Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

Donald Trump and Walt Nauta have moved the U.S. District Court in Florida to continue their trial indefinitely, brazenly suggesting that the trial not take place until after the 2024 presidential election. Among the reasons set forth in the defense motion, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23870430-trumptrialskedflg071023 , is that "The intersection between the Presidential Records Act and the various criminal statutes at issue has never been addressed by any court, and in the Defendants' view, will result in a dismissal of the indictment." (P. 2.)

On the merits, this is batshit crazy -- there is no intersection between the Presidential Records Act and the various criminal statutes at issue. But even so, that is no reason not to set a trial date. The deadline for filing pretrial motions is presently July 24, 2023. (Docket entry 28.) That leaves ample time for litigating any such motions by the December 11, 2023 trial date requested by the prosecution. (Docket entry 34.) If the defense were successful in obtaining any dismissal of the indictment on pretrial motion, the trial setting would become moot. (The government would no doubt appeal such a dismissal.)

The Defendants are being totally disingenuous.

[Kazinski]

Nobody blinks an eye when the prosecution takes as long as they want to charge, or bring to trial a defendent.

The government waited 4 years to not charge Hunter Biden for not reporting income from Burisma which the IRS started in investigating in 2018:

“The whistleblowers say the DOJ chose to let the statute of limitations expire on crimes committed in 2014 and 2015, when Biden failed to report approximately $400,000 in income from Burisma.”

Waiting 18 months between indictment and trial isn’t the least but uncommon in federal courts.

[not guilty]

"Nobody blinks an eye when the prosecution takes as long as they want to charge, or bring to trial a defendent." [sic]

There is a societal interest in prosecuting crimes and punishing offenders. Delay often works to the benefit of a criminal defendant. Statutes of Limitation incentivize charging in a timely manner. While a defendant's Sixth Amendment speedy trial rights are often illusory, the Speedy Trial Act of 1974, 18 U.S.C. § 3161 et seq., was designed with both a defendant's rights and the public interest in mind. The Act generally requires a federal criminal trial to begin within 70 days after a defendant is charged or makes an initial appearance. 18 U.S.C. § 3161(c)(1).

Trump's trial is presently scheduled to begin on August 14, 2023. The prosecution has requested that the trial be reset for December 11, 2023. The defendants have requested an indefinite continuance. Granting either motion would require the District Court to make on-the-record findings that the ends of justice served by granting the continuance outweigh the public's and defendant's interests in a speedy trial.

[Mr. Bumble]

So what was the basis for the prosecution to request a delay to Dec. 11? If they weren't ready to go to trial why did they bring the charges?

[Brett Bellmore]

I believe the reason given was to allow a defense review of the classified documents?

[Armchair Lawyer]

The actual reason is likely the current government would like for the trial to take place at a time where its impact on the election can be maximized.

[Moderation4ever]

No , a December trial could likely be concluded well before the primaries start.

[Brett Bellmore]

I guess the question is, are they trying to make him lose the primary, or hoping he wins the primary and loses the general election?

I personally think neither. He's their Orange whale, and they just desperately want to stick a harpoon in him.

[Sarcastr0]

Not everyone has their eyes purely on partisanship.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, sure, but your neighborhood ice cream truck driver isn't making these decisions, highly political appointees are.

[Sarcastr0]

People you not anyone in the GOP have never heard of suddenly become deft and zealous partisans the moment they do anything Trump doesn’t like.

[Randal]

Your neighborhood ice cream truck driver isn’t making these decisions, highly political appointees are.

That certainly describes Judge Cannon!

[not guilty]

Brett, what facts suggest to you that Jack Smith has a political agenda? He made his bones in the DOJ Public Integrity Section prosecuting both Democrats and Republicans. The investigation of Donald Trump languished until Smith's appointment jump stated it.

[Bob from Ohio]

"investigation of Donald Trump languished until Smith’s appointment jump stated [sic] it"

This makes Armchair Lawyer's point.

[Brett Bellmore]

He doesn't have to have a political agenda. They sicced him on Trump because they wanted him prosecuted. They didn't sic him on Hunter because they didn't want him prosecuted. How complicated is that?

Just because the guy is impartial, doesn't mean that the people holding his leash are.

[Sarcastr0]

Unfalsifiable again!

[David Nieporent]

The investigation of Donald Trump languished until Smith’s appointment jump stated it.

No, that's not right. It was moving along. They had gotten the search warrant and had searched (no, not "raided," you MAGA hacks) Mar-a-Lago and found evidence of his crimes. Nothing was languishing. Smith was not appointed to "jump start" it; he was appointed to keep it moving along after Trump announced his candidacy.

[not guilty]

The investigation of the events of January 6, 2021 was focusing more on underlings. Trump was not the focus of the investigation until relatively recently. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/06/19/fbi-resisted-opening-probe-into-trumps-role-jan-6-more-than-year/

[not guilty]

The FBI was reportedly slow walking the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/01/fbi-dispute-trump-mar-a-lago-raid/

[Moderation4ever]

I think they are trying to do what is required and provide a speedy trail. Most Americans seem to want the same thing and would like the case resolved before the election. This is not an attempt at harpooning anyone, it is self-inflected by the former President.

[Mr. Bumble]

How long do you suspect the trial to take given its unique nature and the fact that it would span the Christmas and New Year holidays? Currently the first primaries are scheduled for early Feb.

[not guilty]

It's just an estimate, but I suspect the prosecution can present its case to conclude not later than Friday, December 29. I cannot envision the defense offering proof, unless Trump or Nauta or both elect to testify. If Nauta flips and testifies for the government, the prosecution case in chief may run longer.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Eh...could it? Say you do it in the middle of December, call it December 11th.

You've got 2 weeks before Christmas. Then the first Caucus is January 15th.

You're just asking for issues.

[Moderation4ever]

Seem like a pretty straight forward case would you need more than 2 weeks?

[Reallynotbob]

You're assuming prosecutors like trying high-profile cases around Christmas. They don't.

[Mr. Bumble]

So considerate but wouldn't that normally be a defense request?

[not guilty]

I suspect the DOJ anticipated that the defense would seek a lengthier delay, so it filed its proposed schedule first out of the gate. The prosecutors will want to protect the integrity of any conviction, so a December trial will allow greater preparation than the present August trial setting. Unless the present scheduling order is modified, (which I fully expect to happen,) pretrial motions are due to be filed not later than Monday after next.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So in your mind it's more likely that the prosecutors are mind readers even though there is no history of them being mind readers.

And less likely that they are interfering with an election even though there's plenty of examples of them interfering with elections.

[Reallynotbob]

Notguilty is very likely correct. Courts frequently look to the People/Government to propose fair schedules and procedures. The People keep their 98+% conviction records in part by establishing themselves as reliable actors looking out for justice. These prosecutors (special or otherwise) have to stand in front of the same judges far more frequently than any member of the defense bar, especially the white collar defense bar.

[bevis the lumberjack]

“establishing themselves as reliable looking for justice”.

lol. The thousands of exonerees identified to date would dispute that statement.

[not guilty]

Which exonerees do you have in mind, bevis?

[Commenter_XY]

not guilty, I think bevis reacted to the thought of the Federal government "establishing themselves as reliable actors looking out for justice."

I share that same reservation myself (rightly or wrongly). There are enough reported instances (blogged about right here at VC) of prosecutorial misconduct that make that a questionable assumption.

[not guilty]

BravoCharlieDelta, anticipating that Team Trump would attempt to drag out this criminal prosecution does not require mind reading.

Do you have any facts suggesting that Jack Smith and the prosecutors reporting to him have any political agenda? Please be specific. And how, pray tell, is presenting an indictment to a grand jury on Trump's turf during summer of the off-year of the election cycle interfering with an election? Are the prosecutors secretly in the tank for Ron DeSantis or any of Trump's Republican rivals?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/?s=jack+smith

Maybe ChatGPT will summarize it for you.

[not guilty]

Lets see now. A few examples from The Last Refuge website that you link to should illustrate that the author thereof knows very little of what he is talking about.

Someone who calls himself Sundance cavils that the memo regarding an attack on Iran that Donald Trump discussed on audio tape is not one of the 37 documents that Trump is accused in Florida of unlawfully retaining.

Of course it is not. Trump's handling/discussion of that memo took place in Bedminster in New Jersey. To try him in federal court in Florida could be a Sixth Amendment violation.

Sundance posits the ipse dixit assertion that Jack Smith leaked the Trump audiotape to the media. He conspicuously points to no facts to substantiate his claim.

Sundance kvetches that without the documents Trump is discussing the audio is inadmissible:

You cannot submit evidence in court of a person talking about documents without the documents the audio is supposedly talking about. Can you see the issue now? As a result, the audio is nothing more than President Trump talking about something the prosecution cannot identify or prove. It’s inadmissible, hence no value, hence the leak.

The tape recording would not be offered to prove the content of the memo, which content is not at issue in the Florida prosecution. It would be offered to show that Trump knew that after leaving office he had no ability to declassify documents. That discussion is highly probative of Trump's culpable mental state.

BCD, do you have evidence that Sundance knows his ass from a hole in the ground? (Other than your overweening confirmation bias?)

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It would be offered to show that Trump knew that after leaving office he had no ability to declassify documents.

Where does this accusation come from other than your own mind?

Who but you is claiming that Trump asserts he had declassification powers after he left office and he executed those powers after he left office?

[not guilty]

Uh, Donald Trump and his apologists have been making that claim. Have you been paying attention at all?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You're lying.

You're lying because you need that ridiculous assertion to support your ridiculous analysis of Sundance's claims.

How sad.

[Nige]

'Who but you is claiming that Trump asserts he had declassification powers after he left office and he executed those powers after he left office?'

https://youtu.be/kGpsXuMvApo

[David Nieporent]

"interfering with elections" is one of those IKYABWAI? terms suddenly adopted by MAGA that has absolutely no meaning other than "bad thing I don't like."

[not guilty]

The government's motion to continue is here. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.34.0_7.pdf

I surmise that the prosecution would be prepared to begin trial on the scheduled date, but there was concern that proceeding to trial on August 14, 2023, “would deny counsel for the defendant . . . the reasonable time necessary for effective preparation,” 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7)(B)(iv), such that an ensuing conviction could be subject to collateral attack because the tight time frame had rendered defense counsel ineffective.

[Krayt]

Speedy trial is a right of the defendant, not The People and their prosecutors.

Especially motivated ones who want it before an election to hurt a political opponent.

It reminds me of the time some lawyers tried to hide behind attorney-client privilege, and the judge pointed out that is to protect the client, not the lawyers.

[Sarcastr0]

There is also a government interest in not having trials last forever.

[Krayt]

Odd to claim that, since the whole point of the right to a speedy trial is to stop government from keeping you twisting in the wind forever.

So what you say, vs. rushing a defendant.

Nah, I am not seeing a weight to the government’s interest measurable with the latest of lab equipment.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you arguing the government has no standing to object to defense continuances?

I confess though I did go deep into crimpro in law school speedy trial was complicated and it’s been a while. I don’t know if that’s the formal place we hang the government interest or not. But our system recognizes a government/public interest in trials not dragging on unnecessarily. And rightly so.

[Krayt]

If your motivation was disinterested purity in speedy trials, maybe. But it’s to git im! before the election.

Now he wants to put it off, but that’s not an impure motive.

[Sarcastr0]

Inchoate accusations of partisan animus will get you nowhere with court, or the public.

As you should know, y’all been making them for ages to the point that you now need to argue that the FBI is a whole cabal.

[Randal]

There's always a public interest to git im, im being any criminal.

If guilty defendants could get indefinite continuances, it would certainly solve our prison population problem!

[David Nieporent]

The election is a year and a half away. It doesn't matter if he's Donald Trump or John Smith; no prosecutor is ever going to say, "Yeah, sure, let's wait 18 months to bring this case to trial for the convenience of the defendant."

[Reallynotbob]

The "lock her up" crowd didn't seem to have this concern.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Take a look at how long the delay between the indictment of Bob Menendez or William Jefferson and the beginning of the trial was.

Here's a hint...more than 18 months.

[David Nieporent]

Here's a hint: I didn't say that no trial ever took place more than 18 months after indictment. I said that no prosecutor ever approved such a delay "for the convenience of the defendant."

[Reallynotbob]

[duplicate]

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"Now he wants to put it off, but that’s not an impure motive."

Every "Open Thread" comes with its own sampling of stupidity. Today's winner is the quoted remark.

Of course Trump's motive for the delay is impure.

[not guilty]

"Speedy trial is a right of the defendant, not The People and their prosecutors."

The Sixth Amendment includes the right to a speedy trial among the rights of defendants. The applicable statutory scheme, 18 U.S.C. § 3161 et seq., is designed by Congress to protect speedy trial rights of both the defendant and the public.

A criminal defendant cannot prospectively waive applicability of the Speedy Trial Act. Zedner v. United States, 547 U.S. 489 (2006). A federal district court has an affirmative obligation to move cases to trial without unwarranted delay.

[Krayt]

If your motivation was disinterested purity in speedy trials, maybe. But it’s to git im! before the election.

[Sarcastr0]

What is your evidence?

[David Nieporent]

Speedy trial is a right of the defendant, not The People and their prosecutors.

“Speedy trial” is a right of the defendant, but it is also an interest of the People. Whatever one’s theory of the primary purpose of the penal system — incapacitation, retribution, and/or deterrence — delaying a trial undermines all of them.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

How long have the J6 prisoners been waiting for their speedy trials?

[Reallynotbob]

How many continuances have they each asked for? How many of them have objected to delays?

[Armchair Lawyer]

Plenty of trials take a while between indictment and the trial. 18 months is definitively not outside the bounds observed for federal trials.

[not guilty]

"Plenty of trials take a while between indictment and the trial. 18 months is definitively not outside the bounds observed for federal trials."

Au contraire. Absent affirmative findings by the District Court, that would indeed be outside the bounds imposed by 18 U.S.C. § 3161. The defense would be entitled to dismissal of the indictment upon motion.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Unless the defense consents to the delay. Since the defense requested the delay of 18 months, then they could not be entitled to dismissal.

You know this. The requested December date by the prosecution is well outside the 70 day limit set by the speedy trial act.

Try arguing in good faith.

[not guilty]

"Since the defense requested the delay of 18 months, then they could not be entitled to dismissal."

Uh, SCOTUS disagrees with you. Have you read Zedner v. United States, 547 U.S. 489 (2006)? While Sixth Amendment rights may be waivable, a federal criminal defendant cannot prospectively waive applicability of the Speedy Trial Act.

[not guilty]

Sorry I failed to close the italics tag.

[John F. Carr]

Zedner allowed a defendant to move to dismiss an indictment notwithstanding an earlier purported prospective waiver of speedy trial rights. The delay, imposed on a reluctant defendant by the judge, had amounted to seven years. In Trump's case any delay is at Trump's urging for Trump's own benefit. His motion to dismiss could be denied on the grounds of judicial estoppel. On the merits, the judge would have to make findings on the record justifying a delay. Who knows what the 11th Circuit would say. It is a unique factual situation.

[not guilty]

Mr. Zedner requested multiple continuances for his own benefit. The trial judge suggested an express waiver of the Speedy Trial Act. 547 U.S. at 495. While the purported waiver was signed at the behest of the judge, much of the delay was at the request of or attributable to the accused.

The Zedner Court ruled that estoppel did not bar the defendant's claim on appeal. Id., at 504-05. The Court did opine, though, that "We see little difference between granting a defendant's request for a continuance in exchange for a promise not to move for dismissal and permitting a prospective waiver, and as we hold above, prospective waivers are inconsistent with the Act." Id., at 505.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Sigh....I asked you to argue in good faith.

This isn't some case where the district court forces a hapless defendant to sign a form saying they "waive all speedy trial rights forever" or else...

Long delays in trials like this are rather common. Just look at Bob Menendez's or William Jefferson's trials, each of which had delays of over 18 months between the indictment and trial start.

If Trump had his request granted, as according to the necessary procedures, no judge in the world is going to turn around and say "charges dismissed, speedy trial violation". You know this. I know this. So stop making it a thing.

[not guilty]

Armchair Lawyer, statutes matter. Indeed, statutes matter even when they dictate a result which intuitively may not make sense. "You know this. I know this." is not a maxim of statutory construction.

Tell the truth. Have you read 18 U.S.C. § 3161 or any decision(s) applying the Speedy Trial Act? Yes or no?

To promote compliance with its requirements, the Speedy Trial Act contains enforcement and sanctions provisions. If a trial does not begin on time, the defendant may move, before the start of trial or the entry of a guilty plea, to dismiss the charges, and if a meritorious and timely motion to dismiss is filed, the district court must dismiss the charges, though it may choose whether to dismiss with or without prejudice. Zedner v. United States, 547 U.S. 489, 499 (2006). That dismissal is mandatory rather than discretionary.

Sure, federal criminal cases sometimes take a considerable time before trial begins, but § 3161 imposes affirmative case management duties and timetables upon a District Court.
Per § 3161(c)(1), the rule is that a trial must begin not more than 70 days after arraignment. Periods of delay under circumstances described in § 3161(h)(1) through (h)(6) are automatically excluded from the 70 day period. Under (h)(7)(a), any period of delay resulting from a continuance granted by any judge on his own motion or at the request of the defendant or his counsel or at the request of the attorney for the Government, is not excluded unless the judge granted such continuance on the basis of findings that the ends of justice served by taking such action outweigh the best interest of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial.

"[A] defendant's agreement to waive the protections of the Act cannot, by itself, justify an ends-of-justice continuance because the public interest in a speedy trial is also protected by the Act." United States v. Ammar, 842 F.3d 1203, 1206 (11th Cir. 2016). "To be clear, a defendant cannot waive the Act's timeliness requirements. The district court bears the burden of making ends-of-justice findings and placing them on the record irrespective of the defendant's agreement to a delay." Id., at 1206 n.3.

A District Court's discretion to grant an ends-of-justice continuance is not unbridled. The factors, among others, which a judge is required to consider in determining whether to grant an ends-of-justice continuance in a given case are set forth at subsection (7)(B):

(i) Whether the failure to grant such a continuance in the proceeding would be likely to make a continuation of such proceeding impossible, or result in a miscarriage of justice.

(ii) Whether the case is so unusual or so complex, due to the number of defendants, the nature of the prosecution, or the existence of novel questions of fact or law, that it is unreasonable to expect adequate preparation for pretrial proceedings or for the trial itself within the time limits established by this section.

(iii) Whether, in a case in which arrest precedes indictment, delay in the filing of the indictment is caused because the arrest occurs at a time such that it is unreasonable to expect return and filing of the indictment within the period specified in section 3161(b), or because the facts upon which the grand jury must base its determination are unusual or complex.

(iv) Whether the failure to grant such a continuance in a case which, taken as a whole, is not so unusual or so complex as to fall within clause (ii), would deny the defendant reasonable time to obtain counsel, would unreasonably deny the defendant or the Government continuity of counsel, or would deny counsel for the defendant or the attorney for the Government the reasonable time necessary for effective preparation, taking into account the exercise of due diligence.

Nothing in § 3161 authorizes a District Court to continue a federal criminal trial indefinitely. The instant Defendants' motion requesting that relief is truly extraordinary and should not be granted.

[not guilty]

Still waiting, Armchair Lawyer. Have you read 18 U.S.C. § 3161 or any decision(s) applying the Speedy Trial Act?

And if you will indulge my curiosity further, when and where did you learn how to parse a statute?

[Armchair Lawyer]

1) Yes.
2) I look forward to your demand that all charges against Trump be dropped on August 16th, given your so firm stance on the Speedy Trial Act.
3) You can also firmly demand all the state charges from New York be dropped September 30th.

If you're not going to be serious, and understand how things really are, then you can stay not being serious.

You also forgot all the other ways delays can be added into the calendar.

[not guilty]

Responding to a straw man much, AL? As I stated, periods of delay can be excluded from the 70 day window, either automatically for certain circumstances specified by statute or on motion because the ends of justice are served by granting a continuance. (And the federal Speedy Trial Act does not apply to New York state charges, but I suspect you know that.)

Applicability of the Act is not waivable prospectively by the parties. (A defendant can waive his rights retrospectively by failing to make a motion to dismiss prior to trial or plea.) As SCOTUS has opined:

[T]he Act serves not only to protect defendants, but also to vindicate the public interest in the swift administration of justice. We thus held that a defendant may not opt out of the Act even if he believes it would be in his interest; “allowing prospective waivers would seriously undermine the Act because there are many cases . . . in which the prosecution, the defense, and the court would all be happy to opt out of the Act, to the detriment of the public interest.” Zedner v. United States, 547 U.S. 489, 502 (2006).

Bloate v. United States, 559 U.S. 196, 211-12 (2010).

AL, I have cited applicable authorities supporting my position. Why have you refused to do so for yours? Merely accusing me of bad faith doesn't feed the bulldog.

[not guilty]

Even an agreement of all parties does not excuse a trial court's non-compliance with the Speedy Trial Act. United States v. Ammar, 842 F.3d 1203 (11th Cir. 2016). The district court bears the burden of making ends-of-justice findings and placing them on the record irrespective of the defendant's agreement to a delay. Id., at 1206 n.3.

[ReaderY]

Donald Trump’s lawyers are paid to try and come up with some sort of argument for delaying the case.

What do you want them to do, not earn their pay? How are their families going to eat?

[defaultdotxbe]

Trump seems to be banking on being re-elected and then pardoning himself, or at least putting it all off for another 4 years by claiming a sitting president can't stand trial in federal court.

[Brett Bellmore]

“One of your most ancient writers, a historian named Herodotus, tells of a thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing hymns. The other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse and laughed. "You will not succeed," they told him. "No one can." To which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might happen in that time. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And perhaps the horse will learn to sing.”

[John F. Carr]

Trump also walks if a pro-Trump Republican wins, though the odds of that are less than the odds of Trump himself winning.

[John F. Carr]

Response:

There is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the Defedants provide none. ... As for the impact of the Presidential Records Act on this prosecution, any argument that it mandates dismissal of the Indictment or forms a defense to the charges here borders on frivolous.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23875072/76-govt-reply-to-motion-for-continuance.pdf

[AmosArch]

Biden's got what plants crave.

He's got electrolytes.

[Frank Drackman]

Remember in Med School a patient wanting me to check his “Electric Lights” “You mean Electrolytes??” I asked, “No man, you know, my Sodium, Potassium, Electric Lights!!” so I checked his Electric Lights, and at least he didn’t include Glucose, as it isn’t technically an Electric Light. Or Electrolyte.

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

But if it were low, it would explain the rest... 🙂

[defaultdotxbe]

I used to work verifying applicants for utility bill assistance, and one app got rejected because the person's address on the application didn't match the utility bill. The application said Charles Magny Ave.

The utility bill, as well as the photocopy of the applicant's driver's license, said Charlemagne Ave. (I made the correction and approved the application)

[Bwaaah]

In early grade school (like second grade), I wrote a book report about a book that detailed the explorations of Stanley and Livingstone. I didn't read any of the book, and really didn't look at anything but the cover. I wrote a page of b.s. and handed it in. The teacher gave it back the next day with a note: "Next time, read the book."

How did she know I hadn't read the book? I had no I idea. But the cover of the book looked something like this:

Stanley
&
Livingston

The "&" was so small that I missed it, and my report was about a guy named Stanley Livingstone. Years later, somebody mentioned something about Stanley *and* Livingstone. I was flummoxed by the remark.

"Stanley *AND* Livingstone?" I asked.

"Yeah," the person said. "You know about them?"

Doh!!!

[AmosArch]

After binging on the Menu and Snowpiercer and Squid Game and Parasite, (which to its credit is slightly more nuanced than the others) there certainly seem to be a lot of movies coming out lately where rich people tell you how awful rich people are. They’ve been around forever of course but we seem to have entered into a new glut these past few years. Got me wondering.

Is there any story you can think of where the rich people are the good guys and the poor people are the bad guys and on top of this thats explicitly the theme they are going for and its not just something you torture out with a convoluted interpretation like a Marxist deconstruction of an Age of Discovery tale of Europeans fighting primitive foreigners? Not that I pity rich people or like what some of them are doing or anything I’m just curious.

[Moderation4ever]

Isn't Tony Stark, Ironman, a rich guys? What about millionaire Bruce Wayne as Bat Man?

[AmosArch]

Theres a few stories with good rich people. But as I said I’m looking for stories where good and rich vs bad and poor are a theme thats focused on. Obviously there are good reasons why the inverse would be far more popular but you’d think at some point in history there would be a small but existing audience or writer for a story about the moral superiority of a rich dude over the envious unwashed rabble. Well I guess there’s ‘Poor Dad Rich Dad’.

Also in stories with rich ‘good’ people. They are generally ashamed to some extent of their status. Scrooge McDuck is one of the few counterexamples I can think of to this trope.

[Nelson]

The Mandel Files by Peter F. Hamilton. Strong themes of anti-socialism and pro-capitalism as well. I highly recommend them.

[Krayt]

You butter up the masses so they won't rage against you, duh.

[Brett Bellmore]

Phule's Company series. At least in terms of the good guy being rich, and unapologetic about it.

[Nige]

The guy who wrote Squid Game was dirt-poor at the time, as a point of interest. Snowpiercer was originally a comic, but a European comic not a US one, so the creators probably weren’t quite on skid row.

In general rich people are delighted to have rich people be bad guys in movies and TV shows and books – it doesn’t challenge their money or their power one iota, but gives people who aren’t rich a kind of catharsis in a ridiculously uneven world. But yeah, billionaire Bruce Wayne beats up impoverished possibly brain-damaged subhumans from the slums all the time.

The fact of the matter is, most people are poor and struggling, which makes for better drama, and always has. Rags to riches epics were all the rage for a while, for example, but nobody has much faith in that template any more except as broad satire or random chance such as lottery wins.

From a slightly different perspective there’s no end of stories with the wealthy and powerful US being the good guy, often in the form of the lowly grunt, and the poor and filthy being the bad guys, in the forms of suicide bombers and such, especially around and after 9-11 and during the endless wars. Which doesn’t even work dramatically, to my mind. It’s poor people who are in danger both from the poor and filthy bad guys and the rich and powerful US. But there are plenty with a touch of updated Cold War disillusionment too.

In short, class dynamics in popular entertainment are a land of contrasts.

[Nige]

'Which doesn’t even work dramatically,'

Um, walking that back a bit, 'lowly grunts cut off and surrounded by poor and filthy terrorists' is intrinsically dramatic, of course, but open to loads of criticism in terms of portrayal and context. Nobody's made a 'poor and filthy terrorists surrounded by lowly grunts' film yet so far as I know. A sympathetic, or even complex, portrayal of p&fts would set people's hair on fire. Four Lions, maybe? But that's a fairly brutal comedy-drama-tragedy, and can't be accused of valorising anything.

[Brett Bellmore]

Don't Mess With the Zohan was actually a bit sympathetic towards the terrorists, at least didn't paint them as monsters.

[Nige]

Didn’t see that. ‘Sympathitic terrorists’ is a bit of an ask, unless they’re Irish, and even then they usually have to be ex-terrorists tracking down old comrades or die redemptively and/or tragically at the end.

[Brett Bellmore]

Actually, the IRA were fairly sympathetically portrayed in The Quiet Man.

[Nige]

And The Eagle Has Landed. An IRA guy helping the Nazis, and all.

[SimonP]

I mean, the Ayn Rand opera come to mind (as well as their film adaptations), but I don't feel like I need to remind present company of their existence and primary themes.

[Brett Bellmore]

She had the wealth as heroes, but I don't recall the poor as villains.

[Chuck P. (The Artist formerly known as CTSP)]

Her villains were not poor, but they didn’t generate any wealth on their own.

