Rov_Scam
2mo ago
The defense has to be proportional to the threat; deadly force can only be used if the perpetrator has a reasonable threat of death or serious bodily injury (serious usually meaning permanent disability, not a black eye). Based on the information available, if he hadn't been shot and were arrested instead, the charge would have probably been something like misdemeanor battery, which wouldn't usually even merit jail time. If the facts come out that the guy were being wailed on, he may have a good defense, but if it's a mere scuffle as described in the article, it's a long shot that should get pled down. This may seem unfair, but for public policy reasons the state prefers that scuffles don't escalate to shootings.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
This is the thing that people who complain about Adobe's effective monopoly on creative software don't understand. Ignore the fact that most Adobe products have advanced features that the competition can't keep up with; it's not important. What is important is that, for all its complexity, Photoshop is easy to use for someone who has never used it before. The basic functions are intuitive. And if you learn how to do something more advanced, the program is structured in a way that you also learn the underlying logic behind how it's set up so that the next time you try to do something similar it will be easy to understand what you're doing.
Then look at an atrocity like Gimp. It's ugly, the basic stuff is intuitive enough but try to do anything beyond that and it's like pulling teeth. It owes its existence to an army of volunteers whose lone motivation is that they think software should be free. And that's pretty much where it ends; as long as they can make a product that looks enough like Photoshop to fool people who don't actually use Photoshop for anything serious, they'll always have an army of Linux fanboys who will whinge about Microsoft's OS dominance and point to Gimp as a perfectly acceptable alternative. And if you dare point out its shortcomings (which indeed are many), then you'll get scolded for not understanding that they don't have Adobe money and who cares what it looks like as long as it works and if it doesn't work then did you really need that feature enough to pay $10/month for it?
What they don't understand is that Adobe doesn't make its money on selling software to people who use it to make internet memes. Its customer base is people who actually use it for a living, and have to stare at the thing all day and don't have the time to deal with a janky workflow. I'm not even one of those people but even as a hobbyist I don't want to spend my leisure time dealing with the frustrations of crappy software. If you want your product to gain market share you have to give people a reason to use it, and "It's free" isn't a reason for people to use it if they're using it for business purposes — the up-front cost might be zero, but that doesn't account for the additional time spent using it and the loss in quality. Doing nothing is also technically free.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
is mostly a choice. No one has to pull the pin.
Exactly. Which is why if you make a conscious effort to take care of yourself, you don't have to worry about being past-ripe. You can't do anything about the receding hairline, but as a balding guy, that's honestly not a big deal. I look much better with a #1 buzz than I ever did with hair, and the upkeep is much simpler. Not exactly a "make hay" story but there was this girl who turned me down in middle school who I hadn't paid much attention to in high school and completely lost contact with afterward. When I was about 24 I was in my local neighborhood dive bar and I hear my name and turn to face an unfamiliar blimp. She said her name and I was completely speechless. She looked like a shipping hazard. She told me I looked different (I had long-ish hair at the time) and I was tempted to say "speak for yourself" but wisely held my tongue. Not that a middle school girlfriend would have turned into a lifelong steady, or that 24 is the age when this happens, but man, the possibility is always there, and I felt like I had somehow dodged a bullet a decade earlier.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
I can only comment about the Pittsburgh beer scene, but for the purposes of this post I'm going to assume that it's similar to elsewhere, though the brewpub craze started a little earlier here than it did elsewhere. In 2005 there were only 4 breweries in Pittsburgh. One was Iron City, which is the local mass-market beer that competes with Miller, etc. One was Penn, which is larger than most micros and is terrible. There was Church Brew Works, which had the novelty of being in a church and also made terrible beer, and East End, which was relatively new but only slightly less terrible than the other 2 micros. In the 2010s a lot more micros started popping up, and most of them, like Hitchhiker and Voodoo, were heavy on the IPAs. The reason for this is that good beer is expensive to make and IPAs are the most forgiving; if something goes wrong there's less likelihood of having to deep six the whole batch. Now there are something like 78 breweries in the Pittsburgh area and while most are terrible, there are actually a few decent ones. Towards the latter part of the 2010s and into the 2020s, somebody realized that a lot of beer drinkers simply don't like IPAs and if they could make a decent lager or kolsch then somebody would drink it. Also, if your area is at a point of brewpub saturation then you can't get business by simply being the only game in town. As a result of this, most places, both here and elsewhere, seem to have diversified their offerings to a point that I wouldn't say there's any particular trend right now.
