I know it's Colbert's shtick and I never really got into it, but still...

"I have friends who live and work in London. They said "don't worry,we're very sensible people."

What's sensible for people in London might not be sensible for people in Salford. Or Boston. Or Wolverhampton. London, or the South-East in general, is as representative of the UK as the East/West Coast is of the US.

The hinterland has been drained at the expense of the center, on both a global and a national scale. If you live and work in the City of London, things might look quite ok, and whatever issues there are only need some reforms to no longer be an issue. But if your factory, the factory that provided jobs for the people in your home town, closed down ten, twenty years ago and now the best you can get is zero-hour contracts, then no, things are not ok.

People up top keep telling you that the economy is growing, that everyone's gonna be better off, that it's ok for multinational corporations and rich individuals to optimise their taxes, while they cut your welfare. Banks get a bailout, you get to pay the bedroom tax.

So no, your sensible friends, if they exist, live in a different universe than many of their countrymen. That's the disconnect we've been talking about.

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"The British economy is tanking. The pound has plunged to its lowest level since 1985... The Dow lost 611 points."

Again, so what? If the economy is growing and it has no effect on you, why should you give a jar of cold piss about the value of the pound or the stock exchange? Arguably, a drop in the exchange rate of the pound makes it easier for you to export your goods and raises the prices for imports, thereby encouraging you to produce the shit yourself. The UK does have a sovereign currency, unlike the Spanish, the Greeks, the Portuguese or the Italians who have to suffer internal devaluations, because Wolfgang Schäuble says so.

"Equity losses over $2 trillion"

Why should that matter? QE has pushed up stock prices beyond any resonable level, so what meaning do these book values hold? Not to mention that a lot of people made a shitload of money by shorting these stocks, including George Soros against Deutsche.

"There'll be no more money"

QE never trickled down anyway, makes no difference. Corbyn's people call their version "QE for the People" and "Green QE" for a reason: the previous version was only meant to prop up banks and stock values.

--------------

On a more general note, the hatred, the racism, the xenophobia... in most cases, it's a pressure valve. You leash out against someone else, you need someone to blame. The narrative is that we're living in a meritocracy, which makes it your fault that you didn't inherit an investment portfolio. So you start blaming yourself. You're a fuck-up. You worked hard and not only didn't climb the ladder, you actually went down. There's depression for ya. Guess what happens if someone, a person of perceived authority, then comes along and tells you it's not your fault, it's the fault of the immigrants. That narrative is very appealing if history is any indication. Even the supposedly most prosperous country in the EU, Germany, has the very same issue in the eastern parts, where there is no hope for a meaningful job.

People need work, meaningful work. Wanna guess how many of those "xenophobes" would be out in the street protesting against immigrants if they had a meaningful job with decent pay? Not to many would be my guess.

So the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are providing the narrative. But the lack of social cohesion is a result of market fundamentalism, of Thatcherism, of Third Way social-democrats leaving the lower half of the income distribution to the wolves. You can't exclude large swaths of the population from the benefits of increased productivity, etc. Social dividend, they called it. It's what keeps the torches and pitchforks locked away in the barn.

Absolutely hilarious hypocrisy!
Could it be that the Republicans were outraged at Planned Parenthood for 'selling' baby body parts too cheaply? Apparently it's OK to do if you make a huge profit, but not OK if you do it for free to advance science.
*promote

Yeah, and she had the option not to assault him in the first place.

I wouldn't have done what he did, but without knowing more about the whole situation, I'm not willing to state that either of them is blameless.

It's incredibly easy to look at this in hindsight and say "he shouldn't have done that". And yeah, again, I'd like to think it's not the option I would have taken.

But please stop repeating "It. Is. Not. Okay. To. Hit."
It comes across as very condescending; we're grown-ups here, and we all know that context matters. Violence is absolutely an acceptable response if you feel the situation warrants it. It's not ok to assault someone, but it is ok to defend yourself. You said so yourself.

We can argue around in circles about whether he was defending himself here or not. Legally, he certainly was.

To be clear, I don't like what he did, and honestly, I can't say that I know my own thoughts about the rights or wrongs of this situation (especially when you factor in the unknown cause).

I'm just not willing to condemn the guy outright.

Making America Hate Again-CHUMP!...er...uhhh...I mean TRUMP!

No surprise these people can't stand any whit of dissent, no matter how respectful or calm it might be, and instantly move from anger to battery and destruction of property while being egged on to go farther. Fascists can never stand disagreement, because it tends to point out how wrong or dumb they are.