[SimonP]

You don't recall the poor as "villains" because they don't even rise to the level of fully human, in Rand's universe.

There's only one example, maybe two if you include Anthem, of poor or working-class people that Rand describes in favorable terms. But these are portrayed as exceptions to the norm. The great villains in her major novels are amorphous masses of people using political power to oppress and abuse her heroes. The "villains" with actual personalities are specific examples of this broader villainy, and never "wealthy" as a result of their own labor or genius.

[Ed Grinberg]

Speaking of Marxism in movies, I saw the latest Indiana Jones last night. At one point, Helena Shaw says (to Indiana Jones): "You stole it from them, and I stole it from you. That's capitalism!"

[Frank Drackman]

Belloq in the first "Jones" was the best Villain...

"Dr. Jones. Again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away."

Frank "No Dr. Jones, I expect you to Die!!!!"

[Brett Bellmore]

It's been pointed out that absolutely nothing Jones did in the entire first movie mattered one bit. With or without him, the Nazis were going to find the Arc. And with or without him, they were going to be smote by the wrath of God for opening it.

He was totally just a bystander to everything that mattered.

[Magister]

Well, he repeatedly succeeded, only to be defeated by the Nazis in turn. One could argue that the Nazis might not have been destroyed upon opening the Ark but for his failed efforts, since we don't know that they could not have managed to use its powers if things had gone differently. And Marion might have been killed if he hadn't been around at various points.

[Reallynotbob]

Am I allowed to offer "any American Western"?

There are exceptions for the dirty railroad barons, etc., but mostly it's the landed sheriff and posse vs. the rabble.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

How about The Philadelphia Story? The unsympathetic George Kittredge character wasn't poor, but an up by his bootstraps guy. And the wealthy by birth Lord family and Dexter Haven were clearly the "good" characters.

[hobie]

Richie Rich?

[Commenter_XY]

Judge Terry Terry Doughty, in his opinion Mo v Biden, stated in his ruling, "The present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history".

Was it?

[Mr. Bumble]

Bomb thrower. I’d argue that if all of the allegations are true that it was. Given the snails pace of the judicial system who knows when they’re will be a decision. DOJ will probably br moving for a stay at the 5th Circuit.

[not guilty]

I wonder if the judge had ever heard of the Sedition Act of 1798.

[Mr. Bumble]

Well that act and the 1918 version were laws passed by Congress and both lasted only a few years. Not exactly the same as the current situation.

[Kazinski]

He did say massive. How many actions were initiated under the 1798 act and how many people had there speech suppressed under this program?

It would have to be several orders of magnitude more.from what I can find there were 25 arrests and 10 convictions under the Sedition act. Way too many but hardly massive.

[M L]

Lincoln arresting tens of thousands of people just for speech and dissent, seizing newspapers etc has to be up there.

[Commenter_XY]

not guilty, I am quite sure Judge Doughty has.

But let me ask you: Did the federal government act unconstitutionally here (MO v Biden)?

[not guilty]

I don't think the federal government acted unconstitutionally. The social media outlets were free to make their own decisions about what content to disseminate. The government is not responsible for private actors' decisions only if, there is such a "close nexus between the State and the challenged action" that seemingly private behavior "may be fairly treated as that of the State itself." Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Assn., 531 U.S. 288, 295 (2001).

Justice Souter there elaborated:

Our cases have identified a host of facts that can bear on the fairness of such an attribution [of private conduct to the government.] We have, for example, held that a challenged activity may be state action when it results from the State's exercise of "coercive power," Blum [v. Yaretsky,] 457 U.S. [991,] 1004 [1982,] when the State provides "significant encouragement, either overt or covert," ibid., or when a private actor operates as a "willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents," Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U.S. 922,] 941 [(1982),] (internal quotation marks omitted). We have treated a nominally private entity as a state actor when it is controlled by an "agency of the State," Pennsylvania v. Board of Directors of City Trusts of Philadelphia, 353 U.S. 230, 231 (1957) (per curiam), when it has been delegated a public function by the State, cf., e.g., West v. Atkins, [487 U.S. 42,] 56 [(1988)]; Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U.S. 614, 627-628 (1991), when it is "entwined with governmental policies," or when government is "entwined in [its] management or control," Evans v. Newton, 382 U. S. 296, 299, 301 (1966).

531 U.S. at 296.

[Commenter_XY]

This was a very helpful answer; you are adding to my legal education.

Considering Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co, is it a close call (I assume that it is)?

If I follow you, the 'bright line' for you is the SM companies were free to refuse fed gov requests.

[Randal]

Lugar was about who counts as a state actor. That’s not the question here. The defendants are literally the government.

The question here is whether they coerced or “significantly encouraged” the social media companies.

The answer is pretty clearly no. If you look at Doughty’s examples of “evidence of coercion” they’re pretty silly. Lots of strong language, like, “I’m really serious here! Really serious.” But strong language alone can never turn a request into coercion. There this idea of an implied threat to support Section 230 legislation, but… changing Section 230 isn't in Biden’s or any if these executive branch defendants’ power. So even if true, for them to threaten to simply take a future position on an issue doesn’t involve the coercive use of their positions or powers.

“Significant encouragement” is similar. It’s not “vehement encouragement” which might include the sort of table-pounding that the judge seems to find so scary. The “significant” part has to be a concrete stick or carrot.

It’s helpful to look at the entire sentence from Blum v. Yaretsky:

A State normally can be held responsible for a private decision only when it has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must be deemed to be that of the State.

The fact that the social media companies routinely denied these requests is pretty strong evidence that they didn’t feel coerced, and that the moderation decisions can’t be “deemed to be those of the State.”

[Commenter_XY]

Randal, this explanation was also very helpful.

So, the fact that Twitter declined to change/censor some number of tweets in response to government requests/suggestions is why there was not 'significant encouragement'. Meaning, if Twitter had not declined any requests, or maybe declined less than 1% of requests, then it would be 'significant encouragement'.

Is that a fair way to interpret that?

[Randal]

I think having acquiesced to all of almost all the requests would be necessary, but not sufficient, to show "significant encouragement." You'd still need to show that they did it because of some concrete threat or promise.

[David Nieporent]

Is that a fair way to interpret that?

Mostly. The mere fact that Twitter had not declined any of the requests would not make it significant encouragement — but it would be strong evidence that Twitter felt coerced.

(Another possibility, though, would be that the government was judicious in what requests it made, only singling out the most egregious material, stuff that Twitter would have deleted on its own when it saw those things regardless of if the government had said anything or not.)

[not guilty]

I'm skeptical that Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., Inc., 457 U.S. 922 (1982), is helpful to the Missouri plaintiffs. The private creditor in Lugar availed itself of a state statutory scheme which authorized the participation of government officials (the clerk, the sheriff) in attaching the plaintiff's property prior to judgment, where the statutes failed to comport with constitutional due process safeguards.

As I understand Missouri v. Biden, the plaintiffs do not challenge the validity of federal statutes.

[Michael P]

Significant covert encouragement? Check.
Willful participant in joint activities? Check.

State action? Check.

[Sarcastr0]

Not seeing evidence of any of that.

[Mr. Bumble]

Your willful blindness can be cured by opening your eyes.

[Randal]

The willful participant claim was already rejected.

If you look at the evidence of “coercion,” it’s all just table-pounding. I dare you to find any evidence at all of anyone from the government threatening (or promising) to take some specific government action within their power (or even within Biden’s power).

Hint: zilch. Open your eyes, Mr. Blindness.

[Michael P]

That's a natural outcome of burying your head in the sand. https://www.racket.news/p/twitter-files-missouri-v-biden-edition

If that's paywalled, some of the high points, which have been covered to some extent in The Twitter Files: Google, Twitter, Meta and others had weekly telecons to consume USG propaganda about alleged misinformation. When the USG asked Twitter to ban or censor users, it generally did, even when it had to find reasons other than what the USG originally suggested. When Twitter missed an account, the USG followed up to demand it be nuked as well, and Twitter apologized for missing it (after nuking the account). The USG offered to concoct compulsory legal process when needed as top cover (which would be state action all on its own).

[Sarcastr0]

Twitter did not generally acquiesce to government requests. As demonstrated in the Twitter files themselves.

This is full of just lies. Maybe racket is not a great factual source.

The issue here is factual, but one side is trying to pretend it’s moral.

[Brett Bellmore]

They didn't always acquiesce. Not everybody at Twitter was comfortable with this relationship, and they got occasional push back when there wasn't an even vaguely plausible basis for the action.

That's not the same as not generally acquiescing.

[Commenter_XY]

The distinction will be lost to him Brett, you're wasting your time.

[Sarcastr0]

This is so full of weasel words and hand waiving that it’s meaningless as any kind of factual argument.

You just want to believe.

[Nige]

If you could show a single instance of any actual retaliation for refusals, I'd actually agree with you, but so far nobody has.

[jb]

At least until Musk bought Twitter, they were only complying with something like 50% of government take down demands and that bucket includes court orders. It’s hard to argue that they were coerced into doing something by the government when they’re refusing to do it half the time.

Edited to add: the Musk version of Twitter complies with government requests more like 80% of the time, probably because he fired all of the people whose job it was to push back on those requests.

[Michael P]

Maybe you shouldn't hang your entire argument on bald assertions and weasel-wording the meaning of "generally" when that's not actually a factor for state action or violating the constitution.

[Sarcastr0]

The fact that twitter said no to the government plenty of times and no adverse action resulted is enough to show no coercion, much less a constructive agency.

[Kazinski]

There is one factual that gives it all away: the wailing and rending of garments when Musk bought Twitter and quit “cooperating” with the government.

In fact Twitter just went to federal court to get the FTC to lay off of Twitter and quit harassing it: “Twitter wants a federal court to end an order imposed by the Federal Trade Commission that limits its data security practices.

The FTC has been watching the company for years since Twitter agreed to a 2011 consent order alleging serious data security lapses. But the agency’s concerns spiked with the tumult that followed Elon Musk’s Oct. 27 takeover of the company.

In March it was disclosed that the FTC was investigating Musk’s mass layoffs at Twitter and trying to obtain his internal communications as part of ongoing oversight into the social media company’s privacy and cybersecurity practices, according to documents described in a congressional report.”https://apnews.com/article/twitter-musk-ftc-data-kahn-5029be631788db4cd6ecab0d3edc9abf

[Sarcastr0]

The government makes requests for things it wants. It is unhappy when these requests are no longer even being considered.

Musk acted like an utter idiot when downsizing Twitter. Like open breaches of laws and contracts. This is not retaliation, this is on Musk.

This is the same as Trump is only prosecuted because of animus, not because of the crimes he did.

You look for connections, you can convince yourself you find them. You will look unhinged to most others.

[Nelson]

"When the USG asked Twitter to ban or censor users, it generally did, even when it had to find reasons other than what the USG originally suggested."

There's a strong argument that it wasn't censorship:

"The communications unearthed as part of the Twitter Files do not show coercion because they do not contain a specific government demand to remove content—let alone one backed by the threat of government sanction.”

That's Twitter saying that. I really like Matt Taibbi. He was great on the pro side in the Munk Debate "Be it resolved, don't trust mainstream media" and had his own Munk Dialogue (https://munkdebates.com/podcast/mainstream-media-the-twitter-files-and-online-ce) that was also very good. Since it's paywalled I can't tell if you're quoting Taibbi or summarizing.

I find the "leftist censorship" claims largely specious, since Twitter often refused to take down things the government wanted and the requests came from both the Trump and Biden administrations, which had very different priorities and views. Additionally, Twitter has increased their takedowns under Musk, not decreased them (https://www.forbes. com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/twitter-has-complied-with-almost-every-government-request-for-censorship-since-musk-took-over-report-finds/?sh=67b112f424ea; sorry for the space, I don't know how to get around the "one link only" limit).

Additionally Musk has claimed that he has no actual choice about government requests, yet before his purchase Twitter fought those requests.

[Nige]

'I find the “leftist censorship” claims largely specious'

For one thing, this all happened under Trump. Requests came from the Biden *campaign* and were mostly about images that had been stolen and were in violation of twitter's tos.

Promoting the twitter files and then going on to accede to all requests either suggests Musk is a hypocritical idiot OR twitter since Musk has been flooded with more genuinely actionable content, which suggest's Musk's running the place very badly from the point of view of the average user. There are a LOT of bots and scams on twitter currently.

I'd also guess that given US support for Ukraine there might be a lot of Russian disinformation operations, but the war seems to have rendered that kind of asymmetrical warfare oddly toothless. Shitposting lies about Ukrainian atrocities isn't going to stop a single bullet or missile from being shipped to the Ukrainians.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, it did NOT "all" happen under Trump. Some of it happened under Trump, some of it under Biden.

[Nige]

Pretty much everything in the relevant case happened under Trump, n'est pas? Okay, it is just plain weird that the anti-Biden twitter files referred to stuff that happened under Trump, while since then the Biden administration is doing more or less the same thing and Musk is not only not publicising it, he's acquiescing far more than the old management he was condeming. The whole thing was such a scam.

[Nelson]

Which is another way of saying it wasn't an attempt by leftists to censor conservatives.

Unless you are arguing the Trump administration was leftist. Is that your position?

[VinniUSMC]

Much of the government during Trump's tenure was indeed full of leftist shits like you. Duh?

[Nige]

Yeah, the famously leftist FBI.

[Nelson]

Oh, I forgot that everyone in government is a lefty, Deep State, fifth columnist bent on destroying America with only Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, and their plucky gang of underdogs standing between them and world domination.

The sad part is, that’s not even a satitical take on Deep State conspiracies. It’s basically the defining narrative of QAnon.

[VinniUSMC]

No "deep state" needed. Shit, plenty of Republicans and RINOs were and are anti-Trump.

Stop confusing my calling you out for being a Lefty Shit with support for Trump, it's unbecoming. I proudly didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, and certainly won't vote for him in 2024, if he makes it on the ticket. I didn't even vote R, so sit and spin Lefty Shit.

[Sarcastr0]

Another ‘I don’t like Trump but I will defend him and all he did from all consequences by blaming leftists.’

Sorry dude, you are paying the fare of making dumb conspiratorial claims about Trump doing crimes and getting in trouble, you get to take the ride.

[Nelson]

"Stop confusing my calling you out for being a Lefty Shit"

You'll have to explain how I am a "lefty shit". I'm quite firmly in the libertarian camp. What exactly makes you think I'm a "lefty shit"? Please be specific, if you can.

"I proudly didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, and certainly won’t vote for him in 2024, if he makes it on the ticket."

What does that have to fo with the subject at hand? If you've forgotten, it's the fact that conservatives complain endlessly about how censored they are when they gave had the company's owner, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial branches all pro-conservative. At some point you have to acknowledge that there isn't any censorship going on, since all the people who could "censor" you are on your side.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Taibbi published another trail of emails today in which the FBI asked that a site be taken down and Twitter said they would without investigation. But it slipped through the cracks at Twitter and the site stayed up for a few days.

The FBI sent another message - “why the hell is this site still up?”

No pressure though. It was just…a resuggestion. That’s it! They were merely resuggesting! Hell, my wife does it all the time!!

Not that anyone on here cares about facts or anything.

This bullshit will become the norm and someday a conservative administration is going to do this to the left, and I’m gonna laugh my ass off at their whines of indignation. It’s the dark side of the Golden Rule - right now they’re doing to others, but they ain’t gonna like it when it’s done to them.

[Nige]

‘Not that anyone on here cares about facts or anything.’

Such as how can Twitter ‘take down’ a site?

'a conservative administration is going to do this to the left,'

It was a conservative administration.

[Frank Drackman]

"Hoo-hoo-hoo, Billy Mack is a detective down in Texas
You know he knows just exactly what the facts is..."

[VinniUSMC]

Nige and Nelson’s little circle jerk “conservative administration”. You’d have to be blind, stupid, and/or a lying lefty shit to think that Trump being in office somehow meant that a significant portion of the government was still manned by lefty shits.

[Randal]

why the hell is this site still up?

I completely fail to understand where you're seeing coercion in this.

The tepid swear? If the government says "hell" that makes it coercive?

You can't be serious.

BTW I'm totally fine with a "conservative administration" requesting social media to take down leftist lies. They can even be really really adamant about it... and use swears!

[David Nieporent]

BTW I’m totally fine with a “conservative administration” requesting social media to take down leftist lies. They can even be really really adamant about it… and use swears!

I'm not (on either side) totally fine with it. Unless the thing to be taken down involves (a) unprotected speech; or (b) national security or imminent public safety issues¹, the government just shouldn't be doing this. But whatever my view of that activity, doing so does not violate the constitution unless there's actual coercion, rather than just harsh language.

¹To be clear, by "public safety" I don't mean that the government just has to recite those words as a talisman, nor do I mean that there's some convoluted speculative Rube Goldberg mechanism by which someone could be endangered. I mean something obvious, like when there's a natural disaster and someone is tweeting instructions that are contraindicated by the situation. ("Stay in your homes" when evacuating is the right option, for example.)

[bevis the lumberjack]

Nelson, who cares if it’s leftists or rightists.? The point is it shouldn’t be anyone.

It just happens that the left is defending it today because their imbecile is in charge. If the other imbecile were in charge they’d be howling like monkeys.

[Nige]

'Nelson, who cares if it’s leftists or rightists.?'

Because nobody would care if there hadn't been an effort to paint these as the left censoring the right, even though it happened under Trump and nobody got censored. In that sense it's a classic right-wing performative outrage generator.

[Nelson]

Leftists don't complain about censorship on Twitter. The right does. If the left were making specious arguments like the right is, I would call them out (like above with the stupid Clarence Thomas aide stuff or with the two impeachments).

Failing to call out a group that isn't complaining makes sense, unlike the rights complaints about Twitter.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Nelson, who is currently having their speech suppressed on social media? Today, this month, this year. The right.

Who is supporting the effort to suppress speech today? The left.

I wonder why the right is complaining and the left isn’t. The only complaint of the left is that not enough speech is being suppressed.

And I hardly think Matt Taibbi qualifies as the right.

[Commenter_XY]

I had the same thought = who cares if it’s leftists or rightists.? The point is it shouldn’t be anyone (in the federal government)

(my add)

[Nige]

'Nelson, who is currently having their speech suppressed on social media? Today, this month, this year. The right.'

Where? Truth Social?

[Randal]

Who is currently having their speech suppressed on social media? Today, this month, this year.

Um... percieved enemies of Elon Musk?

Did I get it right?

[Nelson]

"Nelson, who is currently having their speech suppressed on social media? Today, this month, this year. The right."

Suppressed by the companies? Cultural conservatives claim it's them, but they whine nonstop about being the victim.

As I understand it, Twitter is now run by a pro-conservative, free speech absolutist (as long as you don't say bad things about him). Granted, he is taking down a whole lot more posts than his predecessors (83% of requests vs. 50% before he bought it), but he says he really, really supports free speech and he pisses off lefties, so there's that.

Then you have Truth Social. Rabidly pro-conservative, but like Twitter if you speak ill of the owner your post will be taken down. Or if you speak well of his political opponents. Or if you say the 2020 election was free and fair. Or ... well, you get the point.

Now, if you are claiming conservatives are being censored by the government? Let's unpack that.

When the GOP controlled the Executive branch (and made all of the political appointments)? According to them, they were being censored. When they controlled the Executive and one house of Congress? According to them they were being censored. When they controlled the Executive and both houses of Congress? You guessed it! They claimed they were being censored. A 6-3 conservative Supreme Court? Suddenly they were longer being ... LOLOLOLOL!!! Of course they still claimed they were being censored.

At some point you have to admit that you aren't being censored.

Twitter refused givernment requests (from both the Trump and Biden administrations) regularly and there were absolutely no repercussions. They weren't acting as a government agent.

Every element has been in favor of conservatives at some point (company, Executive branch, the Legislature (House, Senate, and both at different points), and the Supreme Court). Yet the censorship claims remain consistent.

Why is that? When you have all the power, who is stopping you?

Also, I didn't call Matt Taibbi "the right". He is an honest man who doesn't cheerlead for any "side", which is a vanishingly rare breed of courage these days.

[Nelson]

"I had the same thought"

Commenter XY, my point is that the threshold for censorship isn't even within binocular distance of what the right is claiming as censorship. When there are no repercussions to telling the government "no" (as is the case with the Twitter files) there's jo coercion, therefore there's no censorship. When all three branches of governemnt, as well as the owner of the company, has been pro-conservative yet the complaints remain the same, there is a disconnect.

If every variable of power changes in your favor, but you still claim repression, there is more likely a problem with the claim, not everything else.

I am unabashedly and fervently pro-capitalism, so I don't see a problem with a company doing things that they think are to their benefit, even if some of their customers don't. If they piss off enough people, there will be an opening in the market that someone will fill.

That's why I'm equal parts baffled and amused by the whole Bud Light thing. The reason for the boycott is stupid beyond belief, but I'm pretty sure that InBev isn't going to notice anything. Most people probably just switched to another one of their brands, since they sell over 500 brands of beer. Certainly it won't matter two or three years from now, which is short-term in business.

[Life of Brian]

Granted, he is taking down a whole lot more posts than his predecessors (83% of requests vs. 50% before he bought it)

The report and raw data behind that statistic are here. Here's what it actually shows/doesn't show:

1. The data set tabulates formal requests from governmental agencies and courts, so the backdoor emails/phone calls/meetings under discussion here aren't going to show up.

2. The data set gloms together requests to take down posts with requests to disclose information about Twitter users and the report doesn't separately report on them, so there's no visibility on how many requests to take down posts there were, and how many were granted/denied.

3. Nearly 80% of the requests (742 out of 941) came from Turkey and Germany.

4. Not a single request came from the United States (see 1).

So whatever this data set is, it's not helpful at all to understanding the dynamic under discussion in this thread.

[Nelson]

"So whatever this data set is, it’s not helpful at all to understanding the dynamic under discussion in this thread."

Out of my entire post you pull out a single parenthetical, dispute it by claiming that the data set isn't the "real" data set, ignore every single main point I made, and try to say that I'm the one off topic? That's a bold flavor of bullshit you're spreading.

[Krayt]

Jfc, the case literally provided quotes by the highest of officials, including Biden and Nancy Pelosi, threatening tit for tat retaliation of massive financial harm by altering or deleting section 230, unless they censored the way the officials stated in those same sentences.

"Nothing to see here, move along. The companies were private citizens doing their own thing of their own free will."

[Sarcastr0]

Nope. You keep posting that. And when called out that it’s nonsense, no such tit for tat threat exists, you retreat back to your axiomatic belief that the government’s primary purpose is corruption.

The Krayt cycle.

[David Nieporent]

Not only do the tit-for-tat threats not exist, but an individual legislator has no power to carry them out if they did. The times when courts have found "threats" to be an issue was when someone with law enforcement power threatened to use law enforcement power if a private entity didn't suppress speech. Not "maybe we'll change a law if you don't change your general conduct."

[not guilty]

I noticed a typo in my comment above which changed the meaning of what I intended to say.

“The government is not responsible for private actors’ decisions only if . . .” should have been “The government is responsible for private actors’ decisions only if . . .”

Sorry for the mixup. I hope my meaning was apparent from the context.

[ducksalad]

N.G., whether Twitter’s actions were effectively state action, and whether there was coercion, and not the only questions here.

Suppose a government agency assigned employees to a task, had them set up meetings during business hours, and had them making calls on government phones, to:

(a) Persuade people (non-coercively!) to stop attending synagogues and give up on Judaism.
(b) Persuade people (non-coercively!) to boycott Black-owned businesses.
(c) Persuade jurors (non-coercively!) to acquit or not acquit a defendant.
(d) Persuade media outlets (non-coercively) to suppress certain points of view.

In all four cases, they don’t get off the hook because it was not coercive. The entire project is an illegitimate use of government, because the end goal is illegitimate, regardless of the means used.

[not guilty]

We are talking in the context of a specific lawsuit. Commenter XY asked me if the federal government acted unconstitutionally there. I don’t think the plaintiffs in Missouri, et al. v. Biden, et al. sued Twitter or any other non-governmental actors, so whether the private actors’ content decisions are in fact speech attributable to the government should be dispositive of that litigation. I set forth some of the legal authorities bearing on that question, as sumarized by Justice Souter for the Court in Brentwood Academy.

[Commenter_XY]

So NG, hypothetically, if the lawsuit were MO v Biden & Twitter, does your analysis change? If both actors were named in the suit, does the action/behavior then become unconstitutional?

This has been a fascinating read for me (you, Randal, ducksalad). I have to tell you, that whole thing (government asking to take down content based on viewpoint/alleged misinformation) is totally 'icky'. I don't think I want to be the judge deciding that case.

[not guilty]

I seriously doubt that Twitter's content moderation and exercise of editorial judgment is attributable to the federal government. Net Choice, LLC v. Att'y General, State of Florida, No. 21-12355 (11th Cir. 2022), is on point. https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202112355.pdf

[Randal]

The solutions to "illegitimate uses of government" are political. Vote them out. Pass a law. There already is a law against C. Make a law called the "We Hate Internet Narcs Entirely" Act to prohibit D if you want to.

[Commenter_XY]

WHINE Act. Cute. Points for creativity on that one.

[M L]

https://reason.com/2023/07/12/critics-of-the-ruling-against-bidens-anti-misinformation-crusade-see-no-threat-to-freedom-of-speech/

"There may be circumstances where the government runs afoul of the First Amendment by effectively forcing private companies to remove protected speech," law professors Leah Litman and Laurence Tribe conceded. But they complained that Doughty's opinion does not "seriously engage with the issue of when that might occur" and instead "seems to maintain that the government cannot even politely ask companies not to publish verifiable misinformation."

That characterization of what the Biden administration did is contradicted by the copious evidence that Doughty reviewed. Those emails and text messages show that federal officials persistently demanded that platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube remove content that the government viewed as a threat to public health.

"Are you guys fucking serious?" former Deputy Assistant to the President Rob Flaherty said in an illustrative email to Facebook, expressing frustration with the platform's perceived failure to do what the administration "politely" asked. "I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today."

Those private demands were coupled with public rebukes by President Joe Biden, who accused Facebook et al. of "killing people" by allowing the spread of anti-vaccination messages; Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who lodged essentially the same charge; and White House representatives, who said the platforms must be "held accountable" for failing to meet their "responsibility." Murthy said accountability might require "legal and regulatory measures," while other officials threatened to punish recalcitrant companies by imposing new privacy regulations, pursuing "a robust anti-trust program," or reducing their protection from civil liability for user-posted content.

Nor were the administration's "requests" limited to "verifiable misinformation." . . . .

[Randal]

So... your argument is with the word "politely?" And you think that makes all the difference?

[M L]

No, what makes a difference is that these facts weigh on the following:

a challenged activity may be state action when it results from the State’s exercise of “coercive power,” Blum [v. Yaretsky,] 457 U.S. [991,] 1004 [1982,] when the State provides “significant encouragement, either overt or covert,” ibid., or when a private actor operates as a “willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents,”
________

Reason writer Jacob Sullum noted the word "politely" as a little touch of humor. I'm explaining this for you in case you have Asperger's.

[Randal]

So... public shaming, then, that's what does it?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“when the State provides “significant encouragement, either overt or covert,””

Check.

“when a private actor operates as a “willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents,””

Check.

“when it is “entwined with governmental policies,””

Check.

“when government is “entwined in [its] management or control,””

Check.

Sounds like state action to me.

[Nelson]

Sure, if by "check" you mean "Maybe, if you start at the end and work your way back".

There seem to be a lot of lawyers posting relevant cases, but you seem determined to believe your linguistic analysis is equivelent to superior legal analysis. It isn't a compelling argument.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I was quoting language from a Supreme Court decision, language helpfully provided by another commenter.

