https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dont-capture-the-full-extent-of-the-systemic-bias-in-policing/

Article from FiveThirtyEight today.

https://thebulwark.com/trump-the-barbarian/

For those who may not believe that reactionary conservatism has a negative impact:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/25/fox-news-hannity-coronavirus-misinformation/

“Our results indicate that a one standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with approximately 32 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14 and approximately 23 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28,” the authors write. They further note that those differences fade beyond March, as the two hosts’ coverage had largely converged by then.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20160812

We estimate that watching the Fox News Channel for this additional 2.5 minutes per week increases the vote share of the Republican presidential candidate by 0.3 percentage points among voters induced into watching by variation in channel position. The corresponding effect of watching MSNBC for 2.5 additional minutes per week is an imprecise zero...

We find that cable news does increase ideological polarization among the viewing public. The increase in polarization predicted by our model is comparable in magnitude to the estimated decade-long increase in polarization derived from the General Social Survey... In other results, we estimate that removing Fox News from cable television during the 2000 election cycle would have reduced the overall Republican presidential vote share by 0.46 percentage points. The predicted effect increases in 2004 and 2008 to 3.59 and 6.34 percentage points, respectively.

This proves my previous argument about right wing media being more effective.

Tom Cotton came real close to saying the quiet part out loud today.

We need a new bill of rights.

Posted by all3 on 6/23/2020 7:21:00 AM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 6/22/2020 12:36:00 AM (view original):

Posted by all3 on 6/21/2020 9:37:00 AM (view original):

Posted by all3 on 6/20/2020 1:21:00 PM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 6/20/2020 12:13:00 PM (view original):
Somebody took the Purge movies too seriously.

What would stop it from becoming reality?

(I'd really LOVE to hear the newby try to explain, but you're fair and rational, so go ahead.)

Other responses, but no effort at all to answer this. Wonder why.

Tang already answered this. People just aren't that bad.

Look, I've already expressed my opinion about this "defund the police" business. An ~15% average increase in spending on policing in the 90s resulted in a >75% reduction in homicides, including about 8000 fewer homicides per year with black victims. Defunding the police is not going to help vulnerable populations, even in the more moderate sense of "reduce funding for the police." Several economists have done studies in the past ~15 years demonstrating that there is a statistically significant inverse correlation between police funding and crime rates. This at least strongly suggests that people are responding to the risk/reward balance - make it harder to get away with murder, and less people get murdered.

But the ceiling isn't that high. Let's try to be realistic. Most US cities didn't have professional police until the mid- to late-19th century. Many rural areas didn't have police until well into the 20th century. It's not like the average family was experiencing regular burglary, rape, and murder. Neurotypical human beings are built to be pro-social. We're willing to push the rules, but not totally break them until we're very desperate. The founding fathers left lots of correspondence records. They didn't seem to spend a lot of time fretting about being pillaged and murdered in their beds. I think the suggestion that without police everyone should expect their kids to be napped, their wives to be raped, and their TVs to be stolen is incredibly unrealistic. Crime rates would rise, but that doesn't mean everyone would be routinely victimized.

Our you seriously trying to compare societal actions of the founding fathers, or even the late 19th or 20th century to now?
If people behaved towards each other more like they did then, we wouldn't have a lot of today's problems, and I'd understand the thought.
Now we have people looting and burning businesses of the exact people they supposedly support.

because riots were invented in the last two months

i god woodrow

What is our opinion on the new Trump-Putin story?

Posted by tangplay on 6/27/2020 12:18:00 AM (view original):
What is our opinion on the new Trump-Putin story?

Here’s what Trump said 2 months after finding out Russia was paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops: “We have this great friendship. And, by the way, getting along with Russia is a great thing." Basically a green light for Putin to keep executing our soldiers.

This story needs to be on Page 1 of every newspaper for a month. Putin put a bounty on the lives of American soldiers--and Trump rewarded Putin by trying to pull our soldiers out of Germany and put Russia back in the G7.

How would Fox, Lindsey Graham, and the GOP react if any other President knew for months that Russia was paying bounties on our troops, did literally nothing about it, praised Russia, invited Putin back to the G-7, and used our military for campaign photo ops?

Any Trump supporters want to defend this one?

Here's my guess:

"Fake news. The Lamestream Media is trying to make up ANOTHER story about Trump to make him lose. We aren't buying it."

I think it's going to be portrayed as a much bigger deal than it is by a media with an antagonistic relationship with the White House.

How many Americans have actually died as a result of the policy? Is it even double digits? The policy also didn't specifically target US soldiers, it targeted coalition forces. Obviously the largest subset of coalition forces are American, but this at least helps with semantics - the purpose can be couched not as actively targeting the United States, but as attempting to covertly pursue Russian interests with American collateral. Which, frankly, is consistent with both Russian and American strategy during and since the Cold War and not a real departure from the long-term status quo.

Piled on top of everything else Russia has done over the past decade, I don't see this as one of the big dominoes. If your strategy on Russia is to try to pursue a positive relationship, I'd probably be trying to deal with this quietly. It's not a big enough thing to blow up your long-term policy direction over.

From the Party that freaked out over BENGHAZI and 4 deaths , "is it even double digits?" seems rather blase

^^^^

"Is it even double digits" is a HORRIBLE response.

Posted by bronxcheer on 6/27/2020 12:45:00 PM (view original):
From the Party that freaked out over BENGHAZI and 4 deaths , "is it even double digits?" seems rather blase

Ok, I'm going to type something for the first time EVER on the WIS forums.

Benghazi.

I bet you a $20 GC you can't find me mentioning that word once, ever, before this post.

The president ignoring bounties put out on American soldiers is no big deal? Interesting take.

Look, I'm playing devil's advocate here, because I don't agree with current US policy on Russia - basically appeasement. I'm just saying that this is consistent with the policy.

There are very good reasons for the White House to desire positive relations with the Kremlin. Russia certainly has taken several steps back since the collapse of the USSR, but they're still a very big player on the world stage. They control the world's 2nd-largest nuclear arsenal. They control some of the largest oil reserves in the world and are the world's top producer of oil. They also control significant mineral resources including rare metals. More importantly than all these hard strategic resources, Russia has soft resources the US desperately wants to leverage - significant influence with many nations the US lacks such influence with. And Russia is a critical strategic partner in recovering "missing" Soviet warheads and fissile material. If Russia wanted dirty bombs to go off in major US cities while still retaining a reasonable ability to disavow any knowledge of it, they likely have the ability to achieve that at any time. So yes, there are legitimate strategic and security reasons to desire friendly relations with Moscow.

Given that the US policy under this administration has been to pursue a strategic partnership with Russia, I don't see how a US-Russian proxy war on a tiny scale would need to derail that policy. As I pointed out the first time, there is a long history of such proxy wars extending comfortably into the post-Soviet era (e.g. Kosovo, East Timor, Darfur, Syria, Yemen). There is no way in which this incident can be realistically portrayed as a paradigm shift in US-Russian relations. Given that the Trump administration is already pursuing a policy of friendship(/appeasement) I don't see how a non-paradigm-shifting minor scandal should shift policy directions. In particular, if the administration thought they could keep the information quiet, the obvious thing to do would be to talk to the Kremlin quietly. We don't know that this didn't happen. A public policy of condemnation puts a spotlight on the problem and puts a strain on the overall relationship. Now that it's become a public issue anyway I would expect some kind of public response to be forthcoming.