Also no surprise, but sad that the rent a cop (at least I hope that cop was off duty and being paid by the Trump campaign) ignored the actual crime and opted to eject the victims.

Why aren't Trump supporters ejected this fast and mobbed when they actually interrupt other candidates and assault and batter people at, for instance, Clinton rallies? It seems to me they have decided in their wisdom that the rules are now that it's OK to beat up and threaten to burn alive 'interlopers' at a rally (as if it's a secret meeting and Trump's secret master plan to win might get out and be ruined), so that should mean they think it's the proper response when they go to other's rallies to interrupt others, right? Turnabout's fair play, after all, right?
(To be clear, I'm not advocating beating and/or burning them, I'm saying they should see that since it's not OK to do to them, it's not OK to do to others...but they don't see that)

Okay, and let me clarify were you did indeed say it should be forever held against him.

"Yes, it's OK, and normal, for future employers to investigate potential applicants and disqualify them if they show insanely poor judgement publicly like this guy did. You think that's not OK?"

I am owner Newt of Newt's Fabrications and Misunderstandings. I see this guy applying and look into his past. Would YOU hire this guy? Would you, as a black employer perhaps, offer this guy a job working with other black employees?

No? So moving on. You think Walmart wants this racist? Even 20 years from now? Why the fuck would they do that when they have a plethora of job applicants to do that?

So he moves on to Lawdeedaw's Lawn Service. I barely pay minimum wage, and I work him like a dog. Since I am the job he can get, he takes me up. His history is held against him and he has to settle.

Oh, kinda like what happens to blacks who just want to be productive...and have committed past crimes.

Edit Added Later:

Oh, and enouch and VooDooV "defend" this guy much more than me...yet you implied I was a racist douchebag...in fact I never defended him at all and left them out...oddly enough...

In fact I
1-Attacked most businesses as greedy.
2-Said most racists like him are just too proud to take government funds (But I didn't elaborate as to how/why.)
3-And stated that the past should not indefinitely be held against people.

Unless I missed a post from myself (possible) I never even said this guy should keep his job...

Ok let's say there's no cameraman present, but another certain kind of person who'd be happy to give that guy his fight. Let's say the guy got his jaw broken and couldn't work and couldn't afford hospital fees, and THAT was his payment for not being civil with other people?

Not ok with that either? Well what exactly are you ok with? Should the ignorant bastard who was offensive and (attempting to be) intimidating just get away with no consequences? Or worse still offered protection that was never afforded these poor protesters? What will that teach him?

I guess my opinion is i'm happy with the law of the jungle and in this case he got his comeuppance through twitter. Whenever you go around saying stupid things and acting like you're tough, you're taking a risk. It took effort to go there and be rude, but manners cost nothing. They tried to be nice, they tried to get him to go away MULTIPLE times. The guy put in a lot of work for what he got out of this. It's not like his life is over, no one will remember his name in a few weeks and he will have another job and he might not try to make people scared for their own safety in future.

Clarify. You have a problem with them having the right, or just a problem with they exorcising that right? Please explain the difference...as a right only exists if exorcised.
EDIT: You say you answered my question 'should they have the right to fire him', but I looked and can't find that answer. You answered 'they DO have the right', but never answered if you think they SHOULD have the right...which it seems you think they should not, because you have a 'problem' with them using that right....right?

For it to not be 'fair' for him to lose his job, you must assume he has a right to his job...he does not. It is absolutely fair to fire someone for any reason you see fit if you own or run the company...as happened here. What's the issue?

His family has not publicly shown a penchant towards racism or other intolerably intolerant behavior that I know of, they can probably find their own jobs.

Yes, it's OK, and normal, for future employers to investigate potential applicants and disqualify them if they show insanely poor judgement publicly like this guy did. You think that's not OK?

Should his wife divorce him...she probably agrees with him, but if not, perhaps she should. Being married to a racist, antagonistic idiot sounds terrible if you aren't one yourself.
Should his kids shun him, no, should they teach him at every opportunity how backwards his thinking is until he changes? Yes.
Should he die hungry and alone in an alley, no, no one should, but it happens none the less.

Laugh away and fictionalize if you wish, but the terms clearly apply.

