Cool. Coming out of a baptist family I get it, even if i was never that extreme -- westboro... i knew some families sort of like them though... home schooled on the belief that the Bible is the ultimate framework for governing. Not too far off from the us versus them. Same family that taught an anti-evolution class for our youth group. *shudder*

I became an indignant atheist not long after leaving religion. Now, I embrace Took me many a long night hating on religious people.

Until I had a long conversation with a friend who was a microbiologist, observing evolution on a daily basis, and maintaining a healthy Christian perspective. (Well, at the time it was... now he is sort of Phelping me. It's really hard for me still, to accept religious people, even when almost everyone I know is -- many of whom will always judge me for who I am.)

I mostly enjoy the diversity among my Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Buddhist, and Hindu brothers and sisters. They just need to respect my beliefs and recognize that I am not recruiting them and they are not recruiting me. Atheists are the worst at this.

As long as there is seperation of church and state. That is an important concept in maintaining a diverse nation open to dialog like she suggests.

Also, opening dialog with people only works if they reply back hahaha -- most of the angry internet people i know post across a wide array of websites and don't really return for replies that often.

*promote

i would like to say a few things.

first,
i would personally like to welcome my anti-war democrats back to the party.it appears it only took voting in the worlds most successful used car salesmen and professional internet troll to get you fuckers to get off the bench.

saved a seat for ya!../pats seat

second,
while i can admire this woman's passion and self righteous indignation,i refuse to accept her moral condescension,because for all her flowery and bombastic condemnation of anyone who voted for trump was a vote for:racism,sexism,bigotry and hatred,and implies she has deep understanding the motivations for voting trump.

i submit that she does not.
i submit that she is a hypocrite.

i submit that while she decries her anger and outrage at the moral ineptitude of her fellow americans for failing to rebuke an obviously unqualified candidate,who openly used racist and sexist rhetoric to appeal to our most base fears and anxieties.

she was missing the main point.the main reason.

so while she stood upon her ivory tower aghast at the horror unfolding in front of her on election night,she STILL did not get it.

she watched in horror as her fellow americans ignored trumps obvious racism.
ignored the sexism.
ignored the proto-fascist verbiage.
ignored the narcissism and petty tantrums.
ignored pretty much everything leading an election night into the surreal and absurd.

because she didn't get it,and obviously STILL doesn't get it.

because voting trump was not a vote for:racism,sexism,bigotry or hatred.
a vote for trump was a "fuck you" vote.
a trump vote was a "no confidence" vote.

now of course there are those who are racists,and sexist and are most certainly bigots and hateful fuckheads..of course.

and there are those who are diehard rightwing republicans...of course.

but the majority of those who voted trump are NOT those people.the majority of americans have..for forty fucking years..tried to utilize a system to counter correct the political establishment only to get fucked in the ass by the very same system they were trying to correct.

you can go look for yourselves.it looks like a clock pendulum.swinging dem and then back to repub and then back again.

and what did the american people get?
nothing.
nada.
zip.
zilch.

they got:
expanding wars.
stagnant wages and jobs.
higher taxes.
higher living costs.
drone strikes and secret prisons.
a two tiered justice system.
private prisons.
debt peonage.

and a government bought and paid for by:big banks,wall street,military industrial complex and multi-national corporations.

all this while the american middle class fell off the map into poverty and working poor.

so while those who voted trump may be politically unsophisticated,they are most certainly not dumb.

they got it.
and they finally understood that the system that they had been raised to believe was "by the people,for the people" no longer functioned at that capacity.

so the very same people who voted for obama and his "hope and change" campaign.
voted trump.
the people who had become politically engaged by the message that sanders brought to the table,either stayed home,or voted trump.

this was a protest vote.
plain and simple.

your fellow americans just nuked the system.
because it was the SYSTEM that was corrupt and no longer was functioning.

i find their choice just as terrifying as you do,but i have to admire the audacity to just nuke the entire system.

but can you really blame them?
they tried for decades to course correct,but the two party dictatorship had a stranglehold,and they served not 'we the people" but money and power.so our fellow americans utilized their one power given to them by the constitution.

