Rov_Scam
5hr ago
I think people below are reading too much into this. It's just a coincidence. If the same thing happened in any other city there would be similar explanations.
Rov_Scam
6hr ago
I was specifically referring to the book club episode where he tried to get out of reading Breakfast at Tiffany's by watching the movie.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Um, did you read the case? He was charged with murder, and the District Court dismissed on immunity grounds, and the 9th Circuit, in the opinion you linked, reversed the District Court and allowed the case to proceed. Subsequent to this the en banc 9th Circuit upheld the decision. Horiuchi ultimately wasn't prosecuted, but that's because the successor to the original prosecutor dropped the charges. All of this is irrelevant anyway since Minnesota isn't in the 9th Circuit. There may be other caselaw out there but I haven't seen anything to suggest that a state prosecution would be precluded entirely.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
The last I checked the criminal laws police officers conducting law enforcement operations didn't get any special privileges regarding standards when lethal force is justified, but even assuming they did:
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This lady actually hit me. Not hard enough for it to matter, but she did make contact; there are nor arguments about whether if you look at which way the wheel was pointing you can divine if she was trying to steer towards me or go around or had the car in reverse or whatever.
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She hit me again after I yelled at her for hitting me and putting a kid in danger.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
About ten or twelve years ago I was walking down the street and an older woman pulling out of a bank drive-thru bumped me with her car. Then she bumped me again after I banged on the hood and started yelling. I had a 4-year-old kid walking with me at the time, too. It's good to know I could have shot her in the face three times if I had been strapped.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I get the impression that nothing is going to change since all of the concessions Trump wants apparently have to do with oil. And he's supposedly told the oil companies that if they want their assets back they will have to commit to billions of dollars in additional investment. That's going to be a tough sell, especially since the political situation hasn't changed much in terms of stability. Venezuelan oil is expensive to drill and doesn't sell for much, and with prices low, that kind of investment doesn't make sense. Even if the oil companies want to appease Trump, the banks and insurance companies also have to be on board, and I don't see it happening. Maduro was a bogeyman but he didn't really do much (and he was supposedly offering oil concessions anyway), so it's hard for me to see what taking him out accomplishes. As I said earlier, I don't think this is going to have much salience two months from now.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
I'm guessing that this is one of the endless parade of things that seems like a big deal now that everyone will forget about two months from now. Maduro is out of power, sure. But he wasn't some kind of svengali whose personal leadership was necessary for the Bolivarian regime's survival. If that was anyone, it was Hugo Chavez, and when Chavez died it didn't exactly lead to a sea change in Venezuelan politics. So it will be with Maduro; as Mike Tomlin says, next man up. No different than if some foreign power succeeded in assassinating Trump. No different than how the Cuban regime has been operating for years without anyone named Castro in power.
But of course Trump will pretend otherwise, and in Trump World pretending is as good as being true, especially since the Bolivarian regime wasn't any more of a threat to the US in the past 6 months than it's been for the past 25 years. So sure, go in, remove the guy from power, declare victory, and forget the whole thing happened. We won't have to hear about drug boat strikes and oil tanker impoundments anymore, but we also won't see any sanctions relief, resumption of diplomatic relations, or new American investment. Trump will chalk up a W and his supporters will talk about how he had the balls to do what Biden didn't, but everyone will forget about this by spring. By November, nobody in the US is going to be talking about how much better their life is now that Maduro is out of power, and Republicans aren't even going to bother bringing it up in their campaigns, because they know as well as anyone that no one gives a fuck and that things aren't really that different than they were a year prior.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
The difference is that a video of you as Stalin is obviously a joke. Do you think you would have felt the same if instead they showed a video of you masturbating on a television in the classroom?
Rov_Scam
8d ago
If the best you can come up with is a message board notorious for offensive content and a movie that came out 25 years ago it's safe to say that this isn't part of normal polite discourse, and certainly isn't fun. The guy got a 15 year sentence for a first offense. As part of a plea deal. That alone should tell you how serious the conduct is in terms of degree.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
I don't know what circles you're running in if you hear that joke "all the time", but either way, you're talking about the theoretical sexual abuse of a dog and conflating it with the actual sexual abuse of small children.
