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SpankyMcFarland

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Everything posted by SpankyMcFarland

  1. SpankyMcFarland
    Obviously, nobody in law enforcement sets out to kill a person who has called for help. The best strategy is to try to minimise the incidence of this particular outcome.
  2. SpankyMcFarland
    They could at least have retreated within the house until reinforcements arrived. He was known to the police as a disturbed individual - just sending two cops over there was the wrong thing to do. They could have asked another family member present whether there was a gun in the house. The reality is that they got into a situation they weren’t prepared for, panicked and escalated to deadly force when it probably wasn’t required. It’s alleged he was already on the ground when he was shot. If body cameras weren’t worn (I believe it’s still being implemented there) we’ll probably never know the truth about that.
  3. SpankyMcFarland
    The guy was in his home. They could have taken the other family member with them if she felt in danger and they felt unable to deal with the situation without killing somebody. Allegedly, he was lying on the floor when he was killed and nobody was injured except him. The mistake he made was calling the cops in the first place. The police unions are part of the problem, of course. On the other hand, we most definitely need the police to preserve order and the job has to be respected enough to attract good applicants. Too often, they are asked to deal with disturbed psychiatric patients because our mental health services in Canada are so inadequate.
  4. SpankyMcFarland
    Something you think would already exist in the US is being proposed in a reform bill - a national police misconduct registry to follow officers fired for misconduct and make sure they just don’t join another force. Concealing documented misconduct from prospective employers should be a serious offence. Incredibly, the same problem has existed in medicine for years.
  5. SpankyMcFarland
    A somewhat different problem is illustrated in the following case. An agitated young black man with a history of schizophrenia called police as he had done on several occasions previously. Two came to the home. He was in the kitchen with a knife. A confrontation ensued (but not at close quarters according to a family member who came up to see what all the commotion was), they tased him and then they shot him dead. We’ll have to see what the investigation shows. What did he say in the call, did the police know his history and why couldn’t they just have left the house and waited for reinforcements? The crisis intervention team should have been there. Bean bags have been used instead of bullets in some parts of the US when mentally ill patients are involved and don’t have a gun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean_bag_round The piece below in the Toronto Sun could have been written by the police themselves. There’s no attempt to ask any questions about how the situation could have been managed more safely: https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-man-26-shot-dead-by-peel-cops-allegedly-armed-with-knife
  6. SpankyMcFarland
    Science is a systematic search for knowledge. Errors are part of this process. When mistakes are made, as they certainly will be in a situation like this where better means of diagnosis and treatment are being frantically sought, they are disclosed.
  7. SpankyMcFarland
    There may be thousands of coronavirus species in bats alone, potentially capable of making the jump to another species:
  8. SpankyMcFarland
    The thing is there are both large countries and European countries (one with a much bigger population than ours) that have done better than us. As Attaran says, besting the US in a public health crisis is really setting the bar low.
  9. SpankyMcFarland
    As Attaran points out, one of our most obvious peers is Australia. They are probably more isolated than us, without a US next door, but they do have a lot of travellers from China and resemble us in many ways, including size. What’s striking is how quickly they came out with a national policy document as I think I noted much earlier in this thread. The federal government also seems to have played a more active role there in keeping every jurisdiction on the same page.
  10. SpankyMcFarland
    Lawyer and epidemiologist, Amir Attaran, is fairly critical of Canada's Covid effort so far: And he has some suggestions: https://www.macleans.ca/society/health/how-canada-has-bungled-the-covid-19-endgame/
  11. SpankyMcFarland
    Handling it good? Is that standard Ontario lingo? I'd say he's handling it somewhat better than I expected, but there is huge room for improvement. As in the country generally, the response has been poorly organized and data takes too long to get back to stakeholders. Let's hope this appointment smartens things up a bit: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-appoints-jane-philpott-to-lead-pandemic-data-effort/
  12. SpankyMcFarland
    What did I write in my final sentence? Is Trump named there? I certainly do not blame Trump 'for everything' at all, as I have made clear. In the US, and elsewhere, you can add globalization and automation to other causes for alienation between the elites and everybody else. Trump is merely a symptom of America's malaise, a hastily mocked-up facsimile of white nationalism that may pave the way for something and somebody far more dangerous down the road.
  13. SpankyMcFarland
    BoJo talks tough on Hong Kong but has he really thought this through here? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/03/hong-kong-visas-why-is-the-uk-standing-up-to-china-now The prospect of up to three million Hong Kong Chinese arriving on an island that already has a housing crisis may not impress his Brexit supporters who thought they were about to take back control of immigration.
