Youtube comments of possumverde (@possumverde).

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  53. The argument in Roe v Wade wasn't really sound. Somewhat like the current roster (only in the other direction), SCOTUS '73 had already decided they were going to legalize abortion before the case even got there. In their hurry to get it done, they literally just looked for an argument that seemed legit and ran with it. They happened to pick one of the weakest... It only stayed on the books so long because no justices were interested in going through the madness that would come if they overturned it. Even the late Justice Ginsberg warned people that the original argument was not sound and would be overturned eventually. No one listened. If all people are interested in for the time being is simply getting rid of the bans (rather than acheiving a direct right to abortion,) challenging the state bans (at least up to 24 weeks) on the grounds that they violate the 13th amendment's protection against involuntary servitude is the best way to approach it. There are hundreds if not thousands of rulings from many levels of our courts where a woman carrying and giving birth are considered a form of work (she gets the final say because she's the one who will have to do the work of carrying and giving birth style arguments.) If it's work then the 13th applies. If the 13th applies, the 10th amendment can't and SCOTUS no longer has constitutional grounds to send the issue to the states. SCOTUS might still overrule that argument, but they'll likely have to pull their rebuttal directly from their backsides to do so. At that point, it will be clear to all that they are ruling based on personal/political/religious reasons not the constitution...and that will be the end of what little legitimacy SCOTUS has left. I doubt they're delusional or arrogant enough to destroy the court's integrity any more than they already have. Well...maybe Thomas.
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  156. They reached the summit an hour ahead of what they had planned and decided to go looking for waterfalls, though they had been advised not to. (They both had extensive search histories concerning the location of said waterfalls in the week leading up to their disappearance, but assured those who warned them not to look for them that they wouldn't... but they did end up with around two extra hours they weren't expecting to have by reaching the summit early...) The gullies they photographed themselves in were not all along their original path and have since been identified. As has the dirt trail they were on a week later. What most likely happened was that they realized they weren't going to be able ro make it back to the summit (and thus the only path back to town) before it got dark and were going to have to spend the night on the mountain. In that gully area, the only cleared ground suitable for setting up any sort of makeshift camp would be one of the gullies themselves. They made their first attempts to contact help around an hour before dark which makes sense. The temperature was in the mid to upper 50's at night, and they were in shorts and tee shirts, so they would have wanted shelter. The debris formations they took pictures of themselves in front of would have seemed ideal for that. Such gullies are dangerous (especially before the rainy season is fully under way) since blockages can form and hold back water, leading to a very strong surge with debris down the mountain when the blockage gives. It likely rained that night, and they got hit by such a surge with nowhere to go inside the debris tunnel they were in. I've seen such surges, and they would definitely have been injured to some degree and washed along for a bit. Had one or both been carried to where the incline steepened, it would have led to significant injuries and no viable way back up. They would have had to travel down the gully, which would have taken them to the river. There, they would have had water, but nowhere to really go (especially if one or more were injured) and would likely have decided to wait and hope a boat would go by (highly unlikely), or searchers would find them. You can go quite a while without food, but after about a week, you'd be pretty desperate. The dirt path they were on in their week later photos has since been identified via drone, and when you see it, things start to make sense. It ran along a gully and from the bottom likely looked like it went all the way up. It didn't. About halfway up, it essentially ran into a wall of dense foliage with nowhere to go. That would have been the last of their energy and the point at which at least one was likely to more or less give up. They probably went back down the mountain to their water source to wait for help, one died, and the other was too weak to make it for much longer. The only way back up would have been a gully, and by then, there was likely a good bit of water flowing down, so the survivor would have had no options. Nature took care of things from there. The concerned looks on their faces in some of the gully photos were likely the result of their realizing they weren't going to get back in time but might as well take the pictures since that's what got them into the mess in the first place. While the night photos were likely just them using the flash as a flashlight. The head photo makes sense if you have an injured half starved person going up an incline with the person behind them taking periodic pictures to see where they were going. A stumble and fall would bring the person behind down as well, and a photo could easily have been snapped in the process. The photos aimed upwards were probably an attempt to signal a drug plane heard but not seen (as they run without lights) which regularly fly over that area at night. (Somewhere down there, there's probably such a pilot who saw those flashes but can't say anything about it because then they would have to explain why they were flying over that area at night with no flight plan registered anywhere.) The physical evidence all makes sense as remains and items will get washed into the river during the rainy season. Also, the people in the village were not informed of the missing hikers until quite a while afterward and their stories as to where the evidence was found and it's initial condition were different depending on which villager was asked. They had probably already found the stuff, cleaned it, and were using some of it when they found out, and just threw it all back together to turn it in. The phones and camera were damaged and not in working condition with quite a bit of garbled data on them. The investigators were simply able to retrieve some of the data from them. The oddities of missing photos etc. could easily be explained by that. The "famous" missing photo had a registry entry but no trace of the actual image file. That can happen from a glitch. The investigators merely said that the only way it could have manually been removed was via PC, not that it had been removed so. Anyone smart enough to remove the image file would have purged the registry entry as well and attempted to adjust the numbering to completely cover it... or just destroyed the camera (and phones) to make sure there was no evidence to begin with. The foot in the shoe is perfectly natural when it comes to human remains. Shoes slow the decomp process down which leads to the feet eventually falling off. Shoes are somewhat buoyant, so if they end up in the water, they'll travel along. The "sun bleached" bones were most likely not truly or fully sun bleached. A couple of species of the last stage decomp beetles in the area excrete phosphates as they do their work. Such phosphates easily and quickly leech into the bone and turn it very white (they even have a slight glow in the dark for a bit after prolonged exposure to sunlight.) I think that covers most of the "mystery."
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  197. supercoolguy43 "It's undoubtedly the most well known betrayal in history." correction...It's undoubtedly the most well known betrayal story in history. (and even that's arguable if you include the tales etc. from all of the world's various cultures...) "They didn't say that he was the messiah or that he had mystical magic powers..." It doesn't matter what claims they chose to leave out if, like the Judas betrayal legend, the only source behind it is the bible...a notoriously poor source of reliable historical accounts... Also, You probably shouldn't get as cocky as you seem to be when stating that the existence of the biblical Jesus is a fact...There's very little independent contemporary evidence to support such a claim to begin with and none to support any of the various sayings and deeds attributed to him...At best, the existence of someone named Jesus who was executed and was considered by a small cult at the time to be a "messiah" is all that can really be supported by contemporary non-biblical sources...That is far from "proof" of the biblical Jesus... "No wonder nobody likes Atheists" It's better to be disliked than blatantly dishonest...edit: Though technically, your statement doesn't apply to me as I consider myself an agnostic since I don't rule out the existence of some form of "god" just those who have have had certain traits, deeds, etc. attributed to them by their followers which don't match reality...which currently happens to include all of man's various gods throughout our recorded history...but a smart ass statement just begs for an equally smart ass reply...though unlike your statement, the reply is actually true...
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  267. You should probably fix the title. The US investigators say that the data "suggests" that it was intentional. That conclusion is not the only one that the data can support. A failed horizontal stabilizer stuck at it's maximum is capable of causing the same flight behavior. In fact, it has already done so at least once in the past. From the point that Alaska Airlines flight 261's stabilizer completely failed (a partial failure had earlier occurred) it did pretty much the same thing the Chinese flight did. It went into a near complete vertical dive, managed to level out briefly at low altitude, then went into a final fatal dive shortly afterward.It's flight data could even be interpreted as pilot input since the failure caused the yokes to be pulled forward and nearly impossible to budge. Datawise, it would be difficult to distinguish between a pilot pushing or mechanical forces pulling on the yokes. While this crash was most likely a murder/suicide, it would be nice to see the information concerning the horizontal stabilizers condition as well as hear the CVR before reaching a final conclusion (the latter likely being impossible since China claimed it was too damaged and so far none of the investigations have mentioned cockpit conversations as part of their evidence.) At the risk of sounding like a loony conspiracy theorist, the US investigators do actually have a potential motive to push the suicide angle. That being protecting Boeing from potential lawsuits, stock losses, etc. Their stocks have already climbed as a result of this initial conclusion but would likely fall if it turned out to be mechanical in nature. with lawsuits to follow in the end.
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  509. They did a decent job of hiding behind their past reputation but It probably should have been expected since their military kept many of the Soviet army's flaws but got rid of their "fixes." One example is the role of Commissars. Due to heavy reliance on conscripts and brutal, civilian unfriendly tactics, major morale issues are an intrinsic problem. Especially with ground forces. Without Commissars up front cracking the whip, Russian high command has to do it instead and thus make themselves vulnerable to attack. That's why they've been losing generals like they have. Losing Commissars back in the day probably raised troop morale briefly. Losing generals however, only tends to make it worse. Also, while government corruption has always been an issue, the Soviets were at least smart enough not to steal from the military to the point that very little maintenance could be afforded and did a good job of keeping things simple and easy to operate. Modern Russian equipment/vehicle designs are often very complex with too many unnecessary weapons systems stuffed into them. Complexity means high maintenance and when the vast majority of military funding is ending up in private bank accounts, proper maintenance does not get done. Thus their armor and aircraft are constantly breaking down which leads to even more morale loss and lessened combat effectiveness. At least now the illusion has been dispelled and countries on a more equal footing with them know that the Russian military is of no real concern other than the potential use of nukes and their use is highly unlikely. Putin may think them viable but his generals know it would be suicide and would most likely end him before they'd allow him to end Russia out of petty spite.
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  658. ​ @suspicious241  Texas v White wouldn't survive modern review (assuming an honest SCOTUS who base their decision on the Constitution and not their own personal/political agendas...which is a pretty big assumption these days sadly.) The Chief Justice at the time had been a fairly high ranking member of Lincoln's administration and a few of the other Justices had ties to it as well. On top of that clear conflict of interest, for a lot of it's "stronger" points, the opinion relied fairly heavily upon the original "Articles of Confederation" which no longer existed in a legal sense rather than what was actually said during the Constitutional Convention which produced it's replacement (letters like those you mention shoule have little to no legal standing either unless their views were brought up and agreed upon during the convention... they weren't.) Comically, even their interpretation of the AoC was/is sus as it was claimed that the term "perpetual union" included within it meant no state could leave when common usage of "perpetual" in legal contracts at the time simply meant there was no built in time limit on the agreement. It would last indefinitely unless one or more parties sought to alter/end it (SCOTUS justices would have been very familiar with that usage as they had made prior rulings where they defined it as such in their opinions.) Had they focused on what was argued during the Constitutional Convention, they would have found that the issue was intentionally left unaddressed because enough states balked at the idea that once in they could never leave to prevent reaching the nine state ratifications needed for the Constiturtion to take effect. It was understood at the time that it's absence meant the 10th amendment would apply leaving it up to the individual state to decide and it was intended that Congress would address it at some later date once the government officially existed. They never did... and still haven't. As an aside, one of the most obvious "tells" that secession was likely legal came from how the government handled charges against Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders. A little known fact (at least in modern times) is that prior to the states leaving, Davis was considered one of the foremost experts of Constitutional law in DC (and not just by his own party.) As a result, his seeing secession as being legal would have given others good reason to believe it was. That was further evidenced by the fact that the government dropped all charges against him and others he represented as soon as his case was on it's way to SCOTUS. It was feared by many that given the opportunity to make his legal arguments on the matter before SCOTUS, they very well might be forced to agree with him. In other words, they purposefully denied him his "day in court." His argument can be found in the book he wrote later however and having read it (the legal argument part anyway...as the rest is a bit too propogandalike for me to stomach), I can see why they didn't want to risk it. It's far stronger than those eventually made in Texas v White.
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  988. Abortion is the act of terminating a pregnancy (generally via medical procedure.) Any other meaning assigned to it is simply one's personal belief and thus subjective. As such, those meanings have no place in any legal argument involving the subject. While the issues of paternity and any obligations that may come with it are legitimate, they are a matter for civil law to address, not criminal. The latter being the issue at hand here. As for whether or not it should be a state issue, that's where it get's a bit tricky. The argument used in Roe v Wade isn't very sound legally (even the late Justice Ginsburg disagreed with it's reasoning...though not that abortion should be illegal at the state or federal level.) However, there are other potential interpretations to be made in favor of it being a protected right under the existing constitution. Some of which at least deserve consideration before defaulting to the 10th amendment. That's where the problem with what SCOTUS is doing here comes into play. By addressing it via the use of the "shadow docket" as opposed to hearing new arguments, they are essentially overturning a previous ruling concerning constitutional rights arbitrarily. That is not how SCOTUS was intended to operate. The "shadow docket" is really only meant for use in time sensitive matters like emergency injunctions etc. There is no reason to consider the issue of abortion rights as being an immediate emergency. Roe v Wade has been around for ~50 years now. If a new interpretation were so important that it has to be made immediately, then it should/would have long since been addressed. That said, much of the blame should fall on pro-choice members of Congress over the last ~50 years for not taking action to cement abortion rights directly into the constitution. For some reason such members along with a great deal of their constituents, apparently seem to think that it's SCOTUS who "cements" laws. It's not. SCOTUS merely interprets existing law in terms of it's constitutionality. Congress is responsible for writing them. By not addressing things directly via legislature, they leave SCOTUS very little to work with. The less they have to work with, the more fragile and arbitrary their interpretations will be. Give them more direct in depth laws to work with and their rulings become much stronger and thus more binding.
