The problem is that the US blocked him from any conceivable landing point except the countries powerful enough and antagonistic enough to tell the USA to go fuck themselves, aka Russia. I believe his original plan was to get to Ecuador.
This is getting old really quick. Trump's team had considered moving the White House Briefing Room because the current room is so small, the press howled about it. So the press got their way and they're not moving to a bigger press room and will continue using the current one, which only has space for 49 reporters. Now the press is mad that not everyone will get let in.
It's frustrating as shit to hear this, because all I'm hearing is a white guy blaming a black leader for not keeping black people in line. Obama was in a unique position to show white people what it was like to be a black man in America. But rather than listen, white people put their fingers in their ears and yelled "All lives matter! I'm not racist because I don't say nigger!" When a black man is telling you what it's like to be profiled, the correct answer is to listen to him, and try not to do it in the future. Well gee, if I was a black president and my people were being shot by police at a rate disproportionate to the rest of the country, I might say a word or two about how fucked that is. I might support a movement that wanted to end police brutality. When being asked to speak at a police memorial, maybe it makes sense to not stoke the fire of racial tensions and talk about preventing these kinds of shootings in the first place. Maybe I don't attribute all shootings by brown people to terrorism until I know all the facts, because if I do, I'm making targets out of the millions of brown people who live in the country I'm in charge of. The last thing that a president needs to do is demonize an entire religion when he doesn't need to. Maybe by not doing that, there are fewer dipshits that are already harassing Sikhs, Indians and other brown people who aren't Muslim. A president has to consider all the angles when he opens his mouth. For all of Obama's faults, his restraint was the one thing that kept this country from eating itself. Now we have a president that either doesn't realize that every tweet has huge diplomatic and economic implications, or realizes it and doesn't give a shit, which somehow makes it worse.
I think it was a bit of a spin. Originally Trump's team were not happy having the press embedded in the White House (I didn't realize until recently that the Press Core have actual offices in the White House), so they were going to move them. The Press howled, so then the Trump guys spun it as "no no no, just the briefing room, we were going to move it to a bigger room", which was not what they originally said. "You didn't understand..." As with a lot of Trump stuff, he says shit, and then explains/changes it later. So now they're pretending that the bigger press room was just what they were talking about originally, so are saying, "fine, we won't move it".
Wait, so should he consider the facts first and exercise restraint or should he make a knee-jerk statement about "how fucked up it is?" Or does that only matter for one and not the other? Why should he attribute all shootings by police officers to racial malice if thats the case? He should have been a better leader about it. And I understand the impulse to immediately pivot to a discussion about Trump, but I am reviewing Obama in a vacuum here.
The facts are clear on police shootings. Police shoot black people at a disproportionate rate then whites. That isn't a knee jerk reaction. It only seems that way to white people because until recently, it never got reported by the media, and officers were never held accountable. Eventually black people got so pissed about it that they finally spoke up. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Obama, being a lawyer from Chicago, didn't have first hand knowledge of this kind of unacceptable behavior. With mass shootings, facts aren't clear after the first few days or even weeks. That's the difference.
And blacks shoot cops at a disproportionate rate to the rest of the population. The WP kept a 10 year record (I believe it was 2003-2013) and 42% of cops shot during that period were shot by blacks, who are roughly 13% of the population.
I'd say the situation ISN'T clear after each police shooting. Situations like Ferguson when the narrative didn't actually fit the evidence do a disservice to the actual police racism, and brings out them closet racist, maybe some restraint in jumping to conclusions would be a good idea?