Sours and goses have certainly gained market share (I first had one at Allegheny City Brewing in 2016), but, much like IPAs, they're polarizing. I think part of the IPA trend has to do with the fact that most mass-market beers are under-hopped and people felt superior saying they liked something that was totally in the opposite direction, even if it was so bitter it blew out your taste buds to the point that you couldn't taste anything else. I would also note that there seemed to be a trend in wheat beers starting around 2006. Anyway, one trend I've noticed in recent years is the Hazy IPA (also called a New England IPA, though I was in Vermont last year and didn't see it on any menus). It gets its name because it's unfiltered and looks cloudier than most beers. It's similar to an IPA but has a lower alcohol content and is much less bitter, and has fruity, usually citrusy, undertones. But that's just one example. Any brewpub that's small enough that the to-go options are limited will usually have something that's a sort of house specialty and a few other things that are worth trying. It's usually a good idea to go when they aren't that busy; the bartenders in these places love beer and are very helpful about pointing you in the direction of something you'll like.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
As a resident of the same state as @FiveHourMarathon, I'm going to have to semi-agree on gambling. As a resident of the western part of the state, though, I might be able to add some additional perspective. In 2001 West Virginia legalized traditional slot and video poker machines at racetracks. "Video lottery machines" had been legal at racetracks for some time, but they weren't particularly popular. Now that they had traditional slot machines, these tracks began constructing large casinos around them. 2 of the 4 racetracks in the state happen to be in the Northern Panhandle, practically an exurb of Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania had been talking about legalizing gambling for a while, most notably through various riverboat gambling proposals in the '90s, but these never went anywhere. It soon became obvious that everyone was simply driving to West Virginia to play slots, and local news outlets regularly did stories where they'd go to Mountaineer or Wheeling Island and point to all the PA plates in the parking lot and interview the owners, who invariably said that they'd go to casinos in their home state if they were only legal. Whatever their objections were before, state lawmakers couldn't ignore the amount of money that PA residents were taking to West Virginia, and the push was renewed.
One thing lawmakers were initially cautious about, however, was that they didn't want to actually become West Virginia. Once slots were legalized, a number of sketchy "hot spots" started opening up around the state. These were usually bars, tobacco shops, and the like that had a room with 4 or 5 slot machines. Gambling wasn't merely legal there, but unavoidable, and Pennsylvania didn't want the state to have casinos popping up everywhere. So gaming licenses were initially limited to existing racetracks and four stand-alone casinos, one of which had to go in Pittsburgh and two of which had to go in Philadelphia. (It should be noted that at the time, Pittsburgh was effectively getting two casinos, as The Meadows racetrack is less than an hour south, and there was no comparable facility in the Philadelphia area at the time.) The gaming commission was also going through a comprehensive review process to ensure that only the best candidates were awarded licenses. They also announced that the casinos would have table games, at which point the same news stations went back to West Virginia and interviewed their resident casino patrons, who invariably said that they would drive to Pittsburgh (or The Meadows) to play them. West Virginia soon amended their law accordingly.
The system actually worked pretty well for about a decade. Then, the US Supreme Court ruled that sports betting could be legalized in any state. PA legislators rushed back to Harrisburg in the wake of the decision. But while they were there they did a couple of other things. They also legalized online gaming, removed restrictions on resort licenses (around a while but always a minor player), and created a new category of "mini-casinos". I was always in favor of legalized gambling, but this just seems like a bridge too far. I know that going to a casino is no real barrier for a true gambling addict, but there's something disconcerting about the idea that you can blow your life's savings while lying in bed. As another user noted, legalized sports betting has made sports media even more unbearable than it already was.
I play in a couple fantasy football leagues, but I've always found fantasy sports programming useless at best and agonizing at worst (I can only care so much about the fantasy performance of players who aren't on my team, and there's nothing more annoying than watching a game for one guy). Now we've added betting programming to that, and it's become almost completely impossible. Does anybody watch sports purely for pleasure anymore? Some people's lives are apparently so boring that they need to gamble on games they wouldn't otherwise care about to make watching them more interesting. I have a slightly different perspective. Last Friday, I found myself watching the Eagles Packers game with two guys who had parlayed the spread with a bunch of prop bets. Normally I wouldn't care who won, but after listening to the vocal commentary about every play, ref call, etc. that had any impact on their wager, I became very invested in these guys losing their shirts.