and the hypocrisy here is that when bush was in office the left was losing their shit,and rightly so,but when obama was in office all we heard was crickets....and a disturbing silence from the left.(i realize this is an over generalization.there of course was some noise coming from the left).

and this woman is so out of touch that she is convinced that voting trump was a social issue matter?

i am sorry sweetheart,but some things are just not that simple,and condescending from your ivory tower,prattling on about social constructs as if you have been given some moral authority to judge others,only serves to solidify your own tiny and secluded echo chamber.where everybody can smell their own farts and pat themselves on the back for how clever they are,without ever having to critically examine ones own position.

which just means that she will never..ever..get it.

that is my .02 anyways.
take it for what it is worth.

Right, so you're basically advocating shutting down the federal government to get your way. Sorry, elections have consequences. The GOP lost control of both houses in Obama's first two years. They could have had positive influence on Obamacare, but they decided to claim instead it was a socialist takeover of health care, intended to kill grandma. That's the Republicans' fault for getting their butts handed to them in the election. That wasn't because they backed down.

Obamacare wasn't shoved down your throat. You had a vote like everyone else. Boo hoo, your side lost. Do you see me saying everything the Republicans and GWB did was shoved down my throat, even though I didn't like a lot of it? Nope.

Your sister has Crohn's. I never said she didn't. My wife had diabetes for most of her life and recently went through years of dialysis before having a simultaneously kidney and pancreas transplant, which she's still dealing with the anti-rejection meds.

Your sister's medical condition doesn't make your BS story true about what Obamacare did to her premiums. I laid out EXACTLY how Obamacare would work in her situation, and you introduced nothing that proves what I said wrong. Instead, you thought you'd claim the righteous indignation ground and assumed that my immediate family didn't have very serious medical conditions to deal with as well, and then resorted to name calling.

Just remember, your friendly neighborhood HeroPsycho told you Clinton will crush Trump in the electoral college. You can try and ignore reality all you want, but the inevitable is coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

I, like most, don't need absolute proof, proving that kind of thing unless it's ridiculously done in writing is impossible. The appearance is enough, but more than that, it's clear, I have no question about it and would require some incredible evidence to the contrary to think differently at this point. It looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it swims like a duck, it flies like a duck, it lays eggs like a duck...I'm just going to go ahead and call it a duck. DWS cheated and lied to force a Clinton nomination. The DNC purged it's voter rolls, gave Sanders zero support and actually worked against him while doing whatever the Clinton campaign asked them to, no matter how biased it was, under her leadership, then she was given an important job in the campaign and will likely get a cabinet position for her immoral, unethical work done for Clinton's benefit. If that's not quid quo pro, it doesn't exist.

Yes, Clinton and her campaign have had zero insight on how they appear, and are still indignant about people not just loving her because....woman.

Clinton helped put her in position to help win the election, then hired her when that work got her fired. her job WAS to regulate elections to be fair, and her complete and utter failure in doing that job is why she has a job as the head of Clinton's campaign today....and is one reason Clinton will lose.

Perhaps a few might say that, they're wrong. It was stolen by every means possible, no matter how unethical it was to purge voter rolls in poor areas but not affluent areas, or to close most polls in poor areas and limit the hours of the few left opened, but actually increase the hours and number of polls in affluent areas. He lost for a number of reasons, but largely because the DNC did their job for Clinton and worked actively against him the entire election while smiling and lying to our faces about 'fairness' and 'impartiality'. No leap at all to make that claim, my feet don't have to leave the ground.

Yes, since she REWARDED DWS's guilt with a top level position in her campaign and a promise of more important jobs to come, that guilt transfers to Clinton. Had she come out publicly and said 'this behavior is inappropriate, unethical, and I won't have anything to do with a person who clearly has no respect for the rules/laws' she might not be so guilty...but she did the opposite.

Um...didn't Bush himself say her name in a public interview? That's how I recall the Valerie Plame incident.

I'm talking about a person who's job it was to be impartial who was clearly heavily biased and lied about it for a full year publicly....and the person she performed these unethical acts for that rewarded her after it became public.

