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I c. It's the microphones fault

Speaking of reparations.
Protesters burned several stores, including the BP gas station at Sherman and Burleigh, Jet Beauty at 35th and Fond du Lac, BMO Harris Bank at 36th and Fond du Lac, O’Reilly Auto Parts at Fond du Lac and Burleigh and MJM Liquor at Fond du Lac and North — and threw rocks at police on the city’s north side, leaving one officer injured and three protesters arrested.
Yeah I'd like to see some of those paid to cover the damage done. How about we start with that.

This is why Black Lives Matter has lost so much of the support it originally had, like most leaderless organizations.
Here's what I see in Milwaukee:
An armed black man with a lengthy criminal history gets into a confrontation with a black police officer in a black neighborhood in a county with a black sheriff in a country with a black president. Protesters, without examining evidence or applying any form of reason, begin burning down black businesses in a black neighborhood, shouting anti-police rhetoric. "Racism!" once again thrown around like sour-tasting Halloween candy, rather than being applied as the serious allegation it should be.
Even if you think Sylville Smith was shot unnecessarily, explain to the American public how exactly BLM is helping improve the lives of black residents of Milwaukee, or race relations in America.
The officers who killed Freddie Gray, or the officer who shot the care taker in Texas, or the officer who shot an unarmed man in the back in South Carolina... They should all be in jail along with the protestors burning down innocent people's cars and businesses in Milwaukee.

I don't know if he pointed it, but from what I have heard(and wrote already) he turned around towards him. So the way I understand it, he fled, then turned towards the cop and got shot in the chest. While he did not fire at the officer, the officer did fire at him. Had you actually been paying attention to what I was saying instead of just trying to twist everything I post out of context, you would have been aware of that fact, as well as the fact that my original comment quoted by you was referring to this. So I'll repeat it again because I stand behind it 100%.
Since when are they not allowed to shoot at a suspected criminal who's running away without waiting for them to shoot first? Ridiculous.
I did not say shoot them in the back. Yo, it is legal for a cop to shoot at someone deemed a threat, without waiting for them to shoot at them first. To Val - that's not how we want it to be, it's how it already is. And good thing at that or you'd have no cops left.

What gets me about statistics when it comes to Latinos is that there is rarely ever anything to control for the roughly 18% of Latinos currently in the U.S. who are here illegally - Or their U.S. citizen dependents. That again has zero to do with race and everything to do with legal status and the corresponding effect on household income.
I haven't seen those statistics, but are they controlled for factors like hazard pay (men typically take on more hazardous work) and other life choices i.e. maternal leave? (I really do think we need more paternal leave in the U.S.) I've also seen statistics suggesting women are less likely to negotiate pay - Again, I think the big picture is great for research, I think you need to look a lot more in the details to make sensible policy.
I would agree to the extent that there is a fine line between saying "we have some problems" and drawing up doomsday scenarios.
However, you'd be hard pressed to call the U.S. a nation of "white supremacy." I have yet to hear anyone explain to me how Asian Americans outperform whites in virtually every single measure pertaining to standard of living despite growing up and living in a nation hellbent on oppressing minorities. Asian Americans on average make more money, are better educated, live longer, are less likely to be incarcerated, are less likely to commit crimes, are less likely to be victims of crime and are less likely to drop out of high school and college. The list goes on. According to some logic, there must be some Asian American conspiracy to oppress white people right?

Speaking of reparations.
Protesters burned several stores, including the BP gas station at Sherman and Burleigh, Jet Beauty at 35th and Fond du Lac, BMO Harris Bank at 36th and Fond du Lac, O’Reilly Auto Parts at Fond du Lac and Burleigh and MJM Liquor at Fond du Lac and North — and threw rocks at police on the city’s north side, leaving one officer injured and three protesters arrested.
Yeah I'd like to see some of those paid to cover the damage done. How about we start with that.