We're asked to believe there's state action when a private segregated restaurant rents space in a government-owned parking garage, but there's no state action when the government coordinates censorship with private companies who are simultaneously being publicly threatened if they don't censor more.

[Nelson]

"when the government coordinates censorship with private companies"

This particular fallacy is called "begging the question". You can't use your conclusion as a premise and expect to be taken seriously.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

You can't edit out my reference to threats against the companies and think you've given a full answer.

[Nelson]

As has been pointed out repeatedly by a number of lawyers, the legal threshold for threats or coercion hasn't been met.

My takaway from their much more knowledgable and detailed posts is:

1) f you don't actually have the power to do what you say, it isn't, legally, a threat or coercion. So if I said "If you don't do what I say I'm going to drop a nuclear missle on your house", it isn't legally a threat or coercion because I don't have the ability to launch nuclear missiles. A legislator saying they'll alter or eliminate Section 230 falls into this category.

2) The real-world history of Twitter saying no (even when the government says really mean things to them and use really bad words) and suffering no consequences indicates they knew there was no coercion, since saying "no" never resulted in any negative consequences for Twitter or retaliation by the government. So if a government actor said, "If you don't do what I say, you will suffer", but when you don't do what he says nothing happens, that indicates there isn't coercion. It just means he's an impotent blowhard.

Lawyers, is that a fair reading?

[Nige]

All those checks bounce.

[Brett Bellmore]

Perhaps exaggeration, US history has some pretty massive attacks on free speech. But the last few years' efforts to censor social media certainly is a contender, if only on the basis of scale.

[Nige]

Weird how everyone's worked up about a bunch of polite requests that were mostly declined, rather than the whole thing with Tik-Tok.

[Brett Bellmore]

You're imagining the "mostly declined" part of that, you do realize.

[Mr. Bumble]

AI Nige hasn't achieved self awareness yet.

[Nige]

No, I got it from the ol' twitter files.

[VinniUSMC]

a bunch of polite requests that were mostly declined

That is absolutely the most generous possible accounting of what happened. Strange how only lefty shits are given such generous characterizations.

[Nige]

If that's the most generous, then 'poking their nose in and getting swatted away for the most part' is about the least. 'An assault on freedom of speech' is just nonsense.

[VinniUSMC]

So generous of you. Lefty shit covers for lefty shits, news at 11.

[Nige]

Cover for Trump, you mean, This all happened under Trump. I'm defending Trump! Me! Heavens to Betsy.

[VinniUSMC]

Show your work. Lefty shits in government didn't stop being lefty shits just because Trump appeared. In fact, they became even worse lefty shits.

You're not defending Trump, ignoramus.

[Nige]

If you look at the ancient historical records you will see that Trumpe was the presidente of Ye Olde Unitede Statese at the time.

[VinniUSMC]

Again, so what? That doesn't magically make everyone in government a conservative. Stupid Lefty Shit.

[Nige]

It makes it a Republican administration. Full of lefties.

[David Nieporent]

Ah, yes, lots of socialists go to work for the FBI.

[VinniUSMC]

Why wouldn't they? Are you just trying to be obtuse?

[Sarcastr0]

Socialists don’t like cops. The FBI has not been kind to leftist causes.

Is this some deep cover scenario?

Weaving conspiracy theories where legions of committed anti-Trumpists have infiltrated all of government and are responsible for all its behavior before after and during the Trump administration needs more than just VinniUSMC being angry about everything and everyone.

[David Nieporent]

Why wouldn’t they?

Because they want to defund the police, not be the police.

[Nige]

'Why wouldn’t they?'

But did they?

[Nelson]

"But did they?"

As Jan. 6th proves, failure and incompetence don't prove you didn't try to accomplish something. Hell, the Civil War proves that.

If you claim that the Jan. 6th riot was an attempt to stop Pence from certifying the election (which it was), you can't also claim that the "defund the police" effort wasn't an attempt to defund the police.

Wingnuts on the left are as tedious and disgusting as those on the right.

[Krayt]

Threatening section 230, which will cost hundreds of billions in lost stock valuation to the trillion dollar club, to say nothing of myriad smaller companies about the size of the Big 3 automakers, is not gently asking.

This is the worst possible violation of the First Amendment this side of bamboo under the fingernails.

[not guilty]

Modification of section 230 would require Congressional action. The Trump or Biden officials could not effectuate any such modification unilaterally.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Lol. So would modification of the laws governing the student loan program. To Biden, the whole separation of powers thing is barely a speed bump.

[Sarcastr0]

You have no theory of actual action here, much less evidence of actual motion. Just complaining about some other thing.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

The Biden Administration was following the laws as written regarding student loans, just not the laws as reinterpreted by the MQD. It was SCOTUS out of its lane regarding separation of powers.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Bullshit.

[Mr. Bumble]

Seems like Alpheus is drinking more than water.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Quite frequently. I'm getting ready to go on another Kentucky bourbon tour.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Out of idle curiosity, have you ever actually read the HEROES act of 2003?

"...the Secretary “may waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV of the [Education Act] as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency."

[bernard11]

Does anyone have any actual data here, or are we all just believing what we want to believe?

[Commenter_XY]

It is a difficult case = MO v. Biden. There is data, but I think it is the interpretation of the data that there is disagreement upon. There are emails, tweets, memos, etc.

Does it mean the federal government acted unconstitutionally? I dunno, but I am certainly skeptical that the federal government acted in an entirely benign fashion.

[Mr. Bumble]

Benign or malign the government has no business asking or telling site what they can show on their sites unless it is patently against some existing law.

[Nige]

Good thing they didn't do that.

[Brett Bellmore]

SFFA v. Harvard, Honor, and Sadness

This guy lives on Bizzarro world. Seriously, he does. Reading this made my jaw drop, it so stands things on their head.

[Commenter_XY]

Give Super some prozac. 🙂

[Kazinski]

I saw an interesting article the other day, about Military promotions.

The DOD decided to quit including photos of officers up for promotions to promotion boards to keep unconscious bias down. The idea was the board would be less likely to know the race of the candidate without the visual clue.

What went down was the number of minorities promoted, so they put the photos back in.

The current DOD budget being worked on in Congress has a rider that requires all promotions be based solely on merit, Biden opposes the provision.

[Michael P]

There's no surprise that the Biden admin would oppose that, they've also formally opposed Mississippi protecting a majority-Black city and county from crime.

[Illocust]

I've heard that there is a push to get the orchestra who famously started doing blind screenings of music in order to get more women to do doing blind screenings because not enough minorities are being chosen.

[Brett Bellmore]

To stop doing them, you mean? Yeah, I'd heard that, too.

[Illocust]

Yes stop doing them, sorry phone typing is the worst.

[Michael P]

For example, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html

The doubletalk and obfuscation at https://symphony.org/features/rethinking-blind-auditions/ are really breathtaking.

[Krayt]

Tar, with Cate Blanchett, touched on this, having orchestral tryouts behind a screen because of studies showing unconscious bias against minorities and women.

Spoiler: Tar (character) is a pos and slams the "unknown" prospect anyway, who she figured out was an imagined petty enemy, and then it unwinds from there.

[Sarcastr0]

Unconscious bias is a demonstrated phenomenon. But the jump to testing and training and whatnot was ridiculously precipitous. How it’s processed in the real world is only now being looked at.

But it did promise quick and cheap action to companies looking to demonstration their preemptive posture on discrimination.

Whole thing is dumb and should be laughed out of every institution. So many better actions to take.

[John F. Carr]

Liberal lawmakers agree with an earlier media report, tracking beacons in tax preparation code were used to steal tax financial information from millions of Americans. The media have overall been less excited about this incident than the risk that similar spyware embedded in medical sites could reveal that a girl had an abortion.

It is time to formally impose strict liability for the consequences of metrics and advertising trackers.

[AmosArch]

If someone invented a method where you could easily and conveniently kill unborn babies with firearms while keeping the mother alive I wonder if leftists would ease up on the anti 2nd amendment rhetoric.

[Nige]

If lunatics going around shooting pregnant women to kill their fetuses didn't unite left and right to do something about it, nothing will.

[Brett Bellmore]

It can't unite the left and right, because the right's response to "lunatics going around shooting pregnant women" is to go after the lunatics, and the left's response is to go after everybody else who has a gun, while tacitly leaving the actual lunatics alone to keep the pressure up.

[Nige]

Brett, I see your point, I really do, but there's no realistic way that access and availability to weapons can't be regulated better as part of a solution. You can't 'go after lunatics' who haven't done anything yet and who don't present as lunatics, for one thing.

[Brett Bellmore]

“Brett, I see your point, I really do,”

That’s reasonable of you, and I’m not being sarcastic, it really is. Maybe there really is a kinder and gentler bug going around…

“You can’t ‘go after lunatics’ who haven’t done anything yet and who don’t present as lunatics, for one thing.”

Not permitting prosecution of “pre-crime” is NOT a bug. “People who haven’t done anything yet” are innocent, and entitled to be treated as such, as a basic matter of law and justice. And almost everybody who “doesn’t present as a lunatic” isn’t a lunatic.

So, once you start going after ‘lunatics’ who haven’t done anything yet, and don’t present as lunatics, virtually everybody you’re going after is somebody who was never going to do anything wrong! You’ve just specifically rejected having to have any particularized basis for suspecting them!

Now, if you’re talking about something that’s not a civil liberty, it’s just some relatively trivial privilege that means nothing, sure, maybe you can make a case for “going after”, in some very attenuated sense, people who haven’t yet done anything wrong, and probably won’t. I find it sad that I no longer live in a country where you can drop by the drug store and pick up everyday chemicals that have perfectly innocent uses, but I can’t say I’m totally outraged that it’s marginally harder for the neighbor's kid to blow out the basement windows trying to make nitroglycerine. (Darned decent of him not ratting me out for having given him a recipe; I really was high INT and low WIS as a child…)

But when you’re talking about something non-trivial, or even civil liberties related? Yeah, it’s a big freaking deal to “go after” people who haven’t done anything wrong, and show no indications that they will.

[Nige]

'virtually everybody you’re going after is somebody who was never going to do anything wrong!'

Just to point out, this was your suggestion.

'Now, if you’re talking about something that’s not a civil liberty'

If it wasn't a 'civil liberty,' or rather consitutionally protected due to a notion of civil defense that is now archaic, a balance could be struck between the right to gun ownership and functional limitations. In fact, if it weren't for a relatively recent commerically driven radicalsation around the concept of gun ownership, we could probably still have that.

Again, 'going after the lunatics' was your proposed solution.

[VinniUSMC]

Brett said:

the right’s response to “lunatics going around shooting pregnant women” is to go after the lunatics,

Nige "understands":

start going after ‘lunatics’ who haven’t done anything yet, and don’t present as lunatics

And Nige wonders why he's dismissed as a lefty shit.

Not permitting prosecution of “pre-crime” is NOT a bug.

Odd that you still think Brett was suggesting it.

[Nige]

I don't think there's anything especially radical about going after them after committing the crime, so as solutions go it's not exactly groundbreaking.

[Brett Bellmore]

"If it wasn’t a ‘civil liberty,’"

But it is, and that's the end of it until you amend the Constitution to change that.

[Randal]

Or fix Heller. Egregiously Wrong!

[hoppy025]

It's hard to take you seriously when you say "We're not trying to ban guns" when you attack Heller.

[Randal]

I'm not trying to ban guns by attacking Heller. It's actually Heller that makes assault weapons bans possible.

But Heller sweeps in a bunch of peripheral stuff, like handguns and lax storage, plus shall-issue once you get to Bruen, that it finds in the penumbras. If we could at least have laws saying "you can own (military) guns, but you have to be responsible about it," that would be something.

[hoppy025]

No, Heller does not make assault weapons bans possible.

[Randal]

Read it again, it absolutely does.

[hoppy025]

No. It does not.

[Randal]

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M-16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But...

And then he goes on to explain why they may be banned.

[hoppy025]

Except nowhere does he say that they may be banned.

[Nige]

It's a civil right that has drenched the country in innocent blood, so I'm thinking no, that's not the end of it.

[Harvey Mosley]

"...a balance could be struck between the right to gun ownership and functional limitations.

No we couldn't have that. My offer of proof is the state of California. Every year we have more and more gun control laws passed that address "problems" that don't exist. The worst of those revolve around CCW laws. A few years back a law was passed prohibiting anyone with a CCW from carrying on school property. Except for retired LEO's of course. That carve out was needed for the unions to snap to and support the law.

There was never an instance of anyone with a CCW doing anything illegal with a firearm on school property. But the Democrats in California will do just about anything to discourage gun ownership to the non connected in California short of an outright ban. All the while they are lessening sentences of actual criminals convicted of using firearms in crimes. In fact I read a story today that the Democrats on a state senate committee voted against a bill to require longer sentences for child trafficking. While this doesn't have anything to do with guns it does show that California Democrats are more concerned with coddling criminals than protecting children. They will still belt out the refrain, "Won't you think of the children?" when it comes to passing more anti gun laws that don't do anything to make people safer though.

[hoppy025]

Another good example is California's 10 day waiting period WHICH APPLIES EVEN IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A GUN!

[Nige]

'My offer of proof'

All that proves, taken at face value, is that guns aren't popular in California.

[Harvey Mosley]

No. It proves that Democrats in power hate everyday, law abiding citizens owning guns. It has nothing to do with the popularity of guns. If California wasn't dominated by Democrats with a veto proof majority in state government these laws would be a lot fewer and they would be harder to pass. Your response is like saying that abortion isn't very popular in states that have severely restricted or banned it. It isn't very popular with the people in power. Same with guns in California.

[hoppy025]

So wait. Letting people like you finish into your "husband's" rears and spreading HIV wasn't popular in rural Nebraska, but you leftists went whining to Justice Kennedy to get it memorialized as a constitutional "right."

[Nige]

'It proves that Democrats in power hate everyday, law abiding citizens owning guns'

Nah.

[Ed Grinberg]

https://nypost.com/2023/07/12/killer-of-tennessee-surgeon-dr-benjamin-mauck-identified/
[Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis)] used Mauck’s death as an opportunity to push for gun reform, alleging that Pickens would not have had access to a firearm under stricter regulations.
“Tragedies like this underscore the urgent need for common sense — like reinstating background checks and gun licenses, and establishing new reforms like an order of protection so police can remove firearms from a person who is threatening others,” she said in a statement.

[Nige]

See, those are fairly sensible.

[Frank Drackman]

You know what's "sensible"?? (at least where I'm from)
Tarring and Feathering peoples who try to limit our Constitutional Rights (pronounced "Rats" where I'm from)

Frank

[Nige]

edgebot want to lynch DeSantis

[Frank Drackman]

Maybe they should have the Death Penalty for Murder in Tennessee, and take a look at the Killers mugshot, certainly no evidence of it being a "Hate Crime" is there?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/benjamin-mauck-tennessee-shooting-larry-pickens-b2374285.html

Frank

[hoppy025]

“Tragedies like this underscore the urgent need for common sense — like reinstating background checks and gun licenses, and establishing new reforms like an order of protection so police can remove firearms from a person who is threatening others,” she said in a statement.

Yeah, because the savage ape who killed him would have left the gun at home but for the constitutional carry law.

What a fucking moron this c*nt is.

[hoppy025]

Akbari should use it as an opportunity to call for the one thing that would drastically reduce crime in America. Ban black males.

[bernard11]

the left’s response is to go after everybody else who has a gun, while tacitly leaving the actual lunatics alone to keep the pressure up.

Brett,

Crap like this makes it very difficult to carry on a discussion with you. You say some reasonable things sometimes, but have a compulsion to throw in some paranoid lunacy, or RW talking point you saw somewhere and never checked.

[Brett Bellmore]

Memory holing "defund the police", are we?

[Nige]

As opposed to 'more bloated budgets to arm the enforcers of the state with ever more miltarised equipment while reducing accountability for its use!' The enemies of small government get mad at reducing the budgets for the most potentially dangerous-to-civil liberties arm of government.

[Frank Drackman]

Speaking of militarized (if you'd been in the military you'd know how to spell it) unaccountable bloated Police forces dangerous to Civil Liberties how about abolishing the FBI?? They've sucked since J. Edgar Hoover died.

Frank

[Nige]

edgbot the defunder

[Mr. Bumble]

Nige the Section eight.

[Nige]

Bumble doesn't want to be left out

[OtisAH]

Hilarious that you morons hold onto “Defund the police” like grim death all while screeching about shuttering the FBI.

[bernard11]

Even the people (not including me) who were yelling about defunding the police weren't actually calling for defunding the police.

What they wanted - the sane ones - was to stop using police to respond to situations that were better handled by a social worker or whatever.

Admittedly, it was an idiotic slogan.

[Mr. Bumble]

"What they wanted – the sane ones – was to stop using police to respond to situations that were better handled by a social worker or whatever."

How about an example?

Admittedly, it was an idiotic slogan.
I think if you're honest you'd admit its an idiotic idea.

[Nige]

'it was an idiotic slogan.'

It's a perfectly fine slogan. Seperates the people who genuinely prefer limits on state power from the posers.

[Mr. Bumble]

Address your claim to bernard11. He said it was idiotic, not me.

[Nelson]

No, Nige. It was pure idiocy pushed by wingnuts.

[Nige]

Consider it addressed to both of you.

[Nige]

'It was pure idiocy pushed by wingnuts.'

It was a perfectly obvious and good slogan. Only the weak-kneed conceded to the usual right wing lies and distortions and alowed the debate to become about a slogan rather than the ridiculous funding situation.

[David Nieporent]

It’s a perfectly fine slogan.

It was a perfectly fine slogan if one wanted to eliminate the police. It was an incredibly stupid slogan if one wanted to actually get support from anyone, particularly voters.

[Nige]

'Abolish the police' was the slogan of people who wanted to abolish the police.

[David Nieporent]

I am pretty sure that police do not work for free, so taking away their funding would in fact abolish them.

And you're just wrong. Defund the police was an abolitionist position. Only after it started receiving pushback did people try to walk it back and say, "Oh, no, we don't want to get rid of the police; we just want to hire more social workers."

[Nige]

Defund can mean defund completely, true, and there were definitely people who wanted that, but it can also mean defund considerably, and there were also people who wanted that, anyone who claims to believe that any prominent Democrat meant anything but the latter is having a laugh. All the small government types who also want to slash spending on social security and Medicare and abolish the FBI, the CIA, the Departments of Energy and Education getting mad becuase they claim it has to mean the former are not serious people.

Personally I think they should have embraced the abolition idea as a deadly serious threat - reform and cuts or abolition, but there's no-one that radical in the Democrats.

[Harvey Mosley]

What do you think of the state of California passing more and more anti gun laws every year while at the same time lessening the sentences of convicted violent criminals who use a gun during their crimes? Or the state senate Democrats blocking a bill that would increase the punishment for repeat child traffickers? Does that count as going after law abiding gun owners while coddling criminals?

Of course, keeping people who are willing to go through yet another background check, pay a fee to exercise a Constitutional right, pay for and take a test for a Firearms Safety Certificate, and wait at least 10 days (but not more than 30 or you have to do it all over again) from buying a 22 target pistol will definitely make the state safer. /sarc

[hoppy025]

But if you demand a $5 photo ID to vote, they throw a fit! You're imposing a poll tax! Think of those poor blacks who don't have $5 for an ID, but somehow manage to get IDs when they need to use Medicaid or when they go to the Verizon store to buy a new sail phone.

[Reallynotbob]

Nobody: ...

AmosArch: Liberals hate guns because you can't shoot babies!

OMFG.

[Commenter_XY]

What is this? = tracking beacons in tax preparation code

Do you mean tax software like TurboTax, TaxAct, HR Block?

[Mr. Bumble]

According to Fauxahontas Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer.

[Brett Bellmore]

H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer

"Intuit’s TurboTax, however, did not send financial information to Meta but, rather, usernames and the last time a device signed in. In some circumstances, the pixel also gathered information like an order ID number and user’s email address after they signed in."

[Michael P]

The senators also seem to think that because the tracking pixel was embedded in many forms, some of which are specific to certain exemptions or other tax conditions, it would reveal that those users were probably affected by those exemptions or conditions.

[jb]

That sort of tracking isn't really new and is a lot of how advertising networks do targeting--you show up on a site or page and they assume you're interested in whatever is on it. This could happen if you went to a random financial advice site on the same topic just as easily as through the tax preparers.

(The rest of it seems pretty bad, though!)

[Commenter_XY]

Wow...that ain't good. I think John Carr is right about this = It is time to formally impose strict liability for the consequences of metrics and advertising trackers.

[Brett Bellmore]

I tend to agree. It doesn't sound like the most sensitive information was deliberately collected, but they sure as heck weren't displaying any actual concern for user privacy.

In any context where financial data is being provided, it should probably be flatly illegal to share data with a third party without a prominent disclosure of who, and exactly what was being shared.

[Mr. Bumble]

"In any context where financial data is being provided, it should probably be flatly illegal to share data with a third party without a prominent disclosure of who, and exactly what was being shared."
...and user consent.

[Nige]

It's staggering that it isn't already.

[Brett Bellmore]

A lot of money changing hands, I expect.

[Nige]

'You are the product' as they say.

[Brett Bellmore]

If you're not paying for it you're the product. I actually pay to use Turbotax, so they'd damned well better NOT treat me as the product.

[Nige]

Or maybe cut out the unnecessary middlemen entirely and let the IRS do their job of helping people fill out their taxes at no extra charge and with all the privacy protection already built in.

[Mr. Bumble]

Hahahahahahahahaha.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, right, I'll just let the IRS have ALL my financial data, so THEY can figure out my taxes for me. And they'll be very diligent about claiming every appropriate deduction on my behalf, I'm quite sure, and none of it will leak.

[jb]

Non-tech companies actually tend to be way worse privacy-wise than tech companies. Some fun examples:

- For a long time, cell phone providers were selling your (triangulated) location data to basically anyone who wanted it, with no way to opt out
- Retail companies basically sell your whole shopping history to data brokers
- There's a good chance your employer provides your salary to a data broker (theworknumber.com)

None of this is anonymized or aggregated. There's often discussion of Google, Meta, etc. "selling your data" but they actually just use it to figure out what ads to show you. Almost everyone else you do business with does sell your data, though.

[Nige]

‘so THEY can figure out my taxes for me’

That’s not the alternative. The alternative is making it *easier and more straightforward* to file with *clear instructions and tutorials*.

[bernard11]

It's not a good idea to just let the IRS do your taxes, but letting them do that subject to your verification and modification is fine.

Most people's taxes are pretty simple W-2, 1099's (maybe), 401(k).

Deductions, if you have enough to itemize, are trickier, but not much.

I suspect a lot of taxpayers would welcome getting a form from the IRS that they could just sign and send back.

[Nelson]

"let the IRS do their job of helping people fill out their taxes"

Nige, I don't think you understand the purpose of the IRS. It isn't this at all.

[Nige]

Of course not. Not when you're helping middlemen feed like parasites on the results of unnecessary complexity, obscurity and difficulty.

[John F. Carr]

We're seeing "you are the product" with businesses as the product. Google, to pick an example, offers you stuff if you embed their JavaScript in your web page. Thanks to Google, we know we are the number 374 web site in the santa hat marketplace and our users prefer IE 6. You get a little bit of analytics. Google gets everything and shares a little bit of analytics with you.

Google doesn't tell the manager of the marketing division, "help us spy on your users". Google says "add this to your web page and you get a shiny." My law would make the marketing manager as responsible for the consequences as she would be if she let a stranger borrow her car.

[Nige]

They're all really leaning into the process of enshittification.

[Commenter_XY]

The part I am tripping on is how the software vendors (Tax Slayer, Tax Act, HR Block) have not been 'smacked' by regulators. Did these people opt into having their personal financial data sent to Facebook (now Meta)? I highly doubt anyone would consent. Would you? I would not be telling Intuit (TurboTax, which I use), "Hey guys, go ahead and transmit my income data to Facebook, no problem".

I can't believe there has not been a huge reaction to that.

[Brett Bellmore]

Tax preparers that shared private data with Meta, Google could be fined billions

The news really just became public. The smackdown may be coming, half because the administration wouldn't really mind destroying the tax filing industry, so that more people would use the new IRS tax preparation service.

[bernard11]

See, Brett.

A perfectly sensible idea with no conspiracy theories mixed in.

[David Nieporent]

You spoke too soon. See his comment right above this one of yours. He's back to nutty conspiracy theories.

[Nige]

I actually hope he's right, for once.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Tax preparers that shared private data with Meta, Google could be fined billions"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/meta-wont-say-what-happened-to-taxpayer-data-it-may-have-illegally-collected/

[Mr. Bumble]

Missed Brett's post above but it's worth repeating.

[Commenter_XY]

Back in 2022, The Markup's report found that TaxAct had shared data with Meta including users' filing status, adjusted gross income, and the amount of their refund. Google received similar financial data from TaxAct. H&R Block shared data with Meta on users' health savings account usage and their dependents' college tuition grants and expenses.

Holy Shit....sending your f'in AGI? Refund data? HSA usage?

Someone belongs in jail.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Ron DeSantis announced yesterday that, as President, he would authorize deadly force on the border. So it isn't just me saying this now but a major Presidential contender.

[Mr. Bumble]

Against whom? I think it was to be against the cartels.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Whom do you think is sending the hordes across the border?

[Nelson]

Seriously? What the hell?

[Brett Bellmore]

Seriously, it's a side business, they get paid for taking people across, and enjoy the synergy of the drug mules being lost in the masses.

[Nige]

That makes them middlemen exploting the poor and desperate, as middlemen are wont to do, but not the insitigators of people migrating, except in the broader sense that their crime empires keep their country impoverished and dysfunctional. Then again, they're just meeting US demand there, too.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, I wouldn't say they're driving the traffic. They might be facilitating it, and even managing the timing to their own advantage, but people really do want to come here.

[Bob from Ohio]

"They might be facilitating it"

Every border crosser has paid a fee to a cartel, either directly or via their coyote.

[Kazinski]

Ummm, yeah the cartels are definitely involved in people trafficking on the border.

About 2 years ago one cartel attacked a group of illegal migrants crossing the border near Nogales, it seems the coyotes that were bringing them across were using an unauthorized part of the border that was the sole property of the cartel.

[Nelson]

There's a huge difference between "involved in people trafficking" and "Whom do you think is sending the hordes across the border?".

One insinuates (accurately) the cartels' participation for profit. The other insinuates (inaccurately) that the cartels are causing border crossing.

[Bob from Ohio]

"One insinuates (accurately) the cartels’ participation for profit. "

We should consider buying the cartels off to stop most boarder crossings.

[Brett Bellmore]

Pay the Danegeld, you mean?

[Kazinski]

Well I hope we've at least stopped the ATF from running guns to the cartels.

[grb]

Dr. Ed 2 : “Whom do you think is sending the hordes across the border?”

Three Points :

1. No one is “sending the hordes across the border.” These are people trying to find a better life than the societies they’re from.

2. No one will indiscriminately murder them without much greater cause.

3. That Ed feels pride one of signature “causes” has been adapted by DeSantis – a man who will say or do anything if it whores away one MAGA vote – just tells us something about Ed

[Brett Bellmore]

It's true that the cartels (mostly) aren't kidnapping people to march across the border, it's mostly people who actually want to cross it.

That doesn't mean they aren't aiding and abetting it, for a fee.

[grb]

Well, yeah. There’s a market: People trying to find opportunity and escape the violent societies they’re from. Therefore people make money from that market. Pure Capitalism 101.

Just don’t play scary conspiracy music behind those mundane facts & you’ll do fine…..

