They pulled too close, fired way to fast, even the judge agreed. Yes, some blame falls on the parents, but how many cops are being shot and killed vs citizens at this point?

When does officer safety trump the fact that they are supposed to serve and protect, not shoot at the first option and sort it out later? They fired on Tamir within 2 Seconds of arriving on scene, 2 seconds...

What is even more disturbing about this case is, after shooting him, the police walked around the scene and looked for the weapon while the kid lay dying on the snow. Tamir laid there for 4 minutes bleeding from a torso gunshot wound until a police detective and an FBI agent who happened to be nearby came and rendered aid.

Both cops also had issues.

In a memo to Independence's human resources manager, released by the city in the aftermath of the shooting, Independence deputy police chief Jim Polak wrote that Loehmann had resigned rather than face certain termination due to concerns that he lacked the emotional stability to be a police officer. Polak said that Loehmann was unable to follow "basic functions as instructed". He specifically cited a "dangerous loss of composure" that occurred in a weapons training exercise, during which Loehmann's weapons handling was "dismal" and he became visibly "distracted and weepy" as a result of relationship problems. The memo concluded, "Individually, these events would not be considered major situations, but when taken together they show a pattern of a lack of maturity, indiscretion and not following instructions, I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct these deficiencies." It was subsequently revealed that Cleveland police officials never reviewed Loehmann's personnel file from Independence prior to hiring him.

Garmback, who was driving the police cruiser, has been a police officer in Cleveland since 2008. In 2014, the City of Cleveland paid US$100,000 to settle an excessive force lawsuit brought against him by a local woman; according to her lawsuit, Garmback "rushed and placed her in a chokehold, tackled her to the ground, twisted her wrist and began hitting her body" and "such reckless, wanton and willful excessive use of force proximately caused bodily injury". The woman had called the police to report a car blocking her driveway. The settlement does not appear in Garmback's personnel file.

Amazing pieces of work, and both out there to take care of us. I feel safe, do you?

Oh god. Youtube stabilization still isn't the best, is it?

The unaddressed and unanswerable question is, what does the the world look like without a hegemon able to project power? Despots still abuse their citizens. Countries still invade each other. But by historical standards, the world is remarkably peaceful.

No land forcibly changed hands in Europe between 1946 and 2013. Now that some finally has, what are the democracies bordering Russia asking for? American bases.

I don't know if stability is worth $100 billion a year, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it is. What does the global economy look like if shipping isn't safe? How much production is lost when one country invades another, and refugees swarm across the border?

I don't like everything my country has done in the name of protecting world order, but I sure do like living in the most orderly world that has existed since our species evolved. It's natural for anyone under the age of 70 to take this for granted. But taking this for granted makes it impossible to properly weigh the benefits and costs of US military might.

Yeah, "applicable only to the very lightest of electric vehicles". Something like that would at least have a chance of working. Basically something like a Segway, an electric bike, a small cart/kart/trike, something like that. Though how much of a weight save compared to loss of driving dynamics/stability/safety you'd get is a bit iffy, the suspension bits in a 200 pound vehicle are already very light.

But yeah, something like that might work.

Your video, Koenigsegg Agera R's Electronic Stability Control Is Insane, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 12 Badge!

Stabilized http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e_A0n471ow from http://www.reddit.com/r/squirrels/comments/2y1eir/drunk_squirrel_had_too_many_crabapples/cp5otxx

That image stabilization software kicks ass!

@oritteropo

There is a long history of Latin American currency crises which I would refer you to as examples of disorderly collapse. That Tsipras would break most of his electoral promises in his recent 4 month extension agreement should tell you that he knows how catastrophic it would be. You can't quantitatively approximate these kinds of events but qualitatively* (TYPO) the following is likely to occur:

1) Bank run - You saw significant withdrawals even leading up to the meeting with the Troika because of the possibility funding will abruptly stop. A stop to euro lending will see mass outflows with the expectation of bank collapse which will itself likely lead to the collapse of multiple banking institutions.

2) Foreign flows of currencies will dry up - Greek bond yields will spike, in effect no one will lend to the Greek government from overseas. Since like any economy, Greece needs to pay its public sector workers and requires foreign capital for imports, to preserve what it has, it will rapidly convert back to using the Drachma which it can issue and print/create. It is likely the banks will follow in turn and convert deposits to Drachma (another reason why people will withdraw money from banks as soon as they think euro support is over).

