You clearly don't know my family, I could put up with either for a while. Obama smoked weed and did coke, wasn't eliminated from the race for president (nor do I think he should have been) but to me that would be closer to disqualification than a poorly timed retard joke. Both show poor decision making and whatever. I get that Trump is an asshole, says stupid things, and may not be a good dude but I simply feel like Hillary is an intentional liar and has done some really shady shit that we don't totally know about yet. So I won't vote for her because I feel like it's obvious that she is deceitful and dangerous. I don't know if I could vote for Trump either, this might be a year to look at the rest of the ticket to find the best local people and do some research on Johnson. One other thought, if Hillary was the beacon of honesty, hope, and truth you make her out to be; why is she in a close race with Trump?
As the saying goes: "Democrats fall in love, while Republicans fall in line." I think that's a huge part of this election story; you have the vast majority of Republicans willing to vote for Trump, regardless of any other factor, simply because there's an R next to his name on the ballot. We've had people in this thread even admit to as much. On the other hand, a lot of Democrats are seemingly hesitant to blindly support Hillary as the Democratic nominee. Whether that's due to a personal dislike for her, feeling "Berned" by the way the primary played out or just sick of the status quo being maintained for another 4-8 years, you aren't seeing that automatic 40% party allegiance that you're seeing with Trump. For me, I look at it from this perspective; Is Hillary my personal favorite choice in this election? No. I actually voted for Bernie in the primaries. Policy by policy, I actually agree most with Jill Stein and the Green party. However; seeing that I live in Ohio (Yay! It's our year to be relevant for one day in November again!), I feel like I actually need to vote for one of the main candidates and I'll be voting for Clinton for more than just the "Anybody but Trump" standpoint. My two biggest factors in determining my vote are tied to my perceived ability of the candidate to conduct foreign policy and the fact that there's the possibility of up to (worst case) 4 supreme court appointees being made in the next 4-8 years. A lot of talk has been made about how regardless of who gets elected, from a domestic policy standpoint, they'll be kept in check. And that's probably true, because most domestic policy is shaped by congress. But from a foreign policy perspective? I can't even imagine how quickly we'd be fucked under Trump. The guy has to be one of the thinnest skinned people ever given the amount of public exposure he's gotten over the years. And we're seriously considering giving him the keys to the nuclear arsenal? On the other side, I don't agree 100% with Clinton's foreign policy; she's a bit too hawkish for my taste, but at the same time she's show over her tenure in public service to at least be civil and level headed enough to not just fly off the handle at any perceived slight. As far as the supreme court goes; I'll just say that I am in favor of a liberal court that won't try to restrict any social liberties against a specific group (women's health issues, LBGT rights, separation of church and state being the biggest) and I don't feel comfortable with any of the current group of republicans making nominations, as they've all hunkered in and stated that one of their biggest litmus tests is if their nominee would try and overturn Roe v. Wade.
I think you've made fair points. I disagree a bit on foreign policy but only in the level of our involvement, not in what you said about the Trump/Clinton. I personally would rather see us disengage completely from the Middle East and stop sending so much money/people to meddle. That's more Libertarian than Rep/Dem and I realize bailing out quickly would create all kinds of a shit storm. So we can't just do that. I'm not so sure that Trump would as bad as it looks on the surface but agree that he is thin skinned and is guaranteed to make a few idiotic comments that shake things up. On the supreme court, Trump may appoint more liberal judges than even Clinton would. Let's not forget he's pretty liberal socially so that could be something of a coin flip.
Are you really sure about that? Let's say you're hanging out in Boston with an illegal gun in your pocket. A policeman says "Hi" and you take off at a full sprint, lest he discover your illegal weapon. The officer gives chase, you throw your illegal gun, the officer catches you and you proceed to fight him. You are arrested on an illegal weapons charge when they recover the weapon. Actually, no you're not. The officer doesn't even bother to chase you. Why? Because the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the officer shouldn't presume you did something wrong just because you ran, you could've run because you were tired of "The indignity of being racially profiled" and therefore he would have no reason to give chase. The guy's illegal weapon charge was thrown out. So, a cop took down a guy with an illegal weapon and the court let the guy back out on the street. It's not like illegal weapons are a big problem or anything though is it? I can see this law (That only works if you're a minority, if you're not, you're screwed) being used a lot. Have a back pack full of heroin? Run. A satchel full of pressure cooker bombs? Run. If laws like this get passed on a nationwide scale, we are fucked.
Isn't that kind of a fourth amendment thing? I do think it should be ok to run from the police, unless they have a damn good reason to stop you. The police can shoot you, or beat the shit out of you for no fucking reason. You can't do the same to them. I am voting for Hillary because of the supreme court issue also. Specifically gay marriage and women's health. I used to be a republican, but I can't deal with their marriage to the church, and their blaming of poor people and minorities for all of societies issues.
In addition, a lot of the running from police at the mere sight of them and that being probable cause for a stop only applies to high crime areas, aka black and poor communities. So that law exists to control and detain scary brown people. It also generally only would apply to drug crime. Which a lot of people feel shouldn't even get jail time. If someone just runs from the cops as soon as they roll down the street, it's usually because they are holding weed or crack or some shit. If he happened to have a gun on him illegally, then the cop would need better evidence to stop him. It's a remnant from the war on drugs and needs to be stopped. If I were black and saw a cop, I would probably get the fuck out of the area too because there's a good chance of whatever interaction came about, it wouldn't go well.
