Wednesday, October 22, 2014


News Clips For The Day


COMMENTS FROM YAHOO! AND DAILY KOS

https://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/man-warns-obama-dont-touch-girlfriend-163323536--abc-news-politics.html

Yahoo! News
Man Warns Obama: 'Don't Touch My Girlfriend'
By Mary Bruce
October 21, 2014

President Obama found himself in an unusual situation Monday.

As he was casting his ballot early in Chicago, minding his own business behind the voting booth, a young man, Mike Jones, walked by and warned him "don't touch my girlfriend."

The girlfriend, Aia Cooper, who was voting in the booth next to Obama, was humiliated, to say the least. "I really wasn't planning on it," Obama joked with the woman. "There's an example of a brother just embarrassing you, just for no reason whatsoever."

"And now you'll be going back home and talking to your friends; what's his name?" the president asked.

"Mike," Cooper said.

"'I can't believe Mike. He's such a fool,'" Obama said, impersonating the woman.

"He really is," she agreed.

Obama continued: "'I was just mortified. But, fortunately, the president was nice about it. So it's all right.'"

"I am freaking out right now," she said, laughing.

The president got the last laugh, though.

"Give me a kiss and give him something to talk about," the president said, as he gave Cooper a hug and a peck on the cheek. "Now he's really jealous."

But Cooper downplayed the moment.

"He gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Just the cheek," she told ABC's Chicago station WLS. "Please, Michelle, don't come after me!"




President Obama has a lively mind and a sense of humor. He also knows he's a handsome dude. He couldn't resist playing with the young woman, who enjoyed the joke as much as he did. Nuff said.





http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/20/1337891/-Republicans-who-blocked-surgeon-general-nominee-blame-Obama-for-surgeon-general-nbsp-vacancy?detail=email

Daily Kos
Republicans who blocked surgeon general nominee blame Obama for surgeon general vacancy
Joan McCarter
MON OCT 20, 2014

Almost one year ago, President Obama nominated Dr. Vivek Murthy to serve as surgeon general, and the NRA went insane because Dr. Murthy, being a reality-based person, had once talked about the reality of gun violence being a public health issue. Which, of course, resulted in a flurry of vows from Republicans to block his nomination. Now that a particularly scary virus has come the U.S. (and affected approximately one-gazillionith of the population compared to gunshot wounds), people are noticing that it would be really nice to have the position filled. And, of course, Republicans are all saying it's President Obama's fault that we don't have one.

On "Meet the Press" yesterday, for example, Chuck Todd asked Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) about the vacancy in the Surgeon General’s office. "This seems to be politics," the host noted. "The NRA said they were going to score the vote, and suddenly everybody’s frozen. That seems a little petty in hindsight, does it not?"

Blunt replied, "Well, you know, if the president really ought to nominate people that can be confirmed to these jobs, and frankly, then we should Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced on Tuesday that he's forming a panel that will study the social and economic conditions that fueled violent protests in Ferguson, Mo., over the killing of an unarmed 18-year-old this summer.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

" 'Legitimate issues have been raised by thoughtful voices on all sides. Shouting past one another will not move us to where we need to go,' said Mr. Nixon in his remarks, adding that the members of the commission, which haven't yet been named, need to have 'difficult conversations that for far too long have been avoided or ignored.'

"The commission will be empowered to call on experts to address topics ranging from governance, poverty, education and law enforcement. The commission will also recommend changes to make the region a 'fairer place for everyone to live,' Mr. Nixon said. …

"Commissioners will be appointed and will convene by early November and Mr. Nixon expects them to provide near-term recommendations by early spring, said Scott Holste, a spokesman for Mr. Nixon. More in-depth recommendations could 'take more time to develop,' he said."

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the commission will not be investigating Michael Brown's shooting death.

If you remember, over the summer Officer Darren Wilson had a fatal confrontation with Brown. The news drove protesters to the streets, where they clashed with police.
Nixon ordered the National Guard to Ferguson to restore peace, but tensions in the St. Louis suburb have remained high.

NBC News adds:

"The governor's remarks are somewhat of a departure from his rather aloof prior stance on Ferguson, for which he has been widely criticized for being absent and impotent in the fallout from Brown's killing.

"The governor has been blasted by supporters of Brown for refusing to replace St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, whom they say is incapable of fairly prosecuting a police officer, with a special prosecutor. He's also been criticized for not visiting Ferguson in the first tumultuous days of protests, instead keeping his normal schedule which included attending a country music concert and the state fair."


Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) went even further during an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley.