3) Drachma collapse - The Drachma will then depreciate rapidly. Again, the expectation of depreciation pretty much causes the depreciation. If people expect their currency to be worth less in the future, they will sell it, causing it to be worth less. Any existing savings accounts remaining will be decimated in value. Wages will fall drastically for everyone. Suddenly the cost of anything that relies on imported products (hint, a lot in any economy, especially Greece) will rise several-fold. This will lead to further job cuts, collapse of industries, which will precipitate further job loss, unemployment, output loss etc etc etc.

The tl;dr version of this is that government funding crises whether caused by debt or currency collapse in the first instance are self reinforcing and the consequences of an unmanaged collapse are all but guaranteed to be much worse than austerity but order. There is some evidence that countries who have a massive collapse and see their currency depreciate are then about to recover faster afterwards (a cheap currency boost exports, tourism etc) but the human toll is much more sudden and much more severe.

As far as IMF estimates being unrealistic, sure. All I'm arguing about is what is likely to happen and which outcome Greeks should prefer.

Sure Syriza has talked about the good kind of reform, but he's also promised the rest of what I talked about. None of which the Troika will let him do if he wants retain their funding. Anyone following this should have known he would not be allowed any of these promises he made in his election. Surely Tsipras himself knew this. It was either posturing/bluster or pure politics. Now the stability of his government is going to depend on how he can manage down his unrealistic expectations.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/alexis-tsipras-athens-lightning-speed-anti-austerity-policies

Well, Syriza is an acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left (roughly), and everything left of the Berlin Consensus is considered to be radical left. So they are going to call Syriza a radical leftist party until the political landscape itelf has been pulled back towards more leftist positions. But you're right, if they were judged by their positions, they'd be centre-left in theory, if centre-left hadn't turned into corporatism by taking up the Third Way of Schröder/Blair/Clinton.

They are, without a doubt, radically democratic though. As your Grauniad article points out, they haven't turned on their election promises yet, which is quite unheard of for a major European party. Francois Hollande in particular was a major letdown in this regard. Few people expected him to bow down to German demands so quickly. Aside from his 75% special tax for the rich, he dropped just about every single part of his program that could be considered socialism.

Grexit... that's a tough one.

Syriza cannot enforce any troika demands that relate to the programmes of the Chicago School of Economics. Friedman ain't welcome anymore. No cuts to wages or pensions, to privatisation of infrastructure, no cuts to the healthcare system, nor any other form of financial oppression of the lower class. That is non-negotiable. In fact, even increases in welfare programs and the healthcare system are pretty much non-negotiable. Even if Syriza wanted to put any of this on the table, and they sure as hell don't, they couldn't make it part of any deal without further damages to an already devasted democratic system in Greece.

So with that in mind, what's the point of all the negotiations?

Varoufakis' suggestions are very reasonable. The growth-linked bonds, for instance, are used very successfully all over the world in debt negotiations, as just about any bankrupty expert would testify. Like Krugman wrote today, Syriza is merely asking to "recognize the reality everyone supposedly already understands". His caveat about the German electorate is on point as well, we haven't had it explained to us yet – and we chose to ignore what little was explained to us.

Yet the troika insists on something Syriza cannot and will not provide, as just outlined above. Some of the officials still expect Syriza to acknowledge reality, to come to their senses and to accept a deal provided to them. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath. Similarly, Varoufakis is aware that Berlin is almost guaranteed to play hardball all the way.

Of course, nothing is certain and they might strike a deal during their meeting in Wednesday that offers Greece a way out of misery. Or maybe the ECB decides that to stabilize to Euro, as is their sole purpose, they need to keep Greece within the EZ and away from default. That would allow them to back Greece, to provide them with financial support, at least until they present their program in June/July. Everything is possible. However, I see very little evidence in support of it.

Therefore Grexit might actually be just a question of who to blame it on. Syriza is not going to exit the EZ willy nilly, they need clear pressure from outside, so the record will unequivocally show that it wasn't them who made the call. No country can be thrown out, they have to leave of their own. Additionally, Merkel will not be the person to initiate the unravelling of the EU, as might be the consequence of a Grexit. That's leverage for Greece, the only leverage they have. But it has to be played right or else the blame will be put squarely on Greece, even more so than it already is.

-------
Edit #1: What cannot be overstated is the ability of the EZ to muddle through one crises after another, always on the brink of collapse, yet never actually collapsing. They are determined to hold this thing together, whatever the cost.
-------

Speaking of blame, Yves Smith linked a fantastic article the other day: Syriza and the French Indemnity of 1871-73.