Race is the card the democrats play when trying to distract from the economy. The race card got played way too much and way too often, and it cost them. Religion (a la abortion, gay marriage, etc.) is the card the Republicans play when trying to distract from the economy. That shit clearly has some miles left on it, and it paid off. I like how Canada, Australia and much of the EU have handled globalization: strengthened their safety nets, and instituted policies that are designed to avoid fucking over their own citizens. The US hasn't done that and now, neither party really represents much in the way of labor. For all the bitching the democrats are doing, they lost sight of a core fact: they needed to actually help people in need, not just point out what color they were. Obama was a good president in the sense that he was a good role model, represented the office well, and kept things from falling the fuck apart. Trump is first and foremost, classless (he was on the WWE for fuck's sakes). That's one problem: for someone with so much "money" and "knowledge" and "power", he acts like a classless buffoon and it's frustrating to be embarrassed by a politician. Also, the Russia evidence is starting to be pretty Goddamned significant. This is from fucking Reddit: https://np.reddit.com/r/politics/co...ible_kremlin/dcljipx/?sh=b05f0342&st=IY3IKO3R He has deep business ties and that's precisely why he never released his tax returns: the Trump voter wouldn't stomach it. How deep, how bad and how loosely he plays it will determine if he can stay in office. We could be looking at President Pence the moment he pisses off enough establishment Republicans, lead by John McCain, Rubio, or Ryan...and we've seen how well Trump deals with criticism. My main fear from Trump is instability, and he's shown every sign of being a volatile, bullying child so far. The media's behavior is reprehensible, that's true, and Trump knows how to play that fiddle well. Quick: name a media outlet that Trump thinks is fair that we would have called "mainstream" or even "sane" a year ago? I can't do it, unless you count Trump's own Twitter account. Let's see how his first 100 days go, but I am seriously worried about being one of the poor souls with less than $20M net worth in Trump's economy and I haven't heard a fucking whisper from either party about me having the same standard of living as my parents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/politics/rick-perry-energy-secretary-donald-trump.html So to sum up Rick Perry's relationship with the Department of Energy: He had no idea what it does He campaigned on eliminating it in 2012 He forgot its name He was nominated to run it Presumably somewhere in here was when he looked it up on wikipedia He has decided to wing it We are an unforgivably stupid people.
Yes, your secretary of energy once filled an entire football stadium to pray away a drought. A drought that (right after that giant waste of time) tripled in size. Holy fuck, he's a purebred nimrod. Here, put on this tie.
That incident led to one of my favorite no-substance-but-quite-amusing twitter posts: "Governor Rick Perry of Texas has asked his constituents to pray for the end of drought in his state. In response God has set Texas on fire."
I agree with you, but that isn't the the point I'm trying to make. In 2016, for every one million people, 6.6 black people were shot by police. 2.9 white people were shot by police. In 2010, there were almost 170 million more whites than blacks. All things being equal, blacks wouldn't be getting killed 2.5 times more than whites. This is what caused riots in Ferguson and Baltimore. When a police officer shoots a black person, that's really the only fact that matters. It's incontrovertible that a black person is dead. They are dead at the hand of a police force that has a long past of planting evidence and beating confessions out of black people. It's hard to fault black people to trust that same police force that's been brutalizing them for decades. That's why the evidence in each individual police shooting isn't nearly as important to black people. I think that the closer that ratio of white and black police shootings gets to 1 to 1, the more that the evidence in each police shooting will matter more. The lowering of that ratio will mean that systemic racism is being addressed.
Why would you need a competent Sec of Energy when your Sec of State is gonna call all the shots in that area anyways? Also, this is a great time to remind everyone that the outgoing Sec of Energy is the Berries and Cream boy, all grown up
Logically, that makes sense, but multiple studies have shown no correlation between violent crimes and the likelihood of being shot by police officers. This article contains links three of those studies. Here's another link to another Washington Post article. If, according to you, racism isn't near the most significant thing causing black people to be shot by police, than we'll have to agree to disagree.
Clinton Global Initiative to shut down as donations dry up. Now that she won't be president all these foreign governments suddenly decided to stop donating. Gee, I wonder why.
Well, not that that assumption is especially grounded in fact, but it took one minute of searching to find his CV that shows it's forthcoming in Criminology and Public Policy, and was accepted for publication the same month the article ran in the Post.