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  1277.  @Uller1967   At the time (and to this day) there was/is nothing in the Constitution that addresses secession / states leaving in any way. It was left out because it was one of the few issues they couldn't get enough delegates to agree on originally. Over the 80+ years between the creation of the country and the civil war, every state threatened to secede over something at least once. Not once did anyone argue that it wasn't legal. It was assumed that, since there were no powers concerning the issue delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, the 10th amendment put the issue in the hands of the state governments. Also, though not often mentioned, before secession, Jefferson Davis was considered to be one of the foremost Constitutional law experts in Congress. If he didn't think secession was illegal, there's a strong chance that it wasn't. That is bolstered by the fact that once his treason case was about to go to SCOTUS, the federal government dropped all charges against him and other ex-Confederates out of concern that when Davis made his arguments, SCOTUS might be forced to agree with him. All in all, the argument that it was legal is much stronger than that claiming it wasn't. Currently, the only precedent concerning it is the later SCOTUS decision in Texas vs White which (indirectly) saw it as not being legal. However, the argument given there would not survive modern judicial review. The fact that the Chief Justice at the time had been the Secretary of the Treasury under Lincoln's administration and at least two of the other justices had ties to said administration as well (and all justices were from northern states) doesn't exactly help it's legitimacy either. As for the Forts being federal property...A great deal of British property was seized and held with no recompense during and following the Revolutionary War because it was located in USA territory. That alone makes the "Union property" argument seem a bit...weak. However, if that really was a problem, Lincoln's administration and Congress could have simply offered to sell them to the states they were located in. Many, including Fort Sumter, were never actually completed prior to the war due to lack of funding. The Union dumping them off for whatever they could get would have gotten them off the books and lessened the tension which would have been mutually benefitial.
    4
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  1312. When are people going to wake up and recognize this obvious (and utterly incompetent) attempt to frame this guy? An FBI "expert" was only able to narrow the make and model of the car down to three years (2011-2013) when there are shade tree mechanics out there who could watch a 2 second clip filmed with a potato and nail the exact year...and then said "expert" extends it by an additional three years (2011-2016) once they realize the person investigators have decided is guilty actually drove a 2015 model... They act like their cell phone ping location can pinpoint where he was when given the low cell tower density in the area, the realistic accuracy of that method can only narrow it down to within a mile at best. Then, rather than get the suspect's DNA from his own garbage, they go for his dad's instead. A method far less accurate (and easier to fudge.) They find a bloody footprint weeks after the crime (when the public were on their asses to get results) that no one noticed the first time. The "surviving witness" was so terrified that they described themselves as freezing like a deer in the headlights then fleeing to their room in such a panic that they couldn't be bothered to call the police or check on their upstairs neighbors for nearly eight hours and yet they remember "bushy eyebrows" and other descriptors that sound like they wete reciting a list given to them by investigators describing their targetted patsy... and to top it all off, they allow someone they "know" is the killer to leave the state when they supposedly had so much evidence on him they could have gotten an arrest warrant easily. Come on people, hold these incompetent and dishonest investigators accountable for botching the investigation and make them quit this nonsense and go out and find the real killer. Though they've likely done such a thorough job of botching things, they'll never be able to figure out who really did it...
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  1342. Irish Druidess There are scientific aspects involved (mostly mathematical / statistical)...but there will always be too much subjectivity involved for the "social sciences" to ever be true science...It's inherent and there's no way around it...There will always be an irrational emotional component involved...be it in the methodology or in the analysis of the data...an excellent analogy would be poker...It can be approached mathematically, generally with some limited success, but it can't ever be a science for the same reason the social sciences will never be...the emotional aspect...at some point, people (even those who know better) will choose to fold (or stay in) in a situation where the maths tell them to do otherwise...based on...a hunch / read (or whatever name the individual gives to what is essentially an unfounded assumption)...such behavior is to be expected due to our being emotional creatures...we will bend and break reality and engage in ridiculously faulty reasoning if we have a strong enough emotional investment in a particular issue... When emotional bias manages to weasel it's way into the true sciences (and it unfortunately does on occasion) there's a name for it...bad science...thus...as the emotional component is an inherent part of the "social sciences," the highest level they can ever hope to achieve is that of...bad science...better they not claim to be science at all and retain what little dignity / integrity each of the various fields have left...which isn't much these days...
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  1583. You rarely saw it in the past because only moderate to severe cases tended to get reported/diagnosed. Mild cases are very common and most people will have it multiple times throughout their lives and never even know it. The symptoms of mild cases are easily mistaken for more mundane ailments like heartburn, stress, etc. and don't tend to persist for very long. The reason it seems more common now is that (thanks to all the vaccine side effect hoopla) many people who get vaxxed begin actively looking for any little sign of a problem. When they inevitably stumble upon the various existing aches and pains etc. which they had grown used to over time and thus ignored, they immediately tie them to the vaccine and seek medical attention. The end result being things like mild cases of myocarditis, which would otherwise have gone unnoticed, now getting dianosed. The vast majority of the cases supposedly tied to vaccines are of the mild variety and were often only noticed not because they were reported by patients, but because doctors are now looking for myocarditis among the vaxxed even if no symptoms are immediately evident. Something they never used to do. Interestingly, when you compare the level of moderate to severe myocarditis cases among those vaxxed to past data (which only really consisted of such cases) a funny thing happens. They're more or less in the expected range. In other words, there likely isn't much, if any of an increase in myocarditis among the vaxxed. It's just that many mild cases that would have gone undiagnosed in the past are now being diagnosed and included in comparisons to past data when they shouldn't be.
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  1751. I think it's situational. I had an old Camaro I was rebuilding slowly over a couple of years. I finally got it running and took it out to test it a few times. Finally, I got a cruiser behind me who I could tell was going to blue light me and I was trying to figure out what I did wrong. Right before he hit the lights it occurred to me that I hadn't taken care of the registration (over a year out of date.) He pulls me over and before he gets to the car I remember than I hadn't put it on my insurance either (required in my state.) He asked if I knew why he pulled me over, I just said registration. He acted surprised that I admitted it and asked me for proof of insurance. I was immediately honest which I could tell did catch him by surprise. We talked for a bit about why and he said he appreciated the honesty. When he came back from running my license he told me he wasn't going to ticket me for the registration (and to go take care of it since the clerk was still open.) Then, in a very apologetic tone, he said he couldn't let the lack of insurance slide. I was cool with it (my fault after all) and he winked and told me that it likely wouldn't cost me anything as long as I had it insured before the traffic court date. When I went to court, the judge called me up to the bench, covered the mike and told me I must have made one hell of a good impression on the officer as he had actually bothered to include on the court copy of the ticket that I had been completely honest the entire time and hadn't given him any attitude. Something the judge had never seen before. I showed him my proof of insurance and was done. No fine or anything.
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  2106. For practical purposes, it's wrong... Simple simulation will show you that regardless of which door you initially choose and/or whether you switch choices later, you will always win the desired prize 50% of the time you play the game. Period. This is because the guaranteed removal of one of the goat doors by rule means that one of the goat doors is never actually a legitimate choice (as a chosen door cannot be removed) and thus should not be included when calculating the probabilities. It's essentially an illusion and could be removed before or after your first choice with no effect on the end result. Which of the two goats is removed doesn't matter. All that matters is that one is guaranteed to be removed (and thus could never have been chosen.) That's the whole beauty of the problem. It's essentially just a clever way of making a coin flip more interesting than... a coin flip. The producers of the show could easily estimate their costs (50% win rate) while viewers/contestants with either poor or exceptional maths skills would actually think their choices mattered. The former due to having no clue and the latter due to overthinking it. You could add more doors and the odds of winning regardless of your choices would be equal to the initial number of doors minus one (1/3 for 4 doors, 1/4 for 5 etc.) Again simulation bears this out. You could even add more stages with more guaranteed removal of doors and your odds would ultimately be equal to those for the initial number of doors minus the total number of removed doors. Simulation backs that up as well. All because any doors that get removed, regardless of when, could never have been chosen to begin with (as chosen doors can't be removed) and thus might as well have never existed for purposes of determining probabilities. Edit: Technically, if more stages are added then it could be possible to drop a previously chosen door if you were to switch choices. I was assuming you stick to the original choice. For gameshow purposes though they wouldn't drop a previous choice like that because it would mean that choice was definitely not the prize. As such you wouldn't have tension of the possibility that you switched from the winning door.
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  2352. Article 2, sec 1, clauses 2 & 3 only deal with various aspects of the electoral college process. Clause 4 is the only one of the bunch that addresses the setting of a specific day for something. Even then, it still only applies to aspects of the electoral college procedure and clearly gives the US Congress the power to set a uniform date for all states. See below. . Article 2, sec 1, clause 2 Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. Article 2, sec 1, clause 3 The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President. Article 2, sec 1, clause 4 The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States. Also, Pretty much all states have changed their electior laws without direct action by their legislatures at some point. Texas seems to enjoy doing so on a fairly regular basis (ironic considering the suit they filed.) As for Pennsylvania, due to how vague their state constitution is worded concerning election procedure, it can be argued that not attempting to throw out the changes made was essentially the legislature giving approval of them. Beyond that, the "police powers" given the states by the 10th amendment when it comes to emergency health/safety etc. laws could be used to justify the changes in question.
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  2769. The Russian military has a major flaw in it's structure and operation which puts a short time limit on actions like this. They got rid of Commissars when the Soviet Union fell but not some of the reasons they needed them to begin with. They kept their heavy reliance on conscripts (who have no/negative morale by default) and very brutal, civilian unfriendly tactics (which grind on soldiers' consciences and thus lowers their morale even when "winning") along with the usual maintenance, training, and logistics issues and general beuracratic bs which comes with corrupt officials pocketing funds meant for the military etc. The only way the Russian military has of dealing with the morale issue is to send high command to the front to play the role of Commissar while making them vulnerable to attack (hence, the odd amount of generals killed so far.) Putin's generals would have told him he had a week or two tops in this kind of action (due to the civilians to be murdered sharing a once friendly history and cultural similarities with the ground soldiers who would be expected to murder them) to capture the cities he actually wanted before morale would bottom out and render ground forces useless or at best, unreliable. Beyond that, all they could do is continue destroying infrastructure and murdering civilians with long range artillery and missiles (whose operators don't have to see civilian bodies in the rubble or be spit on by survivors and thus will just keep firing away as it's just numbers to them) while pushing for negotiations. Which is pretty much been what they've been doing for nearly two weeks now. There is no fancy strategy or surprise coming. They simply failed to achieve their goals quick enough and now it's just a matter of doing enough damage and killing as many people as possible in hopes of forcing a settlement.
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  2819. It was definitely a flustercluck however, I would suggest that all (especially the media) do some deep investigation into all factors involved (school floor plans, district protocol, etc.) before laying it all on the chief. For example, It was district policy for all classrooms to have their doors shut and locked while class was in session. At least one of the two classroom doors was open. At the point where the gunman started shooting outside, he was over twice the distance and two doors away from the classroom door than the teachers were and was not running. Still the teachers were incapable of getting there first to shut and lock it. According to interviews with survivors, nearly all of the shooting and all but a couple of the deaths occurred within minutes of him entering the room and well before the main body of the police had even had time to arrive (one death came later when a hidden kid's phone rang and got the gunman's attention. While another came shortly before border patrol went in when they asked if anyone needed help to yell "help me." One of the hidden children did which got the attention of the shooter and well...) The two officer's who responded first did attempt to reach the gunman but (looking at the floorplan) had no chance with pistols and essentially no armor due to the defensive position of the shooter and the lack of cover between them and the shooter. Both sustained multiple grazes trying and ultimately fell back and called for back up from the Uvalde PD as protocol required. Here's where things get messed up. From what I can find, the school district PD does not have it's own 911 dispatch and shares one with the Uvalde PD. So the childrens calls were going there not being dispatched directly to the chief. It doesn't appear that the calls for help from inside were being passed on to him. It's not mentioned in the news much but there was a ~40 to ~50 minute long lull in gunfire that started around the time the chief arrived on the scene. With that in mind and the fact that he wasn't being informed about the calls from the children inside, his thinking that they were just dealing with a barricaded shooter with no children in immediate danger makes a lot more sense. Also, looking at the floorplan, for the officers in the nearby hallway to go in, it would have meant a situation where quite a few would most likely be wounded/killed if the shooter were waiting on them to come and no guarantee that they could even get in as he would only have needed to shut the door to prevent it. Given that and the belief that no children were in danger, it completely makes sense that he would not want to try a frontal assault until shields were available. Those in charge of the school district itself share a bit of blame as well. From what I've found, the safety protocol only required that the high school and middle school have dedicated officers stationed. The elementary school was not specifically mentioned (which explains why no officer was there when it began.) It also appears that they spent the bulk of their security funds on the high school and middle school with the elementary school again being left the scraps. Also, the idea of creating their own small undermanned and underequipped PD rather than just simply letting the Uvalde PD handle their area as well just seems unnecessarily complicated and was likely a primary factor in the confusion etc. that day. In the end, trying to lay the blame solely on the police just doesn't seem fair. This was more a matter of many mistakes from many sources combining to form one giant overall mistake. Basically, everybody dropped the ball. As an aside. Looking at the layout of the building, any parents that went in whose kids were in that classroom would most certainly have come out in body bags had the shooter been waiting on an assault. So, the police keeping them back was the wise move. Edit. I forgot to point out just how undermanned and underequipped the school district's PD was. It consists entirely of a chief, four (possibly five) officers, and a detective. They have three schools and the district in general to deal with and do not have armor that could stop high velocity rifle rounds nor are they armed for a shootout against such.