Well, the way it works there is unless it's an emergency, you usually go to what is considered a clinic there...here it would be considered more of a doctor's office, only that you have many types of doctors in the same place. So, say I wanted to see an eye doctor, OR a rheumatologist, OR my primary, in many cases it would actually be in the same place. You sign in, wait by the door to their room, and they call you in(you do not see a nurse first and then wait for them). Usually in the same clinics you can also do bloodwork, vaccinations and even stuff like x-rays. However, for certain things they will refer you to a different clinic or to the hospital. I am not sure if there are any "emergency" clinics that could treat the same issues say like flu complications as a hospital would. I don't believe there are any. But for a simple flu normally you would not go to the hospital, just to said clinic and they treat it there.
The 4 big HMOs own the clinics and place them wherever they feel the need to, but each city has several from each HMO. You can choose whichever HMO you want to sign up with, based on what they have to offer(while most of the basic stuff has to be the same by law, supplemental can be different) and you can switch them once a year too. Copays are usually pretty low - I needed a knee MRI once and I believe it was around $25. For most doctors you only pay about $5 once per quarter. If you switch a doctor, though, you have to start all over. If you don't see them at all during that quarter you don't pay. As I have previously mentioned my wife suffers from several chronic conditions but once she had her residency when she lived there with me, she had no problem signing up for insurance as they are obligated by law to accept whomever, irregardless of pre existing conditions, race, religion etc, which is a good thing but the bad thing is some of them have serious money issues and have actually been on the verge of collapse and have to be propped up by the government which was not mentioned in the above article. I would personally be willing to pay a reasonably higher premium if that meant that no one with pre existing conditions could be refused.
Another problem is the government deciding what they are paying for and what not and there's nothing you can do about it. For instance, several years ago they decided to fund, within the "basket", dental care at first it was for kids up to the ages of 12(back in 2009), this year supposed to be 14 and eventually even 18. While some welcomed this, there was also debate on whether or not it is the right thing to fund that on the expense of potentially life saving treatments and medicines that will not make it in due to the limited budget. I personally opposed it because I feel that a person with no kids should not have to fund other people's kids dental care on the expense of their own medicine. So there are issues, and you will never be able to make everyone happy. The good thing is the US has so many countries' experience to learn from, that if instead of the half assed ACA they actually spent a few years doing research on what is working in every country and what isn't, they could probably come up with a decent plan.

Yeah I suppose we can do that. Apparently dude was shot by a black officer. And despite their rumors that he was executed, or shot in the back by a white cop, he was shot in the chest. Doesn't stop them all from running around like the good lil sheeples that they are and destroying stuff. They have damaged themselves so much in the last year it's not even funny; I hope they end the lawlessness tonight by whatever means necessary.

That's why I say they should look around the world and study other countries' systems before trying to implement one here. Fortunately for the US, at least in that way, it is the last to do so in the developed world, so plenty to learn of other's successes or shortcomings, mistakes or accomplishments, achievements and failures, what works what doesn't work. IF they did that and came up with a reasonable plan(I'd have to see details of it first of course) I could get behind it, but not just another half assed attempt like the ACA.

Yup, and people often wonder how a free market for the most part guy like me, believes that our health should be taken out of the hands of insurance companies. It's difficult to explain, but that's it in a nutshell.

Kind of like the false equivalence when feminists complain that their bachelor's degree in feminist dance therapy only pays 52 cents on the dollar that a physics major makes.. Blaming the gap primarily of course on systemic sexism.