The author makes a convincing case why the suppression of wages in Germany led to disaster in Spain, why it was not a choice on the part of Spain to engage in irresponsible borrowing and how it is a conflict between workers and the financial elite rather than nations. He also offers historical precedent, with Germany being the recipient of a massive cash influx, ending in a catastrophe similar to Spain's nowadays.

It strikes me as a very objective dissection of what happend, what's going on, and what needs to happen to get things back in shape. Then again, it agrees with many points I made on that BBC videos last week, so it's right within my bubble.

This was better than the "Make Safe Happen" super bowl commercial that was basically saying that if you love your children you will buy insurance from Nationwide. That commercial showed a kid who died because of an unsafe situation. Not sure exactly what insurance would have done to help there.

This one was much better. If you love your kids you should purchase insurance to guarantee stability for their upbringing.

@radx

The liquidity/insolvency line is just a fancy way of asking for more money than is being provided. As I said, I expect once structural reform is fully implemented, the ECB (tacitly instructed by Germany et al) will take a much more active role in buying the debt of these countries but it's not at that stage yet. The problem is they've been slow to sell off assets, reform government and reduce public employment to levels demanded.

Again what you propose is easing that eliminates the pressure to reform, which is the intent of the troika/Germany as I see it. I just don't see any of those things happening. As I mentioned before, Greece's debt has largely stopped rising and GDP has been edging upwards since 2010 and is now positive:

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/government-budget-value
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/gdp-growth

As far as running surpluses, I would argue if everyone was nearly as zealous as Germany, then the deficit/surplus gap between countries would narrow - which would be the best outcome globally. As you'd probably know Germany's attitude towards fiscal stability and inflation is fairly hawkish given its history with hyperinflation. But it has clearly served them well when their bond yields didn't spike during the euro crisis because of a shortage of funds.

I wouldn't characterise it as beggar thy neighbour, that's generally reserved for active measures to prevent trade from other countries (such as through tariffs or subsidies). Instead Germany from what I've read, has carved out a competitive niche for itself with it's Mittelstand. I don't know Germany history particularly here, but I assume it led to companies in industries like retail which can't compete globally reducing or being bought out.

I would compare it to what happened here in Australia with the car industry when government support for it vanished. In our case at least, the only reason the industry existed for the past couple of decades is because of that support and it should never have been propped up by the government in the first place. I don't see that really being any different to typewriters being replaced by computerisation, whale oil being replaced by fossil fuels or US manufacturing going to China (and now leaving to other areas of Asia).

Coming back to trade surpluses, for similar reasons to Germany, most Asian countries also run large trade surpluses because of their history with capital flight in the Asian financial crisis of 97. This is despite many of them developmentally being far behind Greece let alone Germany or France. There has been no Asian crisis this time around and investment into these countries (like Malaysia, the Phillippines, Vietnam and China) has hardly been low over the past 10 years.

I'm not a huge fan of QE as a policy either. Part of the problem is central banks like the ECB weren't designed with the intent of using QE, merely adjusting interest rates, let alone any direct purchases of bonds. I was a big fan of what they did here in Australia where they just gave a one off wad of money to everyone who is earning an income. We ended up avoiding a recession entirely, although our economy was doing quite well at the time.

In effect that's more fiscal policy and I can imagine it being difficult to implement in the EU across countries in an even way. Merkel is certainly too hawkish overall. Policy along those lines, unbiased investment via the EIB or let alone just implementing QE earlier (like the US did) would have helped everyone.

In the current situation, "structural reforms" is used to subsume two entirely different sets of measures.

The first is meant to remove what you previously mentioned: corruption in all the shapes and forms it takes in Greece, from a (intentionally) broken tax system formed over decades of nepotism to a bankrupt national media in the hands of oligarchs. The institutions of the Greek state are precisely what you expect when a country has been run by four families (Papandreou, Samaras, Mitsotakis, Karamanlis) for basically five decades.

This kind of structural reform is part of Syriza's program. Like you said, it'll be hard work and they might very well fail. They'll have only weeks, maybe a few months to undo significant parts of what has grown over half a century. It's not fair, but that's what it is.

The second kind of "structural reform" is meant to increase competitiveness, generally speaking, and a reduction of the public sector. In case of Greece, this included the slashing of wages, pensions, benefits, public employment. The economic and social results are part of just about every article these days, so I won't mention them again. A Great Depression, as predicted.

That's the sort of "structural reforms" Syriza wants to undo. And it's the sort that is expected of Spain, Italy and France as well, which, if done, would probably throw the entire continent into a Great Depression.