You're helping Trump win because Clinton can't, and shoving her down our throats as the DNC and her supporters have guarantees a Trump win. She's unelectable, and her supporters have blinders on to her myriad of faults and flaws.

In this country, we are supposed to vote for a person we want to win, not against someone. If people did that, there might be a chance at not having Trump, but because Dumbocrats and Retardicans both vote against the other, and every idiot follows along, we get this.

"Most qualified? Most experienced?" Not more so than Johnson, who has more experience actually governing than she does by far. You might not agree with his policies, but he's not immoral, not unethical, not hated by a majority of Americans, not batshit crazy, and is a candidate. he only has less chance of winning because people think like you and want to vote for someone who sucks ass because they're against someone who is an ass. That leaves us all covered in shit, no matter who wins.
Sanders has far more experience governing than she does. What the hell are you talking about? She has one thing going for her, her stint as Sec of State, but her record there is abysmal and not a positive for most Americans when seen as a whole. She has no experience in domestic policy beyond her short time as a senator, while Sanders has been one for how long? Again, what the hell are you talking about?

Rewarding incontrovertibly unethical behavior with a top position says everything that need be said.

OK, if you want the most reliable president, why didn't you vote for Sanders, who actually keeps his stated positions and votes on them, completely unlike Clinton.

I agree with your characterization, but it's the Clinton campaign that's the rolling dumpster fire and the Sanders campaign that was a Honda Accord that got hit by the rolling dumpster fire and pushed off the road. Now it's a rolling dumpster fire VS a leaky 40000 gallon septic tank, and they're both poised at the top of the hill with all of us stuck in the danger zone.

i am just going to add to the opinions and perspectives that @MilkmanDan ,@ChaosEngine ,@dannym3141 and especially @newtboy who i agree with so clearly that i swear we are related.

since many dynamics have already been covered, i.e:police culture,racism,incompetence etc etc.

i shall offer a historical perspective in the ways of the power dynamic.

while this is a power vs powerlessness dynamic dealing with agents of the state,it helps to understand just how we got to this point,and it is NOT the first time we have been here.

see:labor movement of the 30's and the labor strikes,and the response from not only the business community but our own government.

see: the civil rights movement and segregation,and how demagouges used political power to divide by way of racism,and then used police to intimidate,beat and imprison.

there are many MANY examples here in america where the police have been used to suppress and oppress a people or community for less than altruistic reasons,and most certainly not aligning with the ideology we were taught in school the function of police.nevermind the syrupy sweet,idealized picture shoved down our throats since an early age.

so we see on our facebooks,our twitters and/or whatever social media you prefer,that black lives matter...and the counter point,that NO..ALL lives matter.

now this would make sense in a world that never took history into account,or a growing cultural norm of violence and oppression that had been slowly seeping into poor communities (mainly black and latino).

oh wait..
that's right.
social media pundits NEVER fucking consider any of those factors,because just like bill o'reilly,those are pesky nuances and context conflict with their own narrow narrative.

but let us consider them and how they may possibly be a major driving factor in americas current climate.

let us take ferguson as an example,that is a good place to start.
and let us go back to 2008,where we can see the boiling begin to take place in this extremely impoverished community which was already struggling.

the population is a black majority,poor to working poor.home ownership is low,food stamp recipients are high and the future is pretty bleak.

in 2008 ferguson received approximately 18% of it's total fiscal revenue from misdemeanor infractions i.e:traffic,parking,moving violations.small time stuff.basic fines for small infractions.in 2008 that number jumped to 66%.

why?
what happened?
what changed?

well the comptroller of ferguson (and greater st louis),along with HUNDREDS of other smaller municipalities across the country,had bought the rotten fish that wall street was selling in the form of bullshit derivatives.

now wall street and the big banks got their tax payer bailout,but towns like ferguson did not.they lost millions,sometimes billions.this meant pensions were either reduced or outright denied,because there was NO money!

but a town still has to pay police.
fire fighters and school teachers,
clerks and judges,
keep the roads paved and the street lights working.

