gAlienLifeform

gAlienLifeform , 11 months ago

Yes, but also fuck the society that allowed this to go on for long enough to be fatal and allows children to go hungry and homeless every single day. We shouldn’t allow dumbass or drug addicted or mentally ill or whatever parents to be a death sentence for their children.

gAlienLifeform OP , 1 year ago

I imagine there are at least some Adams voters out there who thought a “law and order” candidate would be totally different this time because he was black

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Meanwhile, how much federal government money is being handed over by Biden’s Education Department to the state of Florida so they have the resources to keep telling students slavery was actually a good thing for black people?

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

When it’s just you and one other person, an argument going in to debating over the meaning of individuals words usually is an avoidable dead end (like, if they insist on calling it to-mah-toe who cares, and if they insist on calling it “the Ukraine” it’s the “you aren’t actually getting anywhere” scenario you described), but when the whole argument is about how you each get to present this issue to a third party (i.e. voters) it’s a totally different situation and semantics is actually kind of the whole ball game.

Also, this isn’t just individual word choice, this is like a “theoretical degree in physics” level of misleading rephrase

The original language seeks to assure access to abortion through what is called viability, when the fetus is able to survive outside the womb. It states, “abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability,” but not in cases where a treating physician deems the procedure necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.

LaRose’s summary turned that section on its head. It now says the amendment would “always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician’s determination” the life and health exception applies.

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Really captures the horror and despair of having seen Basic Instinct 2

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

That’s a dormant commerce clause case; creating a whole ass agency like the FDA is about as un-dormant as Congress can be and should make this a whole different thing

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Has the FDA ever tried to challenge those though?

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Noooo, you can’t be mad, you need to read what he’s saying!

[The same old tired ass debunked a million times transphobic bullshit]

A take that hardly anyone would disagree with.

Yeah, disagreed.

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

I feel like trans people and their allies should know who their enemies are and what they’re saying and doing, if only for their own safety.

It is infuriating, and its not the reasoned and insightful conversations about our personally held systems of normative values and the experience and empirical evidence that informs them that I wish we were having instead of these conversations, but I just think it’s irresponsible to turn a blind eye to it because ignoring it won’t make it go away and could let it fester and spread.

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

[the following was judiciously paraphrased]

Earnest young Republican activist: “So a lot of my classmates at college say the Republican party doesn’t care about climate change, I know that’s a lot of fake news, but could you tell them that you’re taking this issue seriously?”

DeSantis: “This is a woke media trap! Fox news is part of the woke media!”

[Unintelligible yelling]

Ramaswamy: “Environmental regulations are smothering our economy like a wet blanket, which incidentally is also what I’m secretly hoping increased humidity in the global climate does to all you fucking rubes in the next 20 years while I chill out in my bunker and totally don’t get backstabbed by my body guards.”

[More unintelligible yelling]

Christie: “Vivek Ramaswamy is brown and has a funny last name, just like Barack Obama!”

[Even more unintelligible yelling]

[Unclear]: “You’re being paid off!” [Different voice, still unclear who]: “No you’re being paid off!”

Earnest young Republican activist [internally, off camera]: “♪ Hello darkness my old friend ♪”

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

So I do still believe Christie was doing a racism there and should be called out for it (like, anybody who talks about their last name is Barack Obama now? Just taking that piece of rhetoric off the table puts non-white and second generation immigrant candidates at a big disadvantage), but I just discovered that one of the extra psychopathic Republican lawmakers apparently made this same argument last night and now I feel dirty, so I’m just gonna say fuck everyone on that debate stage, edit in a joke a Ramaswamy’s expense to make it more clear that I think he’s a piece of shit too and call it a day

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Nobody in their right mind would vote for anyone on that debate stage

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Guy who writes a song bitching about obese people on welfare is both stupid and an asshole, shouldn’t be a surprise

Holt said that it’s typical for political movements to latch onto cultural artifacts like music or movies to broaden their reach. But in this case, Holt warned that the individuals seizing on the song may lead unsuspecting audiences into their extremist spheres.

Among the early online boosters of the song were Matt Walsh, a far-right commentator who has fanned anti-LGBTQ sentiment. Walsh posted the song to his X account, to 1 million views. Jack Posobiec, a rightwing activist who promoted the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory and has documented ties with white nationalists, shared it on his X account to more than 5 million views.

Not an accident, the song’s author apparently thinks Jewish people did 9/11

Also, on the subject of this song being “breakout/viral” - how hard is it to manipulate streaming numbers? Harder than buying palettes of right wing political screeds to get them onto best seller charts? Because that’s definitely happened before and it’s all the same people involved here

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Incumbent Republicans have been running on “Washington DC is terrible and everyone there is a horrible crook” messaging for decades, their voters “know” it’s not them the song is talking about (“know” in quotes because there’s no textual basis for that belief and the literal lyrics of the song taken out of context could be describing Mitch McConnell or whoever, but Republicans have never let pesky facts get in the way of a good hate and they’re not about to start here)

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Technically, they just say that a Wagner linked Telegram channel said it got shot down. They’re probably waiting for better proof/additional sources before they take the full step of saying it was shot down themselves (at which point I think it’d get added to the headline).

gAlienLifeform OP , 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago)

The grand jury issuing a report happened a few weeks ago (and for a different set of cases), the judge declaring a mistrial happened a few days ago. They’re separate things, but related because in both instances it’s the same set of police officers being caught screwing up in both cases.

