I agree with you of course. There are all sorts of metrics you could measure countries by and which is great will depend on whom you ask. The US is a lure for migrants because of its wealth, but is its wealth greatness? Not hardly. It was largely stolen and built on the back of misery. But it's progressive and innovative and that has its good and bad sides.

It is very much the new Rome. Rome was great but was it good?

this is probably true, especially since the cop was native american. if the cop had been white, he might still be able to get off even from killing a white guy


cliff notes on tower block fires? did people burn to death because they were too poor?


a fairly recent killing that unsettled me quite a bit, was the robot they sent to kill that guy who shot those cops in dallas. if you don't remember the story, it was a black lives matter march, and someone was holed up in a parking garage after firing several rounds at police. the police loaded up a robot with explosives, drove the robot next to the guy and blew him up.

The tower block fires encompass the whole range of inhumanity of capitalism.

I'm glad to see that the US has shown it can't be beaten on inhumanity. The new tax cut for the wealthy bill is pretty ugly. It's probably going to destroy the healthcare market because it will create an insurance death spiral. Taking the money that was put into the market by Medicaid and giving it to the rich is not a great way to sustain healthcare.

Yes. A social housing block in (one of) the richest council(s) in the country caught fire in the middle of the night. These buildings are designed to isolate fires, so don't have/need sprinkler systems and the alarm systems are weak and ****ty so don't wake people up. But the cladding on the outside of the building (installed to prettify the building for rich people's views) was of a standard that is banned in the US precisely because it allows fires to breach the isolation protection. It is legal in the UK, aiui, but it's not clear if the decision to use it in this block was made by the council (which had been cutting back on costs to provide repayments to residents) or the developer. Either way it meant the whole tower caught fire and ~100 people aiui died. Immigrants, poor people, the usual.

It's a stark lesson about what we've been doing in the UK recently -

• Cutting back on social housing and outsourcing its upkeep to the private sector
• Housing as a major plank of inequality, especially in the south east
• Slashing local government budgets severely
• Cutting back on firefighting, closing fire stations, paying firefighters less - Fat Posh Trump is on video rubbishing a critic when his decisions on this were questioned by a rival politician
• The prospects of Brexit allowing the UK to indulge in a 'bonfire of deregulation' suddenly look so appealing
• none of us come out of this looking great, but the tory party is at the heart of a nexus of selfish, anti-social contract, pro-individual reforms that contributed in various ways. On top of that, the Maybot handled the public side of things very badly, and was harshly treated by the press as a result. OTOH, she doesn't have to put her children to bed every night in one of est 400 tower blocks that have the same building materials.

It was awful for May. Wonderful for Corbyn.

May did the standard tragedy speech and visited the firefighters. She said there were 'security concerns' that prevented talking to survivors. The queen just quietly went and visited them.

I'm not a monarchist by a long stretch but you can rarely beat the quizzle for understated dignity. She also trolled May at the Queen's Speech in a way that was utterly unmistakable yet not quite in your face.

Corbyn was filmed talking quietly with volunteers, giving I think it was the local MP? a hug. That's who he is and why he's having success. When the media could just talk *about* him, they could make him out to be a loony out of touch Trot. When they had to talk *to* him, he was revealed as a rather unassuming bro who actually cares about real people. And people really like that.

thanks kokiri. im quite drunk, and you are speaking british, but i think i understood.

Well you wasted a lot of money then, Kyle Courtney

Like I've said before, we had a room full of kindergartners, shot dead by a single person, and not a damn thing changed. NOTHING will change us at this point. We are ruined. Olympus has fallen.

It's not always about race. It's not even usually about race.

Corbyn just did the proper thing as did the queen. I don't think the political calculus even occurred to either, they did their duty. May squibbed it because the victims were going to blame her and she chose not to face her 'peers' in the public square. For shame.

I suppose you won't let a little thing like a unanimous verdict of not guilty by a jury diverse in race and gender get in the way of you accusing someone of being a murderer, let alone ascribing racism to the man just because the suspect was of a different color than the cop. Let me know if I am supposing incorrectly, please.

It means the USA, of course!

and still the Left proceeds with its white-on-black-therefore-automatically-racist narrative!

Ask your friendly neighborhood Native American if he gets to walk through life with a similar level of privilege as a white person like myself.

Here’s how the list shakes out, taken directly from the Star Tribune:

Juror 2: An older white female who manages a White Bear Lake gas station that has a contract with police. She said she had never heard of the Castile case. The judge denied an attempt by prosecutors to strike her after it was revealed that she had pro-police posts on her Facebook page. One of those posts was heavily critical of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling during national anthems last year to protest police shootings. She said she had forgotten about the posts.