I'd go so far as to call any demand to increase competitiveness to German levels madness. Germany gained its competitiveness by 15 years of beggar-thy-neighbour economics, undercutting the agreed upon target of ~2% inflation (read: 2% growth of unit labour costs) the entire time. France played by the rules, was on target the entire time, and is now expected to suffer for it. Only Greece was significantly above target, and are now slightly below target. That's only halfway, yet already more than any democratic country can take.

They could have spread the adjustment out over 20 years, with Germany running above average ULC growth, but decided to throw Greece (and to a lesser degree Spain) off a cliff instead.


So where are we now? Debt rose, GDP crashed, debt as percentage of GDP skyrocketed. That's a fail. Social situation is miserable, health care system basically collapsed, reducing Greece to North African standards. That's a fail.

Those are not reforms to allow Greece to function independently. Those are reforms to throw the Greek population into misery, with ever increasing likeliness of radical solutions (eg Golden Dawn, who are eagerly hoping for a failure of Syriza).

So yes, almost every nation in Europe needs reforms of one sort or another. But using austerity as a rod to beat discipline into supposedly sovereign nations is just about the shortest way imaginable to blow up the Eurozone. Inflicting this amount of pain on people against their will does not work in democratic countries, and the rise of Syriza, Podemos, Sinn Féin, the SNP and the Greens as well as the surge of popularity for Front National and Golden Dawn are clear indicators that the current form of politics cannot be sustained.

Force austerity on France and Le Pen wins the election.

Meaningful reforms that are to increase Europe's "prosperity" would have the support of the people. And reforms are definatly needed, given that the Eurozone is in its fifth year of stagnation, with many countries suffering from both a recession and deflation. A European Union without increasing prosperity for the masses will not last long, I'm sure of it. And a European Union that intentionally causes Great Depressions wouldn't be worth having anyway.

Yet after everything is said and done, I believe you are still absolutely correct in saying that the pro-austerity states won't blink.

Which is what makes it interesting, really. Greece might be able to take a default. They run a primary surplus and most (90%+) of the funds went to foreign banks, the ECB and the IMF anyway, or were used to stabilize the banking system. The people got bugger all. But the Greek banking system would collapse without access to the European system.

Which raises the question: would the pro-austerity states risk a collapse of the Greek banking system and everything it entails? Spanish banks would follow in a heartbeat.

As for the morality of it (they elected those governments, they deserved it): I don't believe in collective punishment, especially not the kind that cripples an entire generation, which is what years of 50+% youth unemployment and a failing educational system does.

My own country, Germany, in particular gets no sympathy from me in this case. Parts of our system were intentionally reformed to channel funds into the market, knowing full well that there was nowhere near enough demand for credit to soak up the surplus savings, nowhere near enough reliable debtors to generate a reasonable return of investment without generating bubbles, be it real estate or financial. They were looking for debtors, and if all it took was turning a blind eye to the painfully obvious longterm problems it would create in Southern Europe, they were more than eager to play along.

I have yet to hear a logical reason people crap on Carter...they invariably just say 'Carter, if you don't understand why he sucked, I just can't talk to you', never ' Carter, this is why he sucked'.
EDIT: If it's all about leadership, stability, and helping, you must be conflicted that Tricky Dick is republican, huh? The Bushes can't help either. It's a wonder you can stick with your party, I quit the republicans when they quit being republican, before I could vote, during Regan.
Carter provided leadership in a responsible direction, but idiots desired placation rather than leadership and didn't follow. Regan placated his base, and we nearly had a depression. Carter started us on a non-interventionist foreign policy, because he personally understood the short and long term repercussions of intervening, now we've shit in their pot so hard and long that we CAN'T just go hands off anymore, we've already created our enemy. That said, it's like a junkie going cold turkey, it hurts them, may kill them, but if they survive they have a chance of life, if they don't stop, they die soon anyway. If we could find a good foreign policy methadone, we should use it at every turn and start worrying about us, IMO. If we had not installed our leaders and otherwise interfered in the first place, everyone would be better off, but that ship has sailed (in many cases because we didn't follow Carter's suggestion to stay out, I might add).
OK, got me with Boston. Ft Hood is a lone gunman, and those stopped prove my point. I think you know I meant foreign spawned terrorist attacks, but I grant I did not say that. But then you have to admit there were other successful attacks under Bush AFTER 9/11, like the guy who flew his plane into the IRS building in Texas.
Agreed, the spread of religion is always terrible, no matter which religion, some are worse than others at times, none are good. I could support outlawing organized religion, but grant that most would not.
Obama did not create radical Islam. If anyone did, it's Regan, by arming them to the teeth against the red menace, then just walking away.
I also disagree that Obama's the 'my way or the highway' guy/side. Please recall, "You're either with us or against us" is a republican slogan. The republicans stated before Obama was inaugurated that he was already the worst president ever, and their plan for the next 4-8 years was 'just say no' to everything, even to plans they designed, but they have never come up with any alternatives, just "not Obama's way" over and over, that's real 'not leading' as opposed to the type they accuse Obama of.
4.5 years of shitty economy, but trending up, not down even then.
Where I live, jobs have been an issue since Regan/Bush 1, so I don't think you want to point that finger here.
Not true, stagnant over the last 14+ years. They certainly went up in the 90's.
Once again, Bush economics caused the recession, salaries went down during the recession/depression. Salaries are on the way up now...not fast enough, granted, but up.
Obama has NEVER been able to do whatever he thinks/wants. That is delusional. Even when the democrats had the votes to do so, they didn't, because they suck donkey dicks. Happy? ;-)
Times were better for a special few under Regan, not most. Times got better for most everyone under Clinton.
We agree on your final point, the Bushes sucked, lets build on that and not make that mistake again.