Anyway, the situation in PA got even worse after various courts ruled that certain games that I don't entirely understand are actually skill games and thus exempt from gaming laws. I doubt these games involve skill to the extent that one can get good enough at them to win consistently, but they've been popping up in seedy convenience stores all over the state. There are also these virtual horse racing and football game things that I've seen in family friendly bar/restaurant type places, but I don't really understand these either. In 20 years we've gone from the lottery, illegal slots in dive bars, and the small stakes stuff that's allowed in private clubs to gambling seemingly being everywhere. You can't get through a news broadcast now without them playing an annoying ad for Rivers online where a jingle that sounds suspiciously like the diarrhea song from elementary school literally boasts that their app allows you to gamble while lying in bed.
The other thing @FiveHourMarathon mentioned that I might as well address while I'm here is aging. I'm a few years older than him and, honestly, make hay while the sun shines is bad advice. Most women who age terribly tend to do so in their late 20s or maybe early 30s. If they make it any longer they're usually stable for the long haul. I'd rather pick one up on the safe side of the divide than marry a girl right out of college without knowing that this nubile cutie has a ticking time bomb hidden away, that all of the sudden she's going to bloat out into something grotesque, like an self-inflating raft from which the pin has been yanked.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
The em dash is probably one of the most misunderstood punctuation marks. It works well when a comma is too weak but a colon or set of parentheses is too strong. It puts a nice pause in the text — and it is underused in professional writing.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
the relevant category he belongs to is “black wide receivers in NFL” — before I look it up, would you kindly tell me if you think this category commits more crimes or fewer crimes than the average American?
Well, did you look it up? I'm not going to go through the criminal history of every black NFL wide receiver, but back in 2010 SI did a roundup of wide receivers with legal problems, and identified 6 (plus Chad Johnson, who didn't have any legal issues at the time other than being a diva, and Plaxico Burress, who wasn't in the league, and Marvin Harrison, who was investigated but never charged). Antonio Bryant wasn't on the list but I know he had legal problems while at Pitt so I'll include him, too. There were 178 receivers in the NFL in 2009. I didn't tease out the white receivers but there were so few of them that they didn't make a statistical difference. That gets us to a ballpark estimate of 4% of NFL receivers who have been arrested, at least in 2009. Considering the estimates of all Americans with a criminal record range from 30%–40%, I'd say that NFL receivers commit significantly fewer crimes than the average American. I'm sure there were receivers in 2009 with criminal records I didn't know about, but I doubt it's 10 times more. If you actually have statistics on this, I'm all ears.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
During the video it sounds like the cop says 6 over at one point, and according to an article I read Hill admitted to doing 55 in a 40 zone, which seems bad but is really only the bare minimum to attract attention, especially considering that he was on a 4 lane road. To put this into context, on I-78 outside of Pittsburgh state police will regularly do "crackdowns" where they're only pulling over people doing at least 80 in a 55. Either way, he wasn't charged with speeding, but Careless Driving, which is code for he was weaving in and out of traffic and probably going a little too fast. I got one of these myself once for making an abrupt lane change when I realized I was about to head up the wrong exit ramp. Not exactly something they normally impound the car over.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
There's a video on Youtube somewhere of Steven Pinker giving a lecture in the UK while on a book tour and during the Q&A one guy in the audience used the limited amount of time to tell Mr. Pinker how well-received his writing was. One can only assume that this guy's writing was complete shit.
I wasn't suggesting they'd ever consider benching Hurts for Pickett. The way he was playing made it look like he was eventually going to get injured.
Edit - If you think having a black QB is bad, try having a black coach. Tomlin haters not only call for his firing on an annual basis, regardless of what the team does, but also refuse to give him credit for his successes which include winning a Super Bowl. This is discounted because it was allegedly done "with Cowher's players", as though there's no GM or front office involved. Never mind that the team was 8–8 Cowher's last year. Never mind that literally every coach who won a Stanley Cup with the Penguins had less time with the team than Tomlin. This is logically contradictory with the other criticism they have, which is that the teams with Bell and AB should have done more. Isn't that admitting that the guy can put a team together? So either he's a bad team assembler or he's a bad game day coach. I could excuse this as just general sports fan stupidity but, in person, they always have to bring up that he was only hired so Dan Rooney could "walk the walk" when it came to his rule. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that they think the Steelers would have been better had they hired the other leading candidate, Russ Grimm, who, as far as I know, was never considered for a head coaching position after that.