As far as being accepted as a certified liberal, forget about it, you're not going to be accepted into their club. 30 years ago you would have been a honorary member, but now that they have gone off the deep end you're not a liberal anymore. You stayed stuck in the 80's when liberals were still sane.
As for this black women thing:
“By both race and gender there is a higher percentage of black women (9.7 percent) enrolled in college than any other group including Asian women (8.7 percent), white women (7.1 percent) and white men (6.1 percent), according to the 2011 U.S. Census Bureau,” Salon says in its write-up.
The Root, on the other hand, focuses on the fact that, in 2010, “black women earned 68 percent of all associate degrees awarded to black students, as well as 66 percent of bachelor’s degrees, 71 percent of master’s degrees and 65 percent of all doctorates awarded to black students.”
The claim that black women are now the nation’s most educated group is used by The Root and other publications to complain that black women haven’t achieved a superior economic status that reflects this apparently superior education.
“Unfortunately, while black women may be the most highly educated, a recent study found that black women make up just 8 percent of private sector jobs and less than 2 percent of leadership roles,” The Root says. This complaint even made it across the pond, being repeated in The Independent, a British newspaper.
But while black women have made enormous educational strides in the last few decades, Salon, The Root, and the rest are all pushing a completely bogus narrative. Black women aren’t the country’s most educated group, and it isn’t particularly close.
Defining what makes a group the “most educated” isn’t a precise science, since there are many traits that could be used to measure a group’s education level. One could look at high school and college graduation rates (Asian women are currently tops in both), or how many Ph.Ds or other terminal degrees a group earns.
None of these measures are used by the news outlets declaring black women the country’s most educated group. Instead, the assertion is based on two observations: that a high number of black women are currently enrolled in college, and that black women dramatically outperform black men academically.
Both of these statements are perfectly true, or at least don’t contradict census data. But neither of them make black women the country’s most educated group.
The percentage of a group that is currently enrolled in college doesn’t reflect which group is the most educated. A person who completed a Ph.D a decade ago isn’t currently enrolled in college, but is certainly more educated than a person who is enrolled as a freshman right now. Blacks also have a substantially lower median age than whites and Asians, which means a larger proportion of them are young people likely to be enrolled in college.
A high rate of college enrollment could even represent individuals taking longer to complete their degrees. Black and white college graduates go on to college at about the same rate, but whites are more than twice as likely to graduate, and are more likely to graduate on time when they do. If black women are taking longer on average to attain their degrees, it will also increase their enrollment rate.
Similarly, the fact that black women earn more than twice as many college degrees as black men doesn’t make them the country’s most educated group. Instead, it just reflects that black women are handily outpacing black men academically. They are more likely to graduate high school, more likely to attend college, and more likely to graduate if they do. The same trend of women beating men is seen for all races at all education levels, but the gap is simply much larger for blacks than it is for whites, Hispanics, or any other group.
Unfortunately, a large number of journalists appear to be terrible at comprehending statistics.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/07/media-says-black-women-countrys-most-educated-group-even-though-its-not-true/#ixzz4HGuvQXbj
So basically, more meaningless baloney. Maybe they just aren't good at their jobs? Simple mathematics, if there is demand for you, you'll earn more. And as I've routinely stressed before, college education is far, far from being the end all, be all.
Speaking of college ed and black women, I know a really, really smart black young woman. Very level headed. We've known each other and been friends since our mid teens, now both in our mid 30's. Almost 20 years. Talked to her for a while on FB last night. She's appalled by both sides right now, as she put it she can't vote for stupid. She does not consider Trump to be racist, just doesn't agree with him or Clinton on many things and I can't blame her. She might end up voting for Johnson, and listen to this, we actually spent a bit of time talking about education and stuff. She pretty much thinks like me on that - we both believe it's very smart to not rely too heavily on "high ed"...Some people have natural talent or natural smarts or intelligence no amount of money or high ed can buy and she is definitely one of them. She only did two years of business administration but she's going to go far in life because she's smart. She's so discriminated against that she's a pharmacy technician, been working for the same company for 15 years now. She left for a year and came back the pharmacy asked for her because they figured she was doing the bookkeeing so well that if she can be trusted with hundreds of thousands of dollars she can be trusted with drugs(racist company I tell ya). Not saying it's the same for everyone, but to try and claim that black women are "the most educated" and thus are "being discriminated against" because they "don't earn very much" is complete and utter nonsense without knowing individual circumstances or what their job actually is and how well they do it.