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

"Violent societies" partially created by the same violent cartels who seek to profit from helping people get away from them. It's almost a perfect business circle.

A "very savvy", "genius" move, one might even say...

[grb]

ObviouslyNotSpam : " .... partially created by the same violent cartels ..."

Sigh. Can we get real here? I don't doubt the cartels have some presence in the business of guiding people over the border. It's an illegal buck and that's what they do. But it would be a small niche for them, they probably aren't that prevalent in the business, and the violence results from their main line service : Marketing narcotics to the U.S. for gargantuan profit.

Linking illegal immigration to the drug cartels is just a red herring.

[Nelson]

Wait, you mean using a large number of people to carry small amounts of drugs across the border is less efficient and more costly than bringing them in with vehicles and bribery? Who knew?

[Brett Bellmore]

We're not talking about using a large number of people to carry. Just using sudden floods of people to overwhelm the system so that the people who ARE carrying can slip through.

[Nige]

But that's not what they're doing. Most of the drugs come through the ports.

[Mr. Bumble]

Got a cite for that?

[Frank Drackman]

As long as they keep the drug traffic in the dark people, the coloreds I don’t care. They’re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.

[Nige]

edgebot performing

[grb]

Frank Drackman : "As long as they keep...."

For the record : It doesn't make any difference you're quoting The Godfather. When you find racism a fun hobby, using a citation (however notable) doesn't move the needle a bit.

Don't you know that?

[bernard11]

So per Dr. Ed, and DeSantis, we should be shooting the cartels' customers.

[Frank Drackman]

that's a Bingoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (HT Grupenfuhrer H. Lada)

[Nige]

The demand for cheap disposable labour in the US.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Something Trump tried to stop.

[Nige]

All he did was create an appalling human rights crisis at the border. All Biden's doing is having a smaller human rights crisis at the border. It's almost as if fucking aorund at the border is not the solution.

[Frank Drackman]

Don't forget the "Kids in Cages"
oh wait, that was Barry Hussein Osama, never mind, forget it.

[Nige]

edgebot recycling

[Frank Drackman]

Nigebot without anything intelligent to say

[Nige]

lol edgebot's opinion on what's intelligent

[David Nieporent]

Nobody. What the fuck are you talking about?

[Dr. Ed 2]

“For starters, DeSantis acknowledged that the gravity of wholesale trespassing into America would, at times, require force to repel the incursion. Specifically, in his border press conference, he described the proper response to cartel drug runners breaking through places where a border wall exists: “I don’t see how you can just let them do that and carve through a wall on sovereign U.S. territory with a backpack full of drugs. Of course, you use deadly force. I mean, would you let somebody just break into your house and do you harm? No.”

Along that same line of defending America with force when necessary, DeSantis continued: “I’ll tell ya, if you drop a couple of these cartel operatives trying to do that, you’re not gonna have to worry about that anymore, they will not mess. They’re only messing with it because they know they can get away with it.””

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/07/01/border_desantis_will_succeed_where_trump_failed_149439.html

This is exactly what I have been saying — you won’t have to shot very many (if any) once they know that you *will* shoot.

[Nige]

Doubt this will get much support. Treating human beings like shit at the border has broad support amongst Republicans, except when Biden does it because it's never shit enough for them, but they still actually need the cheap labour to avoid paying actual citizens living wages. So it's a toss-up as to whether this satisfies their visceral need to dehumanise and brutalise poor people, or that they'd be worried it might actually work.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I think the biggest thing you are missing is the schism between the Chamber of Commerce GOP and the MAGA GOP -- the latter being populist and very much opposed to cheap labor.

I think you also are missing the true visceral contempt which LEGAL immigrants have for the illegal aliens. DeSantos is tapping into that which is why he is so popular in Florida.

And the other thing you are missing is the distinction between "treating people like shit" and enforcing a border. There is a big difference between shouting "please don't make me shoot you" and "I wanna kill..." and (hopefully) the latter will be excluded from border duty.

[Nige]

Of course - the MAGA crowd actually believe their own bullshit, which has been a feature of MAGA all along.

There isn't really a distinction. Human rights violations are still human rights violations regardless of the pretext. Any border agent obeying an order to murder an unarmed civilian is committing a crime, regardless of how reluctantly or enthusiastically they carry it out.

[Frank Drackman]

Nigebot gets excited using dirty words.

[Nige]

edgebot wishes to feel anything

[grb]

Dr. Ed 2 : "I think the biggest thing you are missing...."

I think the biggest thing you're missing is the revulsion that would result if the U.S. started arbitrarily gunning down people at the border. Not even MAGA USA would wholeheartedly applaud such a sickening sight, and they're just a small block of the American people.

There would be revulsion across the country. There would be revulsion around the world. But - hey - it's just DeSantis whoring for votes from people too dumb to see they're being played, so why worry?

[Brett Bellmore]

Does anybody advocate arbitrarily gunning people down at the border? I don't think so. I think they're advocating gunning down people who are crossing illegally, and don't stop when warned that they'll be shot if they don't turn around.

Let me know if anybody does advocate just randomly shooting people at legal border crossings, though.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

"Along that same line of defending America with force when necessary, DeSantis continued: “I’ll tell ya, if you drop a couple of these cartel operatives trying to do that [carve through a wall on sovereign U.S. territory with a backpack full of drugs], you’re not gonna have to worry about that anymore, they will not mess.""

You seem to be assuming a few things DeSantis didn't actually mention doing before the shooting part...

But, true, only shooting people (with backpacks) "carving through" border walls is not entirely "randomly shooting" people!

[grb]

I'm curious about DeSantis' scenario though : How do you tell the person's backpack contains drugs before you "drop" him? I imagine a lot of illegal immigrants wear backpacks - maybe even a majority of them. Do you "drop" a few hundred or thousand figuring you'll get lucky eventually?

[Brett Bellmore]

I think the point is it's not really an issue whether they're carrying drugs, if they're 'carving through" a border wall, and not stopping when warned to.

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : “I think the point is …..”

I think the point is even more simple. DeSantis believes the MAGA voters he needs to poach from Trump swoon with pleasure over fantasies of homicidal violence against illegal immigrants. Therefore he creates a fantasy scenario to feed their lust.

It’s not uncommon. I’ve watched a zillion movies where the villian does something very, very bad to justify hellish blood revenge by the hero. (After all, they killed John Wick’s dog) Thus Desantis’ drug mule with his criminal backpack. Thus DeSantis, who panders on the level of cheesy movies. Thus today’s Right, who sees politics as entertainment.

And what’s more entertaining than popping-off stray immigrants trying to cross the border? That’s a show that’ll have the MAGA audience screaming with rapturous joy from their seats…

[Harvey Mosley]

So you think all illegal immigrants are "cartel operatives"? Wow.

[Brett Bellmore]

The Chamber of Commerce is starting to lose ground in the GOP, because small donations are coming in at a high enough level for candidates to be successful without the CoC's money.

This has the same 'campaign reformers' who were originally worried about big money, and wanted to promote small donations, very worried. It seems they were only in favor of a more democratic system as long as it was a more Democratic system...

[Sarcastr0]

I’m not a fan of business ghouls.
If they are replaced with those enthusiastic about mass murder, doesn’t seem like an upgrade though.

[Nige]

Does it? Most of the small donations to Trump and Republicans seem to have gone into the black hole of his war chest or gets whittled down by middle-men when not being outright stolen. Any decent and serious campaign reformer would be worried about that sort of carry-on. It's more like all those small donations that make TV preachers billionaires than political financing.

[Estragon]

“There is a big difference between shouting “please don’t make me shoot you” and “I wanna kill…”“

You’ve advocated strafing the border with A-10’s you sicko. Would the pilots be yelling that out the window as they fly by or what?

[Dr. Ed 2]

The A-10's engines make a distinctive noise, you can here it 5-10+ miles away, and if you think they are going to shoot you, you will stay away from the border when you hear one.

Of course if they merely fly over the illegal's heads at maybe 30 feet off the ground, knocking them to the ground with their jetwash, they may sufficiently discourage them without having to shoot.

[Estragon]

What in the actual fuck is wrong with you? Do you ever stop and ask yourself why you come onto this ostensibly legal blog and post lurid, violent murder/civil war fantasies every single day of the one precious life you get?

[Mr. Bumble]

...and of course you feel obliged to respond.
Which is worse?

[Estragon]

Great rebuttal, bumbleberry. But, Maybe this is not the tack you want to take given the amount of asinine crap you put on here EVERY SINGLE DAY

[David Nieporent]

I think the biggest thing you are missing is the schism between the Chamber of Commerce GOP and the MAGA GOP — the latter being populist and very much opposed to cheap labor.

I don't think they're opposed to cheap goods and services provided by that cheap labor.

[Nelson]

"I think the biggest thing you are missing is the schism between the Chamber of Commerce GOP and the MAGA GOP — the latter being populist and very much opposed to cheap labor."

The former being the good version of the GOP and the latter being the angry, shouty whiners, you mean?

However, I really hate the MAGA label. It incorrectly conflates Ttump and the paleoconservative wing of the party. Great Man history is bullshit. The leaders don't create the era, the era creates the leaders. Trump tapped into their anger and feelings of the world moving past them, but he didn't create it. It's been around since the 1950s illusion of peace and prosperity was shattered by the reality of non-WASP life in America.

[hoppy025]

If enough of these savages south of the border see their cucaracha cousins come home missing a leg, they'll stop pretty quick.

[John F. Carr]

In a later withdrawn opinion the Ninth Circuit said government agents could be prosecuted under state law for blatantly unconstitutional use of deadly force. This was in the Ruby Ridge case. A shoot to kill policy for drug smugglers crossing the border is in Ruby Ridge territory.

It is not hard to engineer arguably legal use of deadly force in a particular case. The officers who shot Amadou Diallo were acquitted. I think DeSantis is describing a scenario that goes beyond arguably legal.

[Mr. Bumble]

” I think DeSantis is describing a scenario that goes beyond arguably legal.” Maybe under current conditions but wasn’t part of it to declare the cartels terrorist organizations? Would that change the equation?

[John F. Carr]

Terrorists in the United States still have the constitutional right not to be shot dead without a good excuse.

If the cartels are terrorists then buyinf from them potentially becomes material support of international terrorism. The government threatened to use the anti-terrorism laws to prosecute people who paid ransom to foreign kidnappers, but backed down. (And now it's likely to be U.S. policy to pay Iran to release hostages. Again.)

[Mr. Bumble]

"Terrorists in the United States still have the constitutional right not to be shot dead without a good excuse."
That doesn't seem to have stopped several presidents from killing them on foreign soil.

[John F. Carr]

Outside of the United States they have fewer rights. There is a reason the camp holding prisoners of the War on Terror is not in a state or territory.

[Brett Bellmore]

But, not stopping when engaged in something illegal, and told, "Stop, or I'll shoot!" is hardly "without a good excuse".

[David Nieporent]

Yeah, it actually is, pretendlibertarian. Cops can't shoot people just because those people are doing "something illegal." I mean, I'd experience a bit of schadenfreude if that happened to Donald Trump, but it would still be wrong.

[Nelson]

"This is exactly what I have been saying — you won’t have to shot very many (if any) once they know that you *will* shoot."

What a weird, Hollywood-movie world you live in. Dirty Harry at the border.

Identifying the guilty and separating them from those not deserving of lethal force isn't something worth mentioning? If they get shot, they're cartel operatives, right? No trial or evidence required.

[OtisAH]

People knew they’d get shot going over the Berlin Wall, jackass. They still tried.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Ed, you realize we have this thing called a constitution, right? And it says that the president can’t just shoot anybody he wants to.

Fuckin DeSantis. As much as I’d like for him to be better than the 31% Twins he just can’t pull it off.

[Frank Drackman]

What clause of the Constitution is that?? Actually being Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces means he can do exactly that. Ask Obama Bin Laden or Qasem Soleimani

Frank

[Krayt]

He's a Republican from a border state, and is steeped in principles of appealing to Latinos for votes...wait, what?

[Aunt Teefah]

Flailing Meatball Rob has morals on par with those of the most depraved murderous sickos the Volokh Conspiracy comments section can shit out. What a guy.

[Michael P]

Firing a whistleblower, quickly shuttering a dark money PAC, and back-dating money transfers is not a convincing basis for claiming that one was following the law: https://freebeacon.com/democrats/top-democratic-operatives-were-quietly-pulling-the-strings-at-a-voting-rights-group-lawyers-say-they-may-have-broken-the-law/

[Michael P]

Is the FBI ever allowed to fully investigate leftists? It seems like there's always some political interference. https://beckernews.com/fbi-agents-thought-swalwell-had-sexual-relationship-with-fang-fang-but-dem-senators-halted-probe-report-51063/

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Apparently Democrat Senators are top officials at the FBI.

[Nige]

Guess that's what happens when you turn your Chinese spy in rather than try to reclassify them as a whistleblower.

[Kazinski]

He didn't turn his Chinese spy in.

The FBI gave him a "defensive" briefing.

[Nige]

To which he actually listened, sensibly enough. If we're complaining about people being treated differently, it's weird to discount the fact that they acted differently. Typical, but weird.

[Mr. Bumble]

I thought you said he turned him in. You spin faster than a weather vane in a tornado.

[Sarcastr0]

What is reporting contact other than turning in? Do you require a citizens arrest?

[Mr. Bumble]

Kazinski 2 hours ago
Flag Comment Mute User

He didn’t turn his Chinese spy in.

The FBI gave him a “defensive” briefing.

[Sarcastr0]

What triggered the briefing?

[Kazinski]

The FBI was was investigating Fang Fang based on her Chinese contacts and actions, and they blew up the investigation in order to shield Swalwell:

"Fang was involved in fundraising activity for Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign, and FBI agents believed that Fang facilitated a small ($100 or $200 range) illegal foreign donation to Swalwell, according to the source. The congressman’s D.C. office also provided an internship for Fang’s family friend, per the source, with the FBI believing the internship was provided as a favor to Fang.

Swalwell was soon named to the House Intelligence Committee by Nancy Pelosi, and this prompted the FBI’s top leadership (colloquially known as the FBI’s 7th Floor) to decide to provide Swalwell with a defensive briefing in 2015, which effectively shut down the dual investigations by the bureau."
https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1678089873301946371

You guys are making shit up, Swalwell and Feinstein, both on the Intelligence committies were being groomed and monitored by Chinese spys, and were clueless about it until the FBI called off their investigation to warn them.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Being a member of Congress means you are supposed to be trained and capable at rooting out spies?

Here I thought that was one of the jobs of the FBI and CIA. I guess I just don't have enough of a partisan tumor on my brain to realize my mistake.

[Nige]

They were targets and victims, not accomplices. Vive le difference.

[Kazinski]

Sure I can see it happening to congressmen on both sides of the aisle, but its hardly a recommendation for being on the intelligence committee.

But actually I was.correcting the record about Swalwell turning in Fang Fang:

Nige:"turn your Chinese spy in"
Sarcastro: "What is reporting contact other than turning in?".

Nothing like that happened, the FBI had to clue Swalwell in on why he was getting lucky.

[Sarcastr0]

“ "Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person—whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn’t seen in nearly six years—to the FBI,” Swalwell’s office told Axios, while refusing to go into further detail to “protect information that might be classified.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/12/19/heres-what-we-know-about-rep-swalwells-connection-to-a-suspected-chinese-spy/?sh=31f3ac1f2050

Nevertheless I take your point. That is a bare claim by a political office, and not really factually established.

[Nige]

'but its hardly a recommendation for being on the intelligence committee.'

What about when someone claims a Chinese spy is a whistleblower? How does that recommend the person responsible?

[David Nieporent]

Nothing like that happened, the FBI had to clue Swalwell in on why he was getting lucky.

There is exactly zero evidence of any sexual relationship between Swalwell and the spy.

[Nige]

He reported her, didn't he?

[Frank Drackman]

Nige-bot obviously never watched Perry Mason, asking a question he doesn't know the answer to.
Yes, Rep Balls-smell reported Fang-Fang after he'd been fucking her for 6 years.

Frank

[Nige]

edgebot in black and white

[Frank Drackman]

Nige-bot with Brick phone

[Nige]

edgebot sells sea shells

[Michael P]

El Salvador seems to have figured out how to drastically reduce murder rates: lock up criminals.
https://elsalvadorinfo.net/homicide-rate-in-el-salvador/

Some other articles suggest that the government made some secret deal with the cartels to reduce murders and that the decrease is not sustainable. Those articles, such as this one from 16 months ago, have not aged very well. https://www.dw.com/en/why-el-salvadors-murder-rate-has-surged/a-61306161

[Illocust]

Oh, I remember when that started. They basically locked up anyone who was suspected of being a cartel member without requiring a trial, and it worked in lowering their extreme murder rate to lower than a few first world countries. As long as they stop the policy before or soon after they run out of obvious criminals (which they had in abundance and is why this policy worked for them), it looks like it will be a huge win for the people actually living there.

I would not recommend a similar policy in the US. There are probably a couple districts where such a policy would make life better for the citizens, but the US doesn't have a severe enough problem to justify the implementation of such a policy. And to be blunt, we don't have a people fed up enough with criminals that such a policy would stay focused on them instead of immediately shifting to political opponents.

Also remember, we don't have a natural human right to a trial. We have a natural human right to not have our rights violated unless we violate or try to violate someone else's rights first. The trial is just the best way we've come up with to ensure that right. (Also no first world country has a problem of mass violation of human rights big enough to justify bypassing that safe guard as a policy)

[Michael P]

France will exempt elites from their impending spyware regime.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/07/06/france-set-to-allow-police-to-spy-through-phones_6044269_7.html

And sensitive professions including doctors, journalists, lawyers, judges and MPs would not be legitimate targets.

[Kazinski]

They are already using phones to spy on people in Massachusetts without warrants or subpoenas or any other authorization, even people that didn't live in Massachusetts that entered the state.

The state got google to surepticously download a spyware app to all android phones in the state, and if you deleted it they'd download it again.

https://www.themainewire.com/2022/11/massachusetts-secretly-installed-covid-spyware-app-on-smart-phones-lawsuit/

[Dr. Ed 2]

So THAT'S what keeps draining my phone's data. A couple of times I put a gig in and it'd be gone the next day, even though I really hadn't used it.

How is this not theft? And what is the status of the suit?

[Kazinski]

The Mass AG is trying to claim it's moot

I'd say the best way to make sure it never happens again is to lighten Googles pockets by a couple of billion since they are the ones that did it on Massachusetts orders.

[David Nieporent]

Anybody can allege anything.

[Kazinski]

Yeah seems sketchy, the lawsuit was filed by the New Civil Liberties alliance.

"The New Civil Liberties Alliance is a nonprofit civil rights organization founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to defend constitutional freedoms—primarily against the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the administrative power. We need a new civil liberties movement to fight against the erosion of Americans’ basic constitutional rights."

I do recognize at least one name from their Board of Advisors:
Eugene Volokh, Professor of Law at UCLA Law School

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Apparently, Kamala Harris has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for the Central America Plan aka "Kamala Plan".

Her people are so desperate to make her president it's hilarious. It's a good thing for her that voting doesn't matter anymore so I'd say she has a real shot if she runs.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Her people have a very high turnover because of her.

You can tell an awful lot about someone by the way the person treats his/her/its staff, and more in how quickly the person burns through a staff. Having been on the VeeP's staff looks good on the resume or CV, young ambitious people will put up with a lot as a general rule.

This would be an issue were she President. It would be more noticeable and the President's staff actually does *stuff*. A President burning through staff the way she does would be problematic.

Which comes back to her routinely asinine speeches -- I don't know how you can screw up cutting ribbons but she routinely does it. There are any number of college graduates floating around DC who could either write a two-three paragraph speech for her and or coach her on something nice to say about whatever she is there to say something nice about. While often mangling the grammar (he is dyslexic), Bush 43 managed to do this, and with a few exceptions had a very loyal staff because he was decent to them.

I don't think that Harris is inherently stupid, I think she just doesn't think that she has to do her homework. She's arrogant enough to think that if she's there, that's enough -- that she doesn't have to bother to actually know anything about what she is talking about.

She's reflective of something I've seen in the Millennial left -- as long as they have the correct opinions and values, they don't have to know anything about said opinions and values beyond the fact that they have the correct ones.

[Nige]

You have to work pretty hard to make it seem like she’s somehow screwing up rather than competently and rather humbly performing her duties, which aren’t very challenging, obviously, but plugging away out of the limelight she seems solidly workmanlike. VPs being required to toe the party line is practically a job description, as a critique it’s a bit desperate. It took an actual attempt to overthrow the government for Pence to mildly refuse to obey his president by performing his own duties exactly thet way he was supposed to, and they wanted to hang him for it.

[David Nieporent]

You have to work pretty hard

Dr. Ed does not have to work very hard to make shit up. It's just a natural talent of his.

[Michael P]

Culture is — it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right? And present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know…it comes in the morning.

We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way, too.

If that's not presidential quality speech, our resident leftists don't know what is.

[Mr. Bumble]

Maybe Dr Jill is helping her.

[grb]

Dr. Ed 2 : "You can tell an awful lot about someone by the way the person treats his/her/its staff, and more in how quickly the person burns through a staff"

This from a Trump defender. Freak'in unreal.....

[BrianL.]

Dr. Ed 2 says, "A President burning through staff the way she does would be problematic."

How much staff did Trump burn through in his 4 years as President?

[Krayt]

Yeah, Trump long jumped 45 feet on this one, setting the record for the forseeable future.

Reminds me of Clinton leaving office, to pump up Gore, they kept claiming he was the most involved, in the loop vp evah!

Then Cheney smashed that record all to hell. Whether that benefitted the nation is an exercise for the reader.

[Nige]

He didn't burn through all of them. Not the ones that got indicted.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Her "the future unburdened by the past" trope is so hilariously bad.

Someone did a collage of it, you can tell she personally just loves it and think it's her JFK moment.

Her, PB&J and people like Sheila Jackson Lee are why AA has been so disastrous for this country.

[santamonica811]

"Her, PB&J and people like Sheila Jackson Lee are why . . . "

BCD,
Pro tip: If you're gonna slam Affirmative Action; it probably makes sense for you to learn 4th grade English, so that you know when to use "Her" and when you should use "She". Otherwise, the irony of your own illiteracy swallows whatever point you were trying to make.

[David Nieporent]

Her, PB&J and people like Sheila Jackson Lee are why AA has been so disastrous for this country.

This is like Stephen Hawking criticizing the athleticism of Usain Bolt.

[Kazinski]

To be fair she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize at least as much as Obama did.

[Mr. Bumble]

Well Yasser Arrafat won it too, so maybe she qualifies.

[Moderation4ever]

I did not see her name on the page of candidates, where are you hearing this BS?

[Nelson]

I'd like to note that lately there has been a noticeable increase in substantive replies (especially legal replies with cites) and a decrease in paleocon troll swarming and vitriol.

Since I'm not a lawyer I can't really contribute to the discussions except to ask questions, so I wanted to let you all know that your efforts are greatly appreciated, at least by me.

[Kazinski]

Your welcome.

[Nelson]

I'm not a lawyer, but I am a grammar nazi. It's "You're welcome".

You're welcome.

[Nelson]

I realize tone is tough in text. That was intended as a mildly self-depreciating joke.

[Bwaaah]

" I’d like to note that lately there has been a noticeable increase in substantive replies (especially legal replies with cites) and a decrease in paleocon troll swarming and vitriol."

I'm not sure there's been a change. (I'd like to think there has been.) But there are consistently substantive remarks, legal and political, and I too greatly appreciate them.

To the regulars in particular who take the time to thoughtfully respond, the mere presence of prudent thinking and discussion (and often enough without vitriol) gives me feelings of hopefulness about human cultural trajectory. My general optimism tends to be supported by a decadal scale perspective which does indeed look good to me. But the daily perspective is brutally chaotic, lacking in appropriate measure, and smeared with partisan poison. It doesn't help that almost all commercial media outlets survive, at least in part, as partisan cheerleaders for one side or the other, most notably leaving out all the best counter-arguments.

As much as VC discussion is described as being dominated by "the right wing" (lol), there is energetic and able advocacy for the left here. Some of the players switch back and forth between thoughtfulness and nastiness, and if you filter out the nastiness, there's often useful stuff there too. So it's a mixed bag of arguments, many of which are thoughtful, and that mix is a rarity, anywhere, these days.

I don't want to name any names in my compliments, because there's always a left-team/right-team implication that sullies even a compliment. (If I could private message some of you, you'd be surprised at the diversity of voices that I value.) But let me try to phrase a compliment this way: For those of you who take the time to make thoughtful, substantive, responsive, especially more detailed comments here, you have a significant effect on my little world, and thereby often on the people that I affect. (I've been reading VC almost daily for about 15 years, and have only commented on a handful of days. I'm always listening and only rarely speaking here. That probably makes me more like the typical VC reader than the typical VC commenter.)

So to you VC regular commenters: KEEP IT UP. This is an unusual platform of substantial influence through substantive argument, and you're a big part of what makes that so.

[Bwaaah]

Oh. And unlike most outlets where the comments section is like an open sewer and not worth reading, VC is of so much less value, so much less informative, if you don't read the comments. I'd like to think that most VC readers have learned that.

[Kazinski]

It's still much better than most other places, although I can hardly assert that definitively since I use the mute button a lot.

I see a half dozen posts from someone just sniping, with no substantive points then I quit wasting my time.

[Nelson]

Me, too. That's why I have as many Sevos on my mute list as Kirklands.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I believe the two open thread days act as troll bait and give outlets for off-topic political stuff away from the legal threads.

[Mr. Bumble]

Seems like comments on the "legal threads" often devolve into "political stuff".

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I'm not suggesting they're examples of pure legal debate, just that the change in tone could be explained by the additional early-week troll honeypot.

[Nelson]

I was actually considering making a suggestion that one be an open-topic thread and one a legal thread, but the change that I thought I saw in content made me reconsider.

I thought if there was one specifically targeted at legal discussions it would push the vitriol towards the other, as the expectation of cites and cases would be higher in the legal thread.

[Mr. Bumble]

Happy Bastille Day!

[Frank Drackman]

Just makes you want to storm something.

[Mr. Bumble]

Seems like the French adherents for social justice justice are doing just that along with some reparations based looting.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes, how much longer is that going to last?

[OtisAH]

It’s tomorrow.

[Mr. Bumble]

My bad. Had brain fog all day.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So I was listening to the most recent Huberman podcast and he had a guy on there talking about how dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin work together to reinforce particular behaviors. In particular, he had said in mouse models, social interaction was strongly reinforcing as could be witnessed by the activity of the neurotransmitters involved in reinforcement. He posited several evolutionary reasons for this reinforcement of social interactions. He particularly mentioned non-aggressive social interactions (he had some term, I may be misremembering) as being particularly strong and that these drive behaviors like empathy and compassion.

It got me to thinking.

We know, observationally, that human groups that have shared cultures, shared beliefs, look alike, and even degrees of consanguinity tend to be very supportive of each other with high degrees of compassion and support. Ranging from natural families, to generational households, to family-rich communities, and even scaled up to nation-states.

We also know that more diverse communities do not have similar characteristics with regards to communal/social support. There is just something different about biologically intact natural families, homogeneous households, and even homogenous communities that cause humans to thrive.

We don’t see in the animal kingdom diverse communities supporting each other, generally. So there is no real biological model for multiculturalism. They didn’t take mice and see how social interactions with rats altered the reinforcement mechanisms.

I wonder if a researcher did a human study to see how the reinforcement mechanisms came into play with humans of various different social/cultural classifications what they would find?

