zapatos

Well, it would be nice for the Cubans.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what I've been reading but I think the restrictions he is lifting on travel, commerce, and financial activities are currently part of the embargo. Here is an excerpt of a breakdown from the NY Times: (It looks a lot cleaner if you follow the link) http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/17/world/americas/cuba-sanctions.html

I think Obama's changes will stand. I believe the primary reason we have had an embargo this long is because of political inertia. A lot of people want sanctions removed (businesses, tourists, families) and only a few want them to remain (recent Cuban immigrants). I suspect dropping sanctions will make life better for a large number of Cubans.

It is also important to remember that communication is a two way street. While it is important for the speaker to attempt to not offend, it is also important for the listener to attempt to not take offense. In written communication you lose intonation, speed of delivery, body language, etc. Dialogue that takes place through written word only is easily misinterpreted. The listener would do well to not take offense at a perceived insult, and wait instead until the speaker unambiguously calls you a sniveling little rat-faced troll.

-Google Search dictionary.reference.com/browse/ignorant -Wikipedia

You seem to be ignorant of the meaning of the word ignorant.

History is discussed to some extent in every forum on this site. Usually there is a discussion of science that veers off the path for a while into history for context and understanding. It would be interesting to see a discussion of history that veers off into science to provide context and understanding.

No. That is ignorance and political expediency.

While they may be panicking in Sierra Leone and Guinea, I don't see anyone in the US panicking. I very rarely even hear anyone mention it.

Correct, I only addressed the one country you mentioned. You are confusing two different issues. A fall in the number of police shot by citizens in the US does not tell us if it is more or less dangerous to be a policeman in the US than in England. It only tells is it is less dangerous to be a policeman in the US now then it was some time in the past. No, I'm not. I'm saying that police are killing here because everyone has guns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country http://www.odmp.org/search/year?year=2013 That is irrelevant in terms of whether or not it is more dangerous to be a policeman in the US versus England.

I'm having trouble finding any good comparisons, but what I have found indicates that while the population of the US is roughly five times that of Great Britain, we have 10 times the number of police deaths. In England the police don't generally carry guns. Comparing police shootings in the US and England doesn't tell us much. We also have better baseball players than England but that doesn't really suggest that we have better athletes.

Basically yes. You asked if I thought police in the US were in a more difficult position than in, for example, England. My response was simply that by having to deal with more people with guns, the answer is 'yes' it is more difficult. But also because so few Brits have guns, that allows the police in England to generally not carry guns. And of course if you are not carrying a gun you will not be shooting anyone. As long as we in the US allow the public to be armed, it will be necessary to arm the police, and when everyone is running around with guns, people are going to get shot. This country has decided that the Second Amendment is worth the lives of many of its citizens. I agree is is pretty bad. In my opinion much of it has to do with training and tactics. In the US the police are often trained to quickly take control of a situation. Be forceful. Let them know who is in charge. Get in their face. That may work much of the time but if you are dealing with someone who refuses to be pushed around it can quickly escalate into violence. I read that in England that the police tend to take their time with suspects, often keeping their car between the suspect and themselves. This in itself will allow for more time for backup and the opportunity to talk. Don't get me wrong. I think we have a big problem with the police and how they deal with minorities in this country. Mostly the points I have been trying to get across are that we should not treat an individual officer harshly simply because statistically police are harsh with minorities. We have to address the racist problem, but we shouldn't scapegoat anyone to do it. I also believe that all other things being equal and no evidence that one person is right and the other wrong, if it comes down to the word of the officer or the suspect, then the tie should go to the officer.