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  3101. While the argument in Roe v Wade is not very sound legally (even the late Justice Ginsburg disagreed with it's reasoning), there are other potential arguments to be made under the existing constitution. Some of which at least deserve consideration before defaulting to the 10th amendment. Even if technically within their power, the use of the "shadow docket" in this instance makes the decision too arbitrary and will greatly tarnish the legitimacy of SCOTUS if the leaked ruling stands. That said, much of the blame really should fall on pro-choice members of Congress over the last ~50 years for not taking action to cement abortion rights directly into the constitution. For some reason such members along with a great deal of their constituents, apparently seem to think that it's SCOTUS who "cements" laws. It's not. SCOTUS merely interprets existing law in terms of it's constitutionality. Congress is responsible for writing them. By not addressing things directly via legislation, they leave SCOTUS very little to work with. The less they have to work with, the more fragile and arbitrary their interpretations will be. Give them more direct in depth laws to work with and their rulings become much stronger and thus more binding. Currently, there are many issues with no direct legislation that are backed only by lone fragile SCOTUS interpretations (secession for example.) We really need to light a (figurative) fire under Congress's collective a** to do their d*mn jobs and start directly addressing such issues so we can avoid finding ourselves in more messes like this in the future.
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  3169. There's no such thing as renewable energy. The energy being converted into electricity is not returned to the source it was taken from causing that source to operate at a net loss. For example, the energy converted by solar panels is energy that would otherwise have been returned to the atmosphere via reflection or by being absorbed and later radiated back as heat. The consistent supply of energy from the sun will not replace that lost radiated heat to the atmosphere. The panels will simply continue converting that amount into electricity. Wind turbines have the same basic problem. The energy they convert from the wind is not returned. Thus the wind becomes less energetic on average in areas downwind from turbines. Were we to convert enough energy to meet the majority of the world's needs with such methods, the energy lost from the atmosphere would definitely have an effect on the climate and not likely a beneficial one. Hydroelectric and possibly geothermal plants would probably be useful secondary sources. However, there's a limit to the amount of feasible sources and damns come with their own negative environmental effects. Technically, nuclear plants also take without returning. Unlike "renewable" sources however, the energy lost from the decay of the natural nuclear fuels we mine would make up a tiny amount of the overall energy in the atmosphere. When compared to the amount of electricity we can get from those mined fuels, nuclear power becomes the most efficient, least environment altering source available and should be our primary source.
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  3285.  @jonny45k44  It's better left to private ownership for many reasons. In the past, the government used to claim patents from studies it funded. The vast majority of which went unused and gathered dust. It turns out that the government sucks at actively marketing new tech etc. When ownership was put in the hands of those who actually did the work and understood it's possible uses etc. it actually got licensed out, improved upon, etc. because those who understand it know how to actively market it and are motivated to do so financially. The government can still reclaim the rights under certain circumstances (depending upon how much of the funding came from it and other aspects.) Another issue is quality control and reputation. Similar to the videogame crash of the early 1980s where console makers etc. allowed all sorts of garbage to be made and marketed for their systems ultimately leading to a collapse due to a market flooded with shovelware, if a company is forced to allow free use of it's tech, other companies can use it to put out similar garbage which can lessen public trust/interest in the product in general. Thus, weakening the benefits of further developing it and tying the original developers name to said garbage. Much like how Nintendo's requirement that all games for their console be licensed by them to ensure quality saved the videogame market, allowing the private owners of patents to control their use through licensing can actually allow for better products and advancement in the field.
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  3405. The whole problem with sec 3 of the 14th amendment is that it doesn't indicate how it's supposed to be handled at all (something that is definitely Congress' job to fix.) For example, it became law many decades before there was even a federal statute addressing insurrection and rebellion. As a consequence one can argue that it's specific use of those two terms was meant to be a judgement call rather than require a conviction first (as there wasn't originally any statute to convict someone under related to those terms.) That pretty much flies in the face of the historical legal tradition of "innocent until proven guilty" but as written, the argument would be sound. Since it's Congress' job to fix the problem, it makes sense that SCOTUS would pawn the responsibility for doing so off on them. One could argue that since SCOTUS is supposed to handle the interpretation of federal laws, then they should handle the issue. However, the law is so vague that any such interpretation on their part would essentially be the same as legislating from the bench. Granted SCOTUS has had a bad habit of doing such legislating over the last few decades or so (especially with 2nd amendment cases), so it is odd that they would suddenly decide to actually do their job properly for a change, but it is what it is. In this particular case, the ruling is correct. The 14th amendment only applies to federal candidates. States are pretty much free to do whatever their state constitution allows when it comes to state/local elections. Interestingly, had Colorado had something similar to sec 3 of the 14th amendment in their own state constitution, then they may have actually been able to keep Trump off their ballot since the problem boiled down to their attempt to interpret and apply federal law at the state level. Something that is obviously not their jurisdiction. The people who filed that suit were well aware of that and chose the wrong jurisdiction on purpose because they knew it wouldn't fly in it's proper venue (federal court rather than state.) What's sad is that 5 of the 9 justices on the Colorado Supreme Court chose to rule based on their own political agenda rather than the law. Something that should cost them their seats...but won't.
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  3613.  @jeremybackup5758  He was right. At the time the Constitution was written, "well regulated" generally meant "well trained." "Regulated" could have the meaning you give, but the phrase "well regulated" when used in legal documents etc. referred to training. To go a little deeper than that, the 2nd amendment was one of the last additions to the constitution before ratification. It's reason for existing originally had nothing to do with individual rights. It was a variation on laws found in English common law as well as some of the State constitutions. Those laws existed as a failsafe to prevent the king/federal government from being able to disarm regional/state militias. It was included in the constitution as a compromise to get anti-federalist delegates/states to ratify it. Individual rights (related to bearing arms) weren't really discussed at the time. Back then people identified with their state first and country second. Many states were wary of joining an agreement to form a federal government which could potentially dominate the states so they wanted an assurance that their official state (well trained) militias couldn't have their arms taken away by the federal government. The 2nd amendment essentially became obsolete with the end of the Civil War (if not before) as from then on, people identified with their country first and state second and a strong federal professional army became a thing while official state militias all but went extinct being replaced eventually by the national guard.
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  3686.  @marthastewwart  There are plenty of investigators, lawyers, etc. out there who see the same problems with how this investigation has been handled and the "evidence" against this oddball. It's not just me. Most who look at it closely feel the same as I do about it. Out of curiosity, do you really buy the "surviving witness's" story? What seems more likely... That someone would encounter a masked intruder in their home, who just killed four people like it was nothing, freeze up in panic, and live to tell the tale while remembering details like "bushy eyebrows" yet not calling the police or checking on their housemates for seven + hours... or they came home earlier that night, went to bed, didn't see or hear a thing, woke up near noon, found their housemates brutally murdered, felt guilty about sleeping through it and not being there for them, and decided to go along with whatever story those investigating the murders told them would put the killer out of action? Survivor's guilt is a powerful thing. I never wanted to believe such frame ups could ever be a thing (or at least be successful) but the more I look at the way this has been handled, the less sense it makes... unless it really is complete bs... Combine that with so many people immediately assuming the guy is guilty without doing a little research into on their own and actually questioning all of the oddities in how it's been handled and it just isn't right. People want this guy to be guilty so they can sleep a little better at night and have a target for their anger and disgust over the loss of four innocent lives and they are willing to ignore a ridiculous amount of things that don't add up to achieve such peace of mind. Seriously, if this were an episode of some tv crime drama, few would be able to suspend their disbelief enough to enjoy it. Yet, in real life, it's perfectly fine for so many... thst's a bit concerning.
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  3687. Any who do a deep dive into investigating this will find that it was an honest mistake on the chief's part due to many factors. They will also find that almost all of the gunfire and deaths occurred within a couple of minutes of the shooter entering the class room. Well before the main body of the officers and the chief had even had time to get to the scene. It isn't mentioned much, but there was a ~40 to ~50 minute lull in the gunfire that began around the time the chief arrived. Combine that with his not getting the 911 information about the childrens calls and no one telling him otherwise, his assumption that it was just a shooter holed up in a room alone, waiting to be taken out was sound. Also, when you look at the interior layout of the buildings involved, it's apparent that if the officers waiting in the nearby hallway were to assualt the shooter's room and he be ready for it, they would have taken heavy casualties before reaching the door and all the shooter would have needed to do then would be shut the door and lock it. With the erroneous assumption that he was alone in the room and the accurate recognition of the vulnerability of the officers were they sent in, choosing to wait until shields etc. were available would be the logical choice. Sadly, the person truly responsible for this tragedy (other than the shooter obviously) was Irma Garcia (and possibly the other slain teacher as well.) The school district protocol requires that all classroom doors be shut and locked while class is in session. The door to Garcia's half of the joined rooms was open (the only one in the school unless the other slain teacher's door was also open...which is unknown currently) At the point that the gunman started shooting outside, he was over twice as far away from the classroom door than Garcia could have been were she at the farthest part of the room from the door and he also had two doors to get through as well. He wasn't even running and yet, she failed to reach the open classroom door to lock it before he got there. If she had followed protocol to begin with or had quickly reacted to the outside gunfire, there would likely have been few if any serious casualities. The classroom doors were sturdy enough to prevent the breach team from getting in without a key, the gunman would have fared no better and been forced to move on. There's a great deal more of blame to go around to pretty much everybody involved including the district leaders as well. Generally though, everyone dropped the ball in their own way on this. That said, the fatal mistake was that classroom door being open. If that weren't the case the subsequent mistakes from everyone else would most likely never have been.
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  3850. ***** It can be hard to spot that which has become commonplace...It's been nearly 20 years since I went, and after recently considering going back for a degree in a different field and looking into the current state of things, I was highly disappointed in what I found...even my Alma mater has fallen victim to the cry baby generation and seems to care more about "safe places" and providing easy throw away degrees in an attempt to bring in more students...many of whom have no business being there...and it sickens me that they don't even bother to tell these kids that certain degrees (of which they are so proud of offering) might...at best...qualify them for a job at Starbucks...and for damn sure will barely, if ever, pay for themselves... Still, it's not so much that one can no longer receive a somewhat useful education in certain fields, it's that what they learn will likely not be worth the cost...and if that wasn't enough of a discouragement, there's the general...well...patheticness of the current generation (as well as those of the near future at least) of students which will continue to make future employers wary of hiring new graduates (especially depending on their field of "study")...I can avoid the latter were I to go back thanks to my age and experience...but the rest has given me doubts as to whether or not I (or any sane adults for that matter) could put up with the growing number of special snowflakes, their ridiculously idiotic political correctness and their overall war on free speech and the freedom to associate with whom one wishes without persecution* long enough to get out with my sanity much less a new degree... *Harvard's recent decision to persecute and discriminate against students who happen to be members of social clubs which aren't affiliated with the school and aren't located on campus...and more importantly, the general lack of outcry against it from college students nationwide and the sadly large number who actually seem to support it...has all but put the final nail in the coffin of higher education in the US...and pretty much broke my heart...I've never cared much for the Ivy League, but for whatever reason Harvard is seen as a beacon of higher education in this country and for them to set a precedent for something so ignorant and anti-American (and likely found to be illegal if challenged) is just...sad...and worse...since the school is somewhat of a role model to the others, it will end up being repeated at schools across the country in one form or another...and all while the "students" cheer...
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  3924. The electoral college is there to keep things "fair" for the states . This is the United States of America after all, not the United People of America. All one needs to do is look at the electoral college map of the recent election to see that without it, a handful of states would simply dominate the rest. That was something the founding fathers didn't want to see happen so they made the Senate representation "fair" to the states as well as instituted the electoral college. At the time it was conceived, the federal government didn't really have much power and thus the President wasn't really that big of a deal. In modern times however, things have changed and we are less a collection of states and more a collection of various mobs of people with varying ideologies making the electoral college system a bit archaic and possibly counterproductive. The best thing we could do tough, would be to stop being so damned idealistic and become more pragmatic about things. The corrupting influences of progressive liberals and the alt right have greatly weakened us as a country and a society. We've got adult aged children on our college campuses crying over every little thing that comes along and begging to return to segregation as well as those who have gone gun crazy, actually hope for a civil war, and believe whole heartedly in the modern equivalent of fairy tales (wild conspiracy theories) whose populations both continue to grow. Until both of those types remove their heads from their asses and finally grow up (if they are even capable of doing so at this point) we are going to remain screwed regardless of what systems we alter.