CROWLEY: Do you think it would have helped … had there been a surgeon general in place to kind of calm what has become the fear of Ebola?

CRUZ: Look – look, of course we should have a surgeon general in place. And we don’t have one because President Obama, instead of nominating a health professional, he nominated someone who is an anti-gun activist.

To hear the Texas Republican tell it, Dr. Vivek Murthy isn’t even a "health professional," which is the exact opposite of reality.

That's news to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where Murthy is an attending physician and Harvard Medical School, where he teaches. What's more, any healthcare professional who doesn't have an opinion on the public health problem of what's truly an epidemic in the country—gun violence and accidental shootings—is either an ideologue or a not very well-qualified healthcare provider. Additionally, the surgeon general has no ability to make policy about guns, and Murthy himself testified that he would not use the position to advocate for gun restrictions.

And here are Republicans arguing that Murthy isn't a qualified health professional because the NRA—so well known as a public health advocacy group—told them so. But, it's all Obama's fault that we have Ebola in the U.S. and that we don't have a surgeon general to help deal with it.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is on track to meet its annual average of 30,000 gun deaths and 100,000 victims of gun violence this year.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO JOAN MCCARTER ON MON OCT 20, 2014 AT 09:01 AM PDT.
ALSO REPUBLISHED BY DAILY KOS.




http://billmoyers.com/2014/03/23/why-the-nra-is-blocking-obama%E2%80%99s-surgeon-general-nominee/

Why the NRA Is Blocking Obama’s Surgeon General Nominee
by Zoë Carpenter
March 23, 2014

The post of the surgeon general has been vacant since July and it looks likely to remain that way for some time thanks to a strident campaign led by the National Rifle Association and libertarian Senator Rand Paul against President Obama’s nominee, Dr. Vivek Murthy.

Murthy has medical and business degrees from Yale, works as an attending physician and instructor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School and has founded several health businesses and nonprofits. He has also expressed support for limited gun safety measures like a ban on assault weapons, mandatory safety training and limits on ammunition and so the NRA has declared it will “score” his confirmation vote, putting pressure on Senate Democrats running tight re-election races in red states to block Murthy’s confirmation. As The New York Times reported, the White House is “recalibrating” its strategy towards Murthy’s nomination, meaning the Senate vote will either be delayed or never happen.

This isn’t the first time the NRA has held up a nominee: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives went without a director for seven years because of opposition from the gun lobby. But never before has the group set itself so strongly against a surgeon general nominee. So why now? The NRA said Murthy’s “blatant activism on behalf of gun control” attracted their attention.

But the gun lobby’s campaign against Murthy isn’t really about his record, or him at all. His positions on guns are hardly radical or even activist and his views are consistent with those of the majority of Americans. Polling indicates that the public is far more supportive of new gun control laws than members of Congress or, certainly, the NRA.

Furthermore, Murthy’s views represent a consensus among medical professionals that gun violence is a major public health issue. Gun violence, including suicide, kills some 30,000 Americans every year, about the same number as car accidents. Cars are highly regulated for health and safety; guns, barely. Accordingly, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, among many others, have called for stronger gun safety laws. It would be surprising if, as a doctor, Murthy did not have concerns about gun violence and the strength of current regulations.

With public health professionals engaging more forcefully on the gun issue, the NRA has a pressing interest in muting their calls for stronger policy. Really, the campaign against Murthy is the continuation of a longstanding effort to make discussion of gun violence taboo. For years the NRA has worked to bury information about gun violence and its public health implications. The NRA has campaigned successfully to ban registries that collect data on guns used in crimes and in 1996 the group fought for and won legislation that froze federal funding for research on gun violence. Although Obama lifted the restriction last year in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, there’s still very little money — federal and private — for gun research and not enough data, said David Hemenway, an expert on injury at the Harvard School of Public Health.

On the local level, the NRA has tried to bar pediatricians from counseling parents about the risks of keeping guns at home. The American Association of Pediatrics recommends that doctors begin to talk to parents about gun safety even before their baby is born and continue the conversation yearly, just as doctors talk to parents about the dangers of swimming pools and the importance of bicycle helmets. Florida passed a gag law in 2011; crafted by an NRA lobbyist, the bill forbids doctors from “making written inquiry or asking questions concerning the ownership of a firearm or ammunition by the patient or by a family member of the patient.” A district court ruled the following year that the law restricted physicians’ rights to free speech and the case is now in the appeals process. Murthy’s opposition to pediatrician gag laws was one of the reasons cited by the NRA and Rand Paul in their attempt to disqualify him.