Rov_Scam
8d ago
I can understand including some of the more morbid cases weeks when the pickings are slim, but there were three other cases this week. I don't see any need to include this, and, Hentai or no, these facts aren't hilarious. Especially since people like me don't even really know what Hentai is and thus have no frame of reference for what you're talking about.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
No. I think that the president's racism and the racism of most of his supporters is beyond a mere possibility at this point. I'm concerned that, guilty or not, in a free society we shouldn't be targeting criminal investigations based on race, especially when we've already shown a willingness to excuse the exact same behavior when it's done by someone we like.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
The plaintiff’s neurologist is a silly guy. Probably a hired goon.
Yup, and so is the defense neurologist. Treating physicians aren't experts. I mean, they may be in another case, but if they have direct involvement they can only testify to facts. These facts may concern their thought process and what the relevant standard of care was, but the Voice of God is going to come from a hired gun who is being paid to say that the treating physician did nothing wrong.
As for the rest of it, yeah, that's dynamite; I'm sure it will make for good conversation at cocktail parties. You've just given a bunch of arguments that I'm sure sound persuasive to other doctors and to people like those here who aren't doctors but are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt because we have no medical experience of our own. Unfortunately if this goes in front of a jury there's going to be another guy who makes equally persuasive (to them) arguments and of course you're saying that the standard of care was followed because it's your ass on the line and of course the other guy has motivation to say that it wasn't followed and in the end it's all going to come down to... something, but it's hard to predict what. So all that stuff you just laid out is a great argument to make to Plaintiff's counsel, who has done this for a while and knows a thing or two about medicine and juries and you may be able to convince him to settle for less than he otherwise would have, which was going to be nowhere near the tens of millions anyway because that only happens if it actually gets in front of a jury, and no one wants it to get in front of a jury.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
He's an obvious charlatan, but guys like this don't really piss me off that much because they're lack of qualification is so obvious that they can easily be dismissed. What's harder to explain to a non-lawyer is that when an op-ed writer comes with the credentials of "The Frank T. Stottle Professor of Criminal Law at Northwestern University" what it really means is you should give more weight to the analysis of a random second year public defender. What do Larry Tribe and Eugene Volokh have in common? Neither ever practiced law. A look at the Volokh Conspiracy bio page shows a couple of practicing attorneys and a long list of people who entered academia before they were 30. You can say what you want about Ken White's politics or morality or whatever, but at least he's a practicing criminal attorney.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
Those subcultures evidently include the president. He has no problem pardoning fraudsters like Joe Milton, George Santos, and others, relieving them of even the obligation to pay the money back. And when he inevitably pardons the DiBiase brothers a few months from now, exactly zero people will be surprised. But I doubt Nick Shirley or anyone else cares about this, because they're less concerned about fraud than they are the fact that Somalis may be the ones doing it.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
Timmy boy here was her hand-picked choice because he was biddable, and now here's the track record of This Could Have Been Your VP come out to haunt him.
If nothing else, I can agree with you on that one. If the FBI finds significant prosecutable fraud, it will be nothing short of an embarrassment for the entire Democratic Party that the governor wasn't aware that millions or even billions was being stolen from right under his nose. He'd done a pretty good job of catching other Somali fraudsters but there's still no excuse for not catching these ones earlier. The only thing worse would be if it wasn't Somalis (necessarily) but people in DHS itself, people he worked with and trusted who were doing the stealing. It would look especially bad if he publicly praised those who were the masterminds of the crime for getting people off the welfare rolls, when what they were really doing is funneling money that should have gone to the poor to wealthy celebrities, pro athletes, and pet projects. It would look even worse if he claimed he had no idea what was going on and then text messages came out that at least insinuated that he probably had an inkling. And it wouldn't do him any favors if his response to this was to sue the reporter who broke the story for defamation and ask the court to hold her in contempt if she doesn't reveal her sources, creating the distinct possibility that the person who uncovered the scandal would also be the first person to go to jail. Yeah, that would make him look really bad. So bad that I don't know how anyone could vote Democrat after that. Then again, Phil Bryant keeps getting appointed to Trump Administration committees like the FEMA Review Council and the National Assessment of Education Progress, so maybe it wouldn't turn out so bad for him or the party.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
Whether the evidence is sufficient is entirely dependent on whether you think Somalis are Bad People and deserve to have the Feds descend on them and investigate all their wheelings and dealings with an eye towards making heads roll. Of someone goes out next week and produces a similar video involving church based daycares in suburban Dallas, I'm skeptical that the Trump administration would respond with similar vigor, and I suspect we'd hear about how Christians were being railroaded for political purposes.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
Especially when some of the violations are for having more kids than the staff allows for.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I don't see why roll call votes are necessary. Just use an electronic tabulator like they used to poll the audience on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Rov_Scam
11d ago
The laws regarding this sort of thing vary by state, with some states having laws that specifically address it, some not having any but honoring private agreements, and some openly hostile to it. Just to be clear, having lawyers heavily involved doesn't mean one of you gets the guy you used to handle pap's estate to draw something up that you both sign; it means you each consult privately with your own attorneys who have actual experience with donation, surrogacy, etc. In most places it isn't something that's likely to cause problems down the line. But legal concerns are secondary when ethics is on the line. Would you, personally, want to have emanated from a turkey baster and into their world? I the answer is yes and you want kids at a distance, go for it. Otherwise, get that new book on eunuchs, have it with you the next time you see them, and tell them you need more time to think about it.
