But Seriously...

That racist South you've heard of? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sure seems like we handle these issues beautifully.

 

I find what he did fascinating. (Don't approve or support, just fascinating.) Because, he managed to offend ALL kinds of people. The BLM movement takes offense, Canadians take offense since he intentionally changed the lyrics to the National freaking anthem, MLB fans take offense, because politics (or "statements" of any kind, really) should be off limits for that game. Plus, I'm sure FOX and MLB front office folks were screaming a bunch of Goddammits. Really, it just is a fascinating "look at me" moment, when EVERYONE was completely caught off guard at that moment. It wasn't like Obama visited the booth, and you'd expect some politics, or the first-woman-in-the-Majors interview, or anything. It should've been totally benign. Lol. What makes it even funnier, is I'm not even sure he was trying to be political, and it could be he simply is dumb to understand how BLM would be pissed. What a moron.

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-america-could-go-dark-1468423254

Here's an interesting article about America's power grid and just how sensitive to attacks it really is. There is always talk about WMD attacks, EMP events, etc. that could bring America down. Yet here we have a bunch of unprotected, easily destroyed, hard to replace utility substations around the country that if a dozen or two dozen people worked together could cause absolute mayhem with a huge death toll.....and that is without firing a single shot.

I think this more or less falls in line with continued complaints of America's crumbling infrastructure. Sadly, it appears that while we spend 10's or 100's of billions on foreign aide and military intervention around the world, we are setting our selves up for catastrophe at home.

 

I have read so many article like this and have been for a long time, but nothing is ever done about it and no one ever seems to attack them.

 

Here is a good article about a black man describing being unfairly targeted by police. Oh yeah, he is also a Republican senator.

 

I don't disbelieve him in that these cops acted like assholes, that it was inappropriate, or even involved some racial profiling. But then at the same time...

Am I supposed to cry over this or something? I've been pulled over 5 times in the last year. 3 times for speeding, once for a tail light, and then one totally random situation where the cop followed me into a friend's driveway after I got off work Friday night. He asked what I was doing, and then apologized saying he was looking for drunks.

I've been pulled over by a cop mistaking my car for a stolen vehicle. I had a cop yell at me once when I was in college because he thought I was someone else who had just hopped 3 curbs and did a donut in a parking lot. I mean, I've interacted with cops and some of them have been incompetent or acted like shit heads. I don't think that's ok, and while it's understandable that cops deal with the worst society has on a regular basis that's still no cause to even be so much as rude over a minor traffic violations, let alone accusatory or even a little threatening.

But reading that article, he seems really torn up and wants to pull on people's heart strings while none of the shit he's talking about ever amounted to anything. Sure, we can say it's part of the larger problem with police mentality in this country, and that's certainly true, but what exactly is he getting at? What exactly does he want? Is it the removal of systemic racism? Does he want cops to be more polite? Is this related to the shady police shootings, and if that argument is going to be made, then to what extent? How do you meaningfully draw that connection? What standards are the right ones? More importantly, what is fair to the cops, and if we are going to hold them to a higher standard then what criticism is warranted and what is just hearsay and people bitching about minor inconveniences?

I guess what I'm trying to say is... he's right? Yet, what is the point of this speech other than trying to ambiguously throw more fuel on the racism fire and pander to his constituents?

"Let me tell you about a time man... let me tell you about what's it's really like for these people... let me share a story to enlighten you...." Where the fuck are the solutions, and whatever happened to common sense? I don't vote for politicians because they're like me, or because they can eloquently spin a narrative. Fine, do that. You have to win the election, but you already won the election. Maybe find a couple minutes to throw a tangible idea in there, or gasp, table it on the senate floor and actually get some shit done. This BLM thing has been going on for two years now, and I've seen virtually nothing other than people throwing their hands in the air and blubbering that not enough Americans really get it. Our system was not designed to move rapidly, but at this pace maybe when his grandson runs for senator we'll be close to actually passing a bill.

