Bicycle Parts in the News

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 5:12:23 AM UTC, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 3:00:55 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 3:08:01 PM UTC, Tom Kunich wrote:

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated because he saw that all people were the same an preached it. The Democrats in a bid to retain power killed that sort of thinking an support more the message of the segregation but in another manner that they did in the 1880's through the 1950's. This time they separated people to maintain a running anger by hiring ONLY minorities as if that somehow made up for prior discrimination. A man was a slave so they freed him as long as he sat in the back of the bus and then they allowed him to sit in the front of the bus and wanted all of the whites to sit in the back of the bus.

That sort of seething anger among the races was NOT caused by the occasional racist but from a clear and present plan of the racist that run the Democrat Party. They are even on record as describing and laughing about it.

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 15:42:45 -0600, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:04:13 +0700, John B
wrote:

Back in the day the police walked a beat and the cop knew all about
who should be there and what they should be doing and everybody knew
him. I suspect that law enforcement was a totally different thing then
today where the average citizen's only contact with the police is
seeing them ride by in their "cruiser".

I think the majority of cops, especially urban cops, would agree that
policing is a very different thing than when I was young 50 years ago.
There were no beat cops as such in my home town, instead they were all
in suqd cars driving around, but they still knew a lot of people and
what should be going on where. My Dad knew every cop in town through
his business, so it was made clear to me that I had to fly pretty
straight as a result- and I did. I was a boring kid and grew up to be a
boring adult, which doesn't seem like a bad thing now.

At least here, the police seem more like a paramilitary organization
than police as I once understood them. They drive SUV battlewagons,
wear body armor, dark eyewear, have buzz cuts, survey but make as little
contact as possible with the populace. And around here, the "worst"
neighborhoods seem on par than the good neighborhoods in Chicago. Maybe
it is a different world now, I wouldn't know. But it seems like the
"warrior" training mentality for cops results in quick triggers. Years
back a different president came up with some money for neighborhood
policing initiatives, based on the old beat cop model. It worked well
in many parts of the country, but it didn't stick.

From what I have read the "beat cop" method requires much more
manpower than "some guys riding around in cars" and, again from what
I read, the public is resistant to paying more and more money for law
enforcement.
--
cheers,

John B.

On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 2:52:38 PM UTC-8, AMuzi wrote:
On 1/23/2020 3:57 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 12:57:04 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

1. Imprison people and treat them psychologically while drying them
out since most are alcoholics or drug users. These inevitably are
treatable conditions. Now you have someone that doesn't want to use
drugs or alcohol and doesn't want to commit crimes.

While you oversimplify a bit, it is true that a large percentage of
convicts in the have psychological and/or substance abuse problems.
Treating those does result in lower recidivism rates.

2. TEACH THEM A TRADE. Since the largest cause of crime and drug use
is the feeling of total helplessness and anger because of that, you
have to teach them how to take care of themselves.

A good idea. I remember reading about one well-known convict who
learned jewelry making in prison and did make a substantial part of his
living that way for the rest of his days rather than returning to the
drug manufacturing that put him in prison. Granted that is anecdote
rather than data.

But even a bit broader than trade is reintegrating parolees into
society. Work and economic self-support is hugely important, but many
perhaps most employers simply will not hire people who have been
incarcerated. So even if they have a trade they've learned, they can't
get a job. In some states parolled felons can't vote, another bar to
being an accepted member of society.

Another piece is creating civility in jails, which are often savage
places rife with internal crime, gang activity, ready access to drugs,
rape and intimidation, etc. Dehumanizing people and training them to be
better criminals probably doesn't help.

This actually works and small programs that used this method had less
than a tenth of a percent recidivism. The problem was that they could
only teach people computer skills and most people don't really have an
aptitude for that. So other work training programs would have to be
used.

Oh yeah. There is a diversity of aptitudes in prisons just like
anywhere else, and one size doesn't fit all.


I'm with you generally but voting rights and 'being an
accepted member of society' are unrelated.

Hell, literally half the people you know are qualified to
vote but do not. And you don't know who is who. _That_ ought
to be unacceptable in polite society[1].


[1] Which should not be construed as support of mandatory
voting, a pernicious thing I do not advocate.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

As an especially egregious case in point - my friend the retired NCIS agent, NEVER votes. But spends a great deal of time complaining about politicians.