Rov_Scam
14d ago
Tagging @fmac, @Mantergeistmann, and @JarJarJedi since they've expressed interest in this.
I'm actually familiar with this area as I've been a passholder at the resort for the past 20 years and while I was unaware of the exact situation, maybe I can shed some light on it. The resort is divided into the Front Face, which faces the main lodge and the main parking lot, and the North Face, which faces woods on the opposing mountain. The Front Face was the original part of the resort until it expanded onto the North Face in the 70s and 80s. The North Face is smaller acreage-wise (by a little) but has longer, steeper runs. When I ski here, which is often, we spend most of our time on the North side. This is the opinion of most of the more serious skiers and regulars.
The property in question is at the farthest end of the North Face. You can see the house the guy built from the bend on Lost Girl trail where it starts to head downhill. There's a sketchy shot through the trees you can take to get to the front of the house. We used to take this if there was enough snow because there's a hillside in front that's loaded with powder that nobody ever skis. There's some kind of road we'd ski on or near before heading into the woods. If you kept skiing in the direction of the resort it would pop out in an officially marked glade that would take you back to the lift. I haven't skied this in a while, and they have since put up Keep Out signs. It's a decent little woods shot but usually not worth it.
For the past decade plus we were under two assumptions that are now apparently incorrect. The first was that the house was owned by Pirates owner Bob N?Nutting, who also owned the resort until a few years ago and still owns a lot of nearby real estate and related properties (he still owns the golf course, for example). We were also under the impression that the flat area we skied down to was for parking and the road we were skiing on was the driveway, but apparently this isn't true either, because the photos show the driveway and garage on the uphill side of the house. The upshot of all of this is that the entire area is criss-crossed by roads of varying quality. The road we were skiing was probably an old logging road that isn't maintained by anyone. The road at issue here, Neals Run Rd., is about a lane wide and gravel, and has conspicuous "No Winter Maintenance" signs at the Indian Head terminus.
This surfeit of dirt roads means that my friends and I have spent considerable time riding our gravel bikes in the area. You can ride the entire 70 mile length of Laurel Mountain from Ohiopyle to Johnstown practically without leaving gravel. I few years ago I was toying with the idea of putting a biking guide together for the area and rating gravel roads based on the following criteria:
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A roads are hard-packed gravel roads that are well-traveled and are suitable for passenger vehicles. They are kept clear of brush and maintained regularly. They may be kept clear in the winter. Riding on these is similar to riding on crushed limestone rail trails.
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B roads receive considerably less traffic and may be gated. These are usually traversable by passenger vehicles, though some sections may be tricky or even impassible. High-clearance vehicles will have no problem. They are narrow and are subject to blowdowns and washouts that may take some time to repair. Gravel may be loose. These may include steep sections that have grades in excess of typical standards. Riding on these should not pose problems for gravel bikes, but be prepared to walk some sections. Winter maintenance is unlikely.