so what is a local government to do?
can't tax the working class who own homes.you already jacked their property tax to the roof.
can't tax the local business,you already squeeze them as well.
how about those non-property owning people in ferguson?
they need to pay up as well,and let's use the police force to relinquish them of the paltry money they don't have.

to the tune of 66% of all of fergusons revenue.
that is insanity.

so what if you live in ferguson?
chances are you are black,and either poor or working poor.

you make,if you are lucky,20 grand a year and by one man's testimony he paid over 2,000 in traffic tickets in one year.the majority of americans dont see those kind of numbers their entire lifetime.

and what if you began to realize that it was not just you.that almost every person you know or talked to had similar stories.

would you begin to feel a tad bit targeted?

what if the city of ferguson started to become very creative with not only their rules but how they enforced those rules?

what if every year the fines went up?
not remained the same,but actually UP? every year.

what if,as a community people began to actually fear the police? to experience anxiety just by the sight of a patrol car,even though they were not engaging in anything illegal? and who knows...maybe there is some new ordinance on the books that you are unaware of?

would you become paranoid and suspicious of law enforcement?

and then..what if....you started losing friends to cops.people you grew up with being shot in the street,and every time the mayor comes out and calls it a "justifiable killing".

would that make you feel any better?
any less paranoid or anxious?

there was ONE police shooting in ten years and then..as if by magic ..(which is how the media seems to always portray this..shocking news..at 11)..you lose 5 friends in a year.all to cops..all "justifiable".

would you begin to think there was a conspiracy?
targeting you and your neighbors?

i BET you would.
i know i would.

now lets look at the cops.

they are just a tool.
an instrument for the state to uphold the law and write citations for infractions.they dont MAKE the laws,nor the infractions,not even the fines.

they just do what they are told.

and they are told to go into these poor and working poor neighborhoods and write tickets,a LOT of tickets.

do you really think they are unaware of the growing hostility towards them? the looks of disgust,fear and apprehension?

but...this is their job,and they do what they are told.

they see.
they know.
they are aware of the growing hatred towards them,and this makes them anxious..and defensive..and in some horrible,tragic cases...trigger happy.

a natural and normal response to heightened stimuli in the face of great uncertainty.

so they react impulsively and out of fear in a way that ten years ago would have been unheard of.

they think themselves good cops.
they do a good job.
they do what they are told.
and the people hate them for it.
so they respond instinctively and with poor judgement.

we..as citizens,respond with disgust and indignation when a cop abuses his/her authority.we see this as a major moral breach in the citizen/cop relationship,because we feel as agents of the law they should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us...and rightly so,but when you put a human being in a tense and dangerous situation,not of their making,they will fail at some point to react correctly and with sound judgement.

they SHOULD be held accountable,but so should the city council members and the mayor and all the local representatives who created this toxic climate in the first place.

the lesson to be learned here is that nothing is a binary situation when people are concerned.

so when black lives matter protestors address people to make them aware of the situation,this is what they are talking about.the police killing are only a last stage manifestation of a situation that began in 2008 on wall street.

and we need to be aware,because right now it is the predominantly black communities,but soon coming to a neighborhood near YOU.

the poor and working poor have become expendable.no longer relevant to the system.which is why police shootings are being handled the way they are.our value is ever increasingly being judged on how well we can feed the system.

until this disparity is addressed there will continue to be police shootings.people will die and there will be no indictments.

because police do what they are told.

it is up to us to make policy makers accountable for their actions,and in doing so address a toxic climate that both the poor,working poor and cops alike have to swim in.

stop forcing cops to write tickets to fund a city that lost it's savings due to fuckhead bankers.

this blood..all of it..is on those bankers hands.

OK you made me re-watch this. At first I thought the lady had just made a mistake and missed a bike that came up beside her. The camera angle (FOV) makes it difficult to judge distances and directions very well.