When you say .." I have consistently said Carter was my favorite recent president.." That all I need to know how lost you are with reality.

The president provides leadership for USA and for the world. The world looks to us for stability and he provider of help when others are in need.

I didn't know what to think of Ron Paul idea about being a non interventionist. Obama has lifted the hand of interventionism off Arab nations and now we have a shit storm of assassins and killers who desire to kill everyone. Everyone knows this But OBAMA who for what ever reason fails to see this world danger. Now it will take the world decades to fight is battle. Sure these might have had a shitty American backed leader but their peoples were not mass murdered on wholesale levels like ISIS is doing.

We had domestic terrorist attacks. Fort Hood shooting (13 killed) , Boston bombing, and the car bomb that was defused in NYC. Many more stopped. There will be more blood shed on our soil in the name of ALLAH. This is a world wide problem.

Obama is the worst because of this and on domestic side he is a failure because he is steadfast with my way or the highway approach. 6 years and still a shitty economy, real employment is hovering just below 10%, IF you lost you job today do you think you would be able to get another straight away at the same pay? I don't

Salaries have continued to stagnate over last 20 years but under this leadership salaries have lost 4K.

Democrats got a historic spanking this recent midterm and Obama still thinks he can do what ever he thinks. He is delusional.

Times did get better with Regan and Clinton, The Bushes sucked.



History will be the judge, we are just spectators.

"The idea that your cat is the Creator of the Universe has no explanatory power. To have an argument that your cat is the Creator you need to provide positive reasons for it. The Universe is finely tuned: if design is an explanation than I wouldn't need to disprove anything and everything as being a potential Creator, I would simply need to examine the evidence for design to make a determination as to what kind of being this must be, and using Occams razor I could come to some definite conclusions about it."

And I would posit that any same test applied to the Judeo-Christian god would fail the test equally (given that "god did it" isn't a theory, it's a construct). For that matter, so would any other god you want to throw out there. Assuming an intelligent creator pre-dating the universe created the universe calls into question "How did this dude himself go about getting created?". That question can only basically be answered with "It's turtles all the way down".

How do you know that a Universe governed by laws isn't the signature of a Creator?

How do you know my cat didn't create it? Equal empirical evidence (none) of both constructs.

Why would you expect to see a grand cosmos such as this, with such awesome beauty, whirling away with mechanical precision? The mere fact of its existence let alone its operation and stability is something too grandiose to be automatically regulated to some accident.

Really? We happen to live in a time period called the Stelliferous Era in which stars exist. Too far in the past, they couldn't form; too far in the future, they will no longer form. So oddly enough, given that the conditions are at this particular time are favorable to life, life came into being and evolved. So if it's your belief that god created this universe to be human friendly, why'd he wait so long for the conditions to be right for us to exist? Why not just do it on Day 1? Or why didn't he wait longer? Why did the universe have to be human-friendly in the first place? He's god -- he can do anything, so why are humans bound to all these rules of math, physics and chemistry, like every single other bit of life from bacteria to Blue whales?

How do you know that a Universe governed by laws isn't the signature of a Creator?

How do you know it's not my incredibly clever, and possibly deific, cat? Again, same empirical proof (none).

Why would you expect to see a grand cosmos such as this, with such awesome beauty, whirling away with mechanical precision?

We live in a time where the universe is able to support life. Outside of this neatly-ordered era, we'd be plasma or neutrons.