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C roads are unmaintained and are always gated. Blowdown is almost never cleared. Some of these roads are marked as hiking trails. They are often overgrown, swampy, eroded, or excessively steep. If maintained in winter, it is as snowmobile or cross-country ski trails. They may be passable to high-clearance 4WD vehicles, though some spots may be tricky even for them. Gravel bikes may find these roads problematic, at least in sections.
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D roads may appear on old maps but are not on current maps and are not gated as they are not formally recognized as passages, though parts of some may have been repurposed into hiking trails. No maintenance is done whatsoever and hiking or biking these is more comparable to cross-country travel than to hiking or gravel riding. Attempting to bike these is not recommended.
I have not personally traveled the length of Neals Run Rd., so I can't be entirely sure of its condition, but based on parts I've seen and the description of it it rates as a B, though the part through the resort would rate as an A since it is maintained for summer access (I have extensive experience with this part). There is a rail trail in Indian Head and a really good gravel network in the vicinity of the resort. Some friends of mine decided to take Neals Run Rd. up the mountain from Indian Head and cut through the resort to access those roads. I wasn't with them, but they told me if I wanted to experience it I'd have to do it by myself because they would not be riding it again. One of these friends is an absolute beast who invites me to ride the kind of thing I've already done and have no desire to ride again, and I'm not averse to doing huge mountain climbs, so for him to come to the conclusion that that ride sucked means something. Needless to say I haven't been eager to see firsthand what he was talking about, though I guess I could ride up a different way and ride it down.
That road is the only legal access to these properties. There are some A roads in the area with no winter maintenance and occasionally cars will get stuck and have to be dug out. I once came across a FedEx truck stuck in a ditch in the absolute middle of nowhere on a road I was XC skiing on because the numbnuts driver blindly followed his GPS. As I went further towards the pavement, I came across the tow truck he called to get him out, which was also stuck. I can only imagine how bad it gets on a B road in winter. It's about 4 road miles and a thousand feet of elevation gain between Indian Head and Seven Springs, and while that isn't out of line for roads in the area, it looks like the ones I've done gain elevation at a more or less consistent rate by climbing the slope, while Neals Run follows the creek into the slope before cutting up and gaining a huge chunk all at once. I'm thinking out load here, so I beg your pardon, but based on the maps it seems like this would be even more treacherous than a typical gravel road in the area.
If you look straight down the hill, though, the lots are only about 1500 feet from Trout Run Rd. This is also a township road that may or may not be subject to an agreement giving the resort exclusive use, but it provides access to the lower lift stations on the North Face and continues for some ways beyond them, and as such is kept clear in the winter. My guess is that the old logging road we skied on, or another nearby road, goes down to Trout Run Rd. across undeveloped resort property and he had the idea that they would let him develop and use this road for accessing the properties. Regardless of whether Trout Run is open to public traffic or not (and it wouldn't surprise me if it were, since there are a few odd lots you can park at if you know how to get to them, and during the summer you can damn near drive all over the resort [when they had a downhill bike park I would park directly under the main lift in what is normally the middle of a ski run]), I doubt they want additional traffic on what is essentially a private access road. Furthermore, I can all but guarantee you that the resort does all the maintenance on this road, and they're loathe to do it for the benefit of third parties.
There's also the additional wrinkle that running ski resorts is expensive, seasonal, and weather-dependent, and in a bid to even out their revenue streams, resorts have increasingly looked towards related businesses. Using the resorts as bike parks in the summer is one example, but the big one is real estate. When Bob Nutting sold 7 Springs to Vail resorts he only sold the ski operations and wisely held on to all the real estate surrounding the resort. Whether Nutting or Vail is in charge, though, neither wants some rich doofus marketing ski-in properties on what is rightfully their land, land that isn't even near the area they've targeted for investment and that they'd prefer to keep in a more natural state. It's also worth mentioning that these would only be ski-in in the loosest definition of the term, as there's no formal access, it may not be open early or late season, and half of the North Face closes at 4 pm year round, limiting its appeal to those who like night skiing. Aside from the few ski-in condos that are formally available on land developed by the resort, there are other resort-developed (they are privately owned but were sold as part of an official development plan) condos that have free shuttle buses for access. There are, of course, totally private vacation homes in the area that are the equivalent of off-campus university housing, but like off-campus housing you have to get to the resort yourself, and this is expected. Advertising these as ski-in is problematic in that it creates the impression that access is greater than it really is, where anyone renting these places would quickly find out that for how close they are to the slopes, much of the time those renting them would have to drive to the resort and park in the lot anyway.