The other thing they like to bring up is that winning seasons don't matter if you don't go anywhere in the playoffs. They may have a point, but I suspect this is influenced by how long it's been since we've seen a truly dreadful season. If we were to start going 6–11 every year they'd long for the days when Tomlin was coach and there was at least a reason to watch. A couple years ago I actually did an analysis where I looked at every NFL head coach since Tomlin was hired and, giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt, graded every one as either better, the same, or clearly worse. 7 were arguably better, 10 were about the same, and 80 were unarguably worse. Some of those guys were obvious mistakes, but most of them were guys with good resumes who fans were excited about. Suggesting Tomlin should be fired after a winning season is one of the stupidest sports takes out there, and at least half of the people making the argument don't even pretend that it isn't because he's black.
One final dumb criticism that's always brought up is his lack of a coaching tree, as though this matters. The only one of his assistants this even applies to is Matt Canada — he inherited Bruce Arians and Dick LeBeau, Todd Haley had been a head coach previously, Keith Butler retired (and was in the organization longer than Tomlin), and Randy Fichtner would have stayed with the team if they hadn't been mesmerized by Canada. And if Arthur Smith coaches elsewhere he won't count as part of Tomlin's tree, either. It's a dumb argument anyway.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
She's not a crank herself, but she has the reputation of one among normie suburbanites who only hear about her media heel turn. The people I know who supported her in 2020 were all the kind of lefties who expressed support for Ron Paul in 2008. Fair or not, that's the reputation she has, and I don't think her endorsement of Trump moves the needle very much, if at all, considering those same lefty supporters I was referring to tend to despise Trump.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
They were snubbed for a reason. Trump getting their endorsement may get them part of the crank vote, but at the same time it labels them the party of cranks. If you look at the numbers, Biden won Pennsylvania in 2016 by winning over a lot of Democratic "legacy voters", mostly white working and lower class voters in rural areas, particularly in the western part of the state. Trump actually did even better among these voters in 2020, but he lost the state anyway, as his antics alienated suburbanites who typically voted Republican; Biden gained 80,000 votes in Allegheny and Montgomery counties alone, which is more or less the margin of victory. An endorsement from Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, Jr. does nothing to get you these voters, and, if anything it turns them off even more. Especially in light of the fact that a guy like RFK is well left of the Democrats on most matters, but is given a pass by Republicans because he hopped on their anti-vaccine bandwagon. Acting like this does anything to move the needle is acting similarly about Harris getting Dick Cheney's endorsement.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Also, false alarm, the eagles are undefeated, despite their best efforts.
They are, but good God, if Hurts is going to play like that then you guys better get used to the idea of Kenny Pickett starting.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
The entire state’s elections wouldn’t vanish overnight because the non-severability provision would also apply to the part of the comprehensive election reform law that repealed the prior election law.
I specifically said that they repealed it in a separate bill.
The statement that courts ignore severability is also absolutely wild, considering severability questions have been a major part of many Supreme Court cases (which is relevant, considering your example related to Congress). I’m not going to go trawling for more, but off the top of my head, this was the case for the NFIB case upholding Obamacare and the Reno case that effectively created the modern Internet by invalidating almost all of the Communications Decency Act.
I'm not going to regurgitate it here, but Stilip v. Commonwealth (905 A.2d 918, 970) goes into an extensive analysis of why courts aren't required to strictly interpret clauses relating to severability. It basically boils down to a separation of powers issue: The legislature can't dictate to courts how they will analyze a case. They can provide such statements to demonstrate intent, but that's as far as it goes. The US Supreme Court ruled similarly, IIRC, in a case where the statute said that the court would use strict scrutiny as the standard of review, and the court basically said that you can't legislate the standard of review. The cases you reference are just examples where the court applied severability provisions. There's no conclusive ruling stating that courts are strictly bound by that language when deciding severability questions.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Professional football prognosticators seem to be more fickle than normal lately. The Eagles had a bad end to the season but I'm not going to throw them under the bus and say that a season and a half (plus the improved season before that) was all a lucky fluke just because of a half-dozen games. The Gnats are terrible. The Commanders get hyped every year but never seem to go anywhere. That leaves the Eagles and the Cowboys, and the Cowboys will probably choke. At the very least, they don't deserve to win anything. For some reason their fans hate Dak. Everyone keeps saying Zeke is washed, but he's still better than the guy backing him up. They have a good defense, but Micah Parsons is unhappy. I don't know what to make of this. The Eagles have as good a chance as they do.
