Those are decent points, but have absolutely zero to do with the mass abandoning of their positions. It was 100% due to one of their own being charged after beating nonviolent protesters. They originally admitted exactly that, and now that they aren't being supported in their walkout, they are coming up with excuses that didn't matter to them the day before the officer was charged.

I think they should have to pay for the training and equipment they now refuse to use.

What are you talking about? You think budget cuts caused time off to be cancelled?! It costs double to not rotate in other officers, because you pay those on duty overtime, it doesn't make it cheaper. Budget cuts were not the issue when these cops were doing crowd control, only now that they're suddenly called to account for their own actions. No time off temporarily, because of extreme circumstances, was not an issue until one of their own was charged. It's certainly not abnormal, and absolutely not because of budget cuts, it costs more.

No prosecutions is the norm, if I recall, over 98% of charges levied at protesters have been dismissed nation wide, mostly because police had no evidence to back the charges they brought. You might note, as described in the article, "Mr. Schmidt immediately announced that he would focus on prosecuting cases of violence or vandalism; protesters who simply resisted arrest or refused to disperse after a police order would not necessarily be charged." They are taking a stand against anarchic violent protesters, but not the peaceful protesters with a legitimate gripe about violent, racist, deadly police acting as an anarchist gang that believes rules only apply to you, not them.

There are few prosecutions in large part because police declare riots when all participants are peaceful and not causing damage, and police are almost always the one's giving the orders to remove the people they declared "rioters", and in most cases they have zero evidence to back up their declarations, and are as violent as possible, beating peaceful videographers and reporters who were trapped and could not disperse, then charging them with refusal to disperse and resisting arrest, even violence against police for attacking police batons with their faces.
(Edit: remember the freeway shutdown when they marched on the freeway, and police blocked them from exiting or continuing while a second group of police came from behind, forcing them into a small fenced in area with no exit, then charged them all with refusal to disperse and the few that tried to disperse were charged with attacking police officers who blocked every escape route, violently attacking anyone trying to leave...all on live tv?)
Many peaceful protests became riots only after police moved in to violently disperse protests, fully 1/2 were riots because counter protesters and bad right wing actors like proud and boogaloo boys were planting bombs, shooting crowds, starting fires, driving through crowds, and murdering police in an effort to paint protesters as violent anarchists. That is verified fact directly from the DOJ investigation.

It's not a Portland only thing, police abandoning their communities because, as they indicated to the DA, "“It was like, ‘There’s our team and there’s their team, and you are on their team and you’re not on our team. And we’ve never had a D.A. not be on our team before,’” Police assume they are on a team against citizens, and won't do their jobs if, by doing them wrong with bias and malice, they might be prosecuted. They are used to immunity, and don't know how to do their jobs without it because they are abusers of power.

One day after charges were levied they quit in solidarity with the criminal abusive cop, and came up with fake excuses later.

You seem to have missed "the Justice Department said that the city’s Police Bureau was violating its own use-of-force policies during crowd-control operations, and that supervisors were not properly investigating complaints." part.

Schmidt explained his points very clearly in the video.

Did you just not watch it or are you unable to process any information that doesn't put the orange king in the best light?

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Steve Schmidt and Kevin Philips both piss me the hell off.

Both are directly responsible for the dissolution of rational discourse in American politics. Both have done incalculable -- and perhaps irreversible -- damage to America's democracy. Both said damn the consequences when they were conniving to force their toxic ideology on the American people.

Now they both have religion when everything's gone to shit.

To their credits, both have tried to atone for their sins -- Phillips with his book "American Theocracy"; Schmidt with his renunciation of the GOP and everything it stands for -- but the damage has already been done.

Phillips and Schmidt are both incredibly intelligent men and as such, they should have known better. That they're trying trying to clean up their mess is laudable, but that they made it in the first place -- and fucked all of us in making it -- is utterly galling.

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Schmidtting Pugeot!

*ban

Jörg-Julian Schmidt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtdMRYCh1iU

1 - Well let me deconstruct that a bit. Presumably you rely on news, how can you rely on any of it to be trustworthy? Several ways obviously, I would say the main are (A) Ownership, (B) Reputation and (C) Funding.

A - Ownership - RT (and it's web of shadowy news sites pretending to be local) are owned by the Kremlin or clearly Kremlin linked oligarchs. Their incentives should be clear, promote the Putin narrative. When all independent TV news has been shuttered within Russia or taken over, you would expect these outfits to be heavily biased towards propaganda. I would similarly have to be suspect of outfits like Voice of America (US government funded). Corporate news sources have their own incentives. I happen to like the Economist but I'm mindful of its ownership involving the Rothschild family and Eric Schmidt (Google) being on the board for example. After all, every news outfit is owned by someone.