When she ordered a permanent injunction against the Florida law in 2012, District Judge Marcia Cooke wrote that the law “in no way affects [Second Amendment] rights” and instead “aims to restrict a practitioner’s ability to provide truthful, non-misleading information to a patient.” The same can be said of the NRA’s objection to the Surgeon General nominee, who won’t be involved in crafting gun policy. The threat to the NRA is that the surgeon general will merely talk about gun violence, in fulfilling his or her duty to provide the public with “the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce their risk of illness and injury.”

While the NRA’s political clout comes from its individual members, the group serves the agenda of gun industry. What’s really going on with Murthy’s confirmation is that an industry group is trying to keep the government from regulating its products. This isn’t a new battle: the tobacco industry fought it, as have many other industries with financial interests in evading health and safety regulations.

“Most industries try to protect themselves — the less regulation the better, the less oversight the better. They want to pursue their sales,” said Hemenway. “I think it’s almost time for a surgeon general statement about guns, like we had with cigarettes and cancer, particularly about guns and suicide.”

While the industry’s goals aren’t exceptional, its success at evading regulation is, said Kristen Rand, legislative director at the Violence Policy Center. “Guns are a consumer product. We’ve taken a public health approach to reducing product-related injury for every other product, from automobiles, to toys, to airplanes. Every product is regulated from a health and safety perspective with the goal of reducing accident and injury. The only exception is guns,” Rand said.

Murthy’s assurance that he does not intend to use the surgeon general’s office “as a bully pulpit on gun control” failed to appease the NRA. Perhaps appeasement is the wrong tack. The only way to curb the gun industry’s outsized influence is if people like the surgeon general do talk about gun violence and advocate for more research and data, not less.
“The surgeon general’s role is to educate the public about how to live healthier, safer lives and one of biggest injury-producing mechanisms in America today are guns. It’s obviously an area where he should be involved,” said Rand. “What the NRA fears is having someone with a bully pulpit who has solid information and is giving people the facts. The NRA fears information.”

Democrats also need to stand up for freedom of speech and information. The midterm map presents a real challenge, as the Senate races most important to Democrats are in deep red states — Louisiana, Arkansas, Montana, Alaska — where public opinion on gun control is far more conservative than it is nationally. Still, it’s far from clear that the NRA’s endorsement is worth groveling for. The NRA can easily whip up hundreds of gun owners to flood Senate offices with calls expressing outrage over Murthy’s nomination, but there is some evidence that the group’s electoral influence is much less significant than its effect on policymaking and nominations. According to a statistical analysis conducted by Paul Waldman in 2012, “The NRA has virtually no impact on congressional elections. The NRA endorsement, so coveted by so many politicians, is almost meaningless. Nor does the money the organization spends have any demonstrable impact on the outcome of races.” [Emphasis his.]




On Dr. Murthy – “To hear the Texas Republican tell it, Dr. Vivek Murthy isn’t even a 'health professional,' which is the exact opposite of reality. That's news to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where Murthy is an attending physician and Harvard Medical School, where he teaches. What's more, any healthcare professional who doesn't have an opinion on the public health problem of what's truly an epidemic in the country—gun violence and accidental shootings—is either an ideologue or a not very well-qualified healthcare provider. Additionally, the surgeon general has no ability to make policy about guns, and Murthy himself testified that he would not use the position to advocate for gun restrictions.”

From the Moyers article: “Really, the campaign against Murthy is the continuation of a longstanding effort to make discussion of gun violence taboo. For years the NRA has worked to bury information about gun violence and its public health implications. The NRA has campaigned successfully to ban registries that collect data on guns used in crimes and in 1996 the group fought for and won legislation that froze federal funding for research on gun violence. Although Obama lifted the restriction last year in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, there’s still very little money — federal and private — for gun research and not enough data, said David Hemenway, an expert on injury at the Harvard School of Public Health.”

The assault on gun violence research by the NRA shows how deeply corrupt parts of the Republican positions are. On the question of whether or not Murthy is a “health professional,” I can only give one explanation: some Republicans don't mind making themselves appear downright ignorant when they stick to their right-wing hardline poses against all odds. They don't believe anything of the sort – it's just expedient to say they do. They just feel compelled to toe the party line. The NRA has proclaimed Murthy to be something other than “a health professional,” and the NRA has those politicians in fear of their next election season, so they go along with that statement. The Republican stances on evolution, global warming and a non-Biblical explanation of the formation of the universe are other good examples. Not “believing” in global warming, the Big Bang theory and evolution were opinions taken by Republicans increasingly in the last four years according to the Pew Research Center. Why? See the website below:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/12/31/3108741/republicans-evolution-demographics/.