I'm going to ping @Walterodim so I can consolidate my responses here. I have Josh Allen as my dynasty league QB so I'm totally biased, and I've always liked the Bills. I have a theory about QBs like Allen and Mahomes; when you combine guys this good with really good coaching, it doesn't matter who the receivers are. In a sense this is the ideal play because they can't just shadow your top guy all day. Tom Brady won all of his Super Bowls in such a system — everyone forgets this, but the only wideout to ever make the Pro Bowl on a Patriots Super Bowl team was Troy Brown in 2001 (and that was his only Pro Bowl). Randy Moss and Wes Welker had better careers, but neither won a Super Bowl. The Bills' defensive injuries are more of a concern but it seems like they always have a ton of defensive injuries. Speaking of the Patriots, they're in a rebuild and are expecting to be so bad that they're easing Drake Maye into the QB role even though he's obviously better than Brissett. The Dolphins are the kind of team with an "explosive" offense that wins games by hanging a ton of points on shitty teams. But they can't beat anyone good. Their defense relies on the offense keeping them off the field. As for the Jets, it's all hype. The offense assumes a 76-year-old Aaron Rogers will be back in hall-of-fame condition after being injured for a year. I predict he gets injured again and we get to see Tyrod Taylor. Their defense boils down to "we have Sauce Gardner", and they can't stop the run. Breece Hall is good, but so was Travis Henry. Bills win this division easily.
Pinging @Hoffmeister25. The only thing the Chargers have going for them is that they're clearly better than the Raiders and Broncos, so they should coast to an easy second place finish. If two things are certain it's that Jim Harbaugh will run the ball, and J.K. Dobbins will get injured, so be ready to see a lot of the Gus Bus. The Jags briefly looked like they had their act together, but that remains to be seen. The Texans should easily win this division, but their only two years removed from being the second worst team in the league, and as a Jags fan you should know what that means. Hell, as a Chargers fan you should know what early hype combined with limited success can lead to. Granted, the Texans looked more put-together last year than the Jags or the Chargers ever did, but I'm not about to crown them kings of the division, either. The Colts could also pose a problem, but I'm not a fan of overhyped QBs like Anthony Richardson and Michael Pittman, Jr. always underperforms expectations in fantasy, so I'm rooting to see Joe Fluke-O lose another wild card game. The Titans are an interesting story. They deserve to lose for tearing down a stadium that isn't that old to build a taxpayer-funded dome in a city with mild weather. They also have a history of disrespecting the Terrible Towel, and their best season in the past 20 years was with Kerry Collins at quarterback. Honestly, this division could go in any direction.
And now for my Steelers. Over the offseason, they took the bold step of replacing the frustration of a mediocre quarterback with the frustration of two mediocre quarterbacks. As they can't help but repeat in every broadcast, Mike Tomlin has never had a losing season. Every year some edgy sportswriter picks them to go 5–12 or some bullshit without realizing that that isn't possible. No matter how dire things seem, if there's one thing the Steelers are capable of it's battling back from a terrible season to have a chance to make the playoffs with a Steelers win AND a Jaguars loss, AND a Chargers loss, AND a Browns–Bengals tie, only for every leg of this impossible parlay to happen except the part where the Steelers beat the 2–14 Texans. Or, alternatively, they make the playoffs but are so outclassed they lose 45–15. After experiencing two Super Bowl wins I have resigned myself to this fate. But the sportswriters are still idiots; this team is better in every dimension than they were last year, but they're predicted to do worse. Some of this has to do with the brutal schedule, but they have one of the best defenses in the league and everyone forgets that last year they were 7–4 after Thanksgiving despite not scoring any points and would have easily cruised into the playoffs if it weren't for three fabulous weeks of Mitch Trubisky. The idea that Russell Wilson and Justin Fields can be written off entirely after a combined three minutes of preseason play is absurd. Seriously, there's absolutely no correlation between the preseason and regular season so commentators just need to stop acting like there is.