  14. SpankyMcFarland
    When the US President sees fit to sully the memory of a young married woman (and Republican BTW) on Twitter and falsely claim she was murdered after having an affair with Joe Scarborough, what can you expect? Social media as it currently functions may make representative democracy impossible.
  15. SpankyMcFarland
    There seems to an unusually high number of journalists being physically assaulted or hit with projectiles such as pepper balls by police this time. It's hard to tell if there's a pattern to this. Apparently, the US has something like 18,000 police forces, all with their own policies and manuals. That's a recipe for disaster. More specific federal laws on appropriate arrest methods and the investigation of officers when things go wrong are clearly required. What often emerges in these incidents is a history of misconduct, individually or within a force, that has not been properly dealt with over years and has been concealed from the public. Police unions have played a big part in protecting bad apples.
  16. SpankyMcFarland
    Though it pains me to say it, I think Michael Baden’s autopsy conclusions are on this occasion closer to what we saw with our own eyes:
  17. SpankyMcFarland
    The cost of killing Soleimani can’t be figured out yet. Ditto tearing up the JCPOA and all the other agreements Trump has walked away from. That’s the easy bit that pleases ones friends. Making new deals will be much tougher. What about North Korea?
  18. SpankyMcFarland
    The phoney war between Trump and the platforms is like pro wrestling - pretending to hate each other is part of the act. The faux liberals of Facebook in particular stand to make a fortune from Trump's campaign and a man who found the conservative faith rather late in life needs to bypass the pesky fact-checkers of TV and print. Twitter has been very good to him and vice versa.
  19. SpankyMcFarland
    Lord Haw-Haw? He sounded very posh. If he had really been from the top drawer, things might have turned out differently for him: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw
  20. SpankyMcFarland
    1. What I am trying to point out to you there is the gravity of what Trump did. I’m not perfect but I’ve never done that. Florida investigates deaths through a district-based system of medical examiners who are required to be practising pathologists. It does not have coroners. The determination of the manner of death by the medical examiner certainly does have legal significance and would be treated as such in any court of law. If Trump was sued over these tweets, it would be a powerful piece of evidence against him. BTW innuendo, e.g. ‘just asking questions’, is not an absolute defence in such cases:
  21. SpankyMcFarland
    1. I have never falsely accused anyone of committing murder, either explicitly or FYI implicitly with cowardly question marks or claims that other people are saying this. 2. There was never a court case because the death was fully investigated by the medical examiner, including a police investigation and a full autopsy, and was determined to be an accident. Here is the report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/medical-examiner-s-report-on-the-2001-death-of-lori-klausutis/4d82c16d-d9c5-4022-9580-2325b9774cf2/ The Washington Examiner is hardly a left-wing publication but, like many on the right, it has been appalled by Trump’s lies in this case: Take a look at other sane right-wing publications like the WSJ - same message.
  22. SpankyMcFarland
  23. SpankyMcFarland
    Have you ever publicly accused somebody of murder in a case that was ruled otherwise? It’s an extremely reckless thing for anybody to do, let alone a head of government, and it doesn’t matter how long ago it was if the person harmed by the libel is still living, or what you think of that person otherwise. There have been so many other disgraceful remarks as well that would have earned a man pistols at ten paces or a good hiding in other times and places. Public figures in the US deserve more protection under the law than they currently have IMO. Amidst this shameful morass, I’d forgotten about Megyn Kelly - that should have sunk him too with any right-thinking person. Disgusting.
  24. SpankyMcFarland
    Trump’s remarks about Ted Cruz’s father and the Kennedy assassination should have been enough for Republican voters enough to reject him. Instead we’ve been subjected to an unprecedented stream of tabloid garbage from the White House. His recent accusation that Joe Scarborough was involved in the death of Lori Klausutis brings dishonour to himself and the office he holds - but his supporters just don’t care. If anybody, let alone the PM, did this in Britain, they’d be facing a libel suit for millions and an immediate, abject apology written for them by their lawyers. Here’s an experiment you can undertake closer to home; go to some livelier bars at closing time, start accusing random people of murder and see how far you get. It’s just not acceptable behaviour. It never has been.
  25. SpankyMcFarland
    There’s a reason paramedics are told to protect the airway; humans need their oxygen and any manoeuvre that compromises its supply increases the chance of death dramatically.
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