lonely bird Wrote: heard mcconnell has said the american people need a voice in choosing the justices for the scotus. while the vote for president may have that impact if a position on the court becomes vacant the reality imo from a constitutional standpoint is that the american people get no voice in this matter. it is strictly for the president to choose an the senate to confirm. mcconnell is grandstanding. and doing an extremely transparent job of it.

Kosko Wrote: Holy crap. If U.S. politics wasn't dramatic enough. This is going to have a major impact on the elections and politics for the next 12 months.

iolo Wrote: No it's not - you do it per head, and England doesn't come in to it - we compare the UK with the US. If you arm your police, they kill people. We don't. And if you throw guns around like confetti, tens of thousands die. We don't. Americans trying to defend their love of killing are truly pathetic.

My apologies, the population of the U.K. is 64 million compared to the 54 million of just England. That shifts my rough numbers down a little bit.

I'm not defending killings. I'm saying that situation is FAR more complex than just a bunch of bad cops like the article implies. You can't just say we have a bunch of bad cops and then lump in statistics where the officer had no other choice but to fire back. That is wrong, misleading, and undercuts the over all argument.

An accurate comparison between U.K. and U.S. would be unjustified killings by cop per capita. This compares just bad cops to other bad cops. Which is the focus of the original article

Another good discussion would be killings is general. You can bring justified killings by cops into this but you would also have to address America's shitty gun laws. Criminals having easy access to guns makes self-defence killings by officers far more likely. That's not a violent cop, persay, it's a violent society or shitty law. Make sense?

Dutch Wrote:

Zach F Wrote: Of Trump, Cruz and Rubio, I would say Rubio is the most rational one. Cruz is much much worse than Trump on the insanity scale. Honestly, Rubio winning the nomination is the only hope the GOP has of saving face and not becoming a 100% farce.

Wow, Zach, I did not know if you were still around, keep it up and write!!!

Dutch Wrote: Rubio is also a dumb ass; he spouts also rubbish, especially of "financials" and "the military"; probably knows only something about Cuba and his church. Sorry a total pitiful bunch of idiots.

The U.S. has nearly 7 times the population of England. Comparing straight numbers is misleading.

Also, we must rule out 'justified' killings. Cops firing in self-defense, etc. The U.S. guns laws are ridiculously lenient in the U.S. so the American criminals have access to a lot more guns than British criminals. 117 U.S. cops died in 2015 in the line of duty compared to just 1 U.K cop. Adjusting for population, a U.S. police officer is 18 times more likely to die in the line of duty than a U.K. one. It's reasonable to assume that U.S. must act in self-defense more often that Bristish ones.

So, if we want to be accurate instead of hyperbolic, we need to compare the number of 'unjustified' deaths due to police in both countries and adjust for population. I'm sure the numbers are still really sad. And we absolutely need to hold out police officers to the standard of the law, but the numbers provided in the RawStory article are quite skewed and don't show the complexity of the actual situation.

AmcmurryFreedom Wrote: Todays news out of New Hampshire, has Hillary overtaking the lead in the state polls. Now Hillary leads Bernie by 2 points in what was Bernie's home state., so maybe her first show the past week and Bernie's stumbles may have made a Hillary bump. I'm hoping for a more woman cabinet for Hillary's administration. We need change and men in power of past have done some awful performance. More women representation should be better for America.

Chet Ruminski Wrote: They berated Lincoln Chaffe for voting to repeal Glas/Steagall in front of Hillary who's husband made possible the repeal of Glas/Steagall as well as supporting one of the worst ever laws ever made, the Commodities Futures Modernzation Act . Hillary is going to be less than Obama. If elected she has an ax to grind and it isn't to chop up Wall Street. Those two actions made the robber barons look like saints compared to the legal thievery made possible by Bill Clinton. You notice that Hillary made no attempt to distance herself from Bill's Blunders. That is because she supports Wall Street.