#MLM

I have to say a word about deductibles. Health insurance deductibles do not exist in most countries. I find them to be utterly retarded and contrary to the whole point of having insurance. Why have health insurance if you still have to pay so much out of pocket? It took me a while to get used to it as the system in Israel is a HMO system with certain co pays but no deductibles. There is no way that in 2016, people with health insurance should pay thousands before they can even begin to enjoy their insurance. I am a free market person but to me any plan that will eliminate deductibles completely without significantly raising premiums is something I might support. Universal health care is not without issues, though.
Nineteen years after enacting a universal coverage law, Israel continues to grapple with the triangular constraints of cost, access and quality that define the limits of any national health care system, according to David Chintz.
Speaking at a health policy seminar at the University of Pennsylvania's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI), the Hebrew University Professor of Health Policy and Management provided an overview of the Israeli system. Entitled "Governing the Health Sector: Insights from Israel," it detailed the country's essential health benefits, information systems, financing and efforts to increase cost consciousness and quality improvement.
Second-to-last
In 1995, Israel became the second-to-last country of the developed world to provide health care insurance coverage to all of its citizens, leaving the U.S. as the only holdout.
"It was a big deal and a sea change not only in our health system but also in the whole Israeli political economy," Chintz said.
Funded by a health tax and other government funding, the Israeli national system is administered through four different health plans. It guarantees a basic basket of health services to everyone and has established a transparent national Finance Ministry committee that governs what, if any, new services can be added to the basic basket each year.
Since 1998, the Ministry has indexed inflationary increases for that basket of services to the standard national inflation rate -- and eliminated the previous practice of recognizing a separate and substantially higher inflation rate for the medical industry.
Tightly limited budget increases
The Ministry also limited the total of annual increases for those essential services to 1.5% of the total budget and only for "new technologies." Chintz said a major controversy has been the Ministry's unwillingness to recognize the increased cost of demographic changes in an aging population.
The tax revenues and government funding are pooled and distributed to the four health plans to pay for the basket of services according to a risk-adjusted capitation. For the first 15 years, that adjustment was exclusively for age. Since then, sex and socioeconomic status have been added.
HMOs that are part of the national system offer supplemental insurance for items not covered by the basic benefits.
"The (Finance Ministry's annual budgeting process) process is very open, structured and orderly," Chintz said. A 17-member Ministry committee consisting of 4 physicians, 4 economists, 4 health plan executives, 4 public representatives and the Ministry's health ombudsman makes the decisions. The process is heavily covered by the press and the total funding requested is usually about ten times the amount the government agrees to spend.
115% hospital overflow rate
Chintz pointed out that Israel's hospitals are "extremely efficient." The average length of stay is four days; occupancy rate is 98% and during the flu season it rises to 115% as an overflow of patients are housed in the hallways.
This annual flu-season ritual, he said, "leads to a lot of press and questions about the financing of the health system."
He said Israel now has 3.2 physicians per thousand residents, "but based on the age of our physicians and workforce, we anticipate a shortage that will dip below 3 per thousand. We're making efforts to produce more physicians; we're also very low in both the number of nurses-per-patient-population and the number of general hospital beds."
Overall cost and quality
According to the latest Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) figures, Israel's health care costs constitute 7.5% of its GDP; in the U.S. they account for 17.9% of GDP.
According to the World Bank's latest tally, Israel ranks 8th in the world for life expectancy; the U.S. ranks 26th.

http://ldi.upenn.edu/news/overview-israels-universal-health-care-system

That right there, is enough of a reason not to vote for this hack.

Creationists arrive at that conclusion by cherry picking science, disregarding other science and guessing in order to arrive at a pre-determined conclusion.
In the realms of social science, you can rarely carry out experiments, so you rely on quasi-experiments, history and all too often a bit of subjective opinion. The notion that we live in a racist patriarchal sh*thole ruled by white supremacy.. You can only come to that conclusion by cherry picking social experiments, disregarding other experiments, guessing, misunderstanding certain concepts and applying history in a way that suits your pre-determined conclusion.
Here's what I saw in early polling and primaries:
Carson - 30%
Trump - 30%
Cruz - 20%
Rubio - 15%
Here's what I saw in most early primaries:
Trump - 30%
Rubio - 22%
Cruz - 21%
Carson - 10%
So in early polling, you had Trump at 30%, you had Republicans supporting Rubio, Cruz or Carson at 65%.
In early primaries, you had Trump winning 30%. you had Republicans voting for Rubio, Cruz or Carson at 53%.
So in reality, you had two Hispanic Americans and a black American winning the majority of Republican votes in Iowa, South Carolina and most of the south. Where did Carson poll best? The Deep South - Among white Republican voters in Louisiana and South Carolina.
So why didn't Cruz, Rubio or Carson win? Because you don't need to win a majority of support in a Republican primary to win the nomination. You need to win a plurality in a crowded field of candidates. If you're going to make the argument that Herman Cain and Ben Carson didn't win the GOP nomination because they're black, you'll have to at the same time argue why it was that Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, etc. etc. etc. didn't win despite being white.
No, the truth is - Out of a crowd of 17 mostly white candidates, Carson, Rubio and Cruz were the most popular next to Trump.
So if you're going to make the "GOP racism" argument, you'll also have to explain why two Hispanic candidates and a black candidate won the combined majority of GOP primary votes in Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Maine, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Idaho, Wyoming.. Etc., etc., etc.
Donald Trump did not beat Cruz/Rubio/Carson until Carson and Rubio dropped out.
Either way you break it down, the majority of GOP primary voters preferred a Hispanic or black candidate this year.