So he sued for abandonment, thinking that if he got a ruling that forced the resort to keep their part of the road open he could use that as leverage to get them to grant him an easement. The traditional argument would be that the resorts control over the road rendered his property landlocked and since there was an existing public road he would be entitled to a right of way. The problem was that his property wasn't landlocked, his access was just inconvenient. The bigger problem is that if the resort shut down, or even closed the North Face, his property would be worth even less than it already was. So it was painfully obvious to the court that he didn't actually want the relief he was seeking, and he had to compensate the resort for the inconvenience.
There is one postscript to this, though, that I feel needs to be mentioned: He got his easement. And in some sense, his plan worked, because the suit essentially forced Seven Springs to grant him one, though he may gotten lucky because of the sale. So it's 2023, and Bob Nutting has sold 7 Springs to Vail Resorts. The suit against Hudock has been decided, and he has to pay $600,000, either in damages or as an appeal bond. The problem is that Hudock doesn't have that kind of cash; the only assets he has are the properties. Now the resort is in a bind because in order to show that they were serious about wanting to collect the damages they have to actually try to collect, lest the tables be turned on them, and they obviously have the means to pay a cash settlement if Hudock sues them for the same thing they just sued him for.
One option would be for them to just put judgment liens against the properties and foreclose if necessary. Unfortunately the properties aren't worth all that much on their own, given that they they were just the subject of litigation concerning how worthless they are without access. The resort can develop the properties themselves and grant access, but now they have to pay for that and also make the necessary improvements, and probably formalize a shuttle/ski-in/better access then telling guests to drive to the public lots. Furthermore, when Nutting sold to Vail he reserved all the real estate development rights for himself and would have no problem suing if Vail started acquiring properties to compete with him. So in 2023, they granted Hudock an easement. He was able to sell the house he built for 1.1 million, which would presumably net him enough money to put up an appeal bond, and in the future he'd be able to sell his lots. The downside is he can no longer enjoy the house for himself, but from a business perspective, it's not a horrible outcome.
Rov_Scam
17d ago
This is pretty par for the course in some places, and it doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the case. In my line of work, most attorneys just file pro forma motions without any particularized arguments. The judge doesn't read them, and nobody except counsel hears the real argument until the hearing, at which point the parties are arguing based on discussions they've had attempting to resolve the issue. The judge will often get some ideas that neither party had and ask to be briefed on the issue before he rules. But from what I can tell he doesn't necessarily buy his own arguments since he ultimately finds them lacking once they've been fleshed out. The SC would probably prefer to rule in an anticipated issue now rather than have it come up later in another case, and it makes sense that they'd give the parties a heads up so they can prepare accordingly. I'd rather they get it right the first time than make bad rulings because procedure says they have to. As a body, they aren't shy about making it clear that they can do whatever they want.
My whole life I had problems with cold hands until about a dozen years ago when I switched to mittens. After that it's been a complete non-issue, even when skiing in -10 F. For boots, just make sure they're reasonably waterproof and not too tight. There's a temptation to load up on socks for extra insulation but this just makes matters worse; the lack of circulation is what kills you. In ski boots I don't really have that option so I just have to live with cold toes and the pain of the circulation returning when I take them off, but getting more comfortable ones would cost money and performance, so I just use boot warmers and deal with the tradeoff. To illustrate how big of a deal having extra space is, last year I went skiing and after several hours outside my feet were freezing. We were tailgating in the parking lot at the end of the day and I changed in to the tennis shoes I drove up in, thin mesh ones that I was sure in the ~20 F weather would let the wind in and make my feet even colder. But once I was moving around in them my feet actually warmed up significantly, at least after the pain of the blood returning had subsided. Now, I'm sure that if I had been out there longer than an hour or so they would have gotten cold, so insulation is still important, but don't make the mistake of loading up on insulation at the expense of breathing room. I'd prioritize the latter over the former if you have to make a choice. Also, modern toe warmers last about 6 hours and aren't expensive.
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