Intuitively I bet he’d find that social interactions with people who are not like you do not reinforce social behavior as strongly as with people who are. And by like, I mean that in a broad sense and not just race or culture. E.g., if you’re a particular hobbyist, being around others who share your hobby at some convention probably overcomes other differences such as race or sex or national origin. That seems to match my experience attending various conferences, etc.

And if that’s true, that would suggest multiculturalism is actually anti-human and harmful to human thriving.

Am I missing some key data that would suggest a different conclusion?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

And if that’s true, that would suggest multiculturalism is actually anti-human and harmful to human thriving.

Are you suggesting the culture war's winners should stop being so magnanimous toward our vestigial clingers, which would enable America to improve (thrive) even faster?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

That's the conclusion you draw from my hypothesis? That's a pretty dumb one.

A better conclusion would be that the intentional cultural/social engineering the Marxists and the Jews (BIRM) are doing creates harm. One of those groups has plenty of public evidence as to them inflicting harm on purpose and with malice, but the Marxists?

[Frank Drackman]

you just made the list Big Chicken Dinner

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Do you think it would be possible to ever have a drink, but only with your good half?

[Bwaaah]

Along the lines that you discuss, I've long considered the "birds of a feather flock together" observation as reflecting instincts in animals to gravitate toward like kinds. As a matter of survival in a world we know little of, it seems simplistic but advantageous to view things with which we are unfamiliar with greater suspicion than things with which we are familiar (and that we have found to be relatively safe).

Humans, having intellect as we do, would appear to be able to clear away at least some of that unfamiliarity (and implied risk) through learning/teaching. But it seems evident to me that we are trying to overcome some instincts here that are less than helpful to us, especially the most superficial of differences such as skin color. Considering that our animal ancestors lacked any comparable intellect and relied on the most basic of visual/auditory/olfactory notes to differentiate friends and foes, it appears we are the first animals to experience such a superficial gap as one to be bridged.

But I don't like the phrasing of your conclusion. You said "that would suggest multiculturalism is actually anti-human and harmful to human thriving."

I wouldn't characterize multiculturalism as "anti-human" or "harmful" so much as I would say it's challenging to human instinct and requires substantial energy/effort to overcome our instincts to abide by our differences rather than [pretend] to ignore them.

Multiculturalism at the nation-state level presents one set of problems, and *integration* [of different cultures] at the interpersonal level presents another. It's easy to say that the racial/ethnic self-segregation that we observe is caused by cultural conditioning, and dismiss the notion that we're not up against *big* instinctive challenges here. (I think they *are* big challenges, and I don't see how those gaps can realistically be bridged given the apparent strength and endurance of our instincts.)

I think multicultural TOLERANCE is a helpful notion to practice and encourage, particularly in the structure of economic and governmental institutions. In those realms, we don't need love between us; we just need cooperation. But as we get closer to home, as in coupling, families, and immediate neighbors/communities, we would do well to be tolerant of our instincts for likeness. In this area, we seem to have unlimited tolerance for black American self-segregation, but little for white self-segregation, even though both reflect the same instincts even after we have eliminated the more egregious mechanisms of bigotry. (Please spare me another red-lining lecture.)

But to give your point more credit, *forced* multiculturalism is coercive and, at least in part, appears contrary to animal instinct in general and human instinct in particular. Even there, there are people among us who easily, fluidly handle our multicultural differences with little or no internal conflict. The people who champion multiculturalism at a policy level, however, are largely *not* those people, and to the contrary, are coercive players who are trying to jigger one or another group upward or downward without practically addressing our problem of differences (however "superficial" we imagine them to be).

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Thank you for the contribution and I appreciate your insights. They make a lot of sense and some I haven’t considered.

[Randal]

Am I missing some key data that would suggest a different conclusion?

Given that you have no data... yes, I'd say you're missing data.

Is this more voltage again?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Right, so maybe there's some studies done already that would disprove my conjectures.

That's why I asked.

[M L]

My kids don’t go to public school currently.

One of the neighbor families has their kids at the public school, the dad is a doctor, nice family, all the kids are smart and exceptionally good at sports. One of the neighbor kids is a close friend of one of my kids, and they were discussing the public school. He said that the public school is “pretty weird” and that one of his teachers used to be a girl and is now a boy. He said that “all” of the teachers at the public school are telling the students that you can be whatever gender you want to be, which he and maybe a lot of other students don’t buy. This is a top school district and is in an area that leans conservative/Republican. I was honestly a little bit surprised, though I shouldn’t be.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, don't be. There are damn few teachers to the right of Vladimir Lenin. If the parents knew what their children were really being taught, there'd attend school board meetings with pitchforks.

[Sarcastr0]

Really? You heard all the teachers are talking about gender transition in this schools? Really?

It’s possible, but seems pretty extraordinary if you begin to think about it.

[M L]

If you begin to think about it, it's not surprising or extraordinary at all to think that each and every last teacher in a school district might subscribe to (scientifically incoherent in this case) woke ideology. Or at least, that it might seem that way, if any few straggling dissenters keep their opinions completely private.

How many people are actually going all the way through our insane "educational" degrees and certifications these days if they don't agree? Very few and far between, for one thing, teachers are quitting in droves and it seems people don't think being a teacher is very attractive any more for various reasons.

By the way, my interpretation of the the student's comment (second hand) is that (1) these issues are being discussed with some regularity and (2) all of the teachers appear to be in agreement on these issues. Not hard to believe if they all seem to assent to LGB"T" symbols in the classroom and such.

[Sarcastr0]

Have you any numbers about this near total partisanship of education degrees?

Remember voting D or R doesn’t really lock in where you stand on trans stuff.

[Sarcastr0]

Oh and think of the range of age in teachers! No, your priors about the ideology of teachers being all the same does not hold water.

[Brett Bellmore]

Political identification of college professors by field

It's not the most one sided field, that would be English Lit. But it is pretty slanted, and as these are professors, not BA graduates, they essentially represent a sample of the way the field was a couple decades ago, not today.

[Sarcastr0]

Hes not talking about professors and I already said D and R don’t map.

You posted nothing relevant to ML’s claim.

Your knee jerk reflex posting failed to read one comment up.

[apedad]

Wow . . . .

M L just found out there's a real world out there.

Oh and that a child's gossip is the truth.

Man, you people are so fucked.

[M L]

Chill, man. Just bringing a personal touch with an anecdote that aligns with all of the data and news stories. I suspect a lot of people here are "very online." Of course, a lot of people, including people I know personally, have far more direct exposure - attending contentious school board meetings, running for office, etc. I also have a lot more specific knowledge about the situation in the local school district, but thought it was interesting to hear a student's perspective.

[Sarcastr0]

You generally post fucking insane takes from Twitter and then claim you just thought it was interesting conversation fodder, not that you ever believe that stuff.

Coming in with a personal touch of double hearsay that confirms your quite extreme priors is not much better.

[M L]

No, I don't. And no, a student's comment on their school is interesting. Meanwhile your posts are all very low IQ nonsequiturs, not even comparable.

[Sarcastr0]

Low IQ.

That’s a telling insult. Though quite unsurprising.

[M L]

Also, how does this confirm my priors? It doesn’t. It was contrary to my priors.

And it doesn’t get to the merits or substance of anything related to the trans issue, anyway.

What do you think should be taught in schools about transgenderism? Do you dare deny that you agree with it being taught?

If you agree with it, then how can you express incredulity that things are exactly as you think they should be?

Will you conveniently ignore these questions, as always?

[Sarcastr0]

You said you think it’s likely every teacher is indeed pushing the trans agenda these days.
Superlative and nutty claim.

[M L]

There you go making up silly strawmen again.

And conveniently ignoring the question!

[Sarcastr0]

I didn’t answer your question because it is out of scope. Tellingly so - you started with a broad claim about what you heard all the teachers were saying.
Now you have moved on the the actual curriculum, presumably implemented by a much smaller proportion of the faculty.

Galloping like that is a sign of being dumb or bad faith.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Does anyone else find it weird that when the Wapo or NYT talk about Ray Epps lawsuit they frame J6 as "demonstrations" or "protests"?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I don't see the basis for the suit.
It's a fact he was there.
It's a fact that he hasn't been charged.
Where's the libel?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

There is the level of legal insight for which The Volokh Conspiracy is known.

[Commenter_XY]

That may be true, Arthur. Can't say. But you and Sandra (formerly OBL) have had some interesting exchanges on prognostication, namely yours, that have been rather entertaining.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Are you unable to distinguish a political prediction from a legal analysis? You need to ditch the superstition and reconnect with the reality-based world.

Or, continue to be a gullible losers standing at the sidelines of society, watching others shape your nation's progress while you await replacement.

(The entertaining part will be the reaction of clingers when better Americans enlarge the Court.)

[Ed Grinberg]

Dr. Ed says that the factual assertions that are the basis of Mr. Epps’s lawsuit are true. Which means there was no libel. What analysis is missing, in your opinion?

[santamonica811]

Ed G,
Not sure if "Truth is an absolute defense" is actually legally accurate.

Ship's Log: July 13. Captain sober today. Captain did not bugger cabin boy today.

100% truthful statements. Not confident that there would not be a colorable suit nonetheless. Something akin to False Light, perhaps.

[David Nieporent]

What analysis is missing, in your opinion?

The actual allegations of the complaint.

[Michael P]

Maybe he thinks working for the federal government (or the FBI/DOJ specifically) is defamation per se?

[OtisAH]

Gee, I dunno, Ed. Let’s see what other facts we can find.

Is it a fact Epps is a federal agent? No.
Is it a fact Epps instigated the insurrection on behalf of the US government? No.
Is it a fact that Epps is a “public person” under defamation law? No.
Is it a fact that Tucker and whomever else insisted on-air that Epps was both a federal agent and instigated the assault on the Capitol with no evidence of either? Yes.
Is it a fact Epps can show actual damages due to Carlson’s and whomever else’s libel? Yes.

I think I might see where the defamation might be…

[Bob from Ohio]

Is being a "federal agent" defamatory? A federal agent is a servant of the people, how can that be a bad thing?

[OtisAH]

Lord help him, he sure does try.

“Federal agent” is quite possibly defamatory when the overall context is “Federal agent who instigated an insurrection.”

[Michael P]

Why is it defamatory to have instigated an insurrection as a federal agent, but not as a private citizen?

I can understand how somebody else would argue that being falsely accused of instigating an insurrection was defamatory, but Epps seems to have been pretty proud of doing so, so he's lost that argument. Why does it suddenly become defamatory if he did it as a federal agent rather than a private yahoo?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Is it a fact Epps is a federal agent? No.

lol yeah just like all those Proud Boys weren’t fed agents or all those Michigan Fednappers weren’t fed agents.

Good one.

[OtisAH]

Idiot.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

How many other J6 Insurrectionists got a puff piece in the NYT about them? Or had high profile Democrats defending him in Congressional hearings?

Any that you know of?

https://archive.ph/TXyZT

[David Nieporent]

Exactly. BCD, like Julie Kelly from whom he apparently gets his news, is too dumb to know the difference between an informant and an agent.

[jb]

Does anyone find it weird that BravoCharlieDelta just makes shit up and expects us to believe it?

From the subheadline at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/business/ray-epps-fox-tucker-carlson-lawsuit.html

"Ray Epps, a two-time Trump voter, says Tucker Carlson repeatedly and falsely named him as a covert government agent who incited the Jan. 6 attack"

I can't link to more than one article, but the Washington Post subheadline for the main article on the lawsuit is:

"Ray Epps says Tucker Carlson falsely presented him as a ‘scapegoat’ for the Capitol insurrection"

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://thepostmillennial.com/narrative-shift-liberal-media-now-refers-to-jan-6-as-rallies-demonstrations-and-protests-as-they-pivot-to-defend-ray-epps

Receipts.

[jb]

Dude, the very first link in that is the Washington Post article I mentioned. Yes, it uses the words "pro-Trump rally" at one point in the article, but it also uses the word "insurrection" in both the headline and the sentence immediately before.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Look at the context of the references.

Ray Epps attended demonstrations, rallies, and protests. Everyone else was insurrecting and rioting.

That proves the point.

[jb]

LOL, do you think people don't understand that all of those were the same event? In any case, your "receipts" is just cherry picking random sentences.

Look at the NYT article I linked as an example. It puts Epps in the same sentence as "attack":

"After the unfounded accusations about Mr. Epps were aired on Mr. Carlson’s show, they quickly spread to online communities of Trump supporters and to the political world as Republicans in Congress tried to link Mr. Epps to a fictitious conspiracy theory that he was involved in planning the Jan. 6 attack."

The only time that the article uses the term "pro-Trump demonstrations" is when it is referring to Epps's own claims that he felt pressure to go to DC that day to attend demonstrations, and I don't think anyone disagrees that at least some of what happened on January 6th is correctly described as a "demonstration" or a "rally". Just not the part where people violently broke into the Capitol to try to overturn the election.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The other people planned the attack!

Ray Epps “attended the pro-Trump rallies” Ray Epps “took part in demonstrations” Ray Epps “participated in protests”

Meanwhile there’s video of him storming the barricades at the capitol and him yelling at others to “storm it”.

And here’s a huge takedown, with receipts of Ray Epps that somehow no one at the FBI or WAPO, or NYT or the J6 Committee investigators, or people like you could ever come across:

https://www.revolver.news/2021/10/meet-ray-epps-the-fed-protected-provocateur-who-appears-to-have-led-the-very-first-1-6-attack-on-the-u-s-capitol/

More video: https://twitter.com/NewsBecker/status/1618291500735164418

[Sarcastr0]

So ignoring all the times you are wrong, your sweeping claim is right.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I literally explained how the context of how all the “just a rally” references were being deployed to describe Ray Epps and all the “insurrection” references were used to describe everyone else.

Ray Epps is not being characterized as having attended an insurrection, or riot. Even if “attack” appears in the same sentence.

Why are you such a constant, insufferable, gaslighting dick?

[jb]

Did you read the thing you just posted? It's from 2021 and the premise is that Epps is a secret FBI plant because he was in cahoots with Stewart Rhodes who was also obviously an FBI plant because despite the fact he obviously coordinated the attack on Jan 6 the FBI wasn't arresting him. You know, the same Stewart Rhodes who the Justice Department thinks the judge let off too easy with an 18 year old sentence.

[David Nieporent]

Does anyone else find it weird that BCD just makes stuff up?

[Mr. Bumble]

Think the government plays it straight?

‘The Government Can Destroy Anyone’: How An IRS-Led Global Alliance Ruined An Innocent American Banker

It's a long story but I think worth the read whether you are on the right or left.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-government-can-destroy-anyone-how-an-irs-led-global-alliance-ruined-an-innocent-american-banker

[Aunt Teefah]

"An Innocent American Banker"

Doubt.

[Mr. Bumble]

Read it first.

[Magister]

Natalia Zequeira Diaz, commissioner at Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCIF), said Euro Pacific had a “long history of non-compliance” with the territory’s regulations.

Your link says that Puerto Rico put it into receivership, but elsewhere I read that Schiff "voluntarily agreed to a settlement involving liquidation and appointment to a receiver".

Also from your link:

Schiff’s bank catered to ultra-conservative clients who prioritized keeping their money over earning interest.

Amazingly, though, no tax evasion or money laundering, and trusting their money to a man who lost all his bitcoins. Doubt seems reasonable.

[Mr. Bumble]

Again, read the whole story.

[Magister]

I read the story. Repeated non-compliance with regulations means that the investigation was not predicated on his political or economic views.

[Ben_]

New York Times declares freedom of speech part of "the culture wars", with Democrats on the side of government and corporate control of Americans' speech:

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/07/12/free-speech-win-biden-administration-bid-to-overturn-censorship-injunction-fails-n1710224

[Ed Grinberg]

Over the years, I've seen plenty of "Freedom of speech: who needs it?!" type of commentary from New York Times, Washington Post, etc. But a couple of years ago my local newspaper published an op-ed (by a college professor, of course) that I'd describe as "Freedom: who needs it?!" She argued that the Constitution is overly restrictive; that it prevents the government from doing things for (to?) us:

In their quest to protect liberty, the framers created a system that guards against all majorities, both those that are oppressive and those that are not. ... Whereas in 1787 it may have made sense that the primary end of government was to protect liberty, today many expect more — and some expect a lot more.

[Ben_]

Democrat lawlessness faced another setback this week as Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ruled against Lina Khan's rogue FTC on the Microsoft-Activision merger.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/11/microsoft-activision-ruling-highlights-khans-struggles-to-fight-tech.html

Khan continues to lose over and over in court because judges can read and understand the words written in the laws.

[Mr. Bumble]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/secret-service-cocaine-investigation-no-suspect

[Commenter_XY]

How is that possible? Seriously? They find a baggie of coke near the Situation Room. And nobody knows anything?

That is......mighty peculiar.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"How is that possible?" He asks, after reading the article that explained precisely how it's possible.

"According to members who attended the briefing, the Secret Service said they had been able to narrow down the list to about 500 people who could have left the bag of cocaine in the West Wing. The members also said the Secret Service found less than a gram of cocaine, and it was discovered near the West Executive entrance in a cubby where visitors leave their cell phones and other personal items while they are on campus."

[Mr. Bumble]

Just another Unsolved Mystery.

[Frank Drackman]

Doesn't everyone feel so much safer with Sweden on our side?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

[Mr. Bumble]

Oh I don't know, nice to have the Swedish Bikini Team on our side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKcW0ljTg4I

[Moderation4ever]

I think Sweden was always on our side. The fact is that Russia is really the only country in Europe that is really interested in expanding its foot print, so having more countries saying no to that expansion is good.

[Mr. Bumble]

The question becomes if a NATO member like Lithuania was attacked by Russia would Article 5 be invoked and who would respond?
Would a NATO response precipitate WWIII?

[Moderation4ever]

Good question. To my knowledge Article 5 has only been invoked once and that was when the US was attacked on 9/11. It was invoked when America was attacked should it not also be invoked if Lithuania is attacked?

Invading Ukraine was a mistake. Russia has basically been stalemated. Would that happen if NATO was fighting back rather than just Ukraine?

[Frank Drackman]

That ending Scene in Dr. Strangeglove ( I know it's "Strangelove" I just like typing "Strangeglove" )
Putin (and Rooshuns) grow up playing Chess, he's way ahead of us.

Frank "O-O-O"

[Moderation4ever]

The sad fact is we live in a world where a lot of nuclear weapons are in the hand of authoritarians. These people don't have good retirement plans and anyone of them could decide to take out the world when they leave themselves. It is just the world we live in, you accept it and go one. That is all you can do.

[Commenter_XY]

Answers

Q: ...if a NATO member like Lithuania was attacked by Russia would Article 5 be invoked and who would respond?

Answer: The US has tanks and troops stationed in Lithuania; the US would be at war instantly. They're at the point of the sword.

Q: Would a NATO response precipitate WWIII?

Answer: No.

[John F. Carr]

What is WWIII? If you mean nukes, ask Putin.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Doesn’t everyone feel so much safer with Sweden on our side?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Better the Swedes than our Tommy Tubervilles and white nationalist assholes.

Much better.

[John F. Carr]

The FDA has approved sale of a birth control pill without a prescription. It is expected to be available next year. OTC medicine is generally not covered by insurance and mandates for "free" contraception will not apply. It costs more than nothing, but you don't need to feel like you're advertising "I'm a slut" when you walk into the doctor's office to ask for a prescription.

The Associated Press article reported on a college student who asked for the pill to be approved:

The 19-year-old University of Alabama student said she still isn’t comfortable getting a prescription because the school’s health system reports medical exams and medications to parents.

[Bwaaah]

A pill that's been deemed appropriate for prescription use by the FDA since 1973 is suddenly deemed to have an OTC safety profile only a few months after the Dobbs uproar? This, and other more glaring examples of FDA politically motivated actions (e.g. AquaAdvantage salmon) should cause serious doubts about the scientific integrity of the FDA, and in particular, the dynamics between health, the FDA, and the White House.

[John F. Carr]

Of course the decision is politically motivated, but it is probably the right decision anyway.

[Bwaaah]

I like the outcome. But the compromise of institutional integrity is not a good trade for me. FDA approvals are theoretically driven by scientific data. The CDC is supposed to be similarly motivated. But many of the same people who scream about the erosion of confidence in governmental institutions are driving that erosion through their tacit endorsements of political interference, particularly by the Executive branch, that corrupts institutional processes.

[Commenter_XY]

^ This

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Well said.

It's funny because the Democrats wanted all these to be prescription only to begin with so they could then force insurance companies to pay for it and you could get it "for free".

Which of course is also absurd.

[grb]

John F. Carr : "Of course the decision is politically motivated..."

But how so in your opinion? I've heard this was overdo for this past decade and more. It was politics that kept the OTC approval from happening, not the other way around....

[John F. Carr]

Republicans may have played politics too in delaying approval. This was alleged during the Bush administration when the morning after pill was not as freely available as liberals wanted.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Perhaps 50 years of safety data is enough to decide it's ok for OTC use....

[Bwaaah]

But 49 wasn't?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You're alleging that the assigned motivation for doing it somehow nullifies the data behind the pill.

Prove the data doesn't support that it is safe enough for OTC use. Then you can make your conclusion.

[Bwaaah]

"You’re alleging that the assigned motivation for doing it somehow nullifies the data behind the pill."

No, I'm not. I'm alleging that political institutions are significantly undermining the integrity of the practices of technical institutions, including the FDA, and that the timing of this is evidence of that (whether by prior delay or sudden expedition).

No? Nothing there?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"This, and other more glaring examples of FDA politically motivated actions (e.g. AquaAdvantage salmon) should cause serious doubts about the scientific integrity of the FDA, and in particular, the dynamics between health, the FDA, and the White House."

Unless you can demonstrate that the science is not correct, your argument is nothing more than "they took an action at a politically convenient time, so the science can't be trusted."

Perhaps it wasn't necessary to make it OTC before Dobbs.

Either disprove the science, or recognize that your 'evidence' is nothing more than "I don't like it."

[Bwaaah]

I confess to having been too loose here with the "science" angle. I have not seen evidence of the FDA, for example, having approved anything whose safety wasn't reasonably (and properly) evidenced. Safety does not appear to be compromised by politics. But approval, or withholding of approval, or actions, or withholding of actions, does very much appear to be affected way too much by unhelpful political forces.

I feel a bit silly in having intimated that the FDA's actions shouldn't be driven by politics. Aside from the safety issues, what *should* or *would* drive agency discretion? I'd say that discretion should broadly be consistent with a plurality of public sentiment. That seems like a reasonable bias in the exercise of discretion.

The White House, from administration to administration, treats the FDA like a flavor-of-the-day candy machine, pulling out something sweet for its favored interests and putting the kibosh on what the other guys like (whatever that means). What NONE of the administrations do is try to protect, or emphasize protection of, the FDA's independence as a safety advisor; it's ability to openly speak opinion on safety. I think there are many missed opportunities in health due to the FDA *not* speaking about products or processes it firmly believes to be safe, because Congressman and Senators have it out for them. What, in that, is the role of the President? Well, in practice, the President offers no political cover for the FDA. He's as craven a partisan hack as the reps on The Hill and he takes his shots at the agency too (from the inside, using the levers of the Executive branch).

So I suspect our biggest missed opportunity in the FDA is what it doesn't say due to political forces, not scientific compromise. Like it's possible that there's been virtual unanimity in the FDA, for like 30 years, that making these pills OTC would have major benefits vis-à-vis the problems of average people. But they'd never say that, or anything, without a nod from the White House. And that makes FDA actions, like too many other things, subject to the contentions of the next election.

[David Nieporent]

You know that conservatives have been arguing for years that the pill should be OTC, right?

Also, it is not a "few months after" Dobbs.

[Magister]

"the school’s health system reports medical exams and medications to parents" (of 19 year olds) sounds like the real problem.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The University of Alabama and Tommy Tuberville . . . two more reasons the Confederate states should have become unincorporated territories rather than been permitted to resume statehood.

Imagine an America with no senator from Mississippi or Alabama, no House member from Arkansas or Tennessee, no electoral vote from South Carolina or Florida. Instead, a string of unincorporated territories (think of Puerto Rico) along our southern border.

[Frank Drackman]

"No House member from Arkansas..."
would have disqualified William Juffuhson Clinton, who probably should have been disqualified for signing off on the Execution of a Retarded Black Man for purely political considerations (See "Sista Soulja Moment") and his Idiot VPOTUS AlGore,
Jeezo Beezo Coach, like Halley's Comet, once every 76 years or so, you get one right...

Frank

[Bored Lawyer]

Not really. If it's safe for OTC, it should be approved for OTC. Having to go to your Dr. for a prescription is a royal pain. I don't go to my Dr. for a prescription for asprin or acetaminophen.
And, IIRC, Republicans have been pushing for this, as a way to reduce abortions.

[Magister]

I think a 19 year old's health information shouldn't be reported to her parents, regardless of why she seeks health care.

It remains to be seen if the over-the-counter pill is successful; they haven't said how much it would cost.

[Bwaaah]

"It remains to be seen if the over-the-counter pill is successful; they haven’t said how much it would cost."

It will likely be significantly less expensive than an abortion, and much less expensive than a child. And yet you're still concerned about whether it will be cheap enough to be successful?

I submit, then, that even if it doesn't succeed, cost will not have been the reason. (The prospect of a new iphone, however, might be.)

[Magister]

Cheaper than condoms? IUDs? Prescription contraceptive pills? Lots of things to compare to that aren't abortion or pregnancy.

[Frank Drackman]

There’s been an “Over the Counter” Oral Contraceptive available for years, you can get a bottle of 100 for under $4 at any Walmart/CVS/Walgreens It’s called “Aspirin” you can use the 81 or 325mg variety, either is equally effective, So simple, you hold the tablet between your knees until the guy who wants to fuck you goes away. Works every time it’s tried

Frank “Loving” every minute (get it?)”

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/11/us/california-homeless-spending/index.html

California has spent billions to fight homelessness. The problem has gotten worse

Can one of the bootlickers or gaslighters come here in spin this for me? I'm having trouble not believing this confirms everything I believe about big government.

[Nige]

That's becuase you're Captain Confirmation Bias.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

$20B four years to make homelessness worse.

You go “Success!”

[Nige]

Want to end homelessness? Build houses and apartments and give them away to the homeless. Done. Anything else? Waste of money. Even California Democrats are too right-wing for that kind of effective solution.

[Frank Drackman]

Nige-bot doing standup. And failing, badly.

[Nige]

edgebot doing sit-down

[jb]

There's two problems:

1) The housing situation in California is terrible and even $20B is not enough to significantly fix that problem. The problem is that housing creation is stymied by forces both on the left (concerns about gentrification and environmental impact) and the right (concerns about preserving the character of the suburbs). California is making *slow* progress untangling all of the impediments to creating more housing, but it needs to make fast progress to get both supply and therefore prices under control. It's fair to fault some of this to "big government" but a lot of it happens at the local level and its an increasingly big problem across most of the US.

2) I think it's fair to acknowledge that the big blue states don't spend money very effectively. We see this in the cost of infrastructure projects, the cost of government created housing (in LA they're spending something like $1M per new 1BR unit of affordable housing), and in how ineffective some direct assistance programs are (e.g. New York's rent relief efforts). I'm not sure I have great solutions here, but it would be nice to see Democratic leaders whose primary motivation is to make government work effectively as part of making the case that it can be an important part of the solution to problems like homelessness.

[M L]

"even $20B is not enough"

Predictably, then, the answer is even more government spending?

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."

- Ronald Reagan

[jb]

No, I don't think government creation of housing is the right answer to the overall housing shortage and don't think I implied such. This is a pretty good example of where the market should fix (most of) the problem if we let it, but it is going to take a lot of political willpower to overcome the various objections to new housing creation.

