What's the big deal about a couple of tanks?

Don't forget about BIG VAGINA ENERGY! It is a thing too! I swear! I actually leave my house too and interact with other humans, many with pussys or vaginas.
I'll leave the rest to imagination.
I don't think "big" vagina sounds as good as "big" dicks.
Shall I just say "Cunt Energy" instead?
Oh this has gone too far.
[/free form writing] or going comando for those that need a dick reference.

Chili night is his favorite night.

Powerful vagina energy.

Yes. Powerful Vagina Energy.
Sheesh the 3rd page of this thread is all dick talk.

I'm getting burned out on the whole controversy! "Trump's making it all about him!" Whatever.....bottom line it's a paid day off from work for me, the gym is open regular hours, and I can mow my lawn before it gets too blazing hot! This time of year it's blazing hot when I get off work and get time to mow. I anticipate a very productive day.

Put that in a new thread so we can have a "Happy 4th of July" thread!

To answer the OP: they're very handy in the kitchen.

I won’t be watching Trump’s sad attempt at looking like a leader. I’m going to see Spider-Man: Far From Home. But we can never forget that Tony Stark died so that Spidey and half the universe could live. Let us never forget, he was Iron Man.

They can also serve you a beer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=gCW-2_qPlQw

None that required examination of the genitals. But the six years I played football (79-84) required that kind of exam every year to check for hernias.

Obama had the White House for 8 years, and could have had his own partisan military parade if he had wanted. But despite his affinity for blowing up brown people with drones, he had to kowtow to the fringe leftists and communists in the party who hate the U.S. military and despise any overt display or celebration of American patriotism.

The only chance the Democrats have in 2020 is to keep alive the delusion that Trump is a fascist and we're currently in the midst of a modern American totalitarian regime. So of course they're playing up Trump's parade as if he's the Emperor on his way to dissolve the Senate and oversee the construction of the Death Star.

The world is full of examples of real tyrannical regimes who brutalize their citizenry. Trump is no more a fascist than Obama was a sleeper agent from Kenya.

So you're ripping him for NOT having a self-aggrandizing parade. That's just ... just .... awesome...

According to @Dayton3 's doctor he thought he had a penis once but it was just a herpes blister.

It is just a campaign rally anyway. He has wanted to have a full military show in the style of other fascists for a while because his pals Putin and lil kim get one. It is like a toddler wanting to dress up as Elsa because all of his friends are. So after two years of not being allowed to do so and him caving after his twitter tantrum, they gave him 2 tanks on a trailer off to the side. Big win there. After tomorrow we will be able to mock him with memes of how his rally had little attendance, and his tank show was smaller than NK. I am sure this show of force will have Iran quaking in their boots. King twitler can only get two tanks for his military parade.

Only good thing is the terrorist will not have any need to bomb the trump 4th of July rally because it is already a bomb.

You know, you're right. Obama wasn't perfect and he didn't really deliver on the hopes people had for him.

People rarely do.

I'm not sure why "patriotism" so often gets conflated with "militarism" though. Isn't most of what any country represents peaceful?

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. ~ Commander William Adama

Problem is the US police are so very much dominated by ex military types.

Obama was a corporatist. It was great that a black person got into the presidency that was way too white for way too long, but if you listened to real left wing criticism before he was elected he was very much in the pockets of big money and the MIC. I cannot say McCain or mittens romnifeller would have been much different. We did not have a choice, and the mainstream left was covering up for the problems of Obama. It was down right embarrassing how you had to go to comedians like John Stewart and Stephen Colbert and weed out their jokes to get an actual glimpse on TV of the truth. They did criticize Obama quite a bit. It is still that way for mainstream news. If you want a real criticism of what is going on via TV channels you still have to watch the daily show and John Oliver. Oliver is better than Stewart and Colbert most of the time with the amount of research, information, and involvement he has in what he is doing. About the only area where Oliver was beaten is in the information Colbert and Stewart gave us on the PACs and super PACs.

The American news media on TV is just fucking pathetic, and the left did cover for Obama. There is a revolution in how people get their news today, and the battle for internet news is going strong. The nice part is people are much more savvy and capable of looking up facts. Yes, you can live in an echo chamber, but most people know how to use a search and to find real information and not just blogs that feed them what they want to hear. It is also nice to see voices like AOC getting heard and exposing the problems on the left. I would rather the left be driven to correct their problems and have someone I am excited about voting for rather than the same old Biden shit sandwich.

I have heard that studies conducted have found that ex military who have seen combat are more likely to de-escalate situations than police with no military combat experience. It also might be true that exposure to different sorts of people and having to work alongside of them might give white military people better skills at dealing with black and brown people than someone like @Dayton3 who has lived in a bubble of white all his life.

I think a lot of it depends on the person and the purpose for them entering the job. I find corrections officers have a big problem with a chunk of their people being problems. I think it comes from the reality a lot of COs don't make the cut for police officers because of psych problems and intelligence issues. You couple that with being exposed primarily to the worst of society on a daily basis and it is a perfect mix for creating racists. That is not to say that There are not decent COs, and that they do not take a shit ton of abuse from the inmates at times, but there are definitely some problems.

Yet they just keep on shooting people....