B - Reputation - This is the main one to me. You can say what you will about Western media, but there is a cultural expectation among its people and its reporters of the freedom to report newsworthy stories. There are obviously biases and those form part of the news source's reputation. We know TV news tend to be short on fact and sensationalist. Equally, we know Fox News to be right wing. We inevitably find these things out because no matter how much a news owner might want to control its message, freedom of speech sees the reputation leak out. We have reports (regarding Fox for example) that memos go out to use specific language like "Climategate" or we have controversies such as when photos of NYT reporters were photoshopped with yellow teeth.

C - Funding - Advertising vs Subscription, but that's not really relevant here.

My main point is, relying on Putin directly or any of his web of 'news' to get information about Russia or America is particularly silly. We know their ownership, reputation and thereby incentives. Or any state backed news. For corporate news, ultimately any bias from ownership, reputation or say government influence will leak out.

2 - I don't see him as any more politically effective or intelligent than necessarily any other major leader. If I've expressed anything here it should be that what Putin says is just as calculated and manipulative as any politician. Just because it has a veneer of 'speaking truth to power' or recounts some truths does not mean it is true in its entirety. Bluster and waging wars is politically popular in Russia, he is simply playing to a different audience. I would say any notion that he is more 'objective' is farcical. After all the kind of imperialism that he decries of America is the exact kind he's engaged in in Ukraine and now Syria!

I like right at 2:00 when the guy looks right at the camera. "Oh schmidt, I'm so busted."

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Just hook us all up into the matrix why don't ya!!

Schmidt, chief CEO of the wonderful entity envisions Big Google Brother's future....

".....At the Techonomy conference in 2010, Eric Schmidt predicted that "true transparency and no anonymity" is the way forward for the internet: "In a world of asynchronous threats it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it." He also said that "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!"

What threats, motherfucker?? Thanks anyway INGSOC, I can handle alleged threats myself.

While there are a LOT of things I want to comment on, I'd like to point out one thing that I very vehemently agree with. While I can't say that I believe that Jesus was the 'ideal' man, I can say that he's someone that a vast majority of people I know could aspire to emulating.

I'm glad that we can agree on Jesus. I highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Changed-World-Alvin-Schmidt/dp/0310264499

It's not Jesus that is the problem, as awesome of a guy as he was (allegedly). Christianity teaches that it is not the actions that grant you access to Heaven, it is God's Grace. Whether it's Grace because you've acknowledged Jesus as your Lord, or Grace through TULIP-style pre-destination... All of an individual Christian's actions (except for the 'I Believe' action) are, in fact, meaningless. If the speaker thought more about his own Christian Philosophy, rather than de-contextualizing Atheists' quotes, he'd have realized this already.

That isn't true though. Although, you cannot earn your salvation, there are rewards in Heaven based on what you did here on Earth. Neither is it meaningless to follow the two greatest commandments:

Love the Lord thy God with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your mind, and with all of your strength.

and

Love thy neighbor as yourself

Unless you count loving God and your fellow man as meaningless, they are both a reward onto themselves and filled with meaning.

If Christian 'Judgement' were based on actions and not belief in God (hence, their actions and lives had meaning), as many of my non-Christian friends would make it into Heaven as my Christian friends...

The judgment is about sin. Your friends, along with every Christian, have transgressed Gods laws, and the wages of sin is death. The difference is, Christians have received Gods pardon for their transgressions, whereas unbelievers have rejected it and thus have to face God on their own merits.

One specific data point is violence. Every one of my non-christian friends is non-violent. They oppose violence, both offensive and defensive. Never once did Jesus EVER advocate any form of violence. And, if you take his life as a blueprint, he proved his mettle by submitting to being crucified, even stopping the people who would have defended him.

Jesus said this:

John 15:13

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

There are some Christians who are non-violent (Mostly Mennonites/Amish)... I respect them. Others, not-so-much. Any branch of Christianity that doesn't take a hard stance against violence is twisting the Bible to their own selfish ends... which is, unfortunately, most of them.

A Christian is simply someone who has been born again, and has a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and the true church is the body of Christ. Regardless of what a denomination might say, a Christian should consult the word of God:

Matthew 26:52

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

Lest you think I'm cherry-picking, read the Beatitudes... You'll read about being meek, righteous, merciful, peacemakers and persecuted... But you won't see anything that could have justified the Crusades, Slavery or Gay-Hate.