“The theory of evolution is right up there with the theory of gravity in terms of its universal acceptance among scientists. But, as we’ve learned from the climate change debate, politics has the power to trump science — and, according to a new Pew poll, it seems like political partisanship may be starting to take its toll on evolution. While a comfortable majority of Republicans accepted human evolution as fact in 2009, Pew finds a plurality now reject it — an astonishing 19 point reversal in four years.

It’s a finding that tells us a lot, both principally about the (ahem) evolution of the Republican Party in the past fours. In short, the kind of person who doesn’t believe in evolution is much more likely be a typical Republican today than four years ago — for reasons that have only a bit to do with the debate over evolution itself.

There are two keys to understanding what the Pew poll teaches us about Republicans. First, the drop in belief in evolution is among Republicans and, more or less, Republicans only. Acceptance of human evolution was basically the same among Democrats and independents in 2013 as it was in 2009. Second, the share of the total population that believes in evolution hasn’t changed at all. The drop in Republican belief doesn’t appear to be people changing their minds about evolution so much as people who already didn’t believe in evolution becoming Republicans.

Why might that be? The obvious explanation is the changing character of the Republican base. When Republicans win in recent years, those victories are won on the backs of old voters, white voters, and religious voters. While race isn’t super-important in predicting views on evolution, age and religion are. Each generation of Americans, Pew found, is increasingly more likely to accept natural human evolution; Americans 18-29 do so by a 68-27 margin, while the number for seniors (65+) is 49-36. Likewise, white evangelical protestants are the group most likely to reject evolution, while the religiously unaffiliated are by far the most likely to accept it.

The winnowing of self-identified Republicans to these demographic groups has been dramatic in recent years. The overall number of Americans who identify as Republicans hovered around 29 percent from from 2008-2012 as American seniors became dramatically more Republican, the pro-GOP margin shifting from 35-34 in 2008 to 39-29 in 2012. White evangelicals have become similarly more Republican at the same time.

So on one look, the decline in Republican belief in evolution is perfectly consistent with one of the most fundamental trends in American politics: a greying, born-again Republican Party increasingly out of step with the rest of America’s political views.

The Republican base’s increasing hostility to evolution could very well explain the rash of recent state-level debates on teaching evolution in schools. In the past four years, we’ve seen a slate of state controversies over school textbooks and curricula that teach creationism alongside evolution. States like Texas,Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and New Mexico have all had versions of this fight — all controversies sparked by conservative state leaders that have heated up in the past two or three years. All of this anti-evolution activity makes much more sense if understood as Republican representatives and activists responding to incentives created by their increasingly homogenous base.

If that explanation is right, then we should expect to see similarly base-tailored legislation coming out of Republican state representatives in 2014 and beyond. The demographic trends concentrating the Republican base don’t appear to be slowing, which means that Republicans will have even stronger incentives over time to push legislation that appeals to the older, whiter, more religious demographic. This means that more issues like creationism in schools that don’t play on the national level, but can help local Republicans make a name for themselves inside the party, might make their way into state capitols in the coming year.

But the demographic explanation isn’t everything. Pew cautions that “differences in the racial and ethnic composition of Democrats and Republicans or differences in their levels of religious commitment do not wholly explain partisan differences in beliefs about evolution.” Put more simply, Republicans are more skeptical of evolution than you would expect even when you take into account the demographic character of its base.

This suggests another, more subtle effect at work. A wealth of research into political psychology shows that people’s partisan affiliations affect their beliefs on basic facts. Republicans are overwhelmingly more likely to think the economy is doing well when Republicans hold the Presidency, and ditto with Democrats when their guy holds the White House. A recent experiment found that even basic math is contaminated by politics; people are much more likely to correctly solve basic math problems when, in context, solving them correctly helps rather than hurts their party.

In the evolution context, this suggests a feedback effect at work among Republicans. As the GOP becomes more associated with the creationist cause as a consequence of demographic shifts, Republicans start to feel more like being skeptical of evolution is their “team” position. So even Republicans who are demographically more likely to accept the basic science of evolution start to reject it, because that belief best harmonizes their beliefs with the perceived interest of their political party.

Politics, it seems, really does ruin everything — including science.”