Juror 3: Middle-aged white male whose wife works for the St. Paul School District, as did Castile — but she did not know him. He lives very close to the where Castile was shot and works “as the number one guy” at a small metal finishing shop. He said his father was a fire chief and he grew up around law enforcement, and also has a nephew who’s a police officer. He said it would be difficult for him to be unbiased. He has permit to carry and said he knew to keep his hands visible during a traffic stop. “That’s what they teach you,” he said.

Juror 4: A middle-aged white male who had very little knowledge of the case. He said he owns a gun and called the criminal justice system “a very fair process.”

Juror 5: A middle-aged white female who works at an assisted-living center and is highly active in church volunteer work. She said she had heard about the shooting at the time it happened, but knew little else. Her husband was carjacked at gunpoint 18 years ago. She said she had a high regard for police.

Juror 6: A white male in his 40s who is the jury foreperson. A wellness coach for the last seven years, he believes too many “victimless” crimes are prosecuted, including drug use and sex work. He believes marijuana should be legalized. He said he was “somewhat isolated” and knew nothing about the Yanez case.

Juror 7: A white female in her late 30s to early 40s who works as a nurse at the same hospital as Yanez’s wife — but said she does not know her. She said she watched Diamond Reynolds’ Facebook video, but didn’t seek out news about the case and knew a moderate amount about it. She’s a member of a Harley motorcycle group. She said she was “dissatisfied” with how police responded to a call in 1996.

Juror 9: A middle-aged computer support worker, she was not familiar with the Yanez case, and said “I’m thankful we have police officers.” She believes in the right to own a firearm, but added “I’m trying to stay away from them right now.”

Juror 10: A middle-aged white male who is retired from preprinting work, he said he followed news about the case off and on. He said he had seen Reynolds’ Facebook video. “She seemed overly calm” he said on his juror questionnaire. He owns a handgun and hunts.

Juror 11: A middle-aged white male who owns several shotguns and long rifles to hunt pheasants. A former business manager who now works in construction and remodeling, he said in his questionnaire that the criminal justice system has problems but is “the best in the world.”

Juror 12: A middle-aged white male who moved to Minnesota four years ago to get a new start. He said he’s a regular listener to MPR who knew “a lot” about the case. A pipe fitter, he took a permit-to-carry class three months ago. “Keep your hands visible and do not do anything until they tell you want [sic] to do” he said of permit to carry education on traffic stop conduct. He believes minor criminal offenses snowball and trap people in the justice system. “It seems like it’s rigged against you,” he said.

Diverse in race and gender. Your posts are nothing but dishonest scummery

if you believe those tipping studies black people are as racist against black people as white people, though that is stretching a study of that nature

no clue if it applies to studies of police shootings

as typing this now i feel like i shouldn't bring this up because maybe you'll conclude that it means that it's ok or something, but it could just mean it's more systemic than people even realize

the tower fires seems like it's about 90% just randomness bad things happen in big numbers by chance with a few bad decisions thrown in

it's like the titanic, don't think there is any real meaning there

some good discussion the last page imo and i liked the posts about the texting case

bad random things happen, yes

but because we know bad random things happen, they're easily foreseeable, and it's easy to mitigate the consequences

in general, conservatives are all for risk mitigation, even purely economic risk mitigation, when it benefits the rich (see: bank bailouts), but when it comes to things like "hey, if that burns, people will literally die" and "if someone gets cancer they will suffer a lifetime of economic ruin that will impact their family for generations to come" they're pretty indifferent

"but because we know bad random things happen, they're easily foreseeable, and it's easy to mitigate the consequences"

what the ****...

also that got turned into a rant against conservatives very quickly somehow

If random things never happened, it wouldn't be random ldo

Grenfell Tower (specifically) burning is random enough, but having a tower fire like that somewhere in the U.K. is quite likely; we know the rate at which things happen generally

I don't see what's difficult to understand about that

yes if you predict doom and gloom for everything all the time you will be right sometimes

yes after the fact it often appears obvious that something was wrong all along

no we can't forsee "random" things

lol pwns is the only sensible reply here

If you predict there will never be doom and gloom, I presume you're predicting sunshine and rainbows all the time? That seems... not in keeping with any part of human history ever

That we can't predict random things (said on a poker site yet!) is a remarkable take

I can't stress enough how asinine that is

Having a fire in a tower block somewhere in the uk is a statistical certainty. One happened comparatively recently like a couple of miles from grenfell. That's why they're designed with a great deal of confidence to withstand fires, specifically here to prevent the spread of fire. So when a fire spreads and engulfs the building you have to go back and see what effed up with your preventative measures.