I'm not hiring bad cops. If I were, I could put the resources in to investigate applicants for them. With 5 VS pages of 'bad cop', and 6 pages of 'police abuse' alone, it's quite a job, one I don't intend to take up to satisfy you, but I'm satisfied any competent HR person could find out just about anything they've done that might matter. If I felt like spending an hour doing it, I could find 99% of them on VS....I don't.
Often applicants are required to list their accounts (facebook, twitter, etc) so they can be looked at easily. And there are sites that record those sites so even erased posts can be investigated.
So yes, it's eternal, now isn't it? I won't remember this guy in less than a week, as there's no reason to, fortunately or unfortunately, employers have resources and reasons I don't.

I never said it was 'justice' that he would lose his job and be mostly unemployable forever, I said it was IRONIC, since he was lambasting people on the video for being 'lazy' and 'taking his tax dollars', which is what he'll be doing now. I agree, it's a little much that he's mostly unemployable for life now, but as I said, he just needs to find an employer that's willing to be labeled, at best, a racist sympathizer if not racist themselves...he should try Trump.

How is anyone making excuses for the police here?

So fucking what if he was trying to provoke a reaction? His reasons for filming the police like he did don't come into it at all. So what if the officers didn't like it and so what if he did it for this reason.

I don't see how any of this is relevant. This is a video of a person acting completely legally and within his rights and being arrested just because the police didn't like it.

So what if it's provoking, the police should be trained to be able to deal with a provocative situation. You know what would have ended this? The police doing their jobs and ignoring him. That's what should have happened.

Being rude isn't against the law. It's not OK for police to arrest someone for being rude. The only thing this guy was doing was filming the police and people think that's wrong? Or he didn't answer their questions? He's allowed to do that. It's OK. How can you say he was acting like a tool? He did nothing wrong.

The police are supposedly trained individuals. They shouldn't be reacting to provocation, especially when it's so passive as this example. This guy is hardly pushing his luck here. He made no threats to the officers, he didn't do anything even remotely violent or threatening he just exercised his rights. So the police didn't like it, so what?

Fucking apologists. The law is what it is and the police should be held to a high standard regarding it. They should do their job. Let's get this straight, what they did here was arrest someone just because they didn't like what he was doing, even though what he was doing was perfectly legal. That should disgust you, it really should. It shouldn't be OK because you think the guy was being a bit of a dick. That's not relevant because being a bit of a dick shouldn't get you arrested. It's only an excuse if you think that it's not unreasonable for the police to arrest people they just don't like.

To play devil's advocate, there's a reasonable argument to be made that polygamists really aren't worthy of marriage equality.

His point is absolutely valid. People are born homosexual, people choose to be polygamous. It might be that as a society we make an arbitrary decision that polygamy is not ok. Maybe future generations will decide that it is ok.

Personally, I don't give a damn what consenting adults get up to, but I think it's pretty important not to let the issue of SSM equality get sidetracked by the orthogonal issue of polygamous marriage.

If you want to campaign for polygamous marriage, go for it, but I think it's reasonable to pick your battles and in the USA, change happens slowly. It was over a century from the emancipation proclamation to the Civil Rights Act.

I'll quite happily say that SSM is a more important (but unrelated) issue than polygamous marriage.

So, it's not ok to take someone else's gun?
Or to take the battery from his dead buddy's gun (assuming compatibility) and click it into his?

Never done Airsoft

Ok, first things first. If you quote me and you decide to mark pieces of what I wrote somehow, don't do it out of fucking context. The part you turned into bold lettering is only a part of a sentence and does not communicatre the actual meaning of what I wrote at all.
I know you're not a troll but what you did there is suspiciously close to trolling. I know you're better than this. However, that is not ok. I do take issue with that especially because I know you and I are not on opposing teams here. You're not one the racist trolls here, neither am I, you know who I mean without using names.

Second, read my statement carefully. It's pretty much akin to the concept of the self-fullfilling prophecy. The statement I made validifies itself be me stating it.
Here's what I said phrased differently:
White people are better at being racist than everybody else because we don't suffer its consequences. White privilege, lack of empathy and inability to consider another point of view on the issue allows us to disregard the impact of it. That means we can be more clueless and uncaring in our behaviour as we don't feel the historical gravity, more or less immediate consequences or emotional toll of it as long as we can surpress whatever empathy for other humans we have.
Let me re-quote myself without your bullshit bold lettering:
'If there's one thing where white people are far more superiour than anybody else, it's having a feeling of superiority.'
Read that again!
And again!
You call that gloating? Really? A guy saying 'look at me, I'm best at being a shitty person!' is gloating in your opinion?
By stating this, I prove myself to be true, I validify my point by mentioning it. My point is not a good thing. Being arrogant is not a good thing.