As the article points out, $20B would be more than enough if the housing supply problem wasn't getting worse at a faster rate than they can put people in new places.

[M L]

It's not that 20 billion isn't enough to fix the problem, it's that govt spending worsens the problem.

Bottom line is, they voted for this. It's local government but also CA state and all the way up to the centralized bank and money printing, which always makes life less affordable, and benefits the haves at the expense of the have nots.

[jb]

There's lots of ways that government spending could make homelessness less of a problem, and there's plenty of evidence of successful interventions in other places.

In California nothing is going to work very well until housing prices are under control because more people are going to become homeless faster than you can deal with the existing ones.

[Nige]

I'm just DYING to know what the solution would be that didn't involve some sort of government spending.

[Frank Drackman]

The one that's currently happening, peoples who won't pay ridiculous prices (Last year, saw literal Shitholes in Fresno selling for 500K, Escondido??700K) are leaving for only moderately anal violating states (OK, FL has no Income Tax, Yay! the sales/property taxes make up for it) Peoples who love paying $11 for a Quarter Pounder are moving in...
Frank

[Nige]

edgebot's no-solution

[Commenter_XY]

If 20B is not enough, then what is? What's the number?

[Frank Drackman]

70-80 million, either "aborted" or "repatriated"
oh wait, we're talking about different things here...

Frank "That's my final Solution!!!! I mean Offer!!!"

[Ben_]

"…would be nice to see Democratic leaders whose primary motivation is to make government work effectively …"

The issue is "work effectively" for whom?

It's impossible to work effectively for 50 different competing interest groups all at once.

https://archive.ph/C7zW5

"…the inability or the unwillingness to choose among competing priorities — to pile too much on the bagel — is itself a choice, and it’s one that California keeps making…"

[jb]

Yes, I agree. A lot of liberals (like Klein) are aware of these problems and pushing to make it easier to get stuff done as well as set clearer priorities that can be used to negotiate conflicts like this. I think that's a form of leadership that's missing today (and maybe an inevitable result of our current political coalitions).

[Ben_]

"Pushing to make it easier to get stuff done" has to involve saying no to unions. Democrats are never going to do that, especially in California.

[Frank Drackman]

Visit California frequently, work their occasionally, its such a great state, until you have to deal with any State Agency (Highway Patrol (my emissions stickers expired?? its a fucking rental car, I rented it at LAX, but don't want to get "Rodney Kinged" so I have to deal with the whole BS of a ticket for expired emission sticker) Medical Board (Oh wait, I'm working for the VA, don't need a CA license, fuck you!!)
Oh, and the Dept of Revenue goes after peoples who work in CA for only a day, a week, a month, why I never use a Credit Card in CA.

Frank

[M L]

"maybe an inevitable result of our current political coalitions"

Yes. The political coalitions are a result of the centralization and nationalization of everything, which has been a fundamental transformation of this country. The vote of a person in San Francisco is somehow tied to the finer details of how a person may live their life in the backwoods of Alabama, and vice versa. As a result you have one party states and such. This situation is fundamentally unworkable and breeds dysfunction at all levels of society.

[ducksalad]

Maybe in parts of California there really is a significant homeless population that has some regular source of income and would buy or rent conventional housing if prices were reasonable.

In most places, those living on the street are not going to buy or rent at any realistic price, so availability has very little to do with it.

There are some who have the capability to accept free or heavily subsidized public housing.

However, there are some who can’t even do that because housing always has rules and they have a mental illness that makes them unable to understand and follow those rules. It often boils down to their right to bodily autonomy, which they exercise by refusing psychiatric treatment. Many of them had – at some point in their lives – family who were willing and able to provide them a room, regular meals, and take them to the shrink, but they either got kicked out or ran away.

Money alone is not going to help this last category.

[Ben_]

The way to solve society's problem with them is to pass laws making it illegal for people to sleep on the street. Then send the police to keep harassing them every day until they go away. They can move off the streets or out of town. No third choice: no living on the street, no open drug use, etc.

Any government that wants to serve the public can do that. If they aren't doing that, they're prioritizing other stuff ahead of serving the public.

[Nige]

Homeless people are the public. You're creating a outlawed underclass. I'd rather they just set 20 billion on fire than enact your fascist solutions.

[Ben_]

No, a few drifters and drug addicts living on the street are not “the public”.

You’d rather do what you guys do: surrender urban areas to become homeless camps with open drug use, nightly deaths from overdoses, violence and rape commonplace, etc. And you’d say “fuck off” to the 99% of the public who want safe, clean streets.

We know that’s what you’d rather do because that’s what your kind does.

[Frank Drackman]

Worst enemy of the "Homeless" are the "Homeless" themselves.
There's a "Homeless" guy in Dallas, sits at a busy intersection with his "Service" Dog, sign that says "Please help Disabled Veteran! God Bless!!"
Dude drives a $60K F250 Super Duty
He's doing OK, but your average Homeless who steals Homeless Melvins Crackpipe gets an amateur Celiotomy...
Without proper post operative therapy...

Frank "Get a Job!!!! No seriously, get a job, they pay better and less chance of getting stabbed"

[Nige]

edgebot’s home is a chip in a data centre

[Nige]

They very much are, no matter how you try to dehumanise them.

'surrender urban areas to become homeless camp'

Sure, that's the other solution that's almost as bad as your solution.

[Ben_]

Thanks for agreeing that you prefer to surrender urban areas to homeless camps. We knew it, but it helps that you said so.

[Nige]

You're welcome. It would be literally preferable to your disgusting fascism.

[Frank Drackman]

20 billion's a little excessive, apparently Nige-Bot hasn't learned difference between a million and a billion, you'd probably only need to set 70-80 million of the "Underclass" (I'd include Alabama/Georgia/Ohio State fans, FBI agents, Lawyers, all current State/Federal Prisoners serving sentences for violent crimes, Red Sox fans, peoples who buy Corvettes/Porsches/BMW's with automatics, )
OK, know you're a Bot, but hopefully have the Sarcasm detection add-on..

Frank "See the jerk with the Vinyl Top?? Kill Him!!!"

[Nige]

edgebot remembers it's supposed to be 'funny'

[Randal]

Lol @Ben. Do you have any idea how expensive that would be? Finding and harassing 170,000 people every day is not a good use of resources.

Especially since it doesn’t really solve the problem. What are you hoping happens, they all commit suicide? Might as well just skip straight to the final solution. It's cheap.

[Ben_]

"not a good use of resources"

It serves the public, so it’s a good use of resources. Also it’s ok if they aren’t all harassed every day. Just enough to get them off the streets.

"What are you hoping happens…"

I hope they all get jobs and become productive members of society. And clean, safe streets for the public. Clean, safe streets are non-negotiable. You want some helper program for some people, that’s negotiable.

Ultimately any of them can live outdoors if they insist. Just not in town.

[Randal]

What exactly sort of "harassment" are you envisioning? Yelling at them? Beating them up? Taking their stuff?

Homeless people is haven't got a lot to lose.

[Ben_]

Clear them off the streets. Police clear people out of areas all the time. Once they understand that they’ll never get any sleep on the street, they’ll go.

[Nige]

They'll all just vanish.

[Ben_]

They can vanish the same way they appeared. If you can go to a place, you can leave it.

[Nige]

Hint: they won't actually vanish at all.

[Randal]

Once they understand that they’ll never get any sleep on the street, they’ll go.

They'll just go sleep on a different street.

Have you ever been to a city? You don't seem to understand homeless people at all, like maybe you've never met one.

(It turns out to be better for everyone if they sleep in the same place every night anyway, rather than here and there.)

[Ben_]

"They’ll just go sleep on a different street."

For one night. Then they'll get chased away again. Keep doing it until they learn there's no street they can sleep on. Eventually they'll be off the street.

"...better for everyone if they sleep in the same place..."

It's a lot worse for the people who live and work in the city.

[Randal]

No, it's better for people who live and work in the city for the homeless to stay in one predictable place than to turn up in new random places every day.

Every once in a while you gotta move 'em so they don't get too entrenched (aka skid row).

[David Nieporent]

Any government that wants to serve the public can do that. If they aren’t doing that, they’re prioritizing other stuff ahead of serving the public.

Other stuff like the constitution. You can't criminalize status.

[Ben_]

Choosing to sleep on the street in a town isn’t "status".

Every article where they talk to homeless people:

"Several times in recent months, she had declined invitations to a homeless shelter."

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-13/why-cant-los-angeles-create-safe-camps-for-homeless-people

Sleeping on the street isn't status. So no constitutional problem making it illegal.

[Sarcastr0]

Vagrancy laws have a pretty bad history. But you really don’t much care about the homeless people.

Just proper upstanding people like yourself.

[Ben_]

You don’t care about everyone else. Or you’re actively trying to make life worse for everyone.

And you don’t care about homeless people either. Leaving them to die on the streets isn’t doing them any favors.

[Sarcastr0]

Thinking the homeless are people is not some zero sum game. Selective empathy leads to some dark shit, don’t go in for that.

[Ben_]

You prefer surrendering urban areas to homeless camps just like Nige does. That’s why you make empty pseudo-moralistic noises against any attempt to solve anything.

[Sarcastr0]

You present a false choice. Because it is horrifyingly clear that for you the homeless are not human.

If you allow them as people, it becomes a difficult problem. But once you embrace the dehumanization it is all so easy.

We are a post or two from an unironic modest proposal from you.

[Ben_]

That's exactly the pseudo-moralism. That's exactly the nihilistic advocacy for doing nothing, giving up and keeping (and growing) the urban homeless camps.

And then looking the other way at the devastation wrought by your choices, and trying to change the subject to finger-pointing to distract people from seeing the results you chose.

[Sarcastr0]

No one in this whole thread is advocating for doing nothing.

You confuse recognizing there is no quick fix for nihilism.

Also, weird combo to make of moralizing nihilism. But anyhow, don’t let me stop you from dying in this hill.

[Nige]

'the urban homeless camps.'

You just want to exchange urban camps for rural ones.

[Ben_]

Everyone in the thread with no proposal is advocating for (or at least has accepted the idea of) doing nothing. You’re all saying no to everything.

Some of you are pretending that there’s some magical utopian answer hidden out there. But mostly you’re all just watching things burn down, afraid to get your hands dirty with any attempt to do anything.

Maybe even start the fires and fan the flames. So you can engage in your favorite laptop sport of pointing fingers at anyone crass enough to engage with reality.

[Randal]

No, most of us on this thread are saying exactly what BCD’s original article is saying. There’s a housing shortage. When there are more people than houses, not everybody’s going to get one.

The solutions are obvious.

a) build more housing
b) eliminate the obstacles to building more housing
c) incentivize building the type of housing that will help the most: cheap housing

[Ben_]

What are 3 rules you’d change to “build more housing”?

What about when “more housing” is built (in the fictional world or the world of 2040-2050 where that might actually have happened) but homeless people won’t obey the rules to live there?

You have chosen to let them live outside in camps and obey zero rules. So they do.

[Randal]

Ah, the old "homelessness is a lifestyle choice" canard.

Well, I guess it'll be put to the test. We'll see how many people choose homelessness given a viable alternative.

[Ben_]

Read any newspaper article where they talk to homeless people:

"The 38-year-old Gutierrez, wearing sunglasses and black hoodie pulled over his head, kneels beside a car to shade himself from the late-afternoon sun. A motorcycle accident and long hospital stay have left him jobless and in constant pain; an addiction to meth doesn’t jibe with checking into a shelter."

“Everywhere you go, you have to follow rules,” he said. “I don’t want that.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-13/why-cant-los-angeles-create-safe-camps-for-homeless-people

[Randal]

Yeah, homeless people don't like homeless shelters. Duh. They're gross.

That doesn't mean they don't like homes.

If there were a contingent of people who preferred homelessness to homefulness, you'd see rich homeless people too.

(There are actually some, it's trendy for 20-something trust-funders to play at homelessness. But that's not a significant part of the problem. They do have something to lose and are easy to dissuade.)

[Ben_]

First you want to pretend homes will be built en masse. Then you want to pretend they’ll be given to homeless people for free with zero rules to live there?

Instead of pretending, just say you’re for doing nothing.

You’re not fooling anyone by pretending to be in favor of fantasyland houses.

[Randal]

For free? No one's getting a free house.

[Nige]

'You’re all saying no to everything.'

We're saying your solution is evil dystopian fascism that at best only solves the problem of homelessness for people who aren't homeless.

[Ben_]

Now you're pretending that homeless people will all leave their camps and somehow pay a bunch of money to live in these houses you're pretending will be built. What if they don't pay?

Obviously you've decided to keep the camps.

Some homeless people get some housing and everyone else in society is stuck with homeless camps forever, even after we've all paid an enormous amount to build fantasyland houses.

[Nige]

'and somehow pay a bunch of money'

No. Give them housing for free. Why not? Do you prefer homeless camps or offended ideology? 20 billion could have housed them all.

[Nige]

'Leaving them to die on the streets isn’t doing them any favors.'

You want them to die where you can pretend they don't exist.

[Nige]

‘Choosing to sleep on the street in a town isn’t “status”.’

Going to criminalise being poor. Detention, camps, forced labour all in the cards for those non-people.

[Ben_]

There's plenty of area outside of town for people who want to camp outdoors.

[Nige]

Yes, they'll be nice camps for undesirable non-people who dare to be poor, with some nice work they'll do to earn their camp-rent and camp-food, and pay off their ever-increasing camp-debt.

[David Nieporent]

Choosing to sleep on the street in a town isn’t “status”.

No, being homeless is a status. And one does not "choose" to sleep; it's a biological necessity, and will happen involuntarily whether one chooses it or not.

I share the visceral disgust that many experience when they see large encampments of people in public, overrunning the sidewalks and parks. I don't want to see that, let alone have to walk past/around it. And, sure, I may sometimes think to myself, "Why don't these people clean themselves up, get jobs and homes?" But just because you can't envision yourself ever being in a situation where you have nowhere to go does not mean that's true for everyone. "Get a job" is an objective, not an act one can just make happen by snapping one's fingers.

It is true that some people refuse to go to shelters, and someone who does so could constitutionally be punished for sleeping in public. But there isn't enough shelter space for all homeless people in most places in California, so that's not an adequate rebuttal.

[Ben_]

There are places hiring cooks and cleaners. They’re not closely examining resumes and turning down lots of candidates. How many "now hiring" signs for entry level, no skill jobs is enough to end the fiction?

"But there isn’t enough shelter space…"

…that homeless people find convenient enough to prefer to sleeping on the street.

If we make sleeping on the street a lot less attractive, a lot fewer people will do it.

You’re choosing homeless camps over the other available choices — because narcissism wins and building and maintaining a clean, safe, prosperous community loses.

[Nige]

How many of those jobs will actually cover rent, assuming you can get a job without an address?

'…that homeless people find convenient enough to prefer to sleeping on the street.'

Where people choose to sleep, where they have a choice isn’t the problem. That people are in the position of having to make the choice, where they get it, is the problem.

‘over the other available choices’

Your proposed solution is tyrannical and solves nothing.

It’s interesting to get this reminder that though the right hates immigrants and trans people and make a huge fuss about both, their loathing for poor Americans is so profoundly baked-in they aren’t even especially performative about it.

[Sarcastr0]

Problem hard.

Therefore government bad.

Some of you are so ideological on government bad that you cant string together arguments that even follow.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Here's riddle, in your mind hear the voice of the Riddler.

Who likes funky music that rhymes,
Is only 13 yet commits all the crimes?

[John F. Carr]

In this week's obvious news, the Justice Department will not seek the death penalty for the men the Justice Department used to kill Whitey Bulger in prison.

[Frank Drackman]

Let me guess, guys with names with lots of Vowels/Mc's/Oughs ???? and if “Whitey” was anything like Jack Nicholson portrayed he deserved every shiv of it. Seriously, with todays State/Federal Prison “Demographics” anyone named “Whitey” should get permanent “Administrative Segregation”. Even that Monster Dahmer would still be alive today if he hadn’t been put in “General Population” with Afro-Amuricans, who unsurprisingly, don’t like Pediophiles who murder (and eat) Afro-Amuricans… Frank “welcome to “Woke” State Prison, meet your cellmate, Bryan Kohberger”

[Sarcastr0]

What is the motive at this late date?

[Frank Drackman]

1: it’s not that late, how many years later did Tony Soprano kill that Rat in Vermont?? (did anyone ever say “Hello Rat” any more sinisterly?) How many years later did Don Corleone kill Don Ciccio?? (answer 21, yes it's sad I know that) 2: Bulger was a Rat, see #1:

[BadLib]

If there was a list of use cases justifying why Reason should implement a "collapse comment and all descendants" feature, TOT (and the occasional MOT) would certainly be on the list.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I agree, although here we both are perusing it.

[hoppy025]

https://meaww.com/who-was-xavier-kirk-colorado-teen-shot-dead-by-car-owner-after-botched-attempt-to-steal-vehicle

While it wasn't legally justified for the owner to chase after them and use deadly force in this manner, I'm very glad that this jogger is dead.

[Brett Bellmore]

Democrats are back to trying ERA tricks.

"Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri introduced a joint resolution stating the gender-equality measure has met ratification requirements and should be finalized as the 28th Amendment immediately by the national archivist."

Call it the "nuclear" ratification option: Congress just votes to overrule the archivist's count of actual state ratifications, and declare that it's been ratified ratified.

Think the Supreme court would take that case?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Wouldn't the opinion of Congress as a whole hold more weight than the archivist if Congress were to pass this resolution? Hard to believe this would actually pass. You could write a whole lot of amazing but true sentences starting with "Two Congressmen believe..."

[bevis the lumberjack]

No. This congress can’t make a decision for or change a decision of a congress from 50 years ago.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Obviously, but it always comes down to a question of interpretation. I don't see any reason to think the archivist's interpretation of something is necessarily the correct one. Although this particular case wouldn't be a very good example.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Congress has spoken for 60 years that they don't want what's prescribed in the ERA amendment as law.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you concerned Brett, or is this a clear political stunt and you are mad at that, when Dems do it?

[Brett Bellmore]

Obviously it is, at the moment, a stunt, since this isn't going anywhere in the House.

If they happen to get a House majority in 2024, and then do the same thing? It becomes substantially worse than a stunt, it eviscerates the capacity of the states to refuse to ratify an amendment.

[M L]

Extremely regret just seeing an image from a recent Mexican cartel killing where they skinned a guy's whole face in just a few seconds, then removed his heart and held it still beating. Apparently the cartels do things like this on a regular basis while filming it and posting the videos apparently to intimidate others into obedience.

Weird that the Aztecs live on in a way.

Need to see cute puppies and uplifting things now.

[hoppy025]

They are descended from Aztecs and Mayans. It's in their blood.

[John F. Carr]

In the past I have avoided ISIS beheading videos and a man being eaten by a polar bear. Typical combat footage from Ukraine doesn't get to me.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I can't watch the ones of the injured soldiers committing suicide.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ny-health-commissioner-says-she-blew-hospitalizations-out-of-proportion-to-push-covid-shot-for-kids/

NY Health Commissioner deliberately created fear to get parents to give their kids shots they don't need.

Why would she do this?

[grb]

Yeah, and the Desantis-appointed looney-tunes flake of a Florida Surgeon General doctored the report of covid vaccine clinical trials. His objective by this fraud was to convince men not be vaccinated. How repugnant is that? Hard to say, but it trumps your example hands-down.

“Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo personally altered a state-driven study about Covid-19 vaccines last year to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established by the broader medical community, according to a newly obtained document.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/24/florida-surgeon-general-covid-vaccine-00093510

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Weird how your whatabout didn’t answer my question. Did you think it would?

[Randal]

Why, you ask? Well, the thinking was that children represented a “reservoir of infection” that would keep covid circulating in the population even if the kids themselves were at low risk of complications. Immunizing kids could eliminate that reservoir, hastening the repoening of schools for example.

This is an example of what became a common government talking point for pushing the vaccine: do it to protect yourself (or in this case, your kids).

But the vaccines were never about individual protection, they were about slowing the spread and relieving the pressure on overcrowded hospitals. I think we (as in the US) made a mistake in the vaccine messaging by disingenuously appealing to selfishness.

But it’s an understandable mistake. Lots of people had already declared themselves to be sociopathic assholes with no interest in the good of the community, so the government decided to take a stab at tapping into their selfish instincts.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Oh, I see now. We've circled back to the COVID vaccines stopping the spread.

I thought when that turned out to not be, it was to keep you out of hospital if you got it?

[Nige]

I’ve no idea why you’re arguing such trivialities when the vaccines are killing people by the million every day and the embedded chips are controlling our thoughts and actions and replacing cash and giving everyone an appetite for insects.

[Frank Drackman]

Nige bot stumbles onto Sarcasm closed loop

[Nige]

edgebot vaccinated against humour

[Michael P]

Were they also appealing to people's selfish instincts when they lied about Covid origins (https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/07/13/leaked-slack-email-exchanges-prove-scientists-lied-about-covid-origins-n564304)?

Or when they lied about wearing masks to protect against infection (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/fauci-lies-about-lying-about-the-efficacy-of-masks)?

Or are they just pathological liars like you are?

[Randal]

Well, South Park diagnosed the problem long ago: 25% of Americans are functionally retarded. You’re in that 25%.

Yes, the government frequently concocts different messaging for different target audiences, including the 25% audience. Those of us in the 75% are smart enough to recognize the messages intended for the 25% and disregard them as harmless but necessary. You call them lies. They are lies, in the same way that “eat your spinach, it’ll make you strong like Popeye” is a lie. (Although like I said, I think some of the opportunistic messaging around the vaccines was not worth it.)

The early mask guidance intended to mitigate a potential run on masks falls in this category. 75% of us heard “masks work, but don’t rush out and hoard a bunch because doctors and nurses need them.” But the other 25% heard “masks don’t work so don’t buy any.” That really is an appeal to your selfishness now that you mention it.

But the real proof you’re in the 25% is that you believe that HotAir article about scientists and the lab leak is proof of some Fauci-led conspiracy. Did you read it? The scientists were saying that the lab situation “smells fishy” and is a “strange coincidence.” Well duh, we all know that! That doesn’t mean they secretly think it’s true. As the article lays out, they ultimately decided to follow the actual data — not their feelings and suspicions — in finding the natural origin to be more likely.

(In South Park, the boys discover that the 9/11 Truther conspiracy was actually being promulgated by the Bush administration. When Kyle accuses Bush of lying, he says “We told the truth… but 25% of Americans are retarded and won’t believe it anyway. So we let them think that the US government is smart and sophisticated enough to plan and execute something as complex and sinister as 9/11.” Are you a 9/11 Truther by any chance?)

[Michael P]

That's an unqualified "yes" to my last question, then.

[Randal]

https://youtu.be/d7lxwFEB6FI

[Randal]

Then https://youtu.be/XrvScY5nJw0

[David Nieporent]

I don't know why she did this. I also don't know why fanatic right wingers have in the age of covid suddenly pretended to stop understanding the very concept of vaccines. Even if it were true that kids "don't need" the vaccine, a person getting vaccinated helps everyone, not just that one person.

[grb]

This past week I saw both Asteroid City and the new Mission Impossible movie. Loved 'em both. Here's to variety in cinema!

[bevis the lumberjack]

The early reviews on Oppenheimer (out next week) are astoundingly and universally excellent. I can’t wait to see that.

[grb]

It's on my list as well

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This white, male, conservative
"legal" blog has operated for

SIX (6)

days without publishing a vile racial slur,
and has published racial slurs on at least

NINETEEN (19)

different occasions (that’s 19 different
discussions, not 19 racial slurs; many of
those discussions featured multiple slurs)
during 2023 (so far).

This assessment does not address
the incessant stream of gay-bashing,
misogynist, antisemitic, Islamophobic,
and immigrant-hating slurs and other bigoted
content offered daily at this conservative
blog, which is operated by members of
the Federalist Society for Law
and Public Policy Studies.

Carry on, clingers.

[Bwaaah]

If that’s humor, then it escapes me. So I think you’re serious in intimating that you have a relatively strict definition of your term, “vile racial slur.” (How else could you assert such specific statistics?) But I don’t know what it is, and therefore have no basis for determining what your statistics indicate (or what it is that you find so vile, *and* so well defined). Would you be willing to share (perhaps in some obfuscated format) your definition of “vile racial slur”? Is it a list of words? Of phrases? Is there some consensus surrounding such language of which I am unaware? I’m skeptical, but serious in my questions. (I hope you’re not seriously speaking of that which must not be spoken; I can’t wrap my head around that.)

[Michael P]

Many readers have muted that troll, but he at least used to complain that Eugene Volokh does not censor Artie's favorite fetish-word when quoting other people. (I guess Artie thinks Sesame Street went the wrong way with this song: https://genius.com/Sesame-street-n-the-noodle-song-lyrics .) And he would complain that the Washington Post banned him for using various slurs of his own against Jewish people, police officers, people who defend police officers, and the like.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

It is a single word. The one regarding which Prof. Volokh’s employer issued a public apology with respect to Prof. Volokh’s repetitive usage.

This is not complicated. This white, male, right-wing blog in general and Prof. Volokh in particular habitually publish that racial slur. Aim your Google-compatible device at “Volokh” and [n……] for relevant reporting and commentary.

[Bwaaah]

Thanks for the clarification.

For me, and I think most people, a word is in its most basic form a sound or a string of characters whose meaning can only be understood in the context of its speaker's intended meaning. The word [n……] does indeed have a compelling history of vile usage, perhaps more than any other word in American English. (In the views of many, [n.....] is to words as Adolf Hitler is to people.)

The intended meanings of [n....], despite its history of vile usage, are many. That's especially true in its more recent colloquial usage where, for example, it is often spoken affectionately by one friend in jocular reference to another. (I was brought up by my parents to view [n....] as the worst of words and one that should never be used. It shocks me to this day, even where it isn't intended as such. But I find my feelings about this to be increasingly archaic.)

The question arises: is this word, in its history of vile usage, so uniquely distinguished from all other words that we should treat all usages as illicit, inappropriate, barred? Even in referring to it, as you and I both have already done? Must even linguistic inquiry never mention it in its written form? (Do we dare speak, here, of Voldemort?)

Here we depart from mere language usage to issues of politics, power, interpretations of history, and positioning. But that's just another set of contexts that must be separated, for the sake of intelligent discussion, from the intellectual "laboratory of inquiry" in which ALL QUESTIONS ARE ON THE TABLE, and the necessary corollary that all words are on the table.

I would need to see the context within which a word was used in order to judge its appropriateness. A word alone tells me nothing in this query. And let us not pretend that our issues, such as hatred, are embedded in words, and gloss over the essential problem that they are embedded in our feelings, our beliefs, and most materially, our actions.

nigger...please...you gotta lighten up and get your head in the game.

(That's not easy for me to do.)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

(reply a few doors down)

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Dear Diary,

I can't believe it's been SIX WHOLE DAYS since I saw a No-No word on this blog! Six days of safety! Six days of bliss! Six days of BIPOC celebration!

Joyously yours,

Arthur the Noble

[Allutz]

Does Reason have a guide on how to format comments? Quotes, Italics, etc?

[Dan Schiavetta]

I don’t know about other formatting things, but I can put things in italics and bold via HTML indicators.

open angle bracket (on my keyboard it’s shift plus comma), then small “i”, then close angle bracket (on my keyboard it’s shift plus period), will start italics

open angle bracket , then slash, then small “i”, then close angle bracket will close them

for bold, the same thing with small “b”

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You can use html formatting, just note that you lose it once you edit it which makes the extra work risky. Some examples: ‘
<blockquote> </blockquote> for blockquotes
<b> </b> for bolding

There's 'i' for italics, or 'em' for emphasis.