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:15:18 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/23/2020 6:47 AM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Thursday, 23 January 2020 01:04:18 UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:43:46 -0600, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 06:08:46 +0700, John B
wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 14:25:10 -0600, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 12:06:06 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:
On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 9:04:05 PM UTC-8, Chalo wrote:
Tom Kunich wrote:

Murder by cop. Not at all infrequent.

Fixed that for you.

The fact that you don't like cops doesn't change in the least that
people directly with police guns trained on them will make
threatening moves purposely having themselves killed. Whether you
like cops or not that is not murder.

Would it be murder if it was a police officer with gang member guns
trained on him, who then made a move perceived as threatening and got
shot? You bet it would. Prosecuted, signed, sealed, delivered to
jail. Most people wouldn't ask any questions (at least most people
who are white and middle class).

Cops get a pass on shooting people unnecessarily. The "fog of war,"
needing to make a "split second decision," "warrior" training, etc.,
etc. Not sure what the threat is when it's a kid who's unarmed, 50
feet away and facing away from the cop. Or when it's a black guy
seated in his car who lawfully informs the officer that he has a
conceal and carry permit and is armed, but is shot multiple times
within 30 seconds of that (with the victim's wife and child in the
car). Or when a woman calls the police about a neighborhood
disturbance that sounds like a person being harmed and is shot and
killed when she approaches the police car that responded to her call.
Or when it's a cop who tells his partner he's going to shoot and kill
the guy as they drive up in their cruiser, caught on the dash cam, and
then does so *and* plants a gun to implicate the victim as the cause
of the shooting.

I guess those are acceptable losses in an increasingly totalitarian
America.

Well, of course, the answer is to disarm the police.

No. It might work in London (are bobbies still unarmed?) but America is
one of the most violent societies on the planet, except for those
engaged in actual war.

Disarming seems unwise and too "one size fits all." Better training
including resources to understand and cope with problems like mental
illness in the community they serve would be a better choice. Learn to
ask questions before shooting. In our area there are social workers
paired with police officers for calls where the suspect is known to be
or is thought likely to be mentally ill. This seems to have reduced
these incidents, although it's early days and whether or not the program
works and is sustainable is yet to be seen, but it's promising.

I was replying to the guy that highlighted all the "murders by cop".
Simply taking away the cop's guns will solve his problems...
As he didn't mention any other problems either did I.
But of course as soon as the police lose their guns crime will
increase and than he'll be complaining about that.

Some folks ain't never happy :-)

Back in the day the police walked a beat and the cop knew all about
who should be there and what they should be doing and everybody knew
him. I suspect that law enforcement was a totally different thing then
today where the average citizen's only contact with the police is
seeing them ride by in their "cruiser".
--
cheers,

John B.

I had a friend who was a sergeant in the Toronto, Canada police force. He said that one of the biggest mistakes in policing was getting rid of the beat officers. He said that often beat officers could intercede and prevent someone from doing a crime because the beat officer would know the person and could often tell when something was bothering them enough that turning to crime seemed to be their only option.

One of my best friends is a former beat cop and (just retired) professor
of criminal justice. He tends to agree with you. A cop on beat can be
perceived as a fellow human just doing his job, someone you can talk to.
A cop in a car is remote and anonymous. He may be subject to the same
psychology that makes civilians in cars feel anonymous and aggressive.

My friend has told stories about his experiences subduing aggressive
guys on the street and marching them back to the station for booking,
using only manual holds to control them.

But that was long enough ago that he could be reasonably sure the perp
wasn't going to try to shoot him.

Sure, my uncle was a deputy sheriff. Back in those days off duty
police and sheriff's deputies would often work part time at the public
dances that used to be popular in New England - "barn dances :-)
Several hundred at the dance including a large number of the town's
ne'er-do-wells and one or two cops keep the peace?

Well, yes.... but. If you gave a cop a hard time he slapped you up
side of the head with his night-stick, hand cuffed you and threw you
in the car. When the dance was over he'd drive you down to the jail
and lock you up and the next morning the judge would convict you of
"drunk and disorderly" and you'd get fined.

Today, if a cop hits anyone he is the subject of a departmental
investigation and "trial" to see whether he denied anyone "his
rights".

--
cheers,

John B.

On 1/23/2020 4:42 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:04:13 +0700, John B
wrote:

Back in the day the police walked a beat and the cop knew all about
who should be there and what they should be doing and everybody knew
him. I suspect that law enforcement was a totally different thing then
today where the average citizen's only contact with the police is
seeing them ride by in their "cruiser".

