LAReader48

In 2016 Salena Zito said supporters take Trump “ seriously but not literally .” Meanwhile, his detractors, including most of the mainstream press, “take him literally but not seriously.” ... I think this is true and is key to understanding how people feel about Trump. (I do feel his words are a real problem--they are hurting the country a lot). Literally Defunding the Police would unleash a wave of violence against people of all races that would make the KKK pale by comparison. Now about that slogan mainstream liberals are saying, "they don't mean that literally". Ok.. that is how thoughtful, tolerant conservatives feel about Trump. They say they don't agree with his words but continue to work with him on common goals. Liberals say mainstream conservatives should disavow Trump, refuse to work with him, refuse to support and be supported by him, not just disagree with him. Liberals say they disagree with Black Lives Matter on defunding the police, but th...

These are radical changes but in accord with conservative principles. There is an alternative to making the Federal government even more powerful.  1. Local control. Control by a city of 3 million, more people than were in the whole United States in 1789, is not that local. It is quite reasonable that neighborhoods want to choose police that reflect their values and priorities. And even their ethnic group. I don't support affirmative action in any other case, but I do here. A precedent--Candidates for the military academies like West Point are not chosen only by merit. They are nominated by each congressman. The Founding Fathers wanted the military to be representative of the people. Let different neighborhoods choose their police, make the rules, and own the hard choices between public safety and respecting the rights of suspects. 2. Reduce the power of police unions.   (Aside to fellow conservatives: think about police unions the way you think about oth...

They shoot about 1000 people of all races per year, 250 black.  In 2019 it was 1004 people, 249 black.  (references in   References for Police shoot 15 unarmed black men per year  ) 94% of them were armed, 67% were attacking  (directly threatening the life of) the officer. Some of the rest also "posed a significant threat".  56 were unarmed , 25 white and 15 black .  Police shootings database 2015-2020 - Washington Post    (Subscription needed) https://github.com/washingtonpost/data-police-shootings    (Free download, raw data) 37 were unarmed and not attacking the officer. 19 of them were attacking.  Of those 37, 11  were black, 13 were white (rest Hispanic or Other).  Some of those shootings are very questionable and all should be investigated. Even one unnecessary shooting is a tragedy and a crime (literally).  But there are not thousands or hundreds of unarm...

in reply to Facebook post "peaceful protesting  is NOT the answer": Just talking about what happened, not what SHOULD have happened: As I remember it- from 1955 to 1965 blacks tried peaceful protest. They often suffered violence but made more progress than ever before or since. In 10 years they went from legally enforced segregation to discrimination being illegal. Then some resorted to violence, only some but they created a lot violence, and many leaders condemned it only weakly.  White support dropped dramatically. Since then progress has been slow. General reflection on the times We lived through the nuclear arms race, riots of the 60s, 18% inflation, predicted environmental catastrophe in 10 years (predicted 1975), 25% and 50% drops in stock market. Everytime there were predictions and real fear of much worse. The worst case never happened. It usually doesn't.

I also searched news stories. There were a lot of stories repeating the claims, but without hard evidence. There are some later that noticed there is not much evidence-- Many rush to blame antifa, white supremacists for George Floyd unrest, but few offer evidence to back claims - Chicago Tribune   The mayor and police commissioner have attributed some of the violence during the protests to unidentified groups from outside the city and state, but there did not seem to be evidence of that overnight. - Looters Strike at Macy’s and Midtown Manhattan During Protests - The New York Times The extremists taking part in riots across the US: What we do and don't know  - CNNPolitics https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/31/politics/outside-influence-extremists-riots-us/index.html (CNN) — Law enforcement and federal officials say outside elements from both far-right and far-left groups are helping fuel the violent and damaging confrontations that have marred protests across the ...

A lot of people on Facebook, as well as the President, Mayors and others, have been claiming that most of the destruction was caused by White Supremacists or Antifa. If this is true there should be many photos and videos of it happening.  I searched Google images for the last week for "white supremacists riot". There isn't much to see. So this is probably today's Fake News. Don't spread it. If you believe it, find evidence.  I looked at the first 20 hits. I looked for whites committing violence . Is that "racial profiling"? Well, maybe, but I don't think many blacks are White Nationalists. With Antifa it's harder to tell, but I believe they are mostly white and college educated.   2 videos clearly showing whites vandalizing: Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists   video #1 nothing clear  video #2  https://twitter.com/i/status/1266661155994550272 does  show whites s...

Best because: Deaths, unfortunately, are more reliable than number of cases, which depends on the amount of testing. If a country has only done 100,000 tests, it will never show many more than 100,000 cases (though some cases are recognized by symptoms). It shows new cases, not the total number which may be huge and is in the past.  It shows numbers divided by country's population, the only reasonable ways to compare countries with populations varying from 1.3 billion to 330 million to 60 million. It is smoothed (shows rolling 7 day average). Without smoothing there is so much random variation it is hard to see any trend.  Comments on Graphs: Most countries have a fast increase followed by a long slow decline.  The United States's decline is especially slow.  Hover over country name to see just that countries graph.  Click on graph title to go to orignal website, where you can add and remove countries and see lots of other graphs.  ...

As we all have heard, the US has more cases and deaths than any other country, 4 times more cases than the next nearest country, 2 times more deaths.  Lists like the below seem to be the media's favorite. And New York, Michigan, Louisiana seem actually pretty bad. On the other hand the situation in the US, overall, is clearly not 4x worse than Italy, or even as bad.  Coronavirus Update (Live): 2,554,568 Cases and 177,402 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Pandemic - Worldometer  (selected columns) You can find per-capita tables too, though not as many, and they show the US cases and deaths per person quite a bit lower than the big European countries, except Germany.  Country Tot Cases/1M  pop Deaths/1M  pop Belgium 3,322 490 Spain 4,249 437 Italy 2,960 391 France 2,342 302 UK 1,769 237 Netherlands 1,906 215 Switzerland 3,205 161 Sweden 1,424 152 Ireland 3,089 124 USA 2,308 123 Luxembourg 5,671 117 Portugal...