Also, a few small details about grand juries in general (this can vary from district to district and state to state, but this is generally true),

It’s my understanding that a grand jury is convened prior to indictment myand consulted as a step to strengthen the prosecution of a case.

Not exactly. In theory, Grand Juries are actually supposed to be an additional restraint on prosecutors. Before prosecutors can publicly announce serious charges they’ve got to convince a grand jury to give them an indictment. That’s not as hard as getting a petit jury to hand out a guilty plea because a) the grand jury usually doesn’t need to be unanimous, b) the grand jury usually only listens to the prosecutor and doesn’t hear from the potential defendant’s attorney, but in theory at least requiring a Grand Jury’s approval is a way to keep prosecutors from indicting whoever they want just to jam them up to.

The grand jury chooses to indict

Not exactly. The grand jury hears the prosecutor’s evidence and arguments and then issues a report (like, search the term “grand jury report” and you’ll see a bunch of them from all over the place) that will say something like, “we authorize you to issue an indictment against Mr. Bill for violating state statute 101 like you asked for, we don’t authorize you to issue an indictment against Mr Bill for violating state statute 102 like you asked for, and we also authorize you to issue an indictment against Mr Bill for violating state statute 103 which you didn’t ask for but seems like it fits here. We will explain our reasons below.”

(Incidentally, it’s irrelevant here, but they only give the prosecutor permission to issue an indictment, issuing it and withdrawing it are all choices the prosecutor still gets to make (a lot of times a grand jury report authorizing an indictment is just what a prosecutor needs to show Mr Bill to get Mr Bill to testify against Mr Bob and Mr Bill gets to plead to something less than what the grand jury authorized in exchange for his cooperation)).

Since the jury is just made up of average people, who writes the report?

The average people do, albeit usually with a lot of assistance from court clerks when it comes to formatting and organizing evidence and things like that.

You might be asking yourself, “So how do these average people know the difference between state statute 101, 102, and 103 and what’s supposed to apply to which situation?” Mostly, that’s something the prosecutor explains to them (which is maybe part of the reason it’s been said that a good prosecutors could get a grand jury to let them indict a ham sandwich), but they are also supposed to use their own eyes and layperson common sense, so if a majority of them say something like, “the statute says ‘serious bodily harm,’ and we just don’t think the victim’s injuries were serious enough to be called that” then that prosecutor just doesn’t get the indictment they were asking for.

(I think there are also some jurisdictions where the grand jury can ask a judge questions, and in basically all of them the judge can jump in if the prosecutor starts just making stuff up, but generally the prosecutor gets to tell the GJ mostly whatever they want to).

e; Phrasing things with clarity so they can be understood is a task I struggle with on occasion and sometimes need multiple attempts to do halfway good because legal nonsense make brain hurt

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

They also killed a civilian in this incident

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

I mean, I’ve heard this terminology in this context before (e.g. “civilian review boards”), but I absolutely agree with your first sentence

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Lot of typewriter repair jobs got ended by the advent of computers but we didn’t let that stop us, we shouldn’t protect obvious economic inefficiencies like this just to reward already affluent people

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

“I know my job makes the world a worse place and my boss treats me like trash, I wish I could just quit and pursue my own dreams, but I need health insurance!”

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

The federal government has proposed ways to reform prior authorization that would require insurance companies to provide more transparency about denials and to speed up their response times.

So insurance companies can keep doing the same bullshit, they just need to send you more meaningless fine print about it more quickly. Gee, thanks Biden administration.

If finalized, those federal changes [wouldn’t ] be implemented [until] 2026.

Ok, I already said my sarcastic “thanks,” you can stop making it worse now.

But even then, the rules would apply only to some categories of health insurance, including Medicare, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid plans, but not employer-sponsored health plans. That means roughly half of all Americans wouldn’t benefit from the changes.

Ffs

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Welcome to the American corrections system, abuses like this and worse happen every day and we just don’t normally hear about them because the defendants aren’t famous like this one is

“For example, in 2019, guards force fed a Hindu man in ICE detention who went on hunger strike to protest the failure to provide vegan meals to him and other Hindus in detention.”

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

i don’t relish the idea of keeping people in cages

I’m personally of the opinion that it’s sadly necessary sometimes, but we definitely overuse it and it’s always a tragedy when things get to the point where it’s necessary.

Regardless of my opinion though, if you’re interested in this you should probably check out this bit from a textbook on criminal law talking about the theoretical justifications for punishment because lots of people have thought and written lots about this and you may as well pick up the terminology they tend to use.

e; also, these are the arguments you’re going to run into (pretty sure I see deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation theories in this thread)

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

This article isn’t really addressing the mechanism for punishment, just the reasons why we do it. Like, whether it’s a couple of brothers or a taxpayer funded bureaucratic prison system, if we’re punishing someone just because we think they deserve it it’s retribution.

Beyond that, I feel like what you just described is actually just a step backwards from where we’re at currently. Like, why should people who aren’t privileged enough to have brothers not get the same kind of justice as people who do?

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

Understandable. When I said “pick up the terminology” I meant in the sense of having the right words to search to find the academic articles in favor of against.

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

To be fair, it’s hard to guide your kids’ behavior when they hate your guts because you’re an asshole

gAlienLifeform , 1 year ago

There’s a lot of people way ahead of you on the whole “committing war crimes in response to climate change” thing