On closer inspection she actually appears to come from behind and overtake in the right lane which is ending, and then merges into the exact spot where the bike is, and then does not react to the horn and keeps coming. That makes it really awkward for the biker to try to avoid her (speed up? slow down?), because its hard to predict what she is going to do next. So I understand the indignation a bit better and am willing to cheer the cop in this case, he looked very alert and professional (fake? just kidding).

I do wish people would use their mirrors, merge more safely (and faster) and use signals, and line-up properly when turning left, and u-turn safer and look before they open doors - any of those can easily kill a biker unintentionally. However I would be very reluctant to call the cops in these cases if I thought it was a mistake someone made and was lucky to get away with without major incident. Most of the time people learn from these close calls. This lady seemed to be talking back and confident in her ways.

There's no doubt that the person who's lane is ending needs to yield, and no one would argue that the lady in the car is a good driver. Still is it some sort of pride thing for the biker to prefer honking his horn and possibly getting wrecked over 1 second of breaking? I understand driving related righteous indignation, but it doesn't seem worth dying over.

@ChaosEngine.

Yeah. I know. Your last sentence says it all -- he didn't achieve near as much as was hoped for. Hence your disappointment.

From my perspective, I never believed he could do all that was hoped. Because this isn't a dictatorship (thank god, maybe we can survive Trump.) It was clear to me from the beginning that is wasn't possible.

So I wasn't disappointed. I was glad for all that he did manage to get through.

And that is what makes him consequential.

I have my list of things I am pissed at him about for doing -- including the murdering of brown people, including bin Laden. (And I'm pissed at most of the people in this country for cheering state sponsored targeted assassination and ignoring the huge collateral damage of that day and the days that followed.)

History isn't going to judge him on what he promised and couldn't get done. History will judge him on what he actually did. Half-assed heathcare is half an ass more than was managed in over a hundred years. LGBT people aren't disappointed.

And being the first black president -- he'll be in the history books for being that particular breed of person -- the minority who is 10 times better than the ruling majority, who swallows the indignities of prejudice with grace and determination, who rises above the humiliations to become The First. Think Jackie Robinson -- that is what we remember about him, that is the story that has survived. (The recent PBS doc taught me a fuller picture of who he actually was after he survived those brutal first two years in the majors.) That is the story we crave.

He's consequential, all right. Not perfect. Consequential.

All the controversy over race and gender in entertainment these last few years has many of us thinking about it more often than we probably used to. Which is certainly not a bad thing mind you, but it still leaves me with the question of how do we go about that without resorting to some sort of quota system.
Even if we reached a day where say 50% of all heroes in our entertainments were women there will always still be those people out there who will indignantly demand to know why character X in entertainment product Y was cast as a man and not a woman.

@bareboards2
yeah.i do not understand why he was hanging around while she talked shit.

it appears he may have messed her stuff up,and was looking for something that may have dropped.

we really do not know though.could be anything.could be he gave her boobs a goose for all we know.

we DO know that she was verbally abusing him.

i know i would have walked away.i have encountered women like this all through my life.apologizing just gets you a litany of new insults,and as long as you remain in their vicinity...the insults will only continue and get even more derogatory.

walking away is the best policy.

the majority of times that sufficed to appease their inner rage demon.maybe they would throw a few zingers at my back,but i never really gave a shit.more power to her..they are just words flying out of an entitled little girl who cant behave like an adult.

but...

on a few occasions.
the girl would follow right behind me,and continue to berate and harass me.possibly seeing my retreat as a sign of weakness.i really dont know.what i DO know,is that is a blatant sign of stupidity to take your 5"3" 110lb ass and try to jam it into my face as if you were rhonda rousey.

i have never hit a woman.
but i will not allow a woman to put her hands on me,especially when she has been verbally abusive and aggressive with me.

so the girls who have thought it totally ok to escalate the situation with physical violence,i have always responded in the same fashion: they get one shot.ONE.and then i whip around (and guys who have gotten into fights understand this) and in the most threatening and physically imposing manner,plainly let her know "ok thats ONE.go ahead and hit me again.i fucking DARE you.go ahead and hit me again and see what happens.because if you hit me again you are taking the place of a man,and AS a man i will knock you the fuck out".