Police Violence – US vs Britain


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/18/1336354/-Yes-it-s-true-Police-only-shot-four-people-and-nobody-died-in-all-of-England-the-past-two-years?detail=email

Yes, it's true: Police only shot four people (and nobody died) in all of England the past two years
By Shaun King for Daily Kos
SAT OCT 18, 2014

Earlier this year my family and I had a chance to travel the world. I had just received a generous advance for my first book, all of our kids were being homeschooled, and the lease was up on our Southern California home. As a family we had crossed the Texas border into Mexico one time, but we had never actually used our passports before. We saw the opportunity to escape the American bubble for an extended trip as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the six of us. What we saw in London and Paris and throughout South Africa during our months abroad was postcard-worthy, but now that we’re back in the states, one thing has stuck with me: For good reason, people view our country like it’s the wild, wild west—and our police are front and center in this popular opinion.

I had always heard that police in London, by and large, don’t carry guns. Except for the police we saw at Heathrow Airport, we actually couldn’t find a police officer with a gun in London. I looked. The kids looked. Even when we were near famed locations like Buckingham Palace or the British Museum or the London Eye, we just couldn’t spot a single officer with a gun. Our first inclination, fully Americanized to equate guns with protection, was to wonder just how safe we were since none of the officers had firearms, but that feeling soon wore off and we went from feeling weird about not seeing any armed officers to feeling a sense of relief.

It’s not that everywhere my family travels we actively think we are targets to be shot and killed by a police officer, but we, like most black families, have grown sadly accustomed to the near daily news story of another black man or woman being gunned down by the police. In what can only be described as a reality in black America that is widely shared but rarely discussed—police scare the shit out of the most law-abiding black folk you’ve ever met. Being pulled over by the police for a routine traffic violation might get you beat down, or sent to prison on some trumped-up charges like Marcus Jeter in New Jersey, or even killed. It is a sad, running joke throughout black America, backed up by semi-hilarious videos, that white folk can yell in the faces of officers when they are angry, but black folk would be shot on the spot in any such instance.

This reality, when my wife and I shared it with black Londoners, just shocked them. They have their own beefs and concerns with police, but this idea of trembling in fear when pulled over for going 65 mph in a 55-mph zone was just foreign to them. In fact, after visiting the United States for the very first time in 2012, my wife’s hairstylist in London, Teresa, said she felt so unsafe she wasn't looking forward to going back.

"I was scared to death," Teresa told us. "My entire life I’ve wanted to visit New York City and the week we were there on holiday from London, at least six people were murdered, including a teenager who was gunned down by police in his own home."

The United Kingdom, like the United States, has its own deep history of violence. I won’t use this space to teach a history lesson and I only lift it up because anytime I mention how much I believe the United States can improve its modern issues of violence, people are quick to reference our deeply violent past as being too big a hurdle for us to overcome.

Very few articles detail just how outrageous the gap is in cases of police violence between the United Kingdom and the United States as well as this one, entitled "Trigger Happy," in The Economist.

In what at first reads like fiction to the American mind, the article details how officers in all of London and Wales, had only fired their guns four times in the entirety of the past two years—and in those four instances, not one single person was killed!

Even without considering the fact that the FBI publicly admits it doesn't have a reliable account of how many people are killed by police in the United States, and that the real number is likely much more than the 400-plus they estimate, the numbers are staggering. The Economist states:

Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period.

The reality that more young black men were shot and killed by police in the small area of metropolitan St. Louis in the past two months than in all of England and Wales (which has 80 times the population) in the past two years is just outrageous. It's not to say that the solution is simple, but it is absolutely unacceptable for the United States to have problems at this level when our closest peer nation has nothing of the sort.

It's not good enough to say, in the face of so much senseless violence, that "Americans love guns." That's not a solution, it's a platitude. Have we lost our will, as a nation, to tackle tough problems? I just don't think so. While middle ground may be difficult, I'm sure we can do so much better than this.
TAG



http://www.businessinsider.com/marcus-jeter-dash-cam-video-2014-8

Man Facing Years In Jail Cleared After Dash Cam Video Shows Scary Police Behavior
Alyson Shontell
August 27, 2014

In June 2012, police were called to the residence of Marcus Jeter and his girlfriend for a domestic violence incident. Charges weren't filed, and Jeter wasn't arrested. But while Jeter was driving away, a cop car pulled up behind him and flashed its lights.

Initially, Jeter was charged with eluding police arrest and assault. He was looking at up to five years in prison. But in February, Jeter's defense attorney saw footage of the actual event from the cop car's dashcam. And it makes Jeter look like a victim of overly aggressive cops, who appear to have smashed his window, bumped his car head on, pointed guns at him, and punched him in the face.

