The_Nybbler
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
9hr ago
I would bet it would narrow only a very small bit. And of course the first time it happened the justices would get more security.
The_Nybbler
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11hr ago
The problem is the prosecutor will argue that it was blindingly obvious that (insert bunch of opaque regulations) said Trump had to record it as a campaign expense and not a business expense. The defense will argue that no, (insert different bunch of opaque regulations) said he should have recorded it as a business expense and not a campaign expense. The jury, not being experts on the ins and outs of New York business accounting, will not be able to come to a conclusion on the merits, so it'll just be a matter of who they believe. The prosecution certainly won't admit to any ambiguity.
The_Nybbler
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11hr ago
But manchin will probably not cooperate with replacing an assassinated justice
Sure he would. Why wouldn't he? And what choice would he have anyway?
The_Nybbler
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15hr ago
I’m not even sure reporting an NDA as a legal expense is misreporting it…
It's ambiguous enough that I feel certain that had Trump declared it as a campaign expense, we'd see the exact same case with the prosecution making the claim that no, paying someone to keep quiet should not be recorded as a campaign expense.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
19hr ago
No random person could be in Trump's position vis-a-vis the classified documents, so "every other President in history" is really one of the few reasonable comparisons.
That is, no one who wasn't in high political office could actually receive classified documents in the way that Trump is alleged to.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
21hr ago
If they've detected specific transaction patterns highly predictive of possible mass shootings, why is it wrong to acknowledge that?
This is facile. There is no specific transaction pattern highly predictive of mass shootings, in that it is both selective and specific; there can't be, because there are way too few mass shootings. The way they get "highly predictive" is by reversing the order and noting things like "gee, looks like nearly all mass shooters purchased guns recently", maybe we should check out anyone who buys a gun?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
21hr ago
The guns are never, ever going to go away.
A gun buried in your backyard might as well have gone away. They may eventually do sweeps to gather up the majority of them, but even if they don't, in time you or your children will have forgotten about them.
DIY manufacturing gets easier and more accessible every year
Making guns isn't that hard, for competent machinists (of which fewer and fewer are being produced). Making ammo, on the other hand; as far as I know there's no way to even make firearm brass from non-firearm materials, never mind the chemicals. Smokeless powder requires restricted materials (nitric acid). Primers require restricted materials AND are super-dangerous to manufacture on the sly.
The gun culture has gotten more radical, but with ATF declaring firearm parts to be firearms, they'll start rolling up people soon enough, probably starting with those who post videos on the internet. This will "encourage the others" to keep their mouths shut (lest they get picked up by the feds), and the knowledge will no longer be passed along, and the culture will die.
are doing an excellent job of radicalizing the community as a whole to reject the legitimacy of gun control laws
Well, see, there's the problem. They don't. The community isn't radicalizable. At their base, they think the laws preventing me from getting a gun in New Jersey -- a requirement to be vouched for by 2 unrelated adult residents, and a requirement to produce the name and hospital affiliation of any mental health professional I've ever seen -- are reasonable restrictions if administered by decent people. They may be upset by the time it takes to get things approved or the requirement to get a new set of vouchers for every handgun or shit like that, but basically they don't believe in personal freedom or individual rights because they're not liberals (in the Lockean sense). The "second amendment" people are, but they're a small subset. Most red tribers would be fine if they could be assured they could keep their personal guns.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
21hr ago
They’re not going to simply cower in the corner and do nothing when they believe that the country’s future is in the balance.
Red Tribe will, Blue Tribe won't. For two reasons. One, Red Tribe believes more in the institutions and will yield them rather than engage in a fight that would most likely destroy them. Two, Red Tribe learned what happened when it does more than cower in the corner on January 6, whereas Blue Tribe has been learning the opposite lesson since the '60s.
The_Nybbler
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1d ago
Prison is a place there's literally nothing to do but play social dominance games. Trump would probably do fine if he didn't get killed learning the ropes.
The_Nybbler
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1d ago
But there was never any announcement of an end to the epidemic. For all I know, it might still be going on!
https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/wild_animals.html
It is! It got much worse, and now it's back down to 1982 levels.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1d ago
The Bureaucracy is losing the fight on gun control, and they are losing it permanently.
Certainly they are not. There have been some Supreme Court decisions, but the blue states just ignore or even defy ("Spirit of Aloha", "No Second Amendment in New York State") them. And with Rahimi the Court is poised to neuter Bruen. ATF is getting shirty (and shooty) with gun dealers again, not to mention classifying every L-shaped piece of metal a firearm. In New Jersey I still can't buy a gun or carry one if I had one. And even in Virginia, didn't they pass a bunch of new gun control?
Abbott did beat them on the border, I was wrong there. But that's a tiny light in a sea of darkness.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1d ago
We are actually in a much better situation, against a much less ruthless enemy. We have not yet begun to fight, metaphorically or literally.
And you never will.
There is no rational basis for despair in the current situation.