The division is interesting. The Ravens are clearly the best team, but the Steelers should have no problem beating them twice so long as Lamar stays healthy. I used to like Joe Burrow but I lost all respect for him when he showed up to the Super Bowl in that horrible suit (and had to wear it to the press conference since he forgot to bring anything else). Supposedly he's oblivious to fashion so he lets Ja'Marr Chase pick his clothes for him. Most people know that there are certain clothes that white guys can't pull off. Unfortunately, "most people" does not include stylish black guys, who tend to uncritically assume that their approach works for everybody. When Ryan Fitzpatrick showed up at a press conference wearing DeSean Jackson's clothes everybody in the press laughed because they knew it was obviously a joke. No one laughs about Burrow's sartorial choices because they know he's oblivious and it would just hurt his feelings. Anyway, they have a questionable running game and their defense might be worse than the Chargers. These are the kinds of teams the Steelers beat easily since they can't stay competitive unless they score 500 points. The Browns are always the Browns. I'll admit that they have a good defense. But DeSean Watson is terrible enough that they signed ALL the quarterbacks. Nick Chubb won't be his old self coming off of injury and will be worse than Jerome Ford was in his last game before Chubb came back, but not so much worse that they can make Ford the starter. These defensive battles are tossups so the Steelers should split this with them. You can throw darts at a board for the rest of the games because some bullshit always happens.
Prediction: They enter divisional play in last place with a 3–6 record against a shit schedule and everyone starts talking about how the schedule is so tough (all divisional plus Eagles and Chiefs) that there's no way they can possibly come back and Tomlin needs to go, etc. This whole affair involves repeated benchings of both Wilson and Fields and at least one disastrous Kyle Allen start. And then they sign Ryan Tannehill because he knows the "Arthur Smith offense" and they win 7 of their last 8 thorough some combination of the following: Injuries to opposing QBs who aren't Lamar Jackson, fluke plays, missed field goals, questionable penalties, TJ Watt fumble recoveries for TD, Minkah pick-6s, the Eagles starting Kenny Pickett, and at least one Calvin Austin jet sweep. They will then lose to the Browns in the first round of the playoffs in a game so badly played it's nearly unwatchable.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
You're allowed to have ties. You just can't be surprised when someone wants to look into them. Russia may not be our enemy, but our relationship with the Putin government circa 2016 wasn't the best.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
That's how indictments (and civil complaints) work. They list a bunch of facts and then allege that the fact pattern means that the person broke the law (or committed a civil wrong). They don't have to include every detail or spell out every implication. They aren't the last word in the evidence that's going to be presented at trial, either. All that's necessary is that they state enough facts that a jury can make a reasonable inference that the alleged acts were violated, and they've done that.
The listing of "travel benefits", "events to tickets" and "salted ducks" as instances of kickback is particularly odd.
Lol, you're obviously younger than me. Before they cracked down on that sort of thing, event tickets was one of the biggest kickback schemes around. Why do you think corporate luxury boxes became so popular? When I was a kid if there was anything I wanted to go to there was always a chance my uncle (who was a facilities manager for a downtown skyscraper) could get them from a vendor. When I was in high school my friend's dad was in sales and he bought like a dozen tickets to every show at a local concert venue to give to customers. There were always a few shows a year no one wanted tickets to so a whole bunch of us would go. The ethics people started cracking down on that so the new thing became trips. If a vendor wanted to make sales he'd invite his customers to, say, an all-expenses paid hunting trip at a ranch in Wyoming. Ostensibly to talk business. This was soon cracked-down on and most companies started limiting their purchasing agents to gifts under $100, which has been steadily revised downward to the point where anything more than a fruit basket is prohibited. For a while, there was still and old school of purchasing agents who pretty much wouldn't do business with anyone who didn't give kickbacks, and were kind of flummoxed when the new generation of vendors didn't have anything to offer because 90% of their customer base wasn't allowed to accept anything, and the new generation of purchasing agents never knew of a world where that was even conceivable. This wasn't really that long ago (within the past 20 years), so it's understandable that stuff like this is still considered a red flag.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
All I'm asking is if you're willing to make the tradeoff yourself. Would you, personally, prefer to take the status of the woman in this arrangement? Would you marry a woman if, under no uncertain terms, she told you she wanted to have a lot of kids but you would have to give up your career to stay home with them? At the very least, it would eliminate the risk of any workplace fatalities, and no family court would award the woman primary custody in this situation.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
what about hilllary and the uranium one stuff or anyone that was part of the hillary campaign.