So you're pretty much saying you're cool with profiling of any sort, regardless of the circumstance? I mean, it's not like something like this has been tried to be implemented before and proven to be mostly ineffective in most larger, crime ridden cities... Oh wait, how effective has stop and frisk actually been? In NYC between 2002-2014 only 0.02% of times when someone was stopped and searched was an actual weapon found. And to kind of echo what Frebis said, not restricting people's personal choice on basic civil liberties (whether you agree with them or not) is kind of a bad thing in my eye. I really think if the Republicans want to go back to being the party of fiscal responsibility, they need to cut out the very vocal folks in their ranks that seem hell bent on pushing their form of religious "purity" into the way they govern. There's separation of church and state for a reason.
Not a chance. If Trump becomes president we're going to see a more extreme version of Bush Jr.'s delegation. Any nominations for SCOTUS that come under a Trump presidency will be extreme conservatives to appease the Christian Right. Think of the nominees Mike Pence would like, because what we would get.
No, I'm not. This was not a guy who was just standing there and the cops rolled up and patted him down for no reason. This guy took off running when a cop spoke to him. Most probably because he had an illegal weapon. What his lawyer and the MA court did was provide legal validation for his behavior that pretty clearly was not the reason he ran. It also creates a completely different set of laws based on skin color which is not helping anything.
So apparently Trump violated the trade embargo with Cuba back in the 90's Spoiler http://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/14/donald-trump-cuban-embargo-castro-violated-florida-504059.html
I'm genuinely curious about this case and haven't been able to find it in my searching, so do you have a link or anything to it? Or at least the name of the case. I'd rather not speculate any further about this until I can read up on it.
Huh? Why would Trump appease the Christian Right? They make up the majority of the Never Trump contingency and were almost universally Cruz supporters. Trump would more likely do something like nominate a liberal justice just to piss them all off. I think he is that self-destructive.
I mean he did say his supreme court nominee would be pro-life and may overturn Roe vs Wade http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...-scotus-nominee-overturn-roe-v-wade/84223512/
Yeah, so after reading up on this (I read the actual case summary linked in the article, not just the article itself), I still agree with how they ruled. And saying that it creates a whole new set of laws based on a person's skin color is a specious argument at best. What if it had been the other way around and a white guy ran from a black cop instead? The fact is that the man in question was under no legal obligation to listen to the cop. The description of the actual suspects had almost no correlation to the man in question other than being black.
You're right in the fact that I should have said efficient, at least in the case of New York City. However; I still call into question the effectiveness of it actually reducing the number of gun crimes. If that were the actual cause of reduced gun crimes, then Chicago, which has also been using an arguably more extreme version of stop and frisk, would have the same level of decrease in gun crime, which it doesn't.
This is also a topic where it's nearly impossible to determine how effective it was without spending a long time going through the statistics. How many other laws were passed related to this? What other police policies changed? What social issues were at the forefront during this time that had an effect on gun crime? What is a gun crime? Who decides how to classify it? Does every borough in NY classify gun crimes the same way? I just look at as "hey we can stop and search you without probable cause". As a result of either conscious or subconscious biases I think it is something that may be used to unfairly target minorities and contributes to the growing hostility between police and those they are supposed to protect.
I agree with not randomly accosting people for stop and frisk. No argument there. Regarding the case that led to this ruling I'm a lot less convinced though. The police were responding to a break in that happened in the neighborhood and the guy took off. Is it really so unreasonable to pursue? So if the cops show up at or near the scene of a crime and someone starts fleeing they aren't supposed to do anything because that's racial profiling. This seems like the kind of dumb shit legislation that is going to encourage people to be more difficult with police and lead to more shootings. Regarding stop and frisk, at least for New York City, I'm not buying that it accomplished very much. Like the rest of the United States violent crime in New York rose as the war on drugs began, and then began to drop dramatically in the early 90s. It continues to decrease marginally after stop and frisk began in 2002, but the major decline had already happened, and NYC looks to be in the same trend as the rest of the nation. Based on the data I don't think it was worth it.
I think I've had it with Trump. I wasnt sure which way my vote was going to go for the longest time, and I dont know if Im going to even vote at all, but lets do a check-in of the current candidates: Trump: Tweeted this morning at 5 AM to "check out the sex tape" of a former Miss Universe. Johnson: Couldnt name a single foreign leader he admired. Thinks 16 year-olds should vote. And thus the mental retardation of libertarian candidates continues... Hillary: Probably drilling extra holes in her server hard drive platters or murdering another person willing to blow the whistle, but otherwise keeping her shit together. But seriously - I was willing to give him an extreme benefit of the doubt, but I really cant take his retarded bullshit anymore. I supposed the worst case scenario is we get more of the same and we just figure it out 4 years from now, hopefully. I fucking hate her. I think shes corrupt, completely out of touch, and I cant believe Im going to say it, but I hope Hillary wins. At least with her I think I can go to bed at night not thinking, "What the fuck?"
You guys wanna vote for or allow a candidate who talked about his dick during a debate, fine. But I have one more question. For years he questioned the first black president's place of birth, intentionally riling up the worst Americans, even after Obama produced the certificate. At a campaign press conference about birtherism he pimped his hotel then stated straight-faced that Hillary started it and he ended the issue once and for all. Forget naming something that disgusting she or any candidate has ever done. There are millions of people who not only don't find that appalling, it excites them. Some even believe him emphatically. Do you really want them to get their way? If you have time before the election, please read the essay On Bullshit (or at least watch this short video).