I agree with everything you're saying here. Christians are to love their enemies, bless those who curse them, and pray for those who despitefully use them. We are to unconditionally love everyone, because they are in the image of God, and because God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son. That is the model of behavior He has given us.

So, as an Atheist, let me go on the Record... I don't dis-believe in God... I dis-believe in the God that is worshiped by Christians. I also have very specific issues with other Religions, but that can wait for another time. Given that I've found all of the Religions that I've encountered to be as 'bad' as any others... My position is that God may or may not exist, but if He DOES exist, He won't be found in any current religious textbooks...

I'll just say that God deeply loves you, and wants you to know Him personally.

(FYI, I'm one of the "life is meaningless" people that the speaker seems to think can't exist. I can stare into the Abyss and take pleasure walking the line, knowing one day I'll fall in and vanish utterly. It does not, in any way, depress me.)

I don't think he said they don't exist, I think he said that on one hand you may believe it, but on the other hand, you don't live as if everything is meaningless.

>> ^hatsix

They were criminally reckless. Her disqualifying lack of knowledge was so extreme, there's no way she could have faked it until after the convention. Unless these other guys were clueless themselves about basic civics/history/world events, which is even sadder, but not hard to believe. They are political hacks, after all.

If you were interviewing a highly experienced engineer, you wouldn't ask him or her something basic like Newton's 3 Laws. But you would talk shop with such a person about issues that depend upon knowledge of the fundamentals. It wouldn't take 5 minutes to uncover an unsophisticated cad. So, I don't believe the book or the movie. They knew they were in trouble the first conversation they had with Palin.

On Edwards, it's not up to me to prove a negative. I don't know one way or the other. The McCain aid certainly can't prove his assertion, which is my point. I never was in the Edwards camp, but the fact that he was a lying philanderer counts for nothing. Wouldn't be the first time we had a president with those two flaws.>> ^shuac:

>> ^longde:
They should have pressed him alot more on why he knowingly put up an unqualified person as a candidate for the VP. He wasn't contrite enough, IMO.
Also, how does he know Edwards was unqualified?

While I agree that he wasn't contrite enough, you can't say he knowingly put up an unqualified candidate. They just did a crappy vetting job of her. And even if they had the time to fully vet her, I think she could've faked her way through it, she being a good politician.
The vetting process probably assumes a great deal about what a candidate knows because when you ascend to becoming somebody's veep pick, it's a safe bet that you know a few things about the world. In other words, they don't ever bother vetting a sophomore high school student because, why would they ever need to unless sophomore high school students is all we had? Yet that is the level of world knowledge Palin seems to have had...so the vetting questions do not start that far back, understand? My point here is that they didn't realize the full extent of her ignorance and instability until well after the convention. I read the book and saw the movie.
But my question for you about Edwards is this: do you believe he was qualified? You think a person with such crucially flawed judgement and character would be okie-dokie as president, is that right? Better than Palin? Probably, but that's not the only hurdle a potential president has to jump, is it?
So tell us why Edwards wasn't unqualified given his public record.

>> ^longde:

They should have pressed him alot more on why he knowingly put up an unqualified person as a candidate for the VP. He wasn't contrite enough, IMO.
Also, how does he know Edwards was unqualified?


While I agree that he wasn't contrite enough, you can't say he knowingly put up an unqualified candidate. They just did a crappy vetting job of her. And even if they had the time to fully vet her, I think she could've faked her way through it, she being a good politician.

The vetting process probably assumes a great deal about what a candidate knows because when you ascend to becoming somebody's veep pick, it's a safe bet that you know a few things about the world. In other words, they don't ever bother vetting a sophomore high school student because, why would they ever need to unless sophomore high school students is all we had? Yet that is the level of world knowledge Palin seems to have had...so the vetting questions do not start that far back, understand? My point here is that they didn't realize the full extent of her ignorance and instability until well after the convention. I read the book and saw the movie.

But my question for you about Edwards is this: do you believe he was qualified? You think a person with such crucially flawed judgement and character would be okie-dokie as president, is that right? Better than Palin? Probably, but that's not the only hurdle a potential president has to jump, is it?

So tell us why Edwards wasn't unqualified given his public record.

>> ^pho3n1x:

I've watched this twice now, and at the risk of sounding ignorant...
Is he playing left handed position with right handed string layout?


sure looks like it. looks like a left handed bass too (judging from where the knobs are). and despite what the tag says, with frets.
he'd def running through a compressor. maybe an auto filter too.