i actually learned that from my dad.
one of the kindest and most gentle people you will have ever met,but his advice worked like a charm.

can you guess how many of those girls went for hit # 2?

thats right...none.

ya know.people get angry.
people can misunderstand a situation and react angrily.
humans will encounter conflict throughout our lives,and it is a testament to wisdom,intelligence and patience how we deal with those conflicts.

and there is never a time where it is ok to put your hands on another person,except for in self-defense.

so when a woman puts her hands on a man.
i dont care what level the rage meter is at,she should never put her hands on him.

for a few reasons:
1.its wrong.
2.you dont get a free pass because you own a uterus.
3.violence is never the proper choice for conflict resolution.
4.and most important.would you ever in your life walk up to a grizzly bear with a stick and start poking him? would you cry and whine about the unfairness of it all when that bear rips your face off?

use a little common sense and everything will be fine.

and did ya'all catch this womans glee?
the mere idea of her male friends killing this dude made her flush with excitement.that is a tad disturbing,but expected with such low quality females such as these.

experienced a bunch of women in that category as well.

but thats a story for another day.

simply put:this woman escalated the situation by making it physical and got popped in the mouth.
and thats all it was..a pop.
got her attention though didnt it?

so advice to all my lady friends here on the sift.
you have a right to your anger,your outrage and your indignation.
you do NOT have the right to be hitting,smacking or punching guys willy nilly without consequences.

and while i agree with BB (and others) that the dude should have just walked away,i will not put that responsibility solely on him.how is it HIS responsibility to control this womans actions.she hit.she got popped.
end of story.

Anyone who's read my comments knows I'm not a big fan of the police these days, but they were totally in the right here, and the description is absolutely ridiculous BS IMO.
People who try to make a police misconduct case out of this should think first and realize that offering this as evidence of police misconduct/abuse minimizes ACTUAL misconduct/abuse. There was NO "brutal beating", no choking seen, no stomping, no 'swarming by 9 officers', no 'slamming to the concrete', no 'arrested for jaywalking', just a teenager acting a fool and ignoring commands, pushing and kicking officers, and grabbing their weapons, all of which didn't end well for him when he's arrested for resisting arrest and refusing to comply with a direct lawful order from a peace officer...he'll be incredibly lucky if another charge for assault on a police officer isn't coming.
I wonder, what alternative actions do those complaining about this think the police SHOULD have taken? Just let him walk away indignantly? The law simply doesn't work that way.

Jaywalking may not be an arrest-able offence, but refusing/ignoring an officer's lawful command to stop certainly is, so is resisting when the cop tries to control/arrest you (like pulling the cop's hand off your arm, pushing the cop, or grabbing the baton that has yet to hit you).
The kid only gets hit with the baton (in the video) when he grabs it with both hands and tries to wrestle it away from the cop, as the cop wrestles for control of the weapon, the kid gets grazed in the face. When the other 4 (not 9) officers take control, he continues to fight with them and is taken to the ground.
As to his being a kid, he certainly thought he was adult enough to ignore/fight with the police. As far as I could tell, they all used restraint (compared to the normal dog pile and face kicks we've seen in the past in this kind of situation). I really don't think this video is going to help that 'kid' in court.
I'm somewhat surprised they didn't go after the woman screaming for interfering with a police action, or at least command her to move away. Telling the kid to stay seated (and ignore the command to get on the ground) sure seems to meet the criteria in my eyes.

We have decided? When did we have this decision? Because it's pretty much an assumption that we all feel that we are better off if our neighbor's children go to college, etc. The road bit is a terrible example, because even if you don't own a car, you use the roads or some other part of transportation that road taxes aid with. I don't feel that I should have to pay for other people's fuckups and I am not the only one to feel that way, by far. If you smoke all your life and then don't have insurance when the cancer comes around, maybe you should have made some other life decisions. If you screw around and get someone pregnant, it isn't my family's responsibility to fix your mistake. If you feel differently, then we are probably going to continue to disagree on everything else.