I think the majority of cops, especially urban cops, would agree that
policing is a very different thing than when I was young 50 years ago.
There were no beat cops as such in my home town, instead they were all
in suqd cars driving around, but they still knew a lot of people and
what should be going on where. My Dad knew every cop in town through
his business, so it was made clear to me that I had to fly pretty
straight as a result- and I did. I was a boring kid and grew up to be a
boring adult, which doesn't seem like a bad thing now.

What you describe is pretty much how policing is done in my suburban
village. I know relatively few village cops by name, but it's very
common for them to give a quick wave when I pass by on a bike. And I'm
sure they recognize our car as well.

I've posted before about the time I was grading student work about 2 AM
and two cops knocked on the door, startling the heck out of me. They
asked if everything was OK, and when I said it was, they said "We've
noticed that when you're working late, your living room light is usually
off. But today you left it on."

People here have mocked me, saying "You live in Mayberry." Perhaps I do,
but I like it. The cops do a good job, speeders get tickets, and our
crime rate is extremely low. We've made the top 10 list of safest
communities in the state.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On 1/23/2020 4:45 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 09:07:44 -0800 (PST), Chalo
wrote:

Places where cops don't usually have guns exhibit much lower crime
rates than places where they do. Of course, those places also have
sane ideas about permitting real people to have guns in public, not
just cops.

In which direction are you positing cause and effect? Do cops carrying
guns increase the crime rate, or are cops less likely to carry guns in
places where the crime rate is lower?

I'm wondering if there is any place in the U.S. where cops don't carry
guns. They do here, despite a near-zero crime rate.

(A couple years ago, one young cop used his Glock to finish off a very
sick raccoon in our yard.)


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 09:07:44 -0800 (PST), Chalo
wrote:

John B. wrote:

But of course as soon as the police lose their guns crime will
increase
and than he'll be complaining about that.

Places where cops don't usually have guns exhibit much lower crime rates than places where they do. Of course, those places also have sane ideas about permitting real people to have guns in public, not just cops.

Sort of like England, you mean?
--
cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 09:03:40 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

On 1/22/2020 11:43 PM, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 06:08:46 +0700, John B
wrote:
On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 14:25:10 -0600, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Tue, 21 Jan 2020 12:06:06 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:
On Monday, January 20, 2020 at 9:04:05 PM UTC-8, Chalo wrote:
Tom Kunich wrote:

Murder by cop. Not at all infrequent.

Fixed that for you.

The fact that you don't like cops doesn't change in the least that
people directly with police guns trained on them will make
threatening moves purposely having themselves killed. Whether you
like cops or not that is not murder.

Would it be murder if it was a police officer with gang member guns
trained on him, who then made a move perceived as threatening and got
shot? You bet it would. Prosecuted, signed, sealed, delivered to
jail. Most people wouldn't ask any questions (at least most people
who are white and middle class).

Cops get a pass on shooting people unnecessarily. The "fog of war,"
needing to make a "split second decision," "warrior" training, etc.,
etc. Not sure what the threat is when it's a kid who's unarmed, 50
feet away and facing away from the cop. Or when it's a black guy
seated in his car who lawfully informs the officer that he has a
conceal and carry permit and is armed, but is shot multiple times
within 30 seconds of that (with the victim's wife and child in the
car). Or when a woman calls the police about a neighborhood
disturbance that sounds like a person being harmed and is shot and
killed when she approaches the police car that responded to her call.
Or when it's a cop who tells his partner he's going to shoot and kill
the guy as they drive up in their cruiser, caught on the dash cam, and
then does so *and* plants a gun to implicate the victim as the cause
of the shooting.

I guess those are acceptable losses in an increasingly totalitarian
America.

Well, of course, the answer is to disarm the police.

No. It might work in London (are bobbies still unarmed?) but America is
one of the most violent societies on the planet, except for those
engaged in actual war.

Disarming seems unwise and too "one size fits all." Better training
including resources to understand and cope with problems like mental
illness in the community they serve would be a better choice. Learn to
ask questions before shooting. In our area there are social workers
paired with police officers for calls where the suspect is known to be
or is thought likely to be mentally ill. This seems to have reduced
these incidents, although it's early days and whether or not the program
works and is sustainable is yet to be seen, but it's promising.



"America is one of the most violent societies on the planet"

Your premise is greatly overstated. US rate is lower than
Greenland for example:
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/ind...RC.P5/rankings

But higher then 68% of the world's nations :-)
--
cheers,

John B.

On 1/23/2020 4:46 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:

Socialism promises to give people anything they need. It has never worked. Even once.

Well, it may depend how you define "socialism." There are quite a few
countries that right-wing Americans call "Socialist!!" but have
prosperous economies, less terrible poverty, less income disparity,
lower health care costs, generally better health care outcomes and on
average, more content citizens.

Even the socialized medical systems in Canada and England are absolutely horrible examples of what they were supposed to do. In Canada if you have a serious condition it is likely to have longer wait times for treatment than the expected lifespan of the victim.

I understand that waiting times are more of an issue in Canada. I have a
relative who's lived there since - ahem - the days of the Viet Nam war.

Years ago he complained mightily about the Canadian health care system.
His wife had cancer and was going to have to wait overly long, in his
view, for surgery. He was furious.

But she eventually got he surgery. Except for the wait, they had no
complaints about her treatment and care. Years later, she's still cancer
free. And their care cost far less than it would have in the U.S.

I think that's the general run of things with single payer health care.
I may have mentioned being in a three-way phone call between me, our
insurance company, a certain medical laboratory. The confusion about
paperwork for a very routine blood test was incredible, and it took
something like an hour on the phone to straighten it out.

My time was free (except for teeth gnashing), but the people on the
other phones were costing our health care system money. So in a
"socialist" single payer system, the savings in administrative costs
alone must be astronomical.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 1/23/2020 6:30 PM, John B. wrote:
On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 16:20:10 -0600, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 12:43:36 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:
On Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 9:59:55 PM UTC-8, Tim McNamara
wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 21:12:21 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

Today in the Senate we heard Adam Schiff do what he does best -
lie. He did everything from straight out lying to misrepresentation
of things that others said by taking them completely out of
context. This was the Democrat Party in its finest hour.

I expect you could find a case of a Republican doing that but it is
unusual.

Still suffering from that irony deficiency, I see.

That is why the Democrats have been playing them like harps for the
last dozen years - the Republicans continue to bend over backwards
in the attempt to be reasonable and fair when the Democrats are
using it to be unreasonable and unfair. May God save the souls of
the Democrats because I will not. I thank God that he presented
President Trump at the correct time.

Oh my. Your sense of reality is so twisted and warped that it's
really quite astonishing.


well, with my twisted sense of reality why don't you tell me how long
Democrats have been in power in Chicago?

LOL! Ah, good old Richard J. Daley. He was so popular that people
voted for him three or four times in every election, and even dead
people voted for him. I was in high school when he died and when I left
to go to college stopped paying any attention to Chicago politics. I
don't even know if there's been a Republican mayor there in the past 45
years. If I recall correctly, Daley was succeeded by Harold Washington-
who was black- and whites fled to the suburbs in droves. Who was next-
Michael Bilandic or something like that? Wasn't he the guy who got
voted out because of utter incompetence in managing snowplowing after a
major storm (I recall the city not being able to afford fuel or
something like that).

Traditionally the mayor of Chicago has way more political clout than the
governor of Illinois. Speaking of which, Illinois has a spectacular
record of putting former governors in jail- four of the last seven or
something like that! Two Democrats and two Republicans. Not bad for a
state that practically has junk bond status...

"Mayor" Curley, of Boston, won an election while incarcerated for a
fraud conviction and serving a term in prison. In a later case he was
elected mayor while under federal indictment for mail fraud, winning
with 45% of the vote. He was convicted and served 5 months in prison
and when release was met by "a crowd of thousands greeted Curley upon
his return to Boston, with a brass band playing "Hail to the Chief".

In our area, it was former sheriff and congressman Jim Traficant. As
sheriff he beat one prosecution by claiming the bribes he took were
necessary for an undercover sting. But after many "colorful" years on
congress, he was convicted of other bribes, etc. and was sent to prison.
The House of Representatives kicked him out, saying he couldn't
simultaneously be in prison and in congress. (Who says they don't have
standards?)

Traficant ran for reelection from prison and got a decent but
insufficient number of votes. But when he was released, many treated him
as a hero. (I was not among them.)


--
- Frank Krygowski