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  3959. The real problem is the utterly inept training cops receive when it comes to subduing someone...I worked on the "special care" unit at an inpatient psychiatric / rehab hospital for awhile after college (primarily with involuntary / court ordered / often violent patients) and almost every technique that cops employ were forbidden to us (due to injury potential and/or their being counterproductive)...and yet...with only a few hours of training, we were able to routinely take down and restrain far more violent (and occasionally just as large) people than this person with three or four staff (few of whom. myself included, would have been considered built) with little injury to the patient (some carpet burn, small scrapes and bruises etc. almost always coming from the initial move to the ground) and rarely any notable injuries to us (usually due to flukes / under staffing.) The concept was simple, Don't use unnecessarily painful techniques like pressing our knees into pressure points etc. (and absolutely no strikes of any sort) as pain (even if no real physical harm is being done) fuels panic and thus more struggling. Never use a technique or position yourself in a way which would hinder the flow of blood or their ability to breathe properly (to lessen panic and prevent potential medical issues.) Don't overwhelm them with unnecessary stimuli by having multiple people barking commands at them in raised voices (it's amazing how quickly even a mentally disturbed person will calm down if only one person does all of the talking in a calm voice and only concerning the physical condition of the person being restrained and what they need to do to bring an end to the situation...) If the approach we used was so effective on mentally disturbed individuals often more violently out of control than those the police tend to deal with on a regular basis, they should damn well be just as good if not better on someone who is simply pissed off or just scared...Sadly, the police are generally taught the exact opposite of all of this and thus...this shit happens...
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  4006. Yes. Even Russian investigators... multiple times. No evidence of weapons programs or other sinister activities have ever been found. It would take too long to go into full detail but you can google the Nunn-Lugar program and the origin, history, and purpose of their existence should be easy to piece together from there. Otherwise... Long story slightly less long, such labs exist in many of the ex-Soviet countries. They were originally Soviet biolabs used for the study and tracking of infectious diseases in their respective areas with some involved with the Soviet bioweapons programs at times. When the USSR fell, the US funded a program using those labs as part of the process of cleaning up/destroying any bio/chem weapons and other biohazards left behind by the Soviets. Once complete, some were then upgraded to modern medical facilities while others went back to the study and tracking of infectious diseases in their areas. The latter being partially funded by the US. The goal being giving those countries the ability to assess such threats and how to respond to them on their own so they wouldn't have to rely so heavily on other countries/organizations for such information which would in turn allow them faster response times to such threats. There have been multiple investigations of the lab(s) by all sorts of organizations/countries (Russia included) and no evidence of weapons programs etc. has been found. When you backtrace the claims, most lead to Qanon and similar conspiracy theory groups with no actual supporting evidence. Also, despite Russian investigations finding nothing, Comrade Putin has continued to make such claims over the years. Usually in support of military actions he has taken. Again with no supporting evidence.
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  4055. 1) ~2,000 to ~2,500 people are estimated to have entered the capitol building and anyone who went past the original police line outside is guilty whether they were among those who entered or those who remained outside to vandalize the building, cut off exit/access routes, demand Pence be brought out etc. 2) I have a hard time taking an adult using this excuse seriously... The peaceful bit came at the very beginning of his speech. He then spent the entire bulk of his time doing everything he could to get the crowd more and more riled up (including heavily pushing the lie that Pence could stop the certification) before directing the now angry mob toward the capitol building once again. Claiming non-violence early on only to press for the opposite afterward, knowing full well that the earlier bit will have long been forgotten by the end is an old trick. KKK leaders and other scum use it all the time in an attempt to get the violent outcome they desire while giving themselves an "out" should the violence they intended to provoke be blamed on them later. (Edit: there's also Trump's two month campaign of meritless election fraud claims, outright lies about the VP being able to stop the certification, etc. leading up to Jan. 6 to consider as evidence of potential intent to incite an insurrection.) 3) "Believing" something with no evidence and/or that has already been thoroughly debunked is delusional and/or stupid but not illegal. Intentionally spreading such nonsense to promote unwarranted action against one's lawful government however skirts, if not crosses, the line between free speech and inciting a riot/insurgency. That latter bit indeed being illegal. 4) Justice is not complete until any potentially responsible for intentionally provoking an illegal act have also been dealt with/cleared. Accomplishing the dealing with/cleared bit is the purpose of the Jan 6 committee.
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  4076. This doesn't exactly match the information available... The actual CISD police department consists entirely of a chief, four officers (maybe five as there's a conflict between sources), and a detective (with three schools in their jurisdiction.) They were not issued adequate firepower or armor for a situation like this and are generally supposed to call in back up from a neighboring department when something is beyond their capabilities to handle (which they did after two of them at least tried to reach the gunman and were driven back.) The bulk of the officers who were eventually present do not appear to have been from the CISD PD. That said, the CISD chief was the one in charge of the operations and he definitely failed to properly handle the situation. The CISD officers who responded first however, appear to have done their jobs properly. Also, the school district's protocol specifically called for officers to be stationed at the high school and the middle school. The elementary school isn't mentioned. Most of the security funding for the district appears to have gone toward the other two schools as well. Blame should go towards the governing body behind those decisions too. The deadliest mistakes made that day came from whoever propped the outside door open and (though I hate to speak ill of the dead) the two teachers who, having heard gunfire outside, inexplicably failed to immediately close and lock the classroom doors despite having plenty of time to do so. They were the only ones who didn't. If the border patrol officers who eventually took care of things needed a key to get by those doors, the gunman would have been thwarted by them as well.
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  4320.  @C.P.C3719  Dummy rounds aren't very standardized and can often just be live rounds with the powder and primers removed. The whole point is to have something that looks real if caught in a shot without the risk that comes with the real thing. Even the method of verification used varies. Some use a "rattle." Others drill a small hole in the side of the casing and so on. Add all that to the habit of armorers often borrowing/buying rounds/guns from each other (there are likely dummies still in circulation among armorers that are decades old) and you have an accident waiting to happen. For some reason the media don't appear to have done much research on it but one of the most likely causes in this case probably got it's start over a decade ago. While the company that manufactured the dummies used doesn't currently make live rounds, they once did (10+ years ago) on request. Armorers would often order such custom rounds for personal use when ordering dummies for the set. They used the same casings and were visually identical. The only way to tell them apart being a label stuck onto the original box (and possibly a slight reduction in weight.) The guy who supplied her some of the dummy rounds used once worked for one of the old armorers who bought such custom rounds and ended up with a lot of his stuff when he left the field. Some of the old armorer's live rounds could have gotten mixed in with the dummies at some point and over the years of swapping etc., finally made their way onto a set where conditions were perfect for such an accident. Were they to check other armorers' dummy bins, they'd likely find a small handful of those live rounds in some.
    1
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  4418. The invasion is a criminal act and the aggressor should get nothing...other than a bill for the damage done and reparations for the families of the dead. Putin has no real leverage here. His list of significant "allies" grows thin. China (being one of the few that matter) is not happy with him over this so if any "help" were to come from them, it would likely come in the form of helping themselves to the areas in eastern Russia they've been eyeing for decades. From their view, Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan have an important difference. Ukraine is an internationally recognized sovereign nation (which China themselves recognize.) Taiwan isn't. Invading a sovereign nation requires strong justification while reclaiming what they see as a part of their country currently in rebellion requires none. As such, Putin's weakly backed and often silly arguments in favor of his invasion are not enough in their eyes to justify his unnecessarily stirring up of such an international hornet's nest and they want no part of it. Another weakness of Putin's position is his army's poor performance against an opponent they should have steamrolled in a week or so on paper. The international community (including China) are not impressed. In it's sorry state, it poses no real threat should Putin try to escalate this into a full blown conventional war and can be ignored as a bargaining chip. That leaves nukes. Not a concern. Neither the Russian military nor the people will allow Putin to do something so stupid over what is essentially a failed attempt to intimidate/bluff NATO/the west into allowing him to swipe some territory. Were NATO, a combination of other countries friendly to Ukraine, or just the US alone to send in troops and air power to assist the defense, the Russian army would be pushed out far quicker than they pushed in with few losses for the defenders. At that point, without nukes, it would be over and his military would know it. They would also know that any attempt to use nukes in response being the initial aggressor would be insane. All of their relevant "allies" would immediately wash their hands of them (some possibly even turning on them) and it would ultimately be the end of the Russian people. As poor/lazy as the Russian commanders seem to be when it comes to combat tactics etc. they're not entirely stupid or suicidal. If Putin tried to launch out of spite and with nothing to be gained from it, they'd end his rule on the spot. If not them, then the Russian people. He can't hide the truth from them for much longer even with his control of state media and when they finally realize what's actually going on, they'll end him before he ends them. The best approach would be for Ukraine to simply refuse any negotiations until every Russian soldier is out of their territory (including the two bullsh*t "republics" formed by Russian backed terrorist cells...er..."armed separatists"... in the Donbas region.) NATO/Ukraine friendly nations (if they haven't already) should expel all Russian diplomats from their countries, freeze any Russian assets they can, and cease all trade with Russia. Those capable should begin orginizing air drops of supplies for any besieged cities, mobilize and (with approval of the Ukraine government) send troops and air power to aid in the defense. Putin has no hand and has been bluffing the whole time. Calling/folding would be foolish. Raise the pot and he'll fold...or get folded by his own people. If the world keeps folding to his bluffs like we have been for many years, his position will only become stronger. Eventually, he won't need to bluff anymore and it will take an all out war to dislodge him. This is the perfect opportunity to clean him out. If we let it go, we really will be risking a world war in the near future.
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  4421. I really wish Prof Susskind would take a closer look at simulation theories and apply his own unique twist to the concept. It doesn't necessarily require existence to be the result of a computer. If you boil it all down, it can actually work with the holographic principle. With or without a computer, the universe has to be "rendered" somehow. Fields can simply be seen as layers in a rendering process and perhaps the method does indeed use an encoding that involves a 2D representation of 3D information. I think the reason many physicists don't like simulation theories is because, in the end, quantum mechanics ends up being best explained as an "artifact" created by an incomplete rendering process. Consider, if you existed entirely within a rendering which cut corners by truncating/approximating calculations below a certain scale, what would that look like if you attempted to reverse engineer the rendering process? The tiny scale where corners are cut, would appear to behave statistically. Heck, it would explain the double slit at least as well if not better than anything else does. Information for particles is held as wavefunctions rather than constantly being calculated for each particle (to reduce workload/energy consumption.) In a double slit, detecting which slit a particle came through would force a calculation which would collapse the wavefunction and then generate a new one once said calculation has been performed. Since the newly generated wavefunction was created after passing through the slits, there would be no interference pattern. If no calculations are needed until the particle hits a detector, then you get interference as the result of a "bug" or limitation in the code handling the process. Whether or not it's actually done on a computer or simply by the "rendering" process of the universe itself doesn't really matter. You can still reverse engineer it and perhaps find bugs and glitches like say...ER bridges to potentially exploit to your benefit. Just a thought.
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  4526.  @moiseshuerta3984  Do some research and don't just believe what bs you hear on social media (and especially don't believe anything coming from Comrade Putin's state run media or state funded "independent journalists" like Patrick Lancaster.) Azov Battallion has always had various amounts of Jewish members, were funded by a Jewish billionaire before being folded into the Ukrainian military, and now serve a Jewish President. Odd for a bunch of nazis. I'm sure there are quite a few that have swastika tatoos and some who are even practicing nazis (especially prior to becoming legit military when many of the more ideologically extreme members left to pursue such ideologies.) Such is common all throughout Europe these days sadly, but if that were the prevalent ideology, one wouldn't expect the Jewish ties. Their main issue is their extreme nationalism, but nationalism on it's own doesn't necessarily mean race (along with the Jewish members, there are quite a few other ethnicities represented as well including Russian speaking Ukrainians) and isn't intrinsically bad (though like anything, can be if taken too far.) Also, there's a regiment in the Indian army who have nazi symbols on their uniforms but aren't considered nazis. Both stem from WWII where units comprised of both ethnic groups joined up with the Germans because they happened to be fighting the foreigners who had conquered them. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that... While very much cringeworthy to most, The Ukraine regiment who wear the totenkopf was formed in honor of a Ukrainian unit who fought the Bolsheviks when they invaded ~1919 and had a "death's head" on their battle flag as well as the SS 3rd panzer division who used their own version of the "death's head" and fought alongside an all ethnic Ukrainian volunteer SS regiment who formed to fight the USSR (the conquerer of Ukraine.) If you really want to go there, look into the nazi movement in Russia that Putin has done nothing about because they like to prey on peace protesters and homosexuals (and thus currently serve his purpose.) There are also many possible nazi members in the separatist militias working with Russia. A couple of weeks ago, Russia awarded a military commendation to one of their leaders who had multiple nazi related symbols on his uniform when receiving it in person from a high level Russian representative. Said Russian didn't seem to have a problem with it.