I never mentioned Eric Garner. Absolutely. We have more guns per capita than any other nation in the world. The US has 90 guns per 100 residents while England and Wales have 6.2 guns per 100 residents. And that doesn't even account for the relatively small number of handguns in England and Wales. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country There are also other police practices in England I've heard of that make it less likely that police will end up in a confrontation in the first place. I don't know what your point is. Are you suggesting that the average officer reviewed for excessive force should be as likely to be incarcerated as the average drug dealer? This exactly gets to my point. The police are not the same as the average offender. We PUT them in a difficult position. I think it likely that if you give a law abiding person a gun and ask them to deal with the law breakers, and authorize the use of force, that they will on occasion hurt someone. We are ASKING them to do so. To suggest that police should be as likely to go to jail when they are acting in their role as police officers as the average drug dealer/burglar/killer/etc. is ridiculous. I have no idea what the comparison to different countries could mean unless they have all the same laws as we have. Is that a lot or a little? Did they win or lose the suits? Were those suits related to bad outcomes for good faith effort? Or were they related to negligence? What is your point in simply listing the number of suits? You are correct. And as I said, that is not fair. We can't be unfair to Wilson just because we have been unfair to others. What we need to do is stop being unfair to all those you mentioned. Again, I never suggested otherwise. All I said was only Wilson knew if he feared for his life. I don't know what you are trying to prove with this continued push on this topic.

A change might be nice but I'm not sure how it would be accomplished. There are 90 municipalities (of which Ferguson is one) and 10 unincorporated areas in St. Louis County. How small of an area can support a Grand Jury? Will you pull together a Grand Jury every time there is a new crime? Should the Grand Jury be similar to the accused or the victim? What if Michael Brown had taken a walk and been killed in the exact same way in a rich, white community? I'm not sure that Grand Jury would be fair. You couldn't really have created a Grand Jury from the black residents of Ferguson and felt confident you would get a fair review. It also brings up the question of what other factors should be taken into consideration when constructing the Grand Jury. If the community was mostly Jewish, should the Grand Jury consist mostly of Jews? If the community is mostly illiterate should the Grand Jury consist of mostly illiterate people?

But it is the donations from the military that are making the police "a heavily militarized police force". Which is what we should expect. We also shouldn't be surprised that given the vast number of encounters police have with criminals that on occasion the will be issues. Couldn't agree more. But I also feel that in a highly stressful situation, where violence is occurring, that it is unreasonable to expect that an officer will always remember and properly execute the choke hold taught two years ago when he is now struggling with some huge guy who is intending to do him harm. The police are in a tough spot. They don't know the intent of the person they are dealing with. They are scared. Adrenaline is flowing. They are trying to remember if they can do this but not that. Most police don't wish to harm anyone. And they are in a very fluid situation where they have about 3 seconds to make a decision. And of course the juries are in a tough spot. They weren't there. They don't know what the officer was thinking. They have a tough time really understanding what happened simply by reading a report or talking to people who give 20 different versions of what they saw. I think I can get a rough idea of what it is like to be in combat, or have a baby, or deal with cancer, but unless I do it myself it is hard to judge. So in my mind, the police rightly get the benefit of the doubt. Not because it is always right, but because mistakes are going to happen. Just like we tend to give a doctor the benefit of the doubt if they do their best to treat a patient and it turns out they were not as successful as was actually possible, we need to give the police that same benefit of the doubt. I'm all for going after police who break the law (after all they could shoot me too), and I suspect we don't go after them enough, but if something goes wrong and the person the police were trying to arrest was not cooperating, then we need to be awfully sure of our facts before we indict and try police. Let's compare apples to apples. We give all those people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their job. If a farmer misjudges the weather and plants his seed which then rots in the ground because of a long spell of wet weather, we don't criticize him for not doing a better job. He did his best and it didn't work out. No repercussions. Only if he was reckless by not paying attention to weather reports is he criticized. The same should hold true for the police. I didn't mean to suggest that you did. I was only trying to show and extreme example, and point out that you still have to look at each case on its own. Just as a woman's sexual past is irrelevant when trying a rape case, a police department's past is irrelevant when trying an officer. Well it would certainly have been better for us. We would have a better idea of the facts. But you cannot put someone through a trial simply because it is politically expedient. It would not be fair to try Wilson just because it will make us or the residents of Ferguson happy. If a Grand Jury feels a trial is necessary, then by all means have the trial. But there is a reason we put the process that we have in place. It is so we can be fair to everyone involved, and limit how much we do based on emotion. How could a witness possibly know if Wilson feared for his life or not?

