Pete_H

No one said it did, but the proliferation of guns in the u.s. does justify cops carrying guns.

Yeah England is sure an apt comparison. I mean there's probably nearly as many personally owned firearms in the whole country as there are in Renton. England is also a bit of an anomaly among industrialized nations in that regard.

If the glove doesn't fit ...

Well, physical evidence for one. Also, his story makes common sense to me. At any rate, there's no way Wilson would ever be found guilty of murder or manslaughter based on what evidence there was, so you can hardly blame the grand jury for deciding the way they did. However, yes, I concede the point. There are bad cops out there.

Thanks for linking the article on Portugal. I'm looking forward to reading it when I have a chance. Excessive state tax scheme for MJ is indeed counterproductive. As Ivan pointed out, it fails to stop the black market trade. The state should look to realise "profit" by the money saved from not having to enforce prohibition.

Actually it's a very simple issue in a way. Substance abuse is a medical issue. If you approach it from this perspective, you eliminate everything down the chain. So in order to eliminate the demand, you have to treat drug use as an illness, exact the same way as heart disease or cancer. Except that a cancer patient is unlikely to steal your car stereo. So,if we just decriminalize hard drugs it solves some of the problems such as not incarcerating the end user. However, there would still be a black market,drug gangs, and all of the violence and social ills that come along with it. Do we want to have a completely laissez faire approach with like the Phillip Morris of hard drugs producing meth? Or is the government going to make and supply drugs to eliminate the black market? How do they do it in Holland?

I definitely like using a suck tube system in summer. If I was doing something really committing where I'd be super fucked if it failed I'd probably stick with a bottle.

No that dude was black too. Unless there was a similar shooting in Carolina at the same time. But in general I'm pretty sure it's become a race issue. Have you been paying attention to the media recently or read the washington post article I linked?

Very much agree with you on those points. I think how to end the war on drugs is a complex question. Hopefully we'll learn a lot from what's going on with mj laws right now.

True, but the popular rhetoric seems to be whites get away with everything and blacks get shot for jaywalking. So I guess this one is convenient for the bulwarks of social justice to ignore. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/12/04/the-glaring-problem-with-crimingwhilewhite/

I'm guessing the protesters won't be disrupting any Christmas festivities for the police shooting of just an unarmed white dude.

Sale pending

Very lightly used OR Chaos Jacket, Excellent Condition, size large. Black. $100. Will ship (buyer pays shipping) or can meet in Seattle / eastside area or Leavenworth / Wenatchee. Lou Dawson's review: https://www.wildsnow.com/11085/outdoor-research-chaos-jacket-review/

Finally. I knew you'd come around eventually.

Didn't we cover this, like extensively, a few pages back? And Brown was about 8 ft away from wilson when shot (at least according to the last washington post article I read). Check your facts, bro.

I have a lot of faith in today's youth. However, as you recently pointed out, that age range tends to lack real world experience and maturity. Regarding the testimony, apparently many eye witness were discredited for not actually having seen the shooting and just parroting what they heard happen or what they wanted to have happened. Wilson stated he shot Brown multiple times because Brown kept coming and he wasn't sure he was even hitting him. As I said earlier, it seems to me to be fairly immaterial how many times wilson shot. His shooting was either justified or not. As you said earlier, there must have been a lot of confusion and fear. It's not a Western where the good guy shoots the gun out of the bad guys hand. If you're a cop and you legitimately think your life is in danger, I think you go ahead and empty the whole clip.

Yeah I'm sure Darren Wilson's career consisted of him just driving around all day and finding innocent black people to pull into his squad car and assault. That makes lots and lots of sense. You don't have to be wrong about other police shootings or systemic injustice in our American experiment. But you are wrong about Ferguson, despite the collective wisdom of the student body at Garfield high school.

Then you should explain in better. Your statistics, by themselves, can be interpreted multiple ways, which has been pointed out a couple times in this thread.

Issuing speeding tickets = gassing the Jews ? Not sure I can follow you on that one. Look, everyone, including me, has asshole cop stories. Not that you deserved the treatment you got in any of your stories, but I'm guessing the cops just didn't see though your gruff exterior to your true natural sunny disposition.

Do you speak from experience or just inference from what you've seen in the media? I work with cops every day in the municipality where I work and in my experience they are reasonable, normal guys and gals trying to do the right thing in a very difficult profession. Sure some of them are assholes, but isn't that to be expected in every profession? Maybe the jurisdiction where I work is different than every other one in the country, but I kind of doubt it. Don't like the drug war or other policy? Talk to your legislator. Cops don't make law, they just do their best to enforce it. Another example: you know who hates traffic stop quotas more than you? Cops. Again, they are told by the powers that be to issue a certain number of fines. You think they like being the assholes who have to do it?

Fair enough. But I think it's counterproductive and naive to fail to acknowledge Michael Brown's culpability in his own killing. I think Ivan hit the nail on the head when he said there is entrenched racism in the country, this just wasn't an example of it here.

Seems pretty self-evident and common sense to me. It's been explained numerous times in this thread. I'm not sure why tvash doesn't get it. Too much of an ideologue, I guess. In his eyes, a criminal who is a minority is always the victim.

He attacked and assaulted a cop and tried to take his firearm because the cop told him not to jaywalk. There is that small detail. What part of it do you and Bob not understand? One does not need to be "armed" in order to inflict bodily damage. Being physically large and strong is relevant in that one is able to inflict more bodily damage. It also makes Darren Wilson's story credible in that he had a legitimate fear of being physically overpowered. In contrast, his claim wouldn't hold water if he was attacked by a 85 year old woman. That is how it is viewed in the eyes of the law and it also makes common fucking sense.

Regardless of what side of the issue you're on, it's laughable to call Michael Brown "innocent."

The one positive about the situation is that it's opening a lot of dialogue on many different levels about the issues involved.