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  4612. The truth about Iraq's wmds is that they most likely did have some...The US had the receipt from when they sold it to them during the Iran/Iraq war and knew roughly how much had been used by Saddam prior to the start of the US operation to remove him from power. The remainder was probably found and quietly destroyed to keep it from being traced back to the seller (that's the hope anyway, if not then there's a good bit of some real nasty stuff still floating around out there somewhere... though at this point, it would likely be out of date and probably no longer functional.) They were gambling that if he bought from the US then he may have done so from other sources as well but they were unable to find any. It was decided that giving the US/UK a political "black eye" for having sold Saddam the stuff in the first place (or knowing about it in the case of the UK) was less desirable than giving their current administrations one for seemingly being wrong about their existence entirely... The claims concerning Saddam's nuclear weapons aspirations were complete bs though and everyone knew it. He had made some attempts at acquiring uranium years earlier but was thwarted. Thus when Israel took out that Iraqi nuclear facility with an airstrike, there was no longer any point to continuing his efforts. I doubt your dude got popped over that. Unless perhaps he knew that some had actually been found and destroyed. Also, the so called "genocide" would be on the hands of Iraq's "friendly" neighbors not the UK or US. The casualties from the fight to remove Saddam were quite low and the country well on it's way to prosperity afterward. It wasn't until the neighboring countries started arming and sending in insurgents to prevent Iraq from forming a stable democracy that the deaths ramped up. The real mistake made by the US/UK was abandoning the Iraqi people to the wolves around them by pulling out when things started getting messy.
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  4614. @TeenisWrangler42069  Under Bush the lesser, 2M were deported and it saw an increase in food and construction prices along with noticeable economic slump. Same with Obama's 3M. Mark the economic effects up for the numbers Trump wants to deport and it will be devastating on top of a just now recovering economy with already high prices. The best example though, is what happened to Georgia years ago when they passed a law that led to ~90% of their illegal population leaving the state. An economic state of emergency ensued, they quickly repealed the law and eventually voted out many of the representatives who pushed it. Despite public opinion having been jubilant that it passed...up until it went into effect. And they didn't even have to pay for deportation etc. The immigrants just left. Towns went under, small businesses as well as agricultural processing plants etc. closed, many citizens lost their jobs, and they had to get prison labor to pick the fields (which was about as effective as you'd imagine forced unexperienced labor to be) because farmers couldn't find citizens willing to do the work. Ridiculous amounts of crops rotted in the fields. It was a nightmare. Now imagine that only at a national level. It's foolish. Especially since those wanting to do it have not even addressed how they plan to mitigate those drawbacks. Not that they can unless they spread deportation out over 12 years or more and dealt with the economic hit slowly and steadily. Even then, it would likely be a permanent hit to the economy.
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  4826.  Mrreciprocat  Look at the bureaucratic nightmare that our half-assed attempts at socialist programs (welfare etc.) have already created. Now imagine if we go all in...With our population, the bureaucracy needed to administer such programs would essentially require us all to work for some aspect of it (assuming we want such programs to even remotely function.) Personally, I don't see a purpose to living in such a system. It would just be communism with a more acceptable name but the same bleak future. As far as health care goes, there's a reason why so many people from countries with socialized health care systems come to the US and pay out of pocket for important surgeries/treatments. The waiting lists in their own countries are ridiculous and the quality of care is mediocre at best due to the lack of incentive that comes from capped pay for their medical professionals, limitations on what equipment they can afford, etc.. Also, without people in non socialized health care countries like the US paying the R&D costs for new meds etc. Those countries with socialized health care would not have access to them due to caps on how much their governments will pay for such things. Someone has to pay the difference. If we go with socialized health care, who will that someone be? No one. R&D is expensive and if no one pays for it, it will simply cease to occur (or slow to a snail's pace at best.) Similar issues arise when it comes to science, technology, manufacturing, etc. Socialist programs become increasingly inefficient with population increase and thus require that more and more resources be allotted to them just to maintain mediocre results. Resources that could otherwise be used to further the growth of tech/manufacturing etc. Essentially, such systems stagnate as the workforce spends all it's efforts just trying to maintain the bureaucracy. Currently, ~40% of yearly published scientific papers come from the US/are co-authored by US scientists and are often funded by private business (often by the much maligned corporations.) That will not be maintainable if we transition to a socialist system. The resources to fund such things will have to go to inefficient socialst programs instead.
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  4906. The "pro-life" community deserve to be "attacked." They're nothing but a bunch of holier than thou virtue signalers attempting to force their subjective beliefs onto others by corrupting what was intended to be a secular legal code. I'm not exactly a fan of abortion myself but I have no sympathy whatsoever for people who insist on sticking their noses into other people's business only to cry foul when said noses get deservedly punched in response. Those who are anti-abortion are free to not have one. They're also free to voice their opinions against it. They are not however, free to force their beliefs onto others. Period. Abortion bans clearly violate (among other things) the 13th amendment's protection from involuntary servitude. A woman cannot be forced to do the work of carrying and giving birth against her will. There are hundreds if not thousands of rulings where the courts classified carrying and giving birth as a form of work in their arguments. If it's work then the 13th amendment covers it. If the 13th covers it, the 10th amendment can't. Thus, SCOTUS had/has no constitutional grounds to send it to the states. Interestingly, their incompetent ruling also has the side effect of making secession a state matter as well since it isn't addressed in the constitution and is only blocked by a single SCOTUS precedent whose argument is invalid to begin with (Texas v White.) It would be a bit of ironic justice if the pro-choice states chose to take advantage of the situation and leave the union. Said states happen to account for the vast majority of federal tax revenues. It would be a shame if the remaining union were no longer able to pay SCOTUS justices their salaries...or for their protection...and then there's all of the federal assistance nearly all of the "pro-life" states depend on...it'd be a shame.
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  4909. Biden's comeback win from mail in voting was nothing odd. In fact it was predictable using information available an hour or so after the in person vote was completed. Due to Trump's major campaign blunder of actively discouraging mail in voting, there was a consistent bias between in person and mail in results in the swing states. Trump received ~80% of his total votes in said states from the in person vote, while Biden received ~40% percent of his. Those ratios were consistent in states where mail in ballots were somewhat close to in person ballots in number. Regardless of who ultimately won the state. In states that weren't allowed to do any counting of mail in ballots until election day, a situation was created where the in person ballots were all tallied before the mail in vote count began. The following example wiil give an idea of just how strong of an effect that can have. Let's say we have a swing state where early counting wasn't possible and we know that the final total will be 1 million votes split evenly between Biden and Trump. If Trump gets 80% of his total from in person, he'll have 400k votes once the in person vote has been tallied. While Biden's 40% would have him at just 200k. Trump has twice as many votes after in person and would appear to be running away with it. However, we know that it will end in a tie. Pretty big difference and yet it's what would be expected given the data available and the unique conditions covid precautions created for this election. With a little effort, an amateur statitician with a decent grasp of the quirks of this election could have predicted Biden's eventual win once the in person data was posted on election night. I would barely call myself an amateur and my calculations from ~1:30 am est on election night ended up very close to the final results (I had NC just barely going to Biden and Ga barely to Trump which ended up being the opposite.) Trump's professionals (with better access to the data and far better skills with statistics) would have known almost immediately after the in person results were available that he had lost. Which is why he held that silly press conference in the middle of the night calling for mail in counts to be stopped while he still appeared to be running away with it.
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  4944. It makes sense. It all boils down to Trump's decision to actively discourage mail in voting. That was a fatal tactical blunder. For starters, Trump failed to pick up a decent chunk of votes from right leaning people who would have voted for him by mail but weren't interested enough to do so in person. They heard their candidate saying that their mail in votes wouldn't get counted, the Dems would toss them out, etc., said "oh well", and didn't give it another thought. Biden however, picked up the votes from their left leaning counterparts and likely some of the moderates as well. With the final margins as close as they were, those missed votes would probably have given Trump enough for a win. The anti-mail in vote approach also explains the odd behavior of the vote counts as well. It caused the vast majority of Trump's total votes to come from in person voting (~80% in Pennsylvania for example.) Biden's votes however were more evenly split between mail in and in person (roughly 50/50 in Pennsylvania, leaning a bit toward the mail in in other swing states.) Due to that polarization, Trump appeared to have strong leads in the final swing states at the end of the in person vote. However, in the states that couldn't do early counting of mail ins, the in person got tallied first then the mail ins were counted. Biden had far more mail ins than Trump so once that count started, Trump's percentages could only fall and Biden's only rise. The reason it seemed like Biden's numbers spiked was simply due to the fact that mail in votes were handled in large chunks and the data reported only once or twice a day. The in person vote was consistently updated in smaller amounts over the course of election day giving it a gradual climb. If you take the bulk mail in data, split it up into smaller bits, and add it gradually over the period of time it took to count it, you'd see a slightly steeper but steady climb for Biden's results as well.
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  5180. Well, last year, Trump leaked what was supposed to be classified information on a press conference concerning a leader of ISIS we had assassinated. Information that revealed military tactics and assets within the organization. In doing so, he likely set back our intelligence operations within that group by years. Then, there's his decision to abandon the Kurds working with us in Syria. That will weaken our military's ability to find groups willing to trust us enough to work with us in the future. The particular way he went about the assassination of that Iranian general didn't do wonders for our military's reputation either. Now, he's getting ready to throw our military and intelligence operations in Europe and to some extent the middle east into unnecessary chaos for at least a couple of years with the withdrawal from Germany. Once, that goes into effect, it will be the perfect time for certain countries to mess with us. Putin for example could use it to go ahead and take the rest of the Ukraine if he wanted. Also, enemies in the middle east would be in a good position to act against us or our allies as well. Personally, I consider a pattern of behavior which underminds our military's ability to do it's job well to be sabotage whether it is intentional or just the result of stupidity. Also, the thing with the ISIS leader was not the only time he's committed such an error. He's given information concerning the location of nuclear subs to a "friendly" government. Something no other President has been dumb enough to do. He has compromised assets we had in Russia and elsewhere with his inability to keep his mouth shut as well. The longer he's in office, the more damage he's going to cause.
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  5447.  @deebee4575  It doesn't matter if it's mentioned directly or not. If bans on it would create a situation which would violate another constitutional right, then such bans would be unconstitutional as well. Out of incompetence or deliberate bias (likely a bit of both), the majority opinion gave little if any consideration into whether or not there were any indirect protections of a woman's right to choose already present in the Constitution. They took the easy cop out and really only addressed the lack of a direct right. One need only look to the 1st amendment and all of the things not directly addressed which indirectly fall under it's protections to know that ruling out all such possibilities is a necessary step before invoking the 10th amendment and shipping the issue off to the states. As SCOTUS has never addressed the 13th amendment argument related to abortion, an executive order for agencies to use their various powers to their fullest in attempts to enforce said amendment's protection against the involuntary servitude of women who do not wish to maintain a pregnancy in states with abortion bans (prior to 24 week at least) would push the 13th amendment based challenge through the courts and back to SCOTUS faster than waiting on challenges made by individuals at the state level. As the issue is time sensitive, the quicker it can be addressed, the better. SCOTUS may still rule against it but they'll have a hard time finding a legitimate rebuttal to back up that ruling. Edit: The Dems should definitely have codified it well before now. Their incompetence/laziness in relying solely on a SCOTUS ruling however, should not negate individual rights/protections already covered in the constitution (directly or indirectly.) The 13th amendment argument is legitimate, can be supported with precedent, will be very hard to soundly refute, and thus deserves to be heard regardless of Congress's failings.
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  5973. I think people are being very unfair to his frat brothers. Their story makes far more sense than that of the bar. For example, originally, the bouncer's story matched that of his friends in that he was tossed out the back door. The bar later started claiming that they put him out the front. That makes no sense. They removed him for his behavior. They're not going to walk him through the other patrons if his behavior is the problem. Out the back he goes. Also, his friends claimed that none of them were allowed to leave until the tab was settled. That sounds about right. I've seen it before. They also said they weren't allowed to go out the back to meet up with him. They had to go out the front and walk around. By the time they got there, he was gone. They then claimed they called him to see where he was and he told them he was on his way back to the hotel and that he was almost there. If that's true, then there's no point in them going after him since he would be at the hotel before they could catch up to him. Nothing wrong with that. Here's the kicker. If you rotate the bar 180° with the rear exit being in the front and then overlay the path he took, it leads to the hotel and he would have almost been there by the time of the call. It is indeed possible to get that drunk. I did something similar when I was in school. I figured it out relatively quickly but I wasn't completely trashed at the time. Distance wise, the point where he tripped and hit his head would have been close to the hotel had he gone the right way. After he hit his head, his path makes no sense which isn't surprising since he also began to stop and look around confusedly often from then on. Edit: The bar employees are the ones changing their story and it's in their best interest to pawn it off on his friends. They overserved him, tossed him out by himself and then kept anyone from getting to him before he wandered off to his doom. They are very liable and they know it. Until what really happened becomes more clear, dumping on his buddies is simply not fair.