[Allutz]

Just normal HTML then. Okidoke

[John F. Carr]

The prosecution is appealing the 18 year sentence given to January 6 star Stewart Rhodes. I expect the argument to be that Judge Mehta abused his discretion by refusing to accept the government's request to sentence Rhodes as a terrorist, or by giving the terrorism enhancement less weight than it deserved. The government had asked for 25 years.

[Michael P]

San Francisco continues to shit the bed. Or the sidewalk. You know, wherever. https://www.foxnews.com/media/popular-san-francisco-food-hall-closing-drug-dealing-public-defecation-scare-guests-report

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Bwaah:

The dozens of vile racial slurs are merely a part of the incessant stream of bigoted expression and varied slurs one finds at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Gay-bashing, antisemitism, white nationalism, immigrant-hating, misogyny, Islamophobia, white supremacy . . . all are prominent part of the Volokh Conspiracy’s everyday presentation.

Alongside the habitual bigotry are the regular calls for liberals to be gassed, lined up and shot, raped, sent to Zyklon showers, placed face-down in landfills, pushed through woodchippers, shot in the face as they open their front doors, dropped from helicopters, and more.

This blog has become a bigot-hugging right-wing cesspool with a audience of roundly bigoted, disaffected culture war casualties. That appears to be precisely the management’s aim.

[Bwaaah]

Working on response. Thanks for your consideration.

[Bwaaah]

I agree that all those sentiments, ugly much as you describe, are widely expressed here in endless variations. Expressed sincerely, those sentiments reveal contempt in the heart of the speaker, for an expressed reason that *can't*, in my mind, be a basis for, or justification for, such a sentiment. There's a lot of hateful stuff.

But context matters. We're here, in the reader comments at the bottom of a web page on a political blog. All we know, of these "posters," is what they passed through their keyboards. You may know more than that. But I don't, and I suspect few do.

Do these fairly anonymous internet comments genuinely reflect the sentiments of their speakers? With some precision of likeness to themselves? In a manner that I grasp with meaningful precision? Despite the kind of person I am and my own biases?

I really, really don't know.

But I can tell you that my instinctive emotional response when I read invective like you describe is that it's nonsense. I'm not downplaying the wrongfulness of the ideas you enumerate. In fact, if I seriously considered those implications every time I read words that suggest them, I'd be feeling downright miserable around here. That's just too ugly a place for me to dwell.

Those "vile" ideas, in the comments section, at the bottom of a web page of a political blog, barely rise above nonsense to me. And the little bit that comes through to me, from those remarks, strikes me as ANGER. It strikes me as anger in the speaker. But I admit that I'm very uncertain as to what drives that anger, no matter how simple and nasty the words. Because there are real people behind these writings, and just like real people, these kinds of expressed anger tend to reflect real experiences and concerns that are almost never so simple, or as baseless, as the ugly tropes they may express. Their words may be tropes, but they, the speakers, are not tropes. They are each unique people. And there's probably something [meaningful] they're angry about.

Another context: if I am in a _real life_ place with people present and somebody acts upon another person with any of the sentiments you described, that would be an immediate and serious problem for me. If it happened in a business environment, for example, I would feel compelled to challenge that person's behavior. (I have been there many times.)

But this isn't that. NOT AT ALL. That's "real life," and this is the comments section, at the bottom of a web page of a political blog. (I get that this too is, in another way, "real life.")  Angry, nasty, threatening, hateful, malicious words, through keyboards, come cheap and easy down here. Has a single VC commenter ever gassed or shot or hung or eviscerated anybody? I don't know the answer to that. But I think it's unlikely. It's just so easy to send the and through the keyboards here online. But doing that stuff in real life? That's an altogether different doing, with altogether different effects, and altogether different costs. That's kind of like gang banging shit, and I just don't picture the real life bangers working down here in the VC comments.

I suspect that many of the openly ugly comments here come from people who know very well how inappropriate the same words would be in a "real life" context. Especially, they know how costly such words can be, to them, the speakers. But what of that anger they express? I don't know what that's about, but real anger is almost surely there, in real life, in some meaningful form.

I am only so slightly moved by the tropes. Because that's all they are: tropes. The real question is: what of their speakers? And that's where I like to enter the conversation, without presumptions, more with questions, like, "What are you saying?"

It's easy to enter the conversation with a response to the trope. But hasn't that conversation already been had? (And again? And again?) What's to be learned? What's to be had? Why?

To me, so much of these conversations just reek of bigotry, from all sides. What do I mean? I mean when one person approaches another, and judges the other not for what he has done, but for what you think he is. And what do you think he is? It's a combination of the little you know of what he really is (in real life), and a lot of everything that "everybody like him" ever was. That's bigotry to me: coloring people not by who they actually are (of which we know little), but by broader stories that precede them.

When I read your grievances, Rev, it looks to me like you have a problem with a certain variety of "those people." Which people? Those people who are like that, like with the vile stuff. But that sentiment, that "those people" sentiment, doesn't sound any better to me coming from a person who believes A, B and C, than it does from one who believes D, E and F. I just don't get the "those people" paradigm. Even if somebody expresses a vile trope, what can that tell us of WHAT THAT PERSON REALLY IS AND REALLY DOES?. There's still a real person there who represents himself and only himself (in my mind), and deserves to be treated for who he is, and not what somebody thinks he is (especially because he's one of "those people").

There's a saying that goes something like, "The greatest of intentions is smaller than the smallest of deeds." Stated alternatively: "What people say matters little compared to what they do." That's not always true, but generally, much more true than we tend to suggest.

Those tropes, as expressed, tell me next-to-nothing about those people. You seem to feel they indicate a lot more about those people than just the few trashy words; they indicate all that those trashy words represent? All that theoretical representation, all that horribleness, is what you bring to your profile of a person who might post, "I would gladly kill all liberals." Your belief in the materiality of such a statement reflects, to me, your own kind of bias; your own kind of bigotry. (I have mine too; the flavors I dislike seem similar to yours.)

So my inclination is to ignore the tropes, to reach past them, to get to the speaker and his/her unique self, whatever that may be. Even with all their biases and anger, with few exceptions, there's a lot there beyond the tropes.

I prefer to engage the speaker, not the trope. 

On the topic of the VC and "management's aim," I vehemently disagree with your conclusions. I have never seen an official Conspirator, or guest poster, express a single sentiment like any of the tropes you listed. I know they all tend to not dismiss the "libertarian" label. But they each appear very different to me, with very different emphasis in their viewpoints. None represents the views of another, nor of any of the views expressed in the comments below the blog. Even the term "management" is a misnomer in that I don't believe any Conspirator "manages" the expressed views of any other Conspirator (other than through argument).

There may well have been censorship of comments here for one reason or another, but probably not to censor viewpoint rather to avert conflict. Yes, in my opinion, insofar as there has been *any* censorship of comments, it implicitly reflects, in some measure, viewpoint censorship. But I'd be surprised if any censorship was ever done comfortably here. All the trash you see, the tropes, reflects a distinctly permissive view of "free expression" and the ugliness that allows. For me, that openness doesn't just allow the tropes, but also the energetic expression of varied views, many of which are quite salient and worthy of consideration, if not agreement. To me, the Volokh discussions are notably vibrant, littered with thoughtful expression, and yes, sprinkled with trash.

(I'd be surprised if Eugene Volokh doesn't find some, many, of the reader comments to be cringeworthy. He just doesn't strike me as a trash sympathetic person, in the least. That's just my distant sense.) 

I take away from here the thoughtful expressions, and leave behind the trash. I'd be surprised, disappointed, if you were given the opportunity to flip the switch and shut this down, that you would do so?

Would you?

[Bwaaah]

Replace "It's just so easy to send the and through the keyboards" with "It's just so easy to send the [action words] and [tropes] through the keyboards"

[AmosArch]

Is that illegal?

[PeteRR]

How much could it possibly be related to a Xmas party, a 100 bucks?

[Commenter_XY]

Weren't these lawyers all former clerks of Justice Thomas?
Would it be unusual for a Justice to have an Xmas party and their former clerks attend?

Seems like a stretch to suggest somehow Justice Thomas was 'bribed' and somehow changed a decision in response to a Venmo payment of less than $100. I just don't see that. I would feel the exactly same way if you substituted the name Jackson for Thomas.

[Kazinski]

The money was to buy copies of Sotomayor's book.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And yet there are January 6th defendants still in jail without even being charged...

[Nelson]

"paid money to a top aide to Justice Clarence Thomas"

Oh, for the love of God. This is the sort of minor, irrelevant, and pointless talking point that causes the real, significant, and dangerous activities to be marginalized when they are discovered.

Is Clarence Thomas corrupt? It seems possible. Are $100 reimbursements to an aide relevant to that issue? No, idiots. It's bullshit and fluff. Red meat for the left, but marginalizing to investigations into actual corruption.

It's like the Hunter Biden crap, but on the left.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Not the right question. The right question is whether payments to right wing judges at all levels have become customary. The dark money infrastructure behind the Federalist Society alone has at least hundreds of millions at its disposal. What's it doing with the money?

[AmosArch]

Well Nancy Pelosi is somehow one of the greatest stock traders in history and nobody seems to mind.

[VinniUSMC]

Hey SL, I have a really great offer for you. A big, beautiful bridge in San Francisco. Only $10,000 and it's all yours.

[Brett Bellmore]

It wasn't a payment to a judge. It was a payment to an aide.

This reads like parody:

"The amount of the payments is not disclosed, but the purpose of each payment is listed as either “Christmas party”, “Thomas Christmas Party”, “CT Christmas Party” or “CT Xmas party”, in an apparent reference to the justice’s initials.

However, it remains unclear what the funds were for."

I don't know, maybe a Christmas party?

[Armchair Lawyer]

Payment to an aide. Not the judge.

[Darth Buckeye]

And Justice Sotomayor strong arms law schools to buy copies of her book to give to all people attending her speaking engagements. Cool.

[AmosArch]

Thomas would be a raging leftist if he didn't bribed with the DC equivalent of pocket change according to the expert progs on VC.

[Armchair Lawyer]

A larger stretch to say Thomas was "bribed" by having an aide of his paid.

[Mr. Bumble]

Christmas? Isn't that some kind of Christian celebration which makes it suspicious from the start. Bet Chris Wray and the boys at the FBI will be right on it.

[Estragon]

When was the last time you charged someone money for a Christmas party?

[bernard11]

Sure, Brett. That's plausible on its face.

A bunch of Thomas clerks and staffers want to have a Christmas party and chip in, with Vasisht acting as treasurer/organizer.

But why the refusal of conributors, including Vasisht, to comment? Why the secrecy about how much was contributed?

I mean, the easiest thing is to say, "Yeah, a bunch of us decided to chip in and have a party. We met at X restaurant, had cocktails and dinner, and socialized for a while. BFD. Oh and we invited Thomas, because we all worked for him/knew him, etc. "

[Michael P]

Did these tiny checks to cover one's own costs at Christmas parties lead to $3.6 million in royalties while they had a case before the court?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/05/04/liberal-supreme-court-justice-caught-in-scandal-n1692561

[Nelson]

No, there aren't. There may be Jan. 6th defendants in jail pending trial, but as far as I know all of them have been charged.

[not guilty]

"And yet there are January 6th defendants still in jail without even being charged."

Please name one, Dr. Ed 2.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Name one.

[Estragon]

Cmon Ed. One name!

[ducksalad]

You've never chipped in money for an office party?

I've done that maybe two dozen times. Last time was....last Christmas.

[jb]

Actually, lots of people mind, including plenty in her own party (see, e.g. AOC, Bernie, Spanberger). And none of them got disowned by their party in the process.

See? Turns out it's possible to actually be concerned about ethics and not just be a partisan hack all the time.

[Sarcastr0]

Then get her ass. Or reform the system to make it so she can’t pull that shit.

You seem mostly into whining about selected people, so why would you actually want change?

[Estragon]

Office party? These people all had high paying lawyer jobs and didn’t work for Thomas anymore. And no, I have never been asked to chip in for an office Christmas party.

[Estragon]

You didn’t answer my question

[Brett Bellmore]

What, never? I have.

[Mr. Bumble]

A cheap F like you would crash it.

[David Nieporent]

Office party? These people all had high paying lawyer jobs and didn’t work for Thomas anymore.

Right. It's a reunion. Clerks/former clerks do that. It's not an "office party." It's a private gathering.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, but why comment and risk being taken out of context, or misconstrued?

When the police start asking questions, you clam up and lawyer up. Hostile media aren't that different, except that the destination is a PR nightmare, not jail.

[Mr. Bumble]

Why are they under any obligation to comment?

[Estragon]

What’s the definition of “freedman”?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I'm a conservative, not a Democrat.

Thanks for attending my Ted Talk.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, that largely checks with what my son is telling us.

Just the other day it came up, I was browsing NotTheBee, and my son practicing piano glances over and says, “Who is she?” (There was a picture of ‘Miss’ Netherlands on the screen.)

I say, “That’s a guy.” He says, “No, look, that’s obviously a girl.” Me: “No, look at that face, it just screams “guy”.” Him: “No, she looks like a girl. Let me call Mom in to settle this!” Mom walks in. “Who is that guy?” Son: “What???”

I think this transgender stuff is getting common enough that the up and coming generation is starting to have trouble picking up on sex cues, because they’re being taught to ignore them. Wears a dress and long hair? Must be a girl, ignore all the little details.

[M L]

Gullible would be anyone who believes anything you say.

Thousands of news stories across the nation about school board elections and candidates fighting over these very issues.

Thousands of videos and confessions a la Libs of TikTok.

Thousands of news stories across the nation about dust-ups over these very things being taught in classrooms.

Thousands of instances across the nation of ideologues fighting tooth and nail to have books in the school library that teach these very things, along with graphic descriptions of underage sodomy and such.

You may now move to step 2, after denying that something is happening, you then express incredulity at the idea that anyone disagrees with it.

It's Not Happening, And It's Good That It Is

[Sarcastr0]

You are a racist who is addicted to negative attention.
Your party of choice is inevitable, but you suck in such an advanced form being conservative is a trivial aspect of why you suck.

[Nige]

'I’m a conservative,'

So are they. Wait, you're proudly racist and anti-semitic, why dodge?

[Dr. Ed 2]

[Dr. Ed 2]

Be afraid, be very afraid.
I *know* who and what is in K-12 today....

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Weird because I may be all those things, you're a low-information bootlicker who spends his time obfuscating, lying and gaslighting people over the evils of the State.

All the while collecting your big fat Federal paychecks while contributing absolutely nothing positive to society or the economy. Didn't you get an extra $5k a month hazard to stay home during COVID like the rest of the Federals?

What's sadder is the IC pays people to do what you do, but you do it for free.

[Frank Drackman]

You forgot to mention Hitler

[BravoCharlieDelta]

LoTT posted a video of some Democrat tranny who says they want to get a uterus implant so they can get an abortion.

Now that’s a sick, sick fuck. Your people.

[Dr. Ed 2]

11 year olds having sex is what's sick...

[John F. Carr]

The law includes an exception for rape which would apply in the case of a pregnant 12 year old. The law includes an exception for a medical emergency, which would also apply in the case of a pregnant 12 year old.

Other exceptions include incest and "fetal abnormality that in the physician’s reasonable medical judgment is incompatible with life". See https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=90&ba=HF732

[Frank Drackman]

What's the problem?? most girls killed by abortions are under 12.

[John F. Carr]

Only one of them has to be 11.

[Nige]

Did you really type those words just now?

[ducksalad]

If by "charged" you mean suggesting people chip in, then the last time I did it was maybe 5-6 years ago, the last time I was in charge of collecting donations for the Christmas party. We rotate.

[Nige]

‘Thousands of news stories across the nation about school board elections and candidates fighting over these very issues.’

They’re passing laws against trans people, who are a tiny minority, so also making a fuss at school board level about something that is barely an issue fits. But also, launching a cultural pogrom against a minority, resulting in people talking about the minority and the cultural pogrom, justifying the cultural pogrom!

[VinniUSMC]

Is Clarence Thomas corrupt? It seems possible. Are $100 reimbursements to an aide relevant to that issue? No, idiots. It’s bullshit and fluff. Red meat for the left, but marginalizing to investigations into actual corruption.

You were doing so good.

It’s like the Hunter Biden crap, but on the left.

And then you had to go shit all over it. $100 totes the same as "Hunter Biden crap"... fucking lol

[Estragon]

Minimize this all you want. These are lawyers with matters before the court, paying a Justice. Meanwhile, Elena Kagan turns down gift baskets of bagels and lox. Learned Hand used to pay his clerks departure bonus out of his own pocket. Times have changed- but you don’t have to normalize it along the way.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The only interesting question regarding Joe and Hunter is whether what they’re doing is honest graft or dishonest graft.

The statesman and political philosopher G. W. Plunkitt explained the distinction over 100 years ago.

“There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: “I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.”…

“A big city like New York or Philadelphia or Chicago [or a big country like the USA] might be compared to a sort of Garden of Eden, from a political point of view. It’s an orchard full of beautiful apple trees. One of them has got a big sign on it, marked: “Penal Code Tree—Poison.” The other trees have lots of apples on them for all. Yet the fools go to the Penal Code Tree. Why? For the reason, I guess, that a cranky child refuses to eat good food and chews up a box of matches with relish. I never had any temptation to touch the Penal Code Tree. The other apples are good enough for me, and 0 Lord! how many of them there are in a big city [or country]!”

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2810/2810-h/2810-h.htm

Since Biden helped write the laws which distinguish between honest graft and dishonest graft, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that he’s carefully plucked his apples from the good trees, not the illegal tree.

His graft should be considered honest until proven otherwise.

The only time honest graft matters is if the voters get into some kind of jealous fit against their politicians and decide that graft itself is a problem, even if the people committing the graft took care to keep it legal.

[Nige]

I hope you whipped off a few bomb threats to childrens' hospitals to show proper outrage.

[Mr. Bumble]

The Queen's specialty is to obfuscate and dissemble.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You're really here trying to justify a law which would require a 12-yar old to give birth if it wasn't a result of rape?

[Sarcastr0]

Science is pretty great.

My pay is neither big nor fat.

[Brett Bellmore]

Somebody who was formerly a slave.

[M L]

I remember a few years ago when the topic of transgenders was a light-hearted, funny thing. Nobody was upset about it. Nobody imagined having to worry about some oddball using a bathroom at the bar or something.

That all changed quickly when the new programming for the political left came along, from the top down and they all gobbled it right up of course. It started in Charlotte NC with the left passing laws mandating that men be allowed to enter girl's locker rooms and such. From there it proceeded to indoctrinating kindergartners with insane gender ideology. No going back to simpler days any time soon.

[VinniUSMC]

Nige is trying to compete with Gaslightr0?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

In terms of total compensation, the average Federal employee makes 2x as much as a private citizen. A double income Federal family is a top 5% household in terms of total compensation.

Further, according to the CBO, the more educated you are the less you get paid with respect to working in the private sector.

What does the science say about human behavior for job seeking when the stupider you are the more you get paid and the jobs are tenure based and not merit based?

Does the science say those incentives attract smart, driven people? Or what?

[BrotherMovesOn]

Bumble, I saw the other day you're back to throwing effete insults at practitioners again, this time LOKI13, who's dog knows more CIVPRO than you do now or will ever know.
Honestly, don't you have a shred of dignity?

[Estragon]

Lol, pathetic

[Randal]

Not great that Thomas is inviting the conservative end of the Supreme Court Bar over to party. These are people who have cases in front of the court.

The fact that he's also making them pay for it is just bonus corruption.

Face it. You'd be flipping the fuck out if Jackson's mom lived in George Soros's house and he were paying for Leila's tuition.

[Frank Drackman]

Puddin' Tane

[BravoCharlieDelta]

By technical definitions I’m neither. As I don’t assign judgement based upon innate characteristics. Thats what you people do.

What I do, however, is acknowledge how amazing our brains are at pattern recognition and how they strive for cognitive efficiency as its one of the largest consumers of our bodily energy. So our brains use heuristics that are imprinted or based upon observations and they are really good at quickly applying these heuristics in new situations and also relies upon these to make inferences about how the world works. I’m aware enough to acknowledge how our brains work.

You people label relying upon observations about individual and group behavior to make judgment as “racist” or “anti-semetic” or “something-phobic” if those judgments are different than the State dictated beliefs.

For example, if I see an ugly man in a dress and say “hey that’s an ugly man in a dress”, you people say that’s “transphobic”.

If I see a bunch of muscle shirt wearing, long dreadlocked, black males with their underwear showing standing outside of an ATM and avoid that ATM, you people say “that’s racist”.

If I say “hey there’s a bunch of Jewish people on Twitter bragging about White Genocide and celebrating White Replacement” you people say that’s “anti-semetic”.

If I say “hey its kinda weird that the CDC released a Monkey Pox warning for Pride Month, but it makes sense given what we observed with the early Pride Pox outbreak” you people say that’s “homophobic”.

If I see a Chinaman unsuccessfully reaching for the condoms on the top shelf at the CVS, I go over amd get a box of kid sized condoms, because statistically that's the best fitting size.

But really it’s just using the brains pattern recognition capabilities to its fullest and leaning into our brains own needs to not have to evaluate every single thing in every single context, since that would be crippling and inhuman.

So its you people that are the real racists, bigots, and anti-semites because you identify these characteristics and assign judgement based upon that alone.

For example, you see a black person and believe because of his skin color he is inferior and needs help to succeed.

You see a dog of a homosexual couple getting Pride Pox in its butthole, you say because that couple is homosexual they would not rape their dog.

You see a Jew talking about the destruction of the institution of marriage and then engaging in actions that harm the institution of marriage you go, because that person is a Jew they are innocent of any evil doing because of the alleged holocaust.

You see any ugly, hairy man in a dress with male pattern baldness and he says in his deep masculine voice “That’s Ma’am to you” and you override all your instincts and say “that’s a real authentic woman”.

See? It’s really you people that are the actual racists, bigots, anti-semites, and homophobes. I’m just human. Unlike those f’n Jews.

[grb]

M L : “That all changed quickly when the new programming for the political left…”

Obviously false. For every one mention of trans folk from the Left, there are hundreds and thousands from the Right. The same ratio is seen in laws, where passing bills that target and harass trans people is a sport and competition among right-wing pols at all levels of government.

This is what really happened : The Right discovered trans people were the one remaining target where it’s socially acceptable to publicly hate. It’s not like the old days when you could make a open show of hating Blacks, loathing Jews, despising Gays and sneering at women. That time is tragically lost to today’s Right. But enough people still dislike transsexuals that the Right can publicly celebrate their spite and bigotry.

And judging by their obsessive focus on this tiny little group of people, that discovery of a free and uninhibited target was a moment of orgasmic-grade liberation to the Right. Finally they can hate again in open freedom!

[Nige]

'That all changed quickly when the new programming for the political left came along,'

The programming was: 'let's call trans people by their chosen pronouns.' The only outrage to match it was the 40-second tik-tok vid about a beer for sheer shock and horror.

[Mr. Bumble]

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. As always much appreciated.

[grb]

Yes he did.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You gonna point out how anti gay he's being?

[M L]

No, the right (and anyone with any sense, plenty not on the right) became justifiably concerned when the left started demanding that men be allowed to enter girl’s locker rooms starting in Charlotte NC, compete in women’s sports, demanding that others assent to their insanity, etc. That’s all that happened.

[grb]

Good Lord above, but aren’t you a sick fuck? I live in a city where there is all manner of “long dreadlocked, black males” and get along just fine without paralyzing fear. I wouldn’t know where to find Jews bragging about “White Genocide” or destroying the institution of marriage (or using the blood of Christian infants to bake matzos). No doubt you do. I’m not mentally ill enough to worry about Gays and dogs; I never once speculated on Chinese penis size.

Once again, you’re bragging again about personal imbecilic sicko obsessions.

You should stop doing that.

[Nige]

tldr

[Randal]

tbdr

[Nelson]

Nige and Randal: the long, detailed posts are the ones you should read. Bumper sticker posts aren't very informative.

[Estragon]

To be fair, this is probably the response we deserve trying to get accurate factual information from Dr Ed

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Only mentally ill people know facts that our mind masters don't want us to know!

Sincerely,
grb

P.S. you have the worldview of a child

[David Nieporent]

No, that's not even remotely what's happening. This makes you look as clueless as the right wing conspiracy loons.

It's a clerk reunion Christmas party. This is an incredibly common thing for clerks for judges/justices to do. And everyone is reimbursing the organizer for their share of the party, just like when you go out with friends, one person pays the bar tab, and other people reimburse their share through Venmo. The money isn't going to Thomas and isn't paying anyone for anything.

[David Nieporent]

These are lawyers with matters before the court, paying a Justice

No. Neither of those facts are true.

[Mr. Bumble]

Thanks for providing a fair reading of what occurred.

[Estragon]

“ And everyone is reimbursing the organizer for their share of the party, just like when you go out with friends, one person pays the bar tab, and other people reimburse their share through Venmo. The money isn’t going to Thomas and isn’t paying anyone for anything.”

How do you know this? does every attendee pay an equal amount? Or do the big law lawyers pay more than ones in public service? How about clerks that no longer working in the law or are retired? Do they get invited? Do they pay an equal share to everyone else?

Why doesn’t Thomas pay for this himself? He could use all the money he saved by not flying commercial to Bali or paying for his own luxury yacht. Or maybe he could ask Alito for some of the money HE saved on protective detail flying on a private jet to a fishing lodge in alaska.

This situation screams a lot of things to me but appearance of propriety isn’t it. I also don’t agree that “everyone has Christmas parties where you pay your former boss to attend” is the smashing defense you seem to think it is.

[Estragon]

I’ll bet you an internet dollar John Roberts pays for his own clerk holiday party. Maybe that’s why he gets called a squish around here.

[Estragon]

Does the name Patrick strawbridge mean anything to you? I’m sure you have a nit to pick, knock yourself out. Think about what you are normalizing here.

[Randal]

Lies.

The Charlotte nondiscrimination ordinance didn't even mention bathrooms. It was mostly about Uber.

The Republicans in the NC statehouse saw their opportunity to hate on trans people and made up the bathroom thing as a strawman for demagoguery purposes. Then they passed the first actual "bathroom bill," the "Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act" aka HB2.

The recent trans obsession has always been a right-wing culture-war thing. We would love it if you would just go back to leaving trans people alone!

[Nige]

'demanding that men be allowed to enter girl’s locker rooms'

You're saying trans people existed and everyone was fine with it, patently untrue, then you decided trans people should be wiped out of existence because they kept existing.

[grb]

Uh huh. So our "mind masters" want to hide the truth of Chinese penis size, but BCD has escaped their oppressively tyranny...

Good to know.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Your mindmasters hold up four fingers you and dutifully tell them you see five.

And you’re probably the only white person alive who sees a gang of young blacks looking like thugs on street corner and aren’t the least bit worried.

Or a dirty liar.

[Nige]

Lie down for yourself.

[Paladin_44]

Bingo! Godwin award goes to Frank Drackman

[Bwaaah]

If I believed that these "perqs" influenced their decisions, I'd be concerned. But I don't. So I'm not not. (These concerns are mainly the throwings from the peanut gallery.)

[grb]

Uh huh. So our “mind masters” have hidden the truth of Jews seeking “White Genocide”, but the ever-vigilant BCD protects White Nation.

Now dern’t that beat all!

Also : The city I live in is plus-60% black, yet I walk a mile between home & work thru the center of the city at any hour. Last night it was after 2am as I’m facing a deadline. If I was as timid as you & my mind filled with phantasmagorical demons and bugaboos, I wouldn’t last a single day.