Your enemy holds the bureaucracy. They hold the media. They hold the vast majority of the corporations. They hold an even more complete majority of educational institutions. They hold Federal law enforcement and state law enforcement in many states. And of course all big city law enforcement. Your tribe has paths for exit but no paths for entrance -- you may birth more young people but they end up rejecting you under the influence of the institutions. Immigrants may not join the other tribe but they vote for their party, and so do their children.
And most of your tribe respects all of those institutions despite their obvious capture. They can cynically ignore all the rules, all the laws, everything, to go after one of yours, and when the verdict comes in, your tribe will accept it. Ask Alex Jones or Rudy Giuliani. When Trump is duly convicted in New York Kangaroo Court, a large number of your people will say "Well, the jury had more information than I do, so he must be guilty" or similar rationalizations to trust the institutions. Because the very idea that the institutions are utterly corrupt and should be defied is anti-conservative.
That is the rational basis for despair.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1d ago
The US military seems kind of big on following a chain of command which ultimately ends with the president.
They pre-emptively refused to quell the Floyd Riots, and that was before the COVID purges.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1d ago
The Republicans would rather lose forever than tear apart the country that way.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1d ago
The use of the classified cover sheets in that photo does many things
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It provides a lot more visual impact than just classified documents with markings.
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It gives the impression that it would be obvious to anyone who casually looked in the box that it had classified documents. This is important because "knowingly" is an element of some of the charges.
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It effectively substitutes the FBI's CLAIM that the documents were classified for the actual evidence of classification.
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Since the classification markings on the pre-printed cover sheets didn't have to match those on the documents, it provided the impression that the documents had perhaps a higher classification level than they did. For instance, the NPR story claimed one of the cover sheets said "UP TO HCS-P/SI/TK", leading them to believe Trump had documents related to HUMINT. I thought at the time this was odd, you don't put "UP TO" on your caveats. But it makes perfect sense for a placeholder that might be used for a wide range of documents you might find. And given that, there might well have been no HUMINT at all; the placeholder is not evidence.
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Since the narrative accompanying the photo in court filings did not reveal that the cover sheets were added by the FBI, it constitutes an attempt to prejudice and/or mislead the court (as well as the public)
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
Last I heard, the fights over schooling worked out okay for Republicans.
Nope. As soon as the trans stuff disappeared from the headlines, the voters promptly forgot and voted the same school board right back in.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
Departments will tend towards policies that let them do it, like stacking all the product in one spot. But does that make the drug bust illegitimate?
If the gold-plated guns were actually props (not recovered in the bust), it at least risks poisoning the jury pool. And that photo wasn't actually just a publicity photo -- it was included in a court filing by the Justice Department, so it also IMO constitutes an attempt to prejudice the court.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
The part you're forgetting is that if Ford has to insure against all those accidents then the driver doesn't. The up front cost to the consumer may be more, but it's effectively prepaying an insurance policy that lasts the life of the vehicle.
Yes, but I claim the per-accident cost for Ford will be more because liability is not limited to policy limits + net worth of driver, and because plaintiff's attorneys and juries will know this. (Not to mention adverse selection of bad drivers into Fords, but that doesn't apply to the self-driving case)
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
If you regulate mass-produced end-user consumer goods, you will destroy the culture of innovation in that sector, yes. But that's what you want, you've said so yourself; you explicitly want to change the culture of the outgroup you have that consists of software people who refuse to color within the lines.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
If Ford was fully liable for any accident in which a driver of a Ford vehicle was found at fault, but this did not apply to any other vehicles, how much more do you think Ford vehicles would cost than all those other vehicles to cover that liability? I expect it would be at least an order of magnitude; being involved in an accident with a Ford vehicle would be a potential lottery-winner (regardless of who was at fault, and that's often muddy). And I think that's true even if from some nonexistent objective observer's POV, the Ford driver was never actually at fault.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
In case there's any question left about the press's lack of objectivity, the CNN article you cited -- article, not editorial, not column -- contains this bit:
The move by Cannon is a significant win for the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee. The proceeding will give Trump and his attorneys a platform to air unfounded theories about the prosecution, including the accusation that it is politically motivated.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
Ok, I think we've made progress. It is literally impossible for the culture to bother taking the most basic steps to make the billions of devices on our networks not trivially hackable without causing some folks like you to shut down and stop being open to new ideas.
No, it's literally impossible to make a regulatory culture without shutting down new ideas. Perhaps there's some other way to get the result, but you can't have a culture with both properties. Once you put the commissars in place, initiative declines sharply, and that's unavoidable.
I guess we'll find out.
We've already found out in other areas. We just refuse to learn the lesson.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
No, you're asking for an impossibility. You can't have one culture which is both open to new ideas and dedicated to checking boxes.
No, people like a strong horse, not a dead horse. If Trump is assassinated, the Democrats think "good!" (and we probably have a few stories celebrating it, including on major media though those will be quickly toned down) and the Trump base is demoralized, leading to a Biden landslide.
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