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  6053. The truth. Russian Bolsheviks invaded and occupied Ukraine in 1919 forcing them to become part of the USSR against their will. Many decades later, they finally manage to gain back their independence only to have Russia put someone in power who thinks they're the second coming of Stalin and is hellbent on reforming the Soviet Union regardless of whether the now independent former nations once enslaved by the Soviet Union want to return or not (they don't.) That someone then invented a crisis in the Donbas region to destabilize the area and use as an excuse to invade later by sending in paid Russian mercs and supplies to bolster the otherwise insignificantly sized pro-Russia armed separatist groups making a nuisance of themselves to the other 95+% of the local population (who are/were decidely not interested in being ruled by Russia.) In doing so, Comrade Putin made his intentions to invade and enslave the Ukrainian people once again clear. Thus forcing Ukraine to seek defensive alliances with their other neighbors/the west in hopes of protecting themselves. Needless to say, Comrade Putin played a good hand and gave himself an excuse good enough to fool more people than it really should have into backing his unprovoked and illegal invasion of an internationally recognized sovereign nation. Despite the fact that just a little fact checking is all that's needed to reveal his "justifications" for the bullshit they are. In other words, What's going on is that a delusional despot bent on usurping whole nations against their will, made up a load of bull which enough fools fell for to give him the support he needed to attempt an illegal invasion of a neighboring country. Unfortunately for him, that particular country did not go as gently into that good night as he thought they would and now he has a very nasty problem on his hands with no good way out.
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  6055.  @chaseviking5096  This attention seeking manchild of a politician was perfectly capable of wearing a mask and, unlike you, I guarantee you he's well aware of the effectiveness of doing so and knew that taking his off wouldn't affect his chances of catching the disease enough to worry about but would increase the risk to others if he happened to be infected (surgical masks may only prevent the inhalation of as little as ~20% of respiratory droplets but as long as both the nose and mouth are covered, they at least catch ~70% of those exhaled by the wearer...~95+% if worn perfectly. There are tons of studies going back decades on it.) Why do you think surgeons wear them? This douchebag taking his off like that is the equivalent of flipping his colleagues a bird only that bird could also be a potential risk to their health. It's childish behavior from someone supposedly qualified to represent his constituents in Congress. Politicians do unfortunately have to find ways of getting idiots to vote for them. Prioritizing that over the health of his colleagues however, is not the proper way to go about it (and sets a poor example for his constituents.) I've already had the stupid disease and short of variants, I doubt I can catch it again anytime soon, but he and I would have had some words afterward had I been one of those near him. It's the principle of the thing. We just managed to get rid of a President with the maturity of a 12yo. We can definitely do without such people in Congress as well.
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  6247.  @charleslloyd4253  When has the Russian military really been tested? Until Ukraine, never (and in the action they have seen, they've underperformed.) People just transfered the Soviet military's reputation onto them when the USSR fell apart. The two are not the same. The Soviet military could get away with using conscripts and morale killing brutal tactics because they had Commissars up front to crack the whip. The Russian military kept the conscripts and tactics but dropped the Commissars. You can't win a war if your soldiers' morale is gone...just draw out the inevitable. On paper Russia should have steamrolled the whole of Ukraine in two weeks tops. In reality, they tripped allover themselves and troop morale ran out about 2 1/2 weeks into it. From then on all they were doing was long range artillery and missiles with the occasional airstrike when their air farce could canibalize enough parts to get some of their jets airworthy. They couldn't get their ground forces to go in and occupy the last cities they had besieged, lost a few generals who went to the front to play Commissar only to come back in a bag, and pulled back. Even pulling back they had problems as they were unable to maintain troop discipline and some ran amok. That is not an army to be concerned about. The morale issue alone isn't really fixable without reorganizing the entire way they do things and they simply aren't very well trained or supplied. Their equipment looks ok on paper until you factor in the piss poor maintenance it receives due to corruption. Very little of the funds allocated for their military actually makes it there. The bulk ends up in private bank accounts. Also, their tanks have a fatal design flaw that all the caging they can weld on to them won't fix (their auto-loader system has almost all of their ammo up in the turret which is not as well armored as it should be. Set one round off and the entire tank goes up.) Their army wouldn't last two weeks against a well supplied and structured NATO force along with the Ukrainian military. At least not while trying to fight on the offense. They might hold some already occupied cities for a couple more before morale issues ended things. Their air farce would be pushed out in a few days (lack of maintenance means they can only field a fraction of what they have) and their offensive ground forces would have to follow soon without air support. Anyone who thinks Russia would go nuclear if pushed out of Ukraine is just being silly. It would serve no purpose, and immediately cost them the few "allies" they have left. While pretty much turning the rest of the world against them. Russian generals may get their positions based on politics rather than merit, but I doubt many would be dumb enough to even think that would be a good idea. If NATO would just grow a pair and go in, it would be over pretty quickly and the way Russia is, Putin would likely be disgraced and possibly removed if he refused to step down. I'm curious, where exactly do you think such an army could expand the fight to once pushed out of Ukraine? If NATO simply held at the border with the occassional air assault to take out active artillery/missile launch sites in Russian territory, what then? It would be on Russia to attack and they would simply be stopped. Also, remember that despite being "allies" China and Russia have had an ongoing border war of sorts going on in the east for decades. Were Putin to pull anymore troops from that region than he already has, China might just decide to help themselves to some areas they've been eying for a long time. They're definitely not impressed with Putin or his military at this point.
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  6313. The primaries (national or local) are not a good indicator of the strongest candidate. Moderates as well as centrists are far less likely to bother voting in them than progressives and left leaning independents don't even have the option. That's why Bernie tends to do significantly better in the primaries than he does in polls concerning which Democratic candidate has the best chance of defeating the Republican candidate. (His poor showing in the latter being the reason he will never be allowed to win the Democratic nomination.) As for your suggestion that progressive candidates should run a write in campaign if they lose the primary, you're overlooking the significance of there being no Republican candidate on the ballot. They would indeed be sore losers were they to attempt such a campaign in an election containing a Republican opponent as it would only serve to sabotage their party's chances out of spite by splitting the vote. In the Buffalo race however, a moderate/centrist Democratic candidate on the final ballot offered conservative and other non far left voters who would have otherwise had little to no representation in the race, at least some sort of option to give their voices relevance. An elected official represents everyone, not just those who share the same views. By saying that it should have been her seat, you're essentially saying that she deserved to be Mayor regardless of whether or not the majority of the people agreed with her views. That's not a very democratic position to take.
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  6383. The vast majority of the gun fire and deaths occurred within the first few minutes that the shooter was in the room (according to survivors.) Well before the main bulk of the police had time to get there. The slain teachers (or at least one of them) are to blame for most of those deaths. School district protocol calls for classroom doors to be shut and locked while class is in session and at least one of the two doors to the combined classroom was left open. From the point where the gunman started shooting outside, he was more than twice the distance and two doors away from the classroom doors than the two teachers were and yet they failed to get the door(s) shut before he reached them. They were the only class that had an open door. Thanks to the convoluted and unnecessary existence of the school district's own police department, coordination was a complete flustercluck. The department consisted entirely of a chief, four (maybe five) officers, and a detective responsible for three schools and the district in general. They were not equipped with proper body armor against high velocity rifle rounds nor were they properly armed for a shootout against such. Nevertheless, the first two officers on the scene did attempt to reach the shooter but his position inside the classroom with the heavy steel door for cover was too strong and they were driven back with multiple grazing wounds. They did what protocol called for and called for reinforcements from Uvalde PD as they had the manpower and gear to better handle such situations. From what I can find, the school district did not have it's own 911 dispatch and shared one with Uvalde PD. Due to jurisdiction, the school district chief was in command at the scene with nearly all of the officers present being from Uvalde PD but it does not appear that he was informed of the calls for help from the children (probably had his radio tuned to his own department's frequency instead of Uvalde's...that's speculation though) Around the time he arrived on scene, a ~40 to ~50 minute lull in gunfire occurred. With no knowledge of the 911 calls and no gunfire, he assumed that the shooter was barricaded in a room with no kids (and no one on scene gave him any information to the contrary.) Looking at the layout of the building's interior, the officers stationed in the nearby hall would have taken heavy casualties were the shooter to be waiting for them to come (as they would have no cover while the shooter would.) Also, the shooter could simply shut the door and prevent any who actually made it there from entering. Without knowing there were kids in there with the shooter, the chief decided to wait for shields to arrive before trying to dislodge the shooter. When gunfire was heard again (likely the poor kid whose phone rang and gave away their hiding place), the mistake was quickly realized and a breaching group organized and sent in. Also, the school district protocol called for a dedicated officer to be stationed at the high school and middle school with no mention of the elementary school (which is likely why there wasn't an officer there to begin with.) From what I could find, they apparently put most of their security funding into the high school and middle school as well. Long story short, everybody dropped the ball that day and prior when it came to those in charge of the district. Blaming it all on the chief/police is unfair. Especially since even had they done everything right, few if any of the deaths would have been avoided.
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  6428. Decisions and courses of action can only be as good as the information they're based off of. At the same time he issued the travel ban (which came after the first diagnosed US cases), Trump was still downplaying the threat, arguing with his own medical advisors, getting rid of cdc employees that refused to back his downplaying etc. to the point that there was no reliable information to be had. As such, with the President assuring all that it was nothing to worry about, Biden and the American people in general could only take his word for it. That's why you had Democrats and Republicans etc. all saying things were ok. As far as they knew, they were. Now we find out that the President knew they weren't but said nothing. Had he simply informed governors etc. of the real threat, they could have better prepared in case things did go bad. Instead, he continued to assure them all was well only to turn around and lay all the blame on them for not being prepared... That is simply not the behavior nor the level of decision making skills necessary to qualify one to be President. Biden may be suffering from some cognitive issues but even if he is, he's still a better choice. He at least is still wise enough to know that you let your medical advisors address medical issues, your generals fight your wars, etc. He won't be trying to do it all himself and therefore any lessened cognitive function will likely not have much of an effect on the overall outcome. Edit: If there really were nothing to worry about, something as drastic as a travel ban would seem a bit dubious. As such, since the left is heavily focused on race, assuming the ban had a racial component behind it would seem plausible to them. I don't agree personally but it's not really that important of an issue either.
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  6430.  @RVCodeman  Before my rant (lol) I'll say this. If the great state of Kentucky could garauntee that Mitch McConnell will not be re-elected, I might be a little less adamant about getting rid of Trump (maybe we could get California to ditch Pelosi in return if it would help.) As it is, the balance to the executive branch that is supposed to come from the legislative branch, is compromised by McConnell's prefering to get on his knees and fluff the President rather than hold him accountable like his job requires him to. In the end a President is only as dangerous as Congress and SCOTUS allow them to be. So far, SCOTUS has done their job. Congress (primarily the Senate), not so much. That said... Even before covid, there was nothing really backing the apparent improvement of the economy. Stock prices rose on nothing but optimism because people thought they had elected some sort of economic genius. All they elected was a glorified con artist who did what they were best at...con people (and manipulate the market for personal gain.) Nothing about any of the businesses really changed except their stock prices. Their bottom lines didn't improve enough to warrant an increase etc. Before covid, what was going on economically was exactly what went on in 1920. Optimism based "growth" with no real foundation under it. We all know where that eventually landed us...assuming they still cover the great depression in our schools. Everything he has done has been for his own benefit (every once in awhile his benefit might accidentally benefit us slightly/temporarily as well...but it's entirely unintentional on his end.) The trade war with China is simply his way of making an excuse not to pay back the $900M+ in loans he owes to Chinese banks and companies. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if pulling out of Germany was due to him thinking that Deutsche Bank (who he owes over $300M to) was somehow tied to the German government...He can be that stupid at times. In a way, he got lucky covid came along when it did. At least now the inevitable crash that would have occurred during his second term has already happened and can now be blamed on the epidemic instead of him. Long story short, he just isn't any good at his job, be it economic or otherwise, and has shown no desire to improve his performance (in fact, he seems to be getting worse.) If his Presidency were a season of "The Apprentice", he would have fired himself within the first few episodes.
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  6532. Actually, for once Pelosi and the Dems have done something intelligent. For one, the delay buys time to consider adding the President's violation of the impoundment control act as a third article rather than just use it as evidence for the other two articles. He has no defense against that charge if they choose to use it though alone it might not warrant removal from office. The Dems main point however, was to set a trap for the Senate Republicans which, pathetically, McConnell and some others have already been foolish enough to walk into. No one ever thought that the Senate Republicans would vote to impeach one of their own party regardless of the evidence. By dramatically stalling under the claim that they want assurance of a fair trial, They essentially force the Senate Republicans into either publicly abandoning their constitutional responsibility to hold an impartial trial in good faith and vote their conscience based on the testimony and evidence presented during the trial or to break ranks and try to look legit. Thanks to that idiot McConnell, the Dems have already been more successful than they likely hoped. In internet echo chambers, it may seem like Trump has a lot of support but many independent voters along with the silent majority of the Republican party are sickened by the behavior of the President and many of the various Republican representatives supporting him. Assuming no Senate Republicans have a crisis of conscience, Trump will likely survive impeachment and win re-election since the Dems don't have anyone electable running, but the Republicans will most likely lose the Senate. The latter is actually better for the Dems than getting Trump out of there.