The numbers are the average of gross monthly income, before taxes. They have less purchasing power because they have far more money removed towards their taxes and because they have a VAT. The local purchasing power is going to vary due to cost of living in each state being different. For instance, the cost of living where I live is much higher than the rest of the state, while the state overall cost of living is less than some other states, such as California.

I am not playing with numbers or inventing facts, just listing what information could be found by simple google searches. As far as the top 5 bottom 5 bit, I can tell you the average middle class family income in 2014 was 4250 US dollars a month gross. This is the average for the entire middle class, which while declining due to various factors is still larger than the upper and lower class in the country.

I am not outraged and indignant for them, I am defending the facts. The fact is that for all they have, they pay through the nose. The fact is that they have a CULTURAL idiosyncrasy that allows them to be happy with being perfectly equal with everyone else, it is the only way a system like this can make someone happy. Do you not grasp that there is almost no single way to get ahead in a society like Norway's? You have to be identical to everyone else. If your idea of happiness is going to a dead end job, working 40 hours, coming home and not being able to do much because you don't have discretionary income, paying for others to not work hard, etc, then by all means move to Norway. Just be careful if you do, because they really don't like paying for immigrants to have free stuff. In fact, they recently had someone get quite violent over it.

I was raised to believe that if you put more effort in that another person, you should be recognized for that effort and get ahead accordingly. Does this mean I agree with CEO salaries? I do not, but that is a different discussion. What I was not raised to believe in is that, if you simply put in the minimum effort, you should get a medal or trophy for just competing. That is bullshit and counter-intuitive to the way the world actually works. If that was actually possible, Darwin would have had a wildly different theory about natural selection.

I feel like both of you likely made mistaken 'assumptions' in your arguments.
I can't understand how a survey can say 'consumer prices are 36.9% higher there' yet 'local purchasing power is 14.29% higher in the US'...Those numbers don't seem to jibe, or really mean anything without more info. Is that per dollar, per capita, average salary, mean salary, what? If things really cost 36.9% higher there, we SHOULD have near 25% more 'purchasing power' per dollar here, not 14....but you also have to ignore that they have far more dollars per person (even after paying higher taxes) to make your point...and you must also count 'national oil revenue' as 'personal tax' to come up with your numbers...if you did the same for the US, I would accept that, but you don't...as if the fed only gets money from personal taxes.

EDIT: Also, are your numbers AFTER tax income? I note they are AVERAGE incomes, and in the US, most people make far less than the average, because the top 5% takes 50%GDP (+-). Remove the top 5% and the bottom 5% and you'll see the numbers change drastically, and it will give you a much more realistic picture of the average person's income. I seriously doubt the wage disparity is nearly as pronounced in Norway, but I don't really KNOW.

All you complain about them paying for (whether they use the service or not) is the same in the US, yet the (underfunded) services provided in the US for the money are almost useless, so a near TOTAL waste. Do you not understand that? We have decided that, in a society, it benefits YOU if your neighbors children get educated, and also if your neighbors don't go bankrupt over medical bills, and it benefits you to not throw destitute elderly out on the streets, and even if you don't drive, it benefits you to have roads in your area...etc.

I find it hilarious that YOU are outraged and indignant FOR THEM, while they are apparently MUCH happier with the system they live in than you are with yours. You might think about that a minute.

I can't tell who's comment you're referencing with your first comment. I hope not me, cops are all individuals in my eyes, even if it may not seem like it sometimes because they are also a 'team'.

I see your comment as an issue of respect needing to be earned, and also being a two way street. When police over react, or act disrespectfully insulting to a perceived insult (even actual insult), it denies them the respect tomorrow that they are upset about not receiving today. I think most of us expect them to be the professional in any situation and understand they just have to deal with some assholes, not devolve to the level of those they are disgusted by. EDIT: People in many professions have to deal with dicks daily, but only one profession typically responds with indignant violence.
I did see the mans dancing as a dick move, just not one that deserved the reaction it received. A stern "HEY! Get the fuck out of here!" would have done nicely from the cop in the van, and may have earned some respect instead of losing some.

I agree with your last statement, but let's think, who got smacked?