"The next thing I know, one of them busts the [car] door and there is glass all over my face," Jeter tells ABC.

ABC investigative reporter Sarah Wallace obtained the dashcam tapes, and two Bloomfield police officers have now been indicted for falsifying reports and, one of them, for assault. A third pleaded guilty early on to tampering.

Here's what the video shows (via ABC):

The incident began at Jeter's house, where he lives with his girlfriend. Cops were called over for domestic violence, but charges weren't filed.

When Jeter left his house, he noticed a cop car behind him flashing its lights. The video shows Jeter immediately pulling over, not trying to make an escape. When cops approached his car, Jeter put his hands up to cooperate. Two cops were holding guns, which Jeter says scared him from getting out of his vehicle. A gun was pointed right at Jeter.

Another cop car drove to the scene and bumped straight into the front of Jeter's car. The video also shows cops throwing punches at Jeter. "That's where one of the officers punch Mr. Jeter in the head after he was clearly placed in handcuffs," Jeter's attorney says. All charges against Jeter were dropped after prosecutors saw this footage. Two of the NJ police were indicted for falsifying reports, one was charged with assault, and one pleaded guilty to tampering. 




Effectiveness of dash cam in court proceedings: "ABC investigative reporter Sarah Wallace obtained the dashcam tapes, and two Bloomfield police officers have now been indicted for falsifying reports and, one of them, for assault. A third pleaded guilty early on to tampering.”

Policing in Britain: “Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period.”

I have rarely seen nationwide statistics on deaths at the hands of police in the US. I think that is because, as stated in the Business Insider article, accurate statistics haven't been kept. There began to be more of a focus on policing in general here and the rate of killings, during the Ferguson investigation, when the Attorney General announced that he was setting up a database for the purpose, and in conjunction with that, the shocking story came out of the Pentagon program to give military grade weapons even including tanks to American city police forces. That program has a feedback that benefits the Pentagon – when they give their slightly older weapons away in this fashion they can then ask Congress for new ones.

Money, money, money. I hope to see the Attorney General's report on this prevailing problem when it comes out, and what Congress decides to do about it, if anything. I can only hope that a Democrat (Hillary?) will be in office at that time, so that action on the matter is less likely to be stifled. The lower rate of police related killings in Britain has a lot to do with the fact that most of their police officers don't even carry guns, but also, I think, that restrictions on the civilian population owning guns are much greater in the UK, so presumably more of their criminals also don't have guns. With the NRA's choke hold on Republican thought in this country there is little likelihood that we in the US will be able to imitate Britain's policies. The Republican Party simply won't allow it.






Missouri Governor Announces Creation Of 'Ferguson Commission' – NPR
by EYDER PERALTA
October 21, 2014

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced on Tuesday that he's forming a panel that will study the social and economic conditions that fueled violent protests in Ferguson, Mo., over the killing of an unarmed 18-year-old this summer.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

" 'Legitimate issues have been raised by thoughtful voices on all sides. Shouting past one another will not move us to where we need to go,' said Mr. Nixon in his remarks, adding that the members of the commission, which haven't yet been named, need to have 'difficult conversations that for far too long have been avoided or ignored.'

"The commission will be empowered to call on experts to address topics ranging from governance, poverty, education and law enforcement. The commission will also recommend changes to make the region a 'fairer place for everyone to live,' Mr. Nixon said. …

"Commissioners will be appointed and will convene by early November and Mr. Nixon expects them to provide near-term recommendations by early spring, said Scott Holste, a spokesman for Mr. Nixon. More in-depth recommendations could 'take more time to develop,' he said."

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the commission will not be investigating Michael Brown's shooting death.

If you remember, over the summer Officer Darren Wilson had a fatal confrontation with Brown. The news drove protesters to the streets, where they clashed with police.

Nixon ordered the National Guard to Ferguson to restore peace, but tensions in the St. Louis suburb have remained high.

NBC News adds:

"The governor's remarks are somewhat of a departure from his rather aloof prior stance on Ferguson, for which he has been widely criticized for being absent and impotent in the fallout from Brown's killing.

"The governor has been blasted by supporters of Brown for refusing to replace St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, whom they say is incapable of fairly prosecuting a police officer, with a special prosecutor. He's also been criticized for not visiting Ferguson in the first tumultuous days of protests, instead keeping his normal schedule which included attending a country music concert and the state fair."




“Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced on Tuesday that he's forming a panel that will study the social and economic conditions that fueled violent protests in Ferguson, Mo., over the killing of an unarmed 18-year-old this summer.... "The commission will be empowered to call on experts to address topics ranging from governance, poverty, education and law enforcement. The commission will also recommend changes to make the region a 'fairer place for everyone to live,' Mr. Nixon said. …'The governor's remarks are somewhat of a departure from his rather aloof prior stance on Ferguson, for which he has been widely criticized for being absent and impotent in the fallout from Brown's killing. The governor has been blasted by supporters of Brown for refusing to replace St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, whom they say is incapable of fairly prosecuting a police officer, with a special prosecutor. He's also been criticized for not visiting Ferguson in the first tumultuous days of protests, instead keeping his normal schedule which included attending a country music concert and the state fair.'"

The following Wikipedia article on Jay Nixon shows him as a Democrat whose political position is somewhat insecure, who cooperated in a court settlement that ended busing in the area schools, and who backed down in a politically unpopular MIAC report on some “militia” movements in the state. Still, this step of setting up a commission to look into the overall situation in Ferguson is leading in the right direction. I hope they can make some corrective moves in the racially biased situation there.

Jay Nixon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Nixon

Jeremiah Wilson "Jay" Nixon (born February 13, 1956) is an American politician who is the 55th and current Governor of the U.S.state of Missouri. A member of the Democratic Party, Nixon was first elected Governor in 2008. 

In August 2014, Nixon's handling of the Michael Brown shooting andsubsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri, brought him international attention and criticism.

Controversies[edit]

Nixon has overseen the state's involvement in the court settlements that ended mandatory urban busing in St. Louisand Kansas City's public schools.[5] His role in the desegregation cases has caused friction with some African American leaders. In addition, Missouri Republicans have criticized Nixon for his campaign managers' soliciting campaign contributions from utility companies, including Ameren during an ongoing criminal investigation by his office of the company, which were immediately returned when the matter drew attention.

The Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) issued a report titled "The Modern Militia Movement" on February 20, 2009, informing the Missouri State Highway Patrol of several groups of people who could possibly be linked to domestic militia groups. According to the report, these groups included white Christians, supporters of third-party presidential candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin, as well as opponents of gun control, illegal immigration, abortion, the Federal Reserve System, and the Internal Revenue Service. Following a joint letter from Paul, Barr, and Baldwin condemning the report, Nixon and the MIAC issued an apology concerning the report and stated that it will no longer be displayed on any official state websites.[6]






Plane passengers hospitalized due to Ebola concerns
CBS/AP October 22, 2014, 3:37 AM

An airline passenger was being evaluated at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey Tuesday due to Ebola concerns, reports CBS New York. Two others were hospitalized after getting off planes into Chicago.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson Carol Crawford said the Newark passenger was "identified as reporting symptoms or having a potential exposure to Ebola" during the enhanced screening process for those arriving in the U.S. from the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

"(The) CDC or state/local public health officials will contact other passengers on the aircraft should it be determined that there was any risk to the other passengers of exposure to communicable disease," Crawford continued.

The Record newspaper reported that the passenger was on a flight from Liberia that went through Brussels before arriving at Newark Liberty International Airport Tuesday afternoon. The passenger was held briefly at customs at Terminal C at the airport and was then sequestered from the other passengers from the flight, the newspaper reported.

The CDC didn't name the hospital, but the newspaper reported there was a "flurry of activity" near University Hospital in Newark Tuesday night.

In Chicago, two passengers who took ill while flying into O'Hare from Liberia have become the first to test the city's new Ebola protocols, although officials say they see no evidence that either has the deadly disease, according to CBS Chicago.

One of the passengers, a child, reportedly vomited during the flight and is now being quarantined at University of Chicago Medical Center. The child was screened by federal authorities and found to have no fever and no other Ebola symptoms other than vomiting.

Separately, an adult also traveling from Liberia reported nausea and diarrhea. That passenger was taken to Rush University Medical Center for evaluation. That person is being monitored, but has not been tested for Ebola.

The two passengers are not related and were not traveling together, says CBS Chicago.
Customs and Border Protection officers earlier this month started screening passengers from West Africa who arrived at John F. Kennedy, Newark Liberty, Washington's Dulles, Chicago's O'Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airports.

Since the screenings started Oct. 11, at New York's Kennedy, 562 people have been checked at the five airports, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Of those, four who arrived at Washington's Dulles airport were taken to a local hospital. No cases of Ebola have been discovered.

