

Democracy is rightly criticised as rule by the ignorant, but as choice of systems go, given the fallibility of benevolent dictatorship, its about the best we can ask for.

Rule by Instagram/Twitter? Oh Sheeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiit!

 

Cannot say it any better, and it is happening right now. We are actually being governed by the10,000 of the most outraged and the loudest screeching idiots on Twitter.

That idea is so incredible... in the tower of nightmares, it lives 100 floors above defunding the police

Every election, every decision actually is not a referendum, it becomes a direct contest between:
- Chinese information operations and information warfare - yes it is a part of Chinese armed forces
- Russian Information Countermeasures
- Hackers Anonymous
- Any cyber smart campaign volunteers
- countless numbers of smart teenagers in countless basements
- well I would not even mention NSA and half a dozen other totally benign outfits of the US government

And we would be able to watch it live on CNN. I just cannot wait