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  6752. No. They really didn't. Even Republican Senators who questioned them complained that they danced around the questions and never really answered them. Also, the "they got away with it, why can't I?" defense they went with by showing clips of Democrats supposedly "inciting" violence generally only sees use by children and is never considered legit by adults. It was the Democrats strategy which did the most harm to their case. The overly dramatic sob stories of their own party members came across, at best, as a bit disingenuous. Had they repressed their dislike of Pence and put more focus on what Trump did to him, it would have been much more effective. Unlike the riot in general, the responsibility for the Pence hunting that went on that day could have been laid 100% on Trump. He (apparently) did a good enough job with his doublespeak during his speech to plausibly shift enough of the blame off of himself when it came to the general attack (judging by how many of his supporters fell for the trick.) However, he was the initial source of the bs claims of Pence's ability to affect the EC certification and the one who implied that Pence's inaction was disloyal/traitorous. Focusing more on that would have been a stark reminder to the Senate Republicans of what Trump was capable of doing to his own kind in furtherance of his vindictive/self-serving pursuits and may have tilted a few more of them toward voting their conscience rather than the party line. Unfortunately, like the first impeachment, the Dems failed to see the best argument/charge and tried to win on moral outrage and emotion instead. (Trump's violation of the Impoundment Control Act, for example, would have been a slam dunk in the first trial but they barely mentioned it...likely because they figured the general public wouldn't even understand the problem. It wasn't the general public they needed to convince however.) Granted, the Senate Republicans would almost certainly have still acquitted both times, but they would have looked even more crooked than they did/do now.
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  6893.  @danneman5036  If blind obedience to authority and resigning ourselves to a life of quietly suckling government teat were among our virtues, the country would never have existed to begin with. I'd much rather watch some of our cities set them fool selves on fire from time to time for...reasons, than to stagnate in apathy like many European countries seem to have become fond of doing. Buildings can be rebuilt once the fire is out. When the fire in a society burns out however, things generally just end up dark, cold, and forgotten. If nothing else, rioting shows that at least people still care enough to bother getting angry. As for reason, maintaining a quiet little country and maintaining one as large and complex as the US are two very different things and expecting "success" at either to look the same is unreasonable. Consider this, the most densely populated city in Sweden has ~588 people/mile^2 and the country itself has ~10M people. New York City alone has a population of ~8.4M with a density of ~27,000/mile^2. That's just one city. We have many more that, while not as large, still dwarf the largest in Sweden and they are spread out over a far larger land area than Sweden contains as well. Infectious diseases thrive on high population density and poor response coordination. Yet, the US has only lost ~0.003% more of our total population than Sweden to covid 19 going by the reported deaths from each country. Considering the political chaos and riots we've had to deal with at the same time, I don't think it reasonable that our healthcare system be condemned. Especially when those systems being touted as superior would implode into a bureaucratic black hole were they presented with just the population and distance issues alone. It's folly to think that what is ideal under one set of conditions will remain so under any conditions. Even more so to claim superiority having committed such folly.
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  7032. His behavior for fhe first ~2 minutes or so was the result of him trying desperately to hold his breath not the sxecution method itself. Once that was over and he actually started breathing the N2, he lost consciousness fairly quikly. The heavy breathing and random twitches that occurred afterward are what one would expect from someone dying from oxygen deprivation. While it may be a bit unsettling to watch, he was unconcious and had no awarenesa of it. In othsr words, if you remove the unnecessary self inflicted agony from holding his breath ao long at the beginning, all he would have felt was a brief period of normal easy breaths, then a sudden feeling of euphoria/drunkenness for two to three seconds, immediately followed by loss of consciousnesa. Once unconscious, he would have felt nothing more and would eventually die from oxygen deprivation. Despite what many anti-death penalty people claim, Nitrogen hypoxia is not something new. In fact it has been used for decades as a quick, painless, and safe method of rendering someone unconscious (usually for tests requiring unconsciousness and/or looking at behavior after regaining consciousness.) There are plenty of people out there who have experienced it first hand and they'll tell you that there's no discomfort involved (other than the occassional headache afterward from the brief lack of oxygen.) The only difference between it's non lethal and lethal uses is simply that the nonlethal version replaces the N2 with 02 as soon as consciousness is lost so that they quickly regain it, while for an execution, the N2 is kept going until the condemned dies from oxygen deprivation. It really is the most humane way to end a life.
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  7287. The only way for people to draw appropriate conclusions is by considering the potential long term effects, which few ever bother to do. They see the current strain which isn't as deadly and decide that there's no reason to maintain common sense precautions to slow it's spread and leave it at that. In the long run, the problem is not going to be the death total. It will be the case rate and the potential variants that could come with it. In at least ~1/3 of the cases, the disease leaves behind scar tissue in the lungs which reduces their function. Allowing the case rate to increase more than necessary allows more chances for new variants to emerge. Which in turn means more potential cases and thus more potential variants etc. Contrary to social media myth, variants are not always weaker than earlier strains. They only tend to be. Strong variants will emerge from time to time. Over time, with it being possible to catch it multiple times due to variants, Such lung damage (and other side effects of a covid 19 infection) could become fairly common across all demographics and possibly stack with previous damage. Decreased lung function makes the heart and other systems work harder to compensate and thus can cause mild medical conditions to become moderate etc. In time that gradual creep could begin to heavily strain world healthcare systems which may not be able to handle it. Economies would likely suffer greatly as well due to increased loss of man hours for health reasons, increased insurance costs for employers providing health insurance, etc. It's not going to be the end of the world or anything but if we don't do a better job of slowing the case rates now, it could definitely end up being even more of a nigtmare than it's already been in a decade or so and beyond.
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  7455. Perfectly credible...Anyone who knows US elections knows that any mail ins not counted before election day (which in some states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania would be all of them since their election laws prohibit early counting) get counted after the in person votes are tallied. Normally, the amount of mail ins aren't high enough to affect the outcome. This time however, a massive amount of people voted by mail, skewed heavily towards democratic voters (from 2:1 to 3:1 depending on the state) despite being equally available to all. On top of that, % reporting can be a bit deceiving as it doesn't properly account for mail ins (again, until now they were more or less an afterthought.) The states simply handled their in person votes first which ended up with seemingly but not actually conclusive % reporting and then did mail ins which were far more skewed in favor of the democratic candidate than the in person ballots and thus had a much more noticeable effect as they were added in. Those states whose laws allowed early counting got their numbers in relatively quickly and without spikes because they started with a huge chunk already processed and included. The straggling states are those whose laws prohibited earlier counting and thus the imbalanced effect came almost entirely in the last bit of counting. Despite what is being said by Republican party officials etc. no one was really surprised by these results. They knew roughly where they needed to be before mail ins were added in order to survive and they simply didn't get there. They're banking on the average person's lack of understanding of how our elections work as a smoke screen / excuse to cover their failure.
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  7889.  @jamesgreen8573  Perhaps... However, the Russian military has some major intrinsic flaws in it's structure and operation that greatly lessen it's effectiveness even at full power. Their heavy use of conscripts and extremely brutal, civilian unfriendly tactics means constant morale issues (especially for ground forces) and unlike the Soviet army, Russia no longer has Commissars up front cracking the whip. These days they have to risk sending generals to the front to fill that role (which is why they've been getting so many killed.) Generals getting killed isn't exactly good for morale either. Beyond that, their maintenance issues have turned their air force into more of an air farce which is only capable of keeping a small fraction of their aircraft airworthy with heavy reliance on canibalizing the rest for parts etc. Their armored forces aren't much better off and have the additional problem of poor design. Their main tanks are too low to the ground and can get buried up to their turrets in mud that larger tanks could just power through. They're also very easy to destroy with not necessarily well aimed shots due to their autoloader system. Most of their ammo is in the turret and not well shielded. A single hit has a good chance of setting it all off and blowing the turret (and crew) sky high. That's why so many images of destroyed tanks show their turrets 15 feet or more away from the body. Riding around in armor you know to be a flawed deathtrap only kills morale more. All they really have that's effective are their long range artillery and missiles (and technically nukes but their use is unlikely.) While you can level cities with such, that's all you can do. Anything more requires ground forces and they, unlike the ranged units, are the ones who will have to see the bodies of civilians in the rubble, get spit on by survivors, etc. Once again leading to severe morale issues. Likely to the point of simply refusing to go in and occupy such leveled cities like they have been refusing to do for nearly two weeks now in some places.
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  7921.  @Capt.Thrust  The calls to the police claimed the assailant had a gun. With that in mind and the safety of the injured victim at his feet being highest priority, dropping the assailant the moment he turned in the direction of the victim was the proper course of action. If the officer wants to risk his own safety by not immediately incapacitating the assailant, that's on him. He can't however make that choice when it comes to the safety of the injured victim. He has to assume that the guy may have a gun due to the information provided in the calls. If he hesitates just to make sure and the guy did actually have a gun, then he just gave the assailant a chance to further harm the victim. While general firearm discipline includes full awareness of one's surroundings, in reality, there will be situations like this where one will be forced to fire without having an opportunity to gain such an awareness. In any real world situation, all one can do is maintain the best discipline allowed under the conditions (which the officer did.) Also, tasers are not meant for use against an armed individual or where priority requires that the individual be incapacitated immediately as they have a short range and fail anywhere from ~50% to ~67% of the time (one of the prime reasons many departments across the country are gradually discontinuing their use.) Due to the range limit, a failure usually means the target will be able to close distance and be on you before you can prepare for it. Which is...not ideal. They're really only meant for use on beligerent drunks and unarmed idiots with more balls than brains etc. As for tackling an armed individual...no, just no... Especially if it's not fully clear what weapon(s) they're carrying. Feel free to try it yourself one day though and let us know how that works out for you.
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  8039. The mortality rate for the virus in the US is actually quite a bit lower than the world average (better health care than countries with socialized medicine.) We're just letting it spread more which obviously raises the death count. While we do need to be careful and wear masks etc. This thing isn't even remotely as bad as the spanish flu. When you include those with positive antibody tests in the calculations (which you should), the mortality rate of Covid 19 is slightly higher than that of the common flu strains. In fact, Covid 19 would need to kill over 215,000,000 people worldwide to match the spanish flu's mortality rate for both waves combined. It's mortality rate in the next wave, would need to be well over 33% to come close (the rate of this 1st wave with antibody positives included is ~0.5% - ~0.6% and are likely lower since many who likely have the antibodies aren't being tested for them.) That being said, deaths are not the real problem with Covid 19. It's the lingering (possibly permanent) lung damage it causes. While not that noticeable in the vast majority of those who have it, it scales with severity of symptoms during infection and will likely lead to heavy strain on every country's health care systems for year to come. Still, it's not enough to warrant the level of fearmongering going on in the media and will be less of an economic strain than remaining locked down much longer will lead to. If economies crash, health care will crash with them. Then we really will be in a mess.
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  8333. I have never been so thoroughly disgusted with my government and military commanders as I am on this issue. Putin has been bluffing the entire time and they're advocating for what amounts to a weak call at best or possibly even folding...again... He has no viable hand. Raise the pot and he'll fold (or if not, eventually be folded by his own people.) The Russian military and people in general are not going to ride his failed bluff all the way down the nuclear drain so nukes aren't a concern. Without that crutch, his position is too weak to hold what he has were the US alone to send an appropriate number of troops along with enough air power to take control of the skies, much less expand the conflict in any way other than with more bluffs (as weak/inconsistent as Russia's air power is compared to the US, it wouldn't take much to tip scales in Ukraine's favor.) Also, the idea that sending $350M+ in ammo and gear for Ukraine's military will have any significant effect on the outcome is silly. You can't buy training/experience in the middle of a war. Sending $350M worth of equipment operated by well trained US service members however, is a much better use of such funds and would make a noticeable difference, especially in the air. Indirect support in general is nothing more than political virtue signaling and such an approach is childish and shameful in any application. As for Ukraine eventually managing to push the Russian military out once morale/war weariness take their toll, why allow their country to be demolished (thus taking decades to get back on it's feet) and almost certainly be forced to allow Putin to keep some of his ill-gotten gains via negotiations when his position isn't strong enough to warant doing so were the US and/or others to get directly involved militarily? All that will do is encourage him to take similar smash and grab actions against other ex Soviet Union countries and likely Ukraine again at some point every year or so. Each time strengthening his position and making him that much more dificult to dislodge once enough countries finally grow a pair and take military action. As weak as his current position is, the only negotiations they should warant should concern how much Russia will pay in reparations to Ukraine as well as any who came to their aid and nothing more.
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  8428.  @derikbagley2958  The key point there is "back then" as in ~60 years ago, before the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed. Modern Russia is not the Soviet Union (well, except perhaps in Putin's KGB addled mind) and, when not doing stupid things like this invasion, isn't relevant enough for NATO to be concerned about (beyond keeping an eye on their nukes.) Putin having NATO on his doorstep is only a threat in his delusional mind's overestimation of his country's importance. He's swatting at long dead ghosts of the Cold War and seeing threats where there are none while the rest have simply moved on and are waiting for Russia to join them in the 21st century. Unfortunately, by behaving as if the Cold War were still a thing and mistaking his current country for one of it's deceased ancestors, he's effectively forcing Russia to remain isolated and locked in the past. Furthermore he's created a self fulfilling prophecy which forces NATO and the west to make Russia their business again. He sees a threat (where there is none) launches a pre-emptive strike on that perceived threat, and in so doing, becomes a real threat to others, prompting a harsh response from said others and thus his delusional idea that NATO/the west are out to get Russia gets reinforced leading to further delusional beliefs on his part. I could almost feel a bit sorry for him as KGB reprogramming can never be completely undone (so he'll always be delusional), but his general douchebag demeanor is something he brought along with him not something forced upon him and that demeanor warants no sympathy.