Third, I get you are angry. You're a black guy living in the US, right? You should be pissed. There is this stereotype of the 'angry black man'. I never thought about it until Obama became President and political realities cause him to be wary of it.
If you are not white and a US citizen you have every right in the world to be pissed. Racism exists everywhere but one country where it still remains a huge, huge, superfuckinghuge problem is yours.
Pretty much everything encompassing domestic issues in the US has a racial component. My own country has serious problems with racism. Go, ask as german dude with turkish roots about his expirience. Every 'Achmed' has a story about it. Racism is like herpes, even if you don't have it, you're always at risk to be affected anyways.
Don't be mad at me, you're barking up the wrong tree . I may be an insesitive asshole and I won't deny the benefits of being white myself but I'm simply not your problem. People who want to keep you down because they don't like your pigmentation are.

I agree with lucky760 here. This guy was not a compliant person shot for no reason.

I'm someone who thinks cops should be held to extremely high standards and I've commented such on other cop videos on videosift. But in this case I'm not really sure what else the cop could have done. He needed to engage the guy physically. He was walking toward him. That might sound innocent enough but the closer he got to the cop the more dangerous he became.

Even if there was a real language barrier and the guy didn't understand what he was being told this is just obviously not OK. He wasn't behaving right, maybe he was high or whatever but he was a physical threat to the officer.

Portraying him as just a person shuffling around being shot for no reason ignores the fact that he was shuffling right up to an officer who had his weapon drawn. If the officer allowed him to get too close he could have attacked the officer. Even if the officer got a clean shot adrenaline could have driven the guy on a step or two and he could have stabbed or shot the officer. That distance separating them is important. Moving toward the officer in this situation is a threatening act, regardless of where your hands are.

The officer did not shoot on numerous occasions when the guy put his hands down, an act which under the circumstances could legitimately be seen as a threat to his safety. He waited until the guy had gone way too far and got way too close. This wasn't a trigger happy cop out to back a Mexican, it was an unlucky cop in the wrong place.

Christians have often tried to enforce their 'morality' on the rest of us....it NEVER works out well for anyone, and in hind sight is always seen as evil and stupid, as well as non-christian. Morality is a personal decision. When you start legislating/forcing it, you've lost your freedom to decide for yourself. In America, it's 100% legal to sin, the only excuse for singling out this 'sin' is the hatred for those disenfranchised by doing so.
The bible also said I'm to stone anyone working on Sunday, or worshiping incorrectly (even if they're Christian), or worshiping idols (like a cross), or adulterers...where's the standing up for that, if it's so important to follow the bible? It also said to take slaves, rape, murder, sacrifice children, ...shall I go on explaining why 'the bible said so' is the worst argument ever?
Doesn't the bible say it's not OK to marry a different 'race', what about a different religion...why aren't you fighting to end inter racial marriage, and inter faith marriage? Come on, let's hear the logic.
The day marriage was recognized as a civil process, the institution was removed as a religious one and became a civil one, which means one religious groups idea about it matters not. Even if you believe it was 'created by god', you must admit it's now a civil process with civil benefits, not religious one's, so YOUR religion has nothing to do with it anymore. That's YOUR religions fault for insisting on benefits for 'married' people.

As for 5 men...well, I can't really see a reason plural marriage is illegal beyond someone's morals...but a tree? How does a tree consent and affirm their wish to be married? If it can, go for it. Why do you want to stand in the way of that tree's happiness?

Your entire theory of the universe is speculation....including your theory on what I'm OK with. Certainly your theory on deities and the after life...complete and total speculation based on belief, not fact.
I find this video's hypothesis terrible. Because a measured physical property is near what they say they expect it might be if we artificially created the universe implies they know what the constraints of a mythical artificial simulated universe are (that's impossible, if it's an artificial creation, there are no constraints other than those programmed in, and they could be ANYTHING if the programmer is writing the laws of the universe/physics).

Therefore, I am NOT OK with the HYPOTHESIS that the universe is a computer program or designed by a designer (other than the 'designer' that is the laws of physics). I find it a silly blind guess about something we can't possibly know about without creating one ourselves, and even then we'll only know about the one way we did it, not the possible ways it could happen.

A programmer would certainly not be a god to me, but I'm not prone to deifying that which I don't understand. It MAY be a mysterious being (or not), that doesn't make it god anymore than I'm god to my dog. Because some dogs are gullible enough to believe their master might be a god does not make him/her one. The same goes for unknown properties of the universe. Some people may believe the unknown is somehow proof of the divine, that simply does not make it true, or even reasonable.