In other news
In the current news climate we see that some figures and events tend to dominate the front-pages heavily. Still, there are important, interesting or just plain weird things happening out there and a group of people can find these better than one.
I thought I would test with a thread for linking general news articles about "other news" and discussion. Perhaps it goes into the abyss that is page 2 and beyond, but it is worth a try.
Some guidelines:
- Try to find the "clean link", so that links to the news site directly and not a social media site. Avoid "amp-links" (google).
- Write some cliff notes on what it is about, especially if it is a video.
- It's not an excuse to make outlandish claims via proxy or link extremist content.
- If it's an editorial or opinion piece, it is polite to mark it as such.
- Note the language if it is not in English.
- There is no demand that such things be posted here, if you think a piece merits its own thread, then make one.
As chillrob tried to explain, if the president fires all federal employees who aren't loyal to him or an insanre philosophy, he becomes something like a dictator. This is a lose term.
A person like Trump expects his subordinates to ignore legislature and courts and do what he commands. So in your dream scenario the separation of powers is effectively over.
E.g. a common misconception is that a president can let the nukes fly whenever he feels like it.
Thankfully, this is not true. In your dream scenario it would be true and an elderly, mentally ill conspiracy theorist who is not very bright could wipe out some or all countries on a whim.
Great plan though.
In my dream scenario Trump isn't president.
But if he is, he can fire at will and then courts and congress still have full constitutional powers to block any attempt to abuse the system by the trump admin.
I think you are wrong about nuclear weapons in the sense that the presidential power over their use is already absolute and no one can rescind his eventual order to use them, right now with current rules
Mandatory reminder to italians...
lol Italy
special counsel Jack Smith has charged Trump with multiple counts
of conspiring to defraud the government and hold onto power.
for a majority of Republican voters, those charges simply do not exist.
Welcome, once again to Trump’s fact-free alternate reality universe,
in which Trump is relying on disinformation, ignorance,
and voter amnesia to propel himself back