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  8456. General firearm safety rules are not always applicable in their use as props on a movie set. For example, an actor is not supposed to unload or otherwise tinker with a "safe/cold" gun they've been given on set in any way other than what is required for the scene being rehearsed/filmed. For insurance and liability purposes, the status of all firearms on set is ultimately the responsibility of the armorer. If an actor were to take such actions, the armorer could no longer be sure that the weapon is still safe as it's status will have been altered since they last checked it. In order to tell the difference between live and dummy rounds, the gun in this instance would have to have been unloaded. Something Baldwin wasn't allowed to do so he had to trust that the armorer/assistant director had done their jobs and that gun was indeed "safe." (Personally, I would probably have pointed the gun at the ground and pulled the trigger enough to cycle through the loaded rounds...assuming they were supposed to be dummies and not blanks...just to be sure, but that isn't exactly safe either.) Another issue arises concerning not pointing the weapon at something/someone. It should be obvious that a scene where the actor is suposed to point and "fire" the weapon at the camera pretty much requires that the gun be pointed at the camera and thus anyone behind it. That's why they use plexiglass shielding in front of any cameras involved. The shield is designed to block any type of projectile which might be created by a blank round. A .45 round (like in this case) however, will go straight through it, the person behind it, and possibly the person behind them as well (which is what appears to have happened here.) When the accident occured, the director, cinematographer, and Baldwin were working on an upcoming scene in which he would fire (presumably a blank when actually being filmed) at the camera. They described what they wanted him to do and he performed the action asking "so, something like this" after which he drew, aimed in the direction of the camera, and pulled the trigger. Had it been a dummy round like it was supposed to be (for rehearsal), then nothing would have happened. Unfortunately, the armorer/assistant director somehow allowed a gun to be given to an actor with a live round in it. Something which should never happen. As much as I don't agree with his stance on firearms in general, Baldwin the actor did nothing wrong. Baldwin the producer however, might share some blame for the overall poor safety conditions existing on the set. Especially, if he was aware that some of the crew members had been supplying their own live rounds to do some target shooting after wrapping for the day (likely how real and dummy rounds ended up mixed together.) In the end though, the responsibility falls primarily on the armorer and assistant director. Hopefully, someone will eventually manage to create realistic cgi muzzle flashes and accurately mimic natural recoil so that there will no longer be a need to use the real thing in the future.
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  8483. Only coming from Trump's camp. The FBI and DoJ, if anything, have been far more accomodating to the former President than they would have been with any other subject of an investigation. They should have gotten the search warrant the moment he refused to fully comply with the subpoena. Now, the press has been atrocious all around from the left and the right. They've been too hung up on the classified document aspect and have never really tried to explain what's actually going on. Instead they go out of their way make the mundane seem sinister. The affidavit aspect has been their worst transgression. Rather than explain why such affidavits are almost always kept sealed prior to there being an indictment, they've gone out of their way to make it seem like some sort of cover up is behind the DoJ/FBI fighting the attempt to unseal them. It's extremely rare for such affidavits to be unsealed in criminal investigations prior to an indictment (the beginning of the trial phase where defense attorneys can file discovery motions and challenge warrants etc.) The warrant only shows what type of evidence they're looking for. The affidavits will tell you which specific legal violations they're focusing on. Knowing the specifics during the investigation phase is a huge advantage for the target of the investigation as they may have other types of evidence that will be relevant to the specific violation being investigated that the investigators aren't aware of yet and thus it can be hidden/destroyed in advance which would ultimately lessen the effectiveness of the investigation as a whole. It can also tip off accomplices/witnesses etc.
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  9133. Tasers have a dirty little secret... they fail ~50% to ~67% of the time (which is why many departments around the country are gradually discontinuing their use.) Due to their short range, a failure usually means the target will close distance and be on you before you can prepare for it. They're meant for use on unarmed nuisances like beligerent drunks, idiots with more balls than brains etc. As for batons, they are not really reliable in situations where you need to incapacitate someone as quickly as possible. The problem here wasn't the cops. Given the info they had and the situation, it went about as well as it could have. The safety of the injured victim at the officer's feet was top priority and if threatened, dropping the guy quickly would be the proper approach. Even if you have no opportunity to cover certain aspects of firearm discipline first. One of the things that deserves some of the blame was the decision by those calling the police to claim the guy had a gun when he didn't. It's a trick people have learned to get the cops to come quicker but in this case, the officers knowing of those reports had to assume he may have a gun and thus they couldn't afford to hesitate much to make sure once his actions appeared to put the injured victim at more risk. As for using the military in policing roles in country... Beyond the National Guard for emergencies, no...simply no. Unless you want to become like Myanmar and other countries who have a habit of periodically falling to military coups, the separation between the military and police must remain.
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  9446. He made no effort to address the lopsidedness of our immigration policy which makes illegal entry the far better option for those coming from South and Central America. People coming from politically important regions can easily get refugee/asylum status and the fast tracked process that comes with it. Even if the conditions they're "fleeing" are equal or even better than that of the average American. However, we have been intentionally making the normal process increasingly slow and complicated (to discourage immigration) for decades. Over that same time, it has been nearly impossible for anyone wishing to come here from South/Central America to get refugee/asylum status. Even when the conditions they're fleeing are far worse. Thus, leaving them with years of waiting, ridiculously complicated paperwork, etc. and no garuantee that they'll be admitted in the end. The obvious intent of such a policy being to stall any who might want to come here legally long enough for whatever hardships they were fleeing to finish them off (taking care of the problem for us.) Rather than address that issue, Trump claimed that those wanting to come here from south of our border were rapists, murderers, and theives and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on that ridiculous and functionally useless wall (further driving home the message that people from South/Central America specifically weren't welcome.) Biden's policy is definitely a poorly thought out flustercluck but at least it has good intentions behind it. Trump's was just intentionally biased and unfair.
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  9954. Putin is a delusional fool who thinks himself the second coming of Stalin on a mission to return to the (mythical) "golden days" of the Soviet Union. The idea that NATO even gives a sh*t about Russia (beyond their nukes) since the fall of the Soviet Union is silly. Russia as a country simply isn't relevant enough to concern the west anymore and thus the west (NATO included) is not out to get them. Putin's delusional paranoia, overestimation of the importance of his country, and access to nukes combined with his threatening behavior towards neighboring countries he'd like to force back into his imagined new version of the Soviet Union (and those countries seeking protection against such) are the only thing that NATO is concerned about. Not dominating Russia. It's Putin who's preventing Russia from joining the 21st century and thriving. He's also the one doing the threatening and intentionally sabotaging Russian relations with the world (his entire foreign policy has always been to see what side the US takes and then take the opposite regardless of the effect on his country.) Like an abusive relationship, if one side manages to alienate/isolate the other from friends/family etc., it makes dominating them that much easier. Putin needs Russia cut off from and afraid of the rest of the world in order to secure his hold on it so he invents (or imagines) threats that aren't there then uses his control of Russian media to sell those false threats to the people. In this particular case, he's the one who drove Ukraine to seek alliances with western countries and thus he has absolutely no right to complain about potentially having NATO on his doorstep... NATO has no interest in Russia here. Just with their leader. If the Russian people would do what they should have done long ago (before he took steps to essentially make himself President for life) and boot him out of power, all of this would be a non issue...
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  10204. ​ @scotthooper4170 Don't be so naive kid. This has never been about defending themselves, freeing hostages, or even directly destroying Hamas. This was always meant to be a land grab via ethnic cleansing. Nothing more. One need only analyze the IDF's battle plan to see that Israel's stated goals do not fit with the methods being used to supposedly obtain them. A prime example being their unnecessary (ab)use of 2,000 lb. bombs in densely packed residential areas to destroy individual buildings that could easily be dealt with by using much smaller munitions. The only reason for such overkill is if the goal is to cause as much collateral damage and civilian casualties as possible while still maintaining some form of plausible deniability when accused of genocide/ethnic cleansing. As for the human shield argument, there may be some merit (though in urban warfare, civilians will be caught up in it whether intentionally or not.) That said, even if a "human shield" situation were involved, no Hamas member would expect Israel to level up to a ten block radius simply to destroy one building. With the use of appropriate munitions, such a situation would see all in the targeted building dead with maybe a handful more from damage to immediately adjacent buildings. By using a 2,000 lb. bomb instead, you're looking a destruction/casualty rate at least ~50 times greater (possibly as much as ~100 times). That is not an approach you would take if one of your goals was to free hostages as they will likely be held in such areas and thus die from "friendly fire" (which is exactly what has happened to most if not all, of the unaccounted for hostages.) It's also not what one would do if limiting civilian casualties and collateral damage is a goal. Also, consider the IDF's battle strategy for each city. First, they take out the hospitals. Then, they destroy the utilities and housing making the city unlivable and forcing the civilians to flee south. Once that's accomplished, they regroup a bit and then do the same thing with the next city and the next city etc. That is not an efficient way to go about freeing hostages or generating Hamas casualties. All it's good for is herding civilians like cattle in to smaller and smaller areas until their population is extremely dense, they have nowhere left to go, and no resources to sustain themselves. With something like that as a goal, the obvious purpose would be genocide/ethnic cleansing. In fact, it's just a slight variation on how the early stage of the Armenian genocide played out. If continued, the IDF's next phase will simply be to lock them down and let starvation and disease do their dirty work for them. One final thing. From 2000 up until Oct 7 2023, the IDF killed ~25,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas killed ~1,200 and took ~200 hostages once. Even when you add in the small handfuls of Israelis Hamas killed over that time, you're still looking at at least a 20:1 ratio in favor of Israel when it comes to civilians killed (which has since spiked to ~55:1)...and Hamas are the truly genocidal faction in this?
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  10416.  @batzman8585  I'm for keeping our word. Also, NATO getting involved now is likely the only way to avoid a world war. Everytime NATO has folded to one of Putin's bluffs in the past, his position got a little stronger. If they fold to this one, he'll know that the west deems his position strong enough for him to quit bluffing and then the real invasions will begin. By the time the world decides to do something about him, it will take an all out war to dislodge him and China might be convinced to enter then. For the time being, Putin made a rare mistake here. He misjudged not only the severity of the outcry and sanctions from the west (and the resistance from Ukraine) but of the tepid response from his strongest "ally" as well. Currently, he doesn't really have China fully in his corner as they are not exactly thrilled with his decision making ability on this nor are they impressed with his military's performance. They've mostly just been giving him some lip service while doing very little to actually assist. They are highly unlikely to get involved directly enough to matter over something so foolish if NATO decides to defend Ukraine. Again, they'll back Russia with words and that will be it. Also, Putin going nuclear isn't going to happen either. His generals won't allow it. Doing so would cost them the few significant "allies" they have left, turn neutral countries against them, and generally make them complete pariahs. Not to mention potentially lead to MAD. They'll end Putin before they'll let his delusions of grandeur to doom their own country and the world over this nonsense. Without nukes to worry about, NATO involvement would claim dominance in the air in a few days, and offensive Russian ground forces would have to follow soon without air support. Occupying dug in forces might linger a bit but likely not long. The Russian generals know full well the sorry state their military is in due to maintenance, supply, morale, and poor training issues and aren't going to do much more than put up a token resistance on the way out so they can say they tried. If NATO stops at the Ukraine border, all Russia could do is launch more missiles and long range artillery. You can't "win" like that, just stack up more potential war crime charges. So that won't last long either. It may seem scary, but now is the perfect opportunity to nip Putin's dreams of remaking the Soviet Union by force in the bud. He's overextended, doesn't have the support he needs and his military is sorely in need of an overhaul. On top of that, NATO has a legitimate reason to get involved based on a signed written agreement which Russia themselves agreed to (so they can't claim NATO's even remotely the aggressor or that they're sticking their noses where they don't belong as it's Russia who violated the terms.)
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  10483. @Tron Nort What exactly is Biden supposed to testify about concerning the charges against the President? The only possible way he would be relevant is if the President were attempting some sort of justification defense. Such an attempt would be very...ill advised as it essentially admits that he did what he's charged with. The oppisition would simply have to point out that there were plenty of transparent and perfectly legal ways to go about doing what the President chose to do in secrecy (while unnecessarily breaking a few rules/laws in the process) and the President's defense becomes nothing but a guilty plea. The overpaid hacks acting as his defense counsel, while highly unethical, aren't stupid. The mentioning of Biden and his son are just red herrings meant to draw attention away from the President's foolish behavior. They know full well that there's no legal obligation for either to respond to a subpoena and thus no chance that they will be involved with the trial. It's all moot anyway since McConnell lived up to his promise, ignored his constitutional responsibilities, and put on a sad joke of a trial. At least it looks like he may well lose his Senate seat come re-election as a result. If he thinks, that the President will throw him some scraps from the table by giving him a position in his administration, he might want to consider what happened when Mr. Sessions sacrificed his seat for such a position...Donald Trump is not known for giving reach arounds...once he's gotten what he wants from you, you get shown the door.
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