Um, the Justice Department spent 2 years investigating this. I don't remember anyone on the left saying they shouldn't; hell, even Trump seemed like he forgot about it by the time it wrapped up. Of course, no one cares about an investigation into a private citizen.
but don't worry spygate was a conspiracy according to wikipedia
Why would I care about Wikipedia's assessment of the issue?
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Do you seriously not know, or are you just looking for me to name the usual suspects so you can tell me why they were totally railroaded and did nothing wrong, or at least why they weren't Russian agents? Because that's not my argument. I'm not saying that there was any Trump–Russia connection, or that Trump himself did anything his critics accused him of, simply that the information available at the time warranted opening an investigation. If we had a tradition of strict standards regarding these kinds of things I could understand arguments to the contrary, but the Republicans had just spend 2 and a half years looking into Obama's comments after the Benghazi attack. The fact that people who seemed passionate about that at the time couldn't even adequately explain to me what the scandal even was tells you all you need to know. If anyone wants to investigate the New York State government further for possible CCP influence, I'm not going to complain.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
If you read the entire indictment, it looks like there was a sort of quid pro quo going on. Sun's husband met with Chinese government officials who facilitated his business exporting seafood from the United States to China. They earned millions of dollars from this business, which they didn't report on tax forms and laundered into the United States through purchases of real estate and luxury cars. There were also a series of lower-level gifts like covering travel to China and giving them event tickets. In return, she was basically doing the Chinese government's bidding to the extent that her position allowed. She was regularly meeting with Chinese officials and keeping them abreast of her actions.
These are things a politician's chief of staff does, & it's not like she did it in secret and gave no reasons why it's not in the interest of the governor to e.g. have those meetings.
That's certainly a defense. But, "My actions were totally in the interest of New York State and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars my husband's business earned after meeting with Chinese government officials or the thousands of dollars of gifts and travel compensation I got and didn't include on my ethics report" may not play particularly well with a jury.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
If the Trump–Russia allegations were limited to Manafort and only Manafort, then you might have an argument. But there were several more people in Trump's circle who were indicted in connection with the Mueller investigation, and several more who were implicated due to having ties with Russia but committed no actual crimes. There ended up not being any fire, but there sure was a lot of smoke; it's certainly unusual for so many people in a presidential campaign to have connections to a country the US isn't exactly on great terms with. Combine that with Trump making statements about Russia that weren't exactly in line with what anyone on either side of the political aisle was saying at the time, and suspicion is understandable. If there were evidence that the conduct in question went beyond Sun and deeper into the Governor's office, I would expect there to be an investigation.
otherwise, frankly, I would have to chalk such a position up to pure partisanship.
I don't think Democrats have any qualms about hanging even more shit on Andrew Cuomo.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
They don't need to be spread out over the city, necessarily. The number of homeless in Allegheny County has halved in the past 15 years, but the problem is much more salient now than it was then. In 2009 there were certainly bums on the streets but most of the actual encampments were in the interstitial places that nobody sees or even thinks about. You had to go out of your way to find them, and into places that nobody had any reason to go. In the past few years they have taken up residence along our riverfront bike trails, including the GAP, which is a major attraction. People complain about being harassed and having to dodge needles and stray dogs. If the city would simply dismantle two encampments (which are tiny compared to what I read about in other cities) and keep the trails clear, the bums will eventually go back to the places that draw the least attention. The local news isn't going to do a story involving citizen complaints about a homeless encampment on an abandoned triangle of land between a rail yard and a highway embankment.
If you read my recent post on the South Side, you'd remember that I mentioned a spare of shootings in 2021 and 2022. I didn't get into it then, but almost everyone they arrested pled self defense. These were all groups of black kids who got into altercations outside of nightclubs, and their claims of self defense were much stronger than this guy's. Sometimes they were the result of scuffles similar to the one described here. By your logic, these shooters weren't threats to public safety, but a legitimate response to dangerous situations.
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