Word of the latest hospitalization came as the Obama administration, fending off demands to ban travel from Ebola-stricken West Africa, instead tightened U.S. defenses against the virus by requiring that all arrivals from the disease-ravaged zone pass through one of the five U.S. Airports.

The move responds to pressure from some members of Congress and the public to impose a travel ban from the three countries at the heart of the Ebola outbreak, which has killed over 4,500 people, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, since it emerged 10 months ago.

Beginning Wednesday, people whose trips began in Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone must fly into one of the five U.S. airports performing fever checks for Ebola, the Homeland Security Department said.

Previously, the administration said screenings at those airports covered about 94 percent of fliers from the three countries but missed a few who landed elsewhere.

There are no direct flights from those nations into the U.S; about 150 fliers per day arrive by various multi-leg routes.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said, "We currently have in place measures to identify and screen anyone at all land, sea and air ports of entry into the United States who we have reason to believe has been present in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea in the preceding 21 days."

Homeland Security officials at the airports use no-touch thermometers to check for fever, which can be a symptom of Ebola infection. People who have been infected with the virus may not develop a fever and illness for up to 21 days, however.

As the U.S. closed a gap in its Ebola screening, an Ebola-free African country said it would begin checking visiting Americans for the disease.

Rwanda's health minister said Tuesday that travelers who have been in the United States or Spain - the two countries outside of West Africa that have seen transmission during the Ebola outbreak - will be checked upon arrival and must report on their health during their stay.

No Ebola cases have been reported in Rwanda, which is in East Africa. The U.S. Embassy in Rwanda said that country is banning visitors who have recently traveled to Guinea, Liberia, or Sierra Leone, the three countries at the heart of the outbreak, as well as nearby Senegal, which had a single case

The change in U.S. policy falls short of the demands by some elected officials and candidates for an outright ban on travel from the West African outbreak zone. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York described the action as an "added layer of protection against Ebola entering our country."



“An airline passenger was being evaluated at a hospital in Newark, New Jersey Tuesday due to Ebola concerns, reports CBS New York. Two others were hospitalized after getting off planes into Chicago. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson Carol Crawford said the Newark passenger was "identified as reporting symptoms or having a potential exposure to Ebola" during the enhanced screening process for those arriving in the U.S. from the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. '(The) CDC or state/local public health officials will contact other passengers on the aircraft should it be determined that there was any risk to the other passengers of exposure to communicable disease,' Crawford continued.... Separately, an adult also traveling from Liberia reported nausea and diarrhea. That passenger was taken to Rush University Medical Center for evaluation. That person is being monitored, but has not been tested for Ebola.... Since the screenings started Oct. 11, at New York's Kennedy, 562 people have been checked at the five airports, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Of those, four who arrived at Washington's Dulles airport were taken to a local hospital. No cases of Ebola have been discovered.... Word of the latest hospitalization came as the Obama administration, fending off demands to ban travel from Ebola-stricken West Africa, instead tightened U.S. defenses against the virus by requiring that all arrivals from the disease-ravaged zone pass through one of the five U.S. Airports.... Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said, 'We currently have in place measures to identify and screen anyone at all land, sea and air ports of entry into the United States who we have reason to believe has been present in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea in the preceding 21 days.'... As the U.S. closed a gap in its Ebola screening, an Ebola-free African country said it would begin checking visiting Americans for the disease. Rwanda's health minister said Tuesday that travelers who have been in the United States or Spain - the two countries outside of West Africa that have seen transmission during the Ebola outbreak - will be checked upon arrival and must report on their health during their stay.”

I hope these new plane passengers who have shown some symptoms of illness will not prove to have Ebola. I don't understand why the one passenger who is being evaluated at Rush University Medical Center has not been tested for Ebola, though. Maybe he doesn't have a fever. All in all, there seems to be a period of calm in the epidemic as it exists here in the US. I'm glad to see that Rwanda has instituted policies to prevent travelers from the hot zones that have developed so far. It seems to me that other African nations should do the same. If the disease can be stopped in its spread outside the initial area, that will be a great blessing. As for the new US policy of requiring anyone traveling from Western Africa into the US to go through one of five airports where they will receive a physical exam, that to me is more sensible and less difficult than trying to stop all travel from there into our country, as the Republicans are demanding. It is, however, a serious lapse that up until now they were allowed to come into any US airport rather than those five. That's what made the difference between 100% screening and 94%. 94% definitely was alarming rather than calming. I am relieved to see that travelers coming “on land, sea and air” are all being tested for fever and questioned as to their itinerary. It looks like real progress.