 

I think the one thing missing in the dialogue of police vs. the black community is responsibility. All we hear is how badly the police treat the blacks and that's pretty much it. The black community needs to come together and acknowledge there is a problem with the culture of glorifying pimps, hustlers, gang bangers, dope sellers and barely literate rappers. This one sided narrative about the horrible police is just refusing to accept responsibility for the culture that built the problem in the first place.

The fact is that blacks are 12.2% of the US population. Black males are about 6% of the population. Black males 18-24 are probably around 4% of the population. That 4% of the population commits as much violent crime as the other 96% of the society. This is why police target them. It's unfortunate that people that are obeying the law get caught in the trap, but it is going to happen when you have such an easy identifier of likelihood to commit a crime.

I guarantee that if the black community as a whole would bring their crime numbers down to levels that more appropriately reflected their population this harassment and profiling would stop.

 

Really? You never hear about that? Because every single conversation I have or hear about this that includes white people involves someone popping up and yelling BUT WHAT ABOUT BLACK ON BLACK CRIME???

I know that you're obsessed with Chicago and gang violence there, but you haven't brought up how the crazy uptick has coincided with the budget crisis which has been cutting a lot of the programs and causes that are dedicated to curtailing or solving gang and violence issues, like after school programs and summer jobs programs and mentoring services. There are plenty of things being done, or at least attempting to be done, in inner cities to help but they usually rely on precious tax dollars to have any kind of impact or to survive at all so heaven forbid that money goes towards programs benefiting poor urban nonwhite people. I know how the same people quick to point out the responsibilities of the black community to solve their own problems also love when that happens with their tax money.

 

Meh, substations are inherently dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. The voltages are high enough that if you get close enough to the gear without the proper procedures or equipment you can get an arc to flash over and fry you. Even just walking around the substation can kill you if your steps are too big.

It would be a pain in the ass if somebody attacked a bunch of them, but the utilities would just shut in the damaged stations, re-route the transmission lines and shed any unnecessary loads (looking at you general public). Large industrial sites, and essential services might be on backup generators for a bit, but their power would be quickly restored.

 

I think it's also worth looking into those statistics and thinking about why they are the way they are.

Do you think black people actually commit that much more crime than white people?

I think the failed war on drugs which was designed to specifically target black people created the stats that we are seeing. It was designed to make people think black people are just big huge criminals. It fostered a mentality which continues to permeate into law enforcement. It's getting better.

I think I touched briefly on this topic in a different post but someone from Regan's administration openly admitted why the war on drugs was started and it was to target black people. So of course the stats will prove they are criminals more than white people because that's exactly what they wanted.

I'm not saying violent crime shouldn't be punished where it happens. I've had my car stolen and wrecked by a 14 year old black kid. Do I hope he has penile cancer spreading to his anus? Yes. But I also recognize the problem has trickled down because racist policies from the past have created problems we still have today.

 

I remember that happening, people in NY city were calling 911 worried about the bright lights in the sky (they couldn't see the stars normally because of all the light pollution). That was due to power generation plants being shut in as the load exceeded the generating capacity and destabilized the grid. That's a much different scenario than taking out a few substations. Substations don't generate power, they only increase the voltage for transmission or decrease it for use at the other end. Utilities have the ability to start shedding load if things start to go south on them and the first loads to go are always residential. You would start to see brownouts or rolling blackouts in residential area's while leaving industrial and essential services operating.

Losing the ability to generate power is significantly more worrisome than being able route it properly on the grid. Bringing a shut in power plant back on line and connecting it to the grid again takes time. Particularly in the summer when everyone leaves their A/C units turned on.

I would also say generating plants are much harder targets to neutralise than a substation.

 

I was going to say the same. Controlled access points and wire fences. They are usually manned as well which can act as a deterrent to a certain degree.

I can't imagine these plants have their control systems accessible to outside networks and available to hackers. I guess anything's possible, as it was shown with the centrifuges in Iran. Somebody still managed to load a virus into their control system that was capable of destroying the machines.