It is not so much spending on the police force as it is the police being given the military's used equipment. But of course the police are handled differently. Under certain conditions police are allowed activities under the law that would land you in jail. Police may legally drive over the speed limit, enter a private residence, forcibly grab someone off the street and throw them in a car, or even kill under the proper circumstances. Because we ask the police to perform duties that often result in injury or death to citizens or themselves, they tend to get the benefit of the doubt when their performance is in question. While statistics may tell you that police as a group are targeting minorities, they don't help much when it comes to specific situations. Even if the entire state of Missouri, and specifically the police of Ferguson are racist scumbags, you still have to look at Darren Wilson's actions in seclusion. He may be the only non-racist on the force. He may have broken the law many times before but acted correctly in the case of Michael Brown. It is very difficult to know whether or not Wilson feared for his life or the lives of innocent bystanders. Only he knows for sure. And unless you are confident he is lying in this particular case, you are going to be hard pressed to get an indictment or conviction.

So which category do I fall in?

Citation? That seems so out of line with the poll I was able to locate. http://time.com/3613454/ferguson-poll-racial-partisan/

I haven't been able to find that there is an "incitement to violence" law in Missouri. Here is someting I did find. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/03/should-michael-browns-stepfather-be-charged-with-inciting-a-riot-what-about-the-rioters/

I know that there is a comprehensive investigation going on regarding the nights of rioting, and that the police are planning to talk to Brown's step-father soon. I hope they do pursue the rioters agressively but I don't have high hopes that much will come of it. I think the step-father is different. First, I don't know if he can be charged with inciting a riot if no one who heard him say it actually rioted (although other laws may have been violated). And I think the police would be hard pressed to find someone who they can prove heard him say it and then went on to riot because of it. The police and prosecutor have a great deal of flexibility in how they enforce laws. I just feel that given the overall situation, I would talk to the step-father, let him know the possible consequences of his actions, then quietly file away the paperwork.

I don't think it would serve any good purpose to charge him. The people who rioted in Ferguson were going to do so whether he prompted them or not. I agree that it was terribly irresponsible and it tells us what kind of man he is, and had a riot started that would not have otherwise I'd probably feel differently. But since is was said in the heat of the moment and it probably didn't do much to incite the riot I'd be inclined to just let it go. There is no real effort to arrest those who were seen looting stores and to me this is no worse. I'd be happier to see things calm down before anyone gets seriously hurt.

I suspect the culture is driven more by economics than by race. My kids hung out with both white and black kids and from what I oculd tell they all had common interests. If you can afford a car, you drive. If you can't, you walk. If you have a job, you work. If you are unemployed, you spend more time just hanging around. People with more money have more options to go out and do things. If you have little money you have few options. I think it is poor people who come into contact with police the most. If you are not working and can't afford to be somewhere, you are likely to be socializing around your neighborhood, and my experience has been that if you are a young male, you don't want to do that at home.

It is hard to believe this is a science site sometimes given all the unsupported assertions. If you've got evidence that you are right or that I am wrong, please provide it. If you have an argument to make, please do so. But enough with assertions like "This was out and out corruption" unless you are willing to support it. It's getting old.

Which of the shell casings in the attached picture would you guess were fired while Brown was fleeing, and how can you tell? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=4 Given that Brown was approximately 150 feet from the car it is not surprising that when he headed back toward the car he only traveled about 25 feet during those last three seconds. See the attached image from where the furthest blood was found to where the body fell. Also note that the location of the shell casings (further away from the car than where the body fell) support Wilson's testimony that he was backing up and firing as Brown was approaching him. For some reason I cannot open the link but I suppose it is telling us that the two are somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 miles apart. In which case, so what? Ladue is even closer to Ferguson than East St. Louis. Does that mean that Ladue is the same as Ferguson? If you've been to both Ferguson and East St. Louis then it should be crystal clear to you that they are nothing like each other. An interesting aside is that much of "Escape from New York" was shot in East St. Louis since it already looked post-apocalyptic. Yes, several times. You've already said. Your ability to ascertain a man's intentions and professional capability based on the absence of a particular emotion during a 30 minute interview three months after an event occurred is astounding. Unfortunately the rest of us must rely on evidence. You said "the prosecutor {did} not even suggest a range of possible indictments". Yet the prosecutor suggested a range of five different possible indictments. How is your statement not false?