You should try living without useless fear….

[BravoCharlieDelta]

They haven’t hidden it, it’s all over Twitter.

They just tell you it isn’t true and doesn’t exist, so to you it doesn’t exist.

According to the data, which particular demographic commits the most violent crimes per capita? What does the data say?

[grb]

BravoCharlieDelta : "According to the data, which particular demographic commits the most violent crimes per capita?"

Men.

A 2000 global study on homicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that men accounted for about 98 percent of all homicide perpetrators worldwide. I'm sorry, BCD, but the proof is irrefutable. If you see a man on the street your little rabbit's heart should palpitate with terror. Contrarywise, as a man yourself, expect relentless attention by the police. Expect to be shunned by all right-thinking citizens if you shamelessly expose yourself in public. And don't dare think of making any whiny complaints. Numbers are numbers and 98% is 98%.

But what am I saying? You're not THAT kind of man and you can see the other men on the street aren't either. Excellent; you've reached Step One.

Now take that lesson and see if you can apply it more broadly. Then you won't be a quaking abject coward every time you see a dark face....

[Nelson]

"According to the data, which particular demographic commits the most violent crimes per capita? What does the data say?"

Per capita? Rural, Southern states with predominantly white poulations. https://www.statista.com/statistics/200445/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-us-states/

There are 23 states (plus DC) whose violent crime rate is above the national average. Of those, eight states (NM, MI, NV, CA, DE, IL, CO, and MD) plus Washington DC are "blue". Fifteen (AK, TN, AR, AZ, LA, MT, SC, SD, MO, OK, AL, TX, KS, NC, and GA) are "red".

Of those 24, 14 are more "white" (meaning non-Hispanic whites) than the US average of 57.84%.

This is why careful racists and conservatives never use the words "per capita". While it is a much more accurate way to measure crime, it shows that conservative, white states are more violent than liberal, multicultural states. It also highlights that rural areas have more violent crime than urban areas.

Let this be a reminder: accurate reporting of violent crime shows rural, white, conservative have more violent crime. So never, ever, ever talk about per capita crime rates. The only way to make liberal cities and states look bad is to use absolute numbers, since the blue states have a lot more people and it artificially creates the illusion of higher crime rates.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If I see a gang of thuggish looking men on a street corner at 2am, then yes I will avoid them. Just like I won’t walk barefoot over broken glass. Just like I won’t eat food that smells spoiled. Just like I won’t swim in the ocean if sharks have been spotted. Just like I won’t get into a car if the car is on fire. Just like I won’t do other obviously dangerous things.

Do you walk barefoot over broken glass because you don’t want others to think you’re a bigotted glassist?

I don’t because I’m not an amazingly stupid idiot who puts virtue signaling over personal safety.

Nelson, no offense but your reasoning doesn't follow. You infer the race of the criminal based upon the "political color" of the state.

That's pretty stupid. Most of those Southern States are in the Black Belt. Crime rates are 3 to 4 times higher in urban areas than rural areas.

[Life of Brian]

There are 23 states (plus DC) whose violent crime rate is above the national average. Of those, eight states (NM, MI, NV, CA, DE, IL, CO, and MD) plus Washington DC are “blue”. Fifteen (AK, TN, AR, AZ, LA, MT, SC, SD, MO, OK, AL, TX, KS, NC, and GA) are “red”.

Of those 24, 14 are more “white” (meaning non-Hispanic whites) than the US average of 57.84%.

In a discussion about the race of the specific individuals committing the crimes, this sort of silly statistical peanut buttering says less than nothing.

[David Nieporent]

Just like I won’t swim in the ocean if sharks have been spotted.

Unless they're great white sharks, amirite?

[Nelson]

Not per capita. That's my point. The only way urban areas surpass rural areas in violent crime is if you use absolute numbers. When you make it relative to the size of the population, rural areas show higher rates.

And that doesn't even include when Sheriff Joe Bob doesn't report when his brother beats his wife. Assuming he reports his crime stats to the FBI database at all. It's voluntary and largely done by larger, more urban police departments, possibly due to smaller depatments not having the manpower available to put together the reports.

[grb]

BravoCharlieDelta : “Just like I won’t swim in the ocean if sharks have been spotted”

Not to trespass on DN’s witty comment above, but ya got to draw distinctions. If I’m diving – say – a shipwreck in North Carolina and see a shark, I swim towards it. Usually they’re sand tigers and look wonderfully ferocious but are completely harmless. The first time I dove the Caribsea (Torpedoed by U-158 in 1942 with 21 deaths), I reached out and touched a 7ft-long beauty as she glided by. My dive buddy shook a finger, later saying topside that was taking matters a bit too far.

People are very rarely shark food and almost all attacks come from blundering in a shark's way as it feeds. Of course there’s no big sin in BCD being ignorant about sharks by itself. The problem is he’s ignorant about everything…..

[ducksalad]

His point, I believe, is that sex with a 12 year old is by definition always rape.

[Brett Bellmore]

If it wasn't the result of rape, what would it be? A case of virgin birth? In that case, maybe she should give birth?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://www.charlottemagazine.com/hb2-how-north-carolina-got-here-updated/

Randal, there's reality. it doesn't match your beliefs about reality, will you update your beliefs?

[M L]

Lies.

https://archive.is/1I1jM#selection-8263.0-8263.97

"Council members approved expanding the city’s existing nondiscrimination ordinance in a 7-4 vote...The changes mean businesses in Charlotte can’t discriminate against gay, lesbian or transgender customers...The most controversial part of the ordinance would allow transgender residents to use either a men’s or women’s bathroom, depending on the gender with which they identify."

[Estragon]

“ It’s a reunion.”

Your words. Not theirs.

[Estragon]

How do you know it was a reunion? The people who went called it a Christmas party. Were only clerks there? How about spouses? Were there any non-former clerks there? Was Leonard Leo there? You don’t know!

[John F. Carr]

If it was a virgin birth the doctor could still invoke the medical emergency exception.

And most people don't care, i.e. they won't change their minds based on whether a law has exceptions for rare cases. Public support of or opposition to abortion laws is based on millions of pregnant 16-45 year olds (for the pro-abortion crowd) or millions of vulnerable babies (for the anti-abortion crowd).

[Jason Cavanaugh]

I don't know what the specific exception is in Iowa, but generally speaking, minors having sex with other minors within a certain age range of each other is not rape.

So the hypothetical 12 year old girl could be impregnated by a 13 year old boy and it wouldn't be rape, and she still wouldn't be allowed to have an abortion.

[Frank Drackman]

Sent my daughters to Pubic High Screw-el for the last few years of their Ed-jew-ma-cation, but only when the Jewish Private School started getting all Woke, and found out that the Pubic Screw-el was 90% half Asian, had way better sports teams, Academics, oh, and did I tell you? it was free and they could drive there. 2 years and they speak way more Vietnamese than 9 years of Hebrew classes… Both got full ride College Scholarships 1 Ath-uh-letic, 1 ROTC and currently fly the friendly skies when they aren’t contributing to Global Warming…

Frank

[ThePublius]

Why do you call pro-life people 'anti-abortion?' Why aren't pro-abortion people called 'anti-life?'

[bernard11]

They are not under any such obligation. I get that they are lawyers and it's a reflex.

If it were me I might show them the records to prove it was exactly what it seemed.

And if it weren't me I might do that anyway, just to show that it was nothing to get excited about. They may be fine lawyers - not so great at PR.

Unless there was something fishy going on.

[bernard11]

Payment to an aide. Not the judge.

Aide, or bagman?

[John F. Carr]

I went through a phase of writing "anti-choice" and "anti-life". Activists on both sides annoy me.

[Bwaaah]

He didn't liken anybody to Hitler. He merely pointed out an obvious omission in one of the comments. Anyway, Drackman deserves much more than a Godwin. In fact, he deserves a Hitler Award.

And now you can rightfully award your Godwin.

[Mr. Bumble]

Be sure to get back to us when you find the proof of that, as if it matters.
You sound like one of those guys who always forgot his wallet when it came time for a collection.

[Estragon]

So you are extrapolating from your personal experience but have no actual knowledge. As I said before, I don’t know that what seems normal to you given your lived experience is the standard by which we should be assessing the propriety of judicial conduct.

[Mr. Bumble]

First son or bagman?

[Randal]

You're such a weird guy. That article exactly tracks my description and contradicts yours. So... thanks?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You said Republicans invented the trans bathroom issue and it didn't exist prior to Republicans inventing it.

In the timeline I provided, can you show where the Republicans invented and how the controversy didn't exist prior? Just reference date as bolded in the article that you believe where this invention occurred.

[Randal]

There were early signals like

An amendment removes restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and changing rooms from the proposed changes. The amended ordinance is voted down, 6-5.

But the real fireworks start on November 21, 2015 and especially January 2016:

January 2016: During its winter meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, the Republican National Committee issues a memo that “calls on the Department of Education to rescind its interpretation of Title IX that wrongly includes facility use issues by transgender students”; “encourages state legislatures to recognize that these Obama gender identity policies are a federal governmental overreach”; and “encourages state legislatures to enact laws that protect student privacy and limit the use of restrooms, locker rooms and similar facilities to members of the sex to whom the facility is designated.”

Remember, the ordinance was about...

adding five categories — marital and familial status, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression — to the list of “protected classes” in city ordinances with non-discrimination language. The city already prohibits discrimination, among contractors and in public housing, taxis, and public accommodations such as restrooms, against people on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, and age. Emphasis mine!

[Randal]

Keep in mind this is all before the Charlotte ordinance actually passed, which was Feb 2016.

[M L]

The Charlotte NC ordinance required that men identifying as women be allowed into women's restrooms, shower rooms, bathhouses, and the like. The state HB2 was a response to that. Capiche?

[Randal]

Hm… reduced to just restating your lies followed by “capiche,” huh?

Did you read BCD’s timeline? The Republicans' national bathroom culture war gauntlet was thrown before the Charlotte ordinance (which didn’t even mention bathrooms). Allow me to quote it victoriously again:

January 2016: During its winter meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, the Republican National Committee issues a memo that… “encourages state legislatures to enact laws that protect student privacy and limit the use of restrooms, locker rooms and similar facilities to members of the sex to whom the facility is designated.”

[M L]

That was in response to the same ordinance that Charlotte NC was putting forth since before March 2 2015.

Did you not even read the document you keep referencing?

It explains how, of course, all of this was preceded and kicked off by Obama's 2014 executive diktat trying to make schools allow men into women's changing rooms.

Then it explains how later in 2014, the City began mulling doing the same with a local ordinance. Then,

March 2, 2015: The City Council holds a public hearing in advance of the vote to add the protected classes. It draws 117 people, many of them furious about a specific provision in the proposed language that would allow transgender people to use publicly accessible restrooms according to the gender they identify with.

Check your calendar, March 2015 comes before January 2016. Again did you even read the article?

[Randal]

It draws 117 people, many of them furious about a specific provision in the proposed language that would allow transgender people to use publicly accessible restrooms according to the gender they identify with.

Exactly. A provision which was dropped from the ordinance... and then the ordinance was voted down.

So I'll ask you the same as BCD (who didn't answer): Are you fucking serious?

You think the Democrats' grand opening shot in the bathroom wars was when Charlotte quietly voted against trans rights... twice?!? That's unbelievably ludicrous which is why it's taken me this long to figure out that's even what you're trying to say.

How about those 117 furious Republicans who showed up? That looks like the germ of a culture war. The RNC was like "I think we've got something here" and was issuing national bathroom edicts a few months later. Putting Democrats on defense.

It's all right there in BCD's timeline.

[M L]

Oops, you missed it again. Right there in the timeline. Obama started it with his diktat putting men in women's locker rooms. The left agenda was broadcast from the biggest megaphone from that point on. Charlotte picked up the ball signaling their intentions in 2014. They didn't vote against it twice, or even once. They proposed it, then voted against a watered down version in 2015, because a carveout was put in, due to popular opposition in reaction to this new culture war frontier invented by the left, specifically excepting bathrooms so that women's privacy would be respected. Then in 2016 they passed the real deal forcing property owners to allow men into womens lockers and shower rooms. Are you serious? You must be the slowest commenter here and that's saying a lot.

[Randal]

The 2014 "diktat" had nothing to do with bathrooms. It just said hey, maybe we should include trans people in our nondiscrimination calculus.

Do you disagree with that?

And if you're counting that policy as the initial thing, why bring up Charlotte at all?

It makes no sense.

[Randal]

That doesn’t contradict what I said in the slightest.

Here’s the ordinance. It says nothing about bathrooms. It’s just general nondiscrimination ordinance.

Ordinance No 7056 https://www.charlottenc.gov/files/sharedassets/city/city-government/departments/documents/clerks-office/ordinances/2015-2019/2016/ordinances-2016/february-22-2016.pdf

The previous sex-discrimination law explicitly exempted restrooms. But the new law said nothing about restrooms, and never went into effect. Bathrooms weren’t the point of the ordinance and it may not have even been interpreted by courts to cover them. That controversy was ginned up entirely by Republicans.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

"March 2, 2015: The City Council holds a public hearing in advance of the vote to add the protected classes. It draws 117 people, many of them furious about a specific provision in the proposed language that would allow transgender people to use publicly accessible restrooms according to the gender they identify with. Opponents claim this would allow sexual predators to cite the law to gain access to public bathrooms."

Note the date. Is that before or after the Republicans passed HB2?

[Randal]

There was no such provision. Look at the actual ordinance, I linked it.

I'm not saying that the ordinance wouldn't have had that effect, it's plausible it would depending on how the court read it. But there was no "provision." No explicit language about bathrooms or lockerrooms or anything.

Your article is actually more accurate here. The Republicans at the meeting were complaining about the lack of such language (in the form of an exception to the general nondiscrimination rule).

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why are you refuting the "proposed ordinance" with the "passed ordinance"?

Do you understand those are not the same things?

[Randal]

I thought you thought the “provision” was in the actual ordinance.

So you think this all got started by the Democrats because of a proposed provision in Charlotte that got amended out of an ordinance that didn’t pass?

That’s what you call grasping for straws.

An ordinance not passing should’ve been — and was — a non-event. But the Republicans caught a glimpse of how easily they could rile up their base over hating on trans people and have been running with that ball ever since.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Read the fucking timeline you idiot.

You say this was a whole-cloth invention from the Republicans.

That's provably and irrefutably not true.

HB2 was a reaction to Democrat and Federal machinations. Not an unprovoked invention like you keep insisting.

[M L]

Why does Randal lie so much? Probably a paid shill.

Everyone knows the Charlotte NC ordinance required that men identifying as women be allowed into women's restrooms, shower rooms, bathhouses and similar facilities. This is covered in pretty much every single news story and there is no disagreement about it.

[Randal]

I read the timeline. There aren't any "Democrat and Federal machinations" on it.

The first machination I see is the RNC in January 2016 making bathroom bills part of its national platform.

[Estragon]

I don’t have to prove anything. We are talking about the appearance of impropriety.

I have thrown numerous holiday parties and not once asked anyone for money.

You spend all day on here lobbing content free insults at people and the best you can come up with is I’m cheap? You are truly a pathetic loser.

You sound like someone who doesn’t get invited to a lot of Christmas parties, which—if your real life personality matches your Mr Bumble persona— would make a lot of sense!

[David Nieporent]

I don’t have to prove anything. We are talking about the appearance of impropriety.

There's no appearance of impropriety.

I have thrown numerous holiday parties and not once asked anyone for money.

It's not a personal party. It's a group holding a get together. Just looking at my own Venmo history (which I made private years ago!) and I see dozens of entries when I went out with a group of people, one person paid the tab, and then everyone Venmo'd him their share. Or where there was a parent event of some sort, and everyone who was coming was asked to chip in to cover the costs.

When I went to my high school reunion (quite some time ago — before Venmo), a rich person didn't just decide to host it and cover all the costs; we had to pay our share to attend.

Why are you pretending this is something new?

[Estragon]

You didn’t answer any of my questions from above, because I’m assuming you don’t have personal knowledge of the party in question (feel free to correct me on that point). The truth is you don’t know what went on at that party and neither do I— that’s the problem!

I don’t really see what your personal experience of throwing parties has to do with the instant situation. You know a great way to avoid the appearance of impropriety as a Supreme Court Justice? Pay for you own vacations. Pay for your own airfare. Pay for your own luxury yacht. Pay for your own ward’s tuition. Sell your mothers house in an arms length transaction to a bona fide purchaser for value who you don’t know personally. And pay for your own Christmas parties!

This is one of the nine most powerful people in our political system. So yes, I think they are subject to higher standards than everyone else. The judicial canon of ethics thinks so. So frankly your personal experience of going Dutch on parties and paying to go to high school reunion is not really relevant here, in my mind.

[David Nieporent]

I don’t really see what your personal experience of throwing parties has to do with the instant situation.

Then why did you write, above, "I have thrown numerous holiday parties and not once asked anyone for money"?

[Estragon]

Because bumble said I’m cheap

[Estragon]

And because no matter what you say, I think it’s bizarre to invite someone to a Christmas party and then hit them up for a contribution.

[David Nieporent]

Once again: it's not his Christmas party. He's not hosting some people at his house. It's the past and present clerks having their annual get together.

Do you actually have any friends? Do you ever go out with them? Yes, you could do separate checks, but that's a PITA for the restaurant. Much easier to have one person pay, and then have everyone else Venmo that person their respective share.

[Estragon]

David. They called it “Thomas Christmas party 2019.”

They did not call it “clerk reunion 2019.”

You don’t know who attended this party. I don’t understand your basis for repeatedly insisting this just former clerks splitting the bill at Olive Garden.

[David Nieporent]

I don’t understand your basis for repeatedly insisting this just former clerks splitting the bill at Olive Garden.

Because I know a lot of people who have clerked. (Not for Thomas specifically.) And that's how it works.

(Other than the Olive Garden part. It was probably Applebees. (Do I need a sarcasm emoji here?))

[Nige]

Obviously something needs to be done about how shitty private citizens' pay is.

[Mr. Bumble]

Never complain, never explain.

[BrotherMovesOn]

Thanks, I thought it was reasonably thoughtful.
Fortunately for you, there will never be a Loki13's dog against Bumble CIVPRO exam death match.

[Sarcastr0]

Insider trading is an evil in and of itself.

[Nelson]

Hunter Biden trading on his father's name has nothing to do with Joe Biden.

One reference to an unnamed "big guy" in an email on a laptop that was possessed by a Trump lawyer who was disbarred for making “demonstrably false and misleading statements” isn't even hearsay, let alone evidence.

Much like an aide's Venmo account recording transactions that were most likely reimbursements doesn't have anytbing to do with Clarence Thomas.

When there is a ridiculous assertion being made, I call it ridiculous. You check to see if it's someone you support, then respond based on that. Which is why you cheered when I pointed out the idiocy of the Thomas "scandal" and jeered when I called out the Hunter "scandal".

You don't have principles, you have a team that you're in the tank for.

[Nelson]

Nitpicking is exactly the point. An insignificant payment to an aide isn't even a nit. It's barely an n.

The Crowe stuff is horrible and deeply concerning, but talking about pocket change makes it seem less like actual corruption and more like the latest story by the boy who cried wolf.

For the love of all that's holy, stop making mountains out of molehills. The GOP has done that since Obama took office and look at the moral rot that it has engendered. Watching someone wildly careening all over the road shouldn't make you say, "Hey, you know what? We should drive like that guy!".

Democrats are fucking idiots.

[David Nieporent]

Even setting aside that you confuse lawyers and litigants, What “matter before the court” did Patrick Strawbridge have in December 2019?

[Nelson]

Yeah, you posted the exact same post before. It wasn't pithy then and it hasn't aged well.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Maybe if I obsessively post the same content hundreds of times over several years you’ll grow more tolerant of it?

"it hasn’t aged well"

After Plunkitt has been in his grave almost exactly 100 years, his insights remain as relevant as ever.

Really, your *best* defense of Biden's behavior is to call it honest graft. Trying to say it's not graft at all will only cause regular citizens to laugh themselves into coughing fits.

Or perhaps your best approach is to complain about Republican graft. Propose a gentleman's agreement by which each "team" gets to practice honest graft. Oh, wait, that's *already* the implied agreement we have in place.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Also, Plunkitt is a veritable fountain of wisdom, and I think the only quote I’ve used before was the first paragraph…the Garden of Eden paragraph is one I haven’t previously quoted, as far as I recall.

[David Nieporent]

Really, your *best* defense of Biden’s behavior is to call it honest graft. Trying to say it’s not graft at all will only cause regular citizens to laugh themselves into coughing fits.

"Biden's behavior"?

If you're talking about Hunter, he's a private citizen so it's not graft. If you're talking about Joe, to what "behavior" do you refer?

[Estragon]

Learned hand paid his clerks their departure bonus out of his own pocket. Elena kagan refused a basket of lox from former students. Who is serious about the appearance of impropriety?

[Nelson]

Well played, sir!

[Bwaaah]

Thank you. Thank you. I owe it all to my inspiration, Frank "Hitler-ain't-so-bad-ass" Drackman.

[David Nieporent]

Iowa's Romeo and Juliet law (it's very weird that they're called such, but they are) does not apply to people under age 14; it's inherently rape.

[David Nieporent]

I also don’t agree that “everyone has Christmas parties where you pay your former boss to attend

Why do you keep talking about paying Thomas? Nobody paid Thomas.

[David Nieporent]

"Appearance of impropriety" is not a sword to wield against people when one has no evidence of actual impropriety. Especially when there's no appearance of impropriety.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

You rely on pre-Edisonian methods of illumination.

[Sarcastr0]

Nah he is bad at statistics.

The right comparison controls for education and the like. He knows that hence his bobbled CBO ref.

For white collar work, it’s steady but not particularly high paid. This is not a secret - if your conclusion is people go in for government work for the pay, you’ve taken a wrong turn.

[Sarcastr0]

Once your fancy quote gets called out as a false choice, you got nothin, eh?

You appreciate good rhetoric, but good rhetoric does not an argument make.

[VinniUSMC]

Hunter Biden trading on his father’s name has nothing to do with Joe Biden.

Awfully defensive there. I didn't mention Joe Biden. In reference to "Hunter Biden crap," I wasn't talking about Joe Biden corruption, just Hunter Biden's ... troubles ... being a far cry different than $100 Venmo'd.

you have a team that you’re in the tank for.

Yeah, team "Make Fun of Lefty Shits for Being Stupid Lefty Shits." Like I said, you almost made a good comment, but then you had to go and Lefty Shit all over it. BOAF SIDES!

[Life of Brian]

if your conclusion is people go in for government work for the pay, you’ve taken a wrong turn.

Two things:

1. Pay includes benefits, including generous pension packages that generally aren't available in the private sector anymore.

2. Another soft benefit is the amount of pay vs. the amount of time/effort actually spent working, as your 24x7 postings here (and wherever else) aptly show.

[Sarcastr0]

The government pension hasn’t been generous since the reforms in 1980. You now get a 401k like thing just like most other white collar workers.

I am good at my job, and take great pride in it. Blind ‘are you working every moment’ is a stupid metric. And frankly an inappropriate comment to make.

[Life of Brian]

The government pension hasn’t been generous since the reforms in 1980.

Oh, nonsense. If you idle your days away there for the rest of your career, you'll get about a third of your base pay for life. And that's on top of Social Security.

Blind ‘are you working every moment’ is a stupid metric.

I was more thinking, 'are you working any moment.

And yes, that's an exaggeration. But clearly not much of one.

[Estragon]

So the aide kept all the money? Cmon David.

[David Nieporent]

So the aide kept all the money? Cmon David.

No, the aide spent all the money on the party! Why are you playing dumb? Food (and alcohol, of course) cost money.

[Estragon]

So why not pay for it himself? Hot dogs and beer are cheap. Maybe ginni could chip in with all the money she’s making emailing mark meadows about prison barges or whatever the hell she does all day.

Or are you saying he wanted to have a fancier party than he could really afford, so he had everyone chip in? So this is another example of Thomas feeling entitled to a certain lifestyle but enjoying it off the backs of big law partners, similar to how he felt entitled to a nice vacation to Bali?

[David Nieporent]

What’s “himself”? Why would he pay for former clerks to have a party? What on earth are you talking about? How stupid are you?

"Hey, the clerks are getting together on December 20th at Oliver Garden this year. Everyone who's coming, please chip in $50 to cover your unlimited breadsticks."

[Estragon]

He’s throwing a Christmas party! That’s what they called it! Why doesn’t he pay for food and drink??? It’s his party!!!!!!!!! He was there, wasn’t he?!?

[David Nieporent]

He’s throwing a Christmas party! That’s what they called it! Why doesn’t he pay for food and drink??? It’s his party!!!!!!!!! He was there, wasn’t he?!?

No, it was not his party. It was his clerks' party. He probably stopped by, yes, though that's not actually in the article.

[Estragon]

You keep saying this. What is your basis for believing this? They called it “Thomas Christmas party 2019”

[The Margrave of Azilia]

OK, fine, Biden is a regular Cato, and neither he nor his family benefited from Biden's political position.

[Sarcastr0]

Graft is not something to define so broadly every powerful person is included. That is both formally wrong and functionally useless.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

OK, I'll rewrite the definition to exclude Biden and his family profiting from his office.

[Nige]

If you could provide proof he did, you wouldn't have to.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Did anyone in Joseph Biden’s family get high-paying corporate positions with businesses with an interest in having good relations with the U. S. government? Were the family members, strictly speaking, qualified for those positions by education and experience?

If you admit that the first is true and the second is false, then how would you account for these things in your rosy worldview?

[Nelson]

The fallacy that you are using this time is called a “false choice”.

You should look at the boards of major corporations and nonprofits. It’s mostly connections and name recognition that matter, not knowledge and experience.

They are board members, not workers or company executives at any level. Their subject knowledge wouldn’t change the products one iota.

Having someone with a prominent last name on a board is advantageous for many reasons, especially in recruiting investors and securing financing from lenders.

The assertion that Hunter Biden was on the board in order to directly influence his father is illogical and fallacious. There is literally no evidence to suggest that and, with thousands of corporate boards proving the premise, copious evidence that argues against it.

Unless you think that most corporate boards are engaging in bribery and corruption. Do you?

[David Nieporent]

Did anyone in Joseph Biden’s family get high-paying corporate positions with businesses with an interest in having good relations with the U. S. government?

Every business on the planet has an interest in having good relations with the U.S. government.

[Nige]

It's BCD , what's he going to be, racist but at further length?

[Randal]

I didn't not read it because it was long.

[Nelson]

"I didn’t mention Joe Biden. In reference to “Hunter Biden crap,”

That's what I was referencing, which is obvious given that without his father, no conservative would know who Hunter Biden is.

I live in Delaware and have known Hunter is a sleazy opportunist and general scumbag for a few decades. In fact, I mention it here. Often.

Beau was an amazing man and his death was a tragedy. Hunter dying would make the world a better place.

"Joe Biden corruption"

Really? What corruption is that? And try to answer without using conspiracy theories or unfounded accusations, if you can.

"Like I said, you almost made a good comment"

I made a perfectly good comment. Noting the similarities between the hyperbolic "Clarence Thomas' aide makes Clarence Thomas corrupt" narrative and the hyperbolic "Joe Biden's son makes Joe Biden corrupt" narrative isn't Boaf Sidez. It's pointing out that corruption is about the principals and their behavior, not anyone else.

"then you had to go and Lefty Shit all over it"

You make my point for me, Captain In-The-Tank.

[Nelson]

Whoops, I read that wrong. Sorry, Randal. Carry on with your munchies and jam bands.