That right there, is enough of a reason not to vote for this hack.

I'm not sure I'm certified. I did spend 15 years trying to convince Republicans that going into Iraq was an exceptionally bad idea, that the U.S. healthcare system costs, per capita, twice the amount of any single payer system, that there is no non-religious reason for a federal ban on ban gay marriage, that there is a correlation between climate change and CO2 in the atmosphere, that religion doesn't belong in politics, that deporting 12 million people won't work in practice, that you shouldn't own a gun if you're mentally insane and that absolutely no amount of hurt feelings trump an individual's right to free of speech. That didn't prevent much of the GOP from going over a cliff.
I think those are perfectly legitimate liberal viewpoints, despite the fact that nearly 40% of millennials favor a ban on "hate speech." George Carlin would roll in his grave.
The viewpoints I argue on VJ pertain mostly to traditional liberal thought as well. In this case, I think any liberal should question whether gun ownership or gun culture is the real problem. I'm interested in solving problems, not making ideologically pure fad statements. Has banning guns from any major metropolitan area of the United States actually helped lower murder rates?
If being liberal means banning things we don't like, avoid offending anyone at all cost, promoting religiously orthodox medieval garments as "diversity", not questioning semi-truths that have become almost folkloric to the left - Then I don't meet certification requirements.
There are plenty of perfectly reasonable conservatives, and plenty of good ideas on the conservative side. I may not agree with all of them, but I'd rather compromise with conservatives, than see my own side fall over its own ideologically authoritarian cliff of hypocrisy.

I'll gladly "own up" to white privilege the day I hear any proponent of the matter lay out a good argument as to why, specifically, it's called "white" privilege.
Asian Americans have the highest average household incomes in America. Indian Americans are the only ethnic group making over $100k per year on average. Asian Americans are on average more educated, have higher life expectancy, are less likely to be incarcerated, less likely to be shot by police, less likely to be perpetrators or victims of crimes than white Americans. Iranian Americans make on average $100 more than Norwegian Americans, while Japanese Americans make on average $10,000 more per year and Filipino American households make an average of $20,000 more per year. Pakistani Americans and German Americans have roughly the same annual income, while Taiwanese Americans outperform most other demographic groups in virtually every single measure pertaining to standard of living.
If "Asian America" was a country, it would be by far the world's wealthiest, while "African America" would still be the world's 13th wealthiest, outperforming half the European Union.
Yet, we live in a racist sh*thole trying to annihilate black people, with a system that is "rigged" to benefit white people at the expense of minorities. And Asian privilege does not exist because.. What? Band-aids more often come in "European complexion"?
When you single out a significant part of the population based solely on the color of their skin but fail to substantiate why accusations made don't apply to others, you end up convincing very few people. That's true whether you single out blacks, whites, Hispanics or Asians. My initial gut feeling would have it that the narrative of "white privilege" fits in perfectly with the narrative of an "oppressive, racist sh*thole called America", and statistics suggesting that white Americans aren't doing quite as well as other demographics groups is.. Well.. Contrary to that narrative. It's kind of like when some Christian groups dismiss clear evidence of an Earth dating waaaaay farther back than 6,000 years. Because pretending it's 6,000 years old conveniently fits the narrative.
Unfortunately, a number of science-denying young Earth Christians have made their way into elected government. And frighteningly, a large number of social science-denying activists have made their way into academia.

I also find it odd they are talking about the education level of Trump supporters. If you took away from the democrat party the voting bloc that is uneducated and govt dependant, they would be out of business.

How is "education" defined, and who defines it, and why?

Country music rocks, man. This, coming from someone who grew up on rock, alternative rock, hard rock and punk rock, wasn't exposed all that much to country until I met my country girl. Anyways, I still think having a mixture of rock and country songs makes for the best playlist.

Well don't you know? the government gives you stuff for free. It doesn't cost you a dime.

You're part of the problem, naitch. You're part of the problem. Whoooo!