In this area I would have to argue somewhat against you. A military person who has seen some combat is much more calm and collected in stressful situations over all. It is not a guarantee of better performance, but the military is much better trained than your off the street police officer going through the academy. They understand weapons better, and they have more confidence in themselves dealing with unarmed civilians in a peaceful situation. It really is a mater of training and experience when it comes to making the choice of using your weapon under a stressful situation, and from what I have seen a person with a background in the US military is far more likely to behave in a more professional manner as a LEO.

I know it actually goes against what you might think, but there are reasons for it.

First, you have to understand the US police force. There are a few types of cops. You have your town sherrif's department, your state police, and then your federal police. Most of the time what you run into is your sheriff and local town cops. The sheriffs are fairly easy to get into and you do not need a lot of education to get into the organization. Yes, if you want to move up to things like detective or command you need training, education, and time. You can also be elected to positions in the sheriff's department. The training is varied and pathetic. These guys are pretty much anyone. On the state police level there is normally a educational requirement, and they get better academy training. These are your more experienced and professional cops, but they are also not the first responders to local situations.

Your standard townie cop is probably some gung ho twat who joined because they think being a police officer is cool. If they have some military experience the idea of responsibility has already been somewhat drilled into their heads. They have had contact with people from different areas as they served with them. They have had better experiences with a wider variety of people, and are not some dude living in a local bubble in his state.

I have actually known a lot of police, and the ones that come from the military are often a different breed from the ones that came into the force from civilian life. I have also worked with training police and military in combat simulation and the military ones do so much better under fire than your squid cops. Seriously, I know why NYC police have emptied clips at unarmed people and hit nothing but the surroundings. They are terrible. I would fear for my life if a sheriff ever took out his gun to try and protect me.

I get your personal experience and what it counts for but mine is somewhat different. I suspect the difference you are seeing is down to a combination of age and life experience alongside a very different policing culture rather than the value of military training or experience per se.

Bear in mind ex military who join will tend to be older than raw recruits off the street, not to mention the fact that US police have a very different playbook to those in Europe.

Mature people tend to be less aggressive, have better judgement and are more experienced in using communication skills. I work with a lot of police officers and the best ones in my experience tend to be those who had another career before joining the service (key word there, "service", not "force"), those with a broader appreciation for life in the real world than a training academy can offer.

Some of those officers have served for years and never once drawn their baton in anger or physically grappled with an offender, despite being on the front line, because they've got backgrounds which taught them the value of being able to communicate well and gain peoples' trust.

To be fair we are talking about two very different environments and policing in the US requires officers be equipped to deal with a higher risk, but that alone doesn't really explain the differences in methodology:



Although murders overall are higher than in other G7 countries the ratio is even greater for police killings. That's telling because it indicates that the police in the US use far more violent tactics than their European counterparts even once you take the relative background violence of society into account.

In fact you are more likely to be killed by a police officer in the US than you are to be killed in Japan period.

That may well be due to a more violent culture or the presence of guns increasing the officers' perception of threats, or it could be due to young inexperienced officers having inadequate training to deal with that violence (which would explain your observation that ex military cope better than raw recruits in that setting), but it does beg the question why the nation with the most militaristic police culture also seems to be disproportionately likely to kill civilians.

I am not saying there is not a problem. However, I am saying the system in the US is different from other areas, and the police that come from a military background handle themselves better overall than police that don't. I think that speaks more towards a lacking of training that is is systematic for US police, and the attraction towards the job for bullies and other people with problematic personalities.

You are certainly right that the present system of US policing is problematic, but as we try to improve their performance we need to recognize where things are actually going good. When you join the military you are shipped off to basic training. When you get there you are mixed with a whole bunch of different people from different backgrounds and places. you train in a place that is not your hometown, and then you might serve in areas that are not your local bullshit. As a LEO none of that is forced upon you, and maybe it should be. Maybe you should have to bunk in with some people from an urban environment before you start policing a town where you might encounter them visiting. Maybe you should be forced to communicate and be a team with people who are different than you before you start being a police officer. That is one of the things the military of the US probably does better than a lot of colleges.

This is one of the reasons I support a sort of civil corps we can use. If you are poor or for experience you can join up and serve within the US and have your housing, meals, education, and medicine taken care of for a few years while you work on infrastructure projects like establishing high speed rail, making a good electrical grid, and making internet communications standard across the country so everyone is connected. This is an area best regulated by a government that protects free speech and artistic expression over corporations who are defined by the bottom line.

yes it is! But actual symbols and physical examples of peace/compassion/stability etcetera are a little tougher to pull off, and frankly boring & uninteresting to the average person.

So since 1984 no doctor has ever done the "turn your head and cough" test? I've had it done countless times, generally on annual physicals. You've never had strains or injuries that required a doctor or nurse to see your genitals if only briefly?

Let us all remember @Dayton3 has been examined in a hospital, according to his story, and I am sure the doctor examined his testicles to make sure there were no lesions on them that he needed to be aware of because of his foot rot.

Do remember @Dayton3 is a pathological liar.

The doctors who worked on my injured feet were not much interested in my genitalia. And no while I have been asked about the occasional strains I've never had anything considered severe enough for such an examination.

I agreed with your post in total. But this part is not true. While I was around almost exclusively white people until I went to college, I think I can safely say that in college and especially over the last 22 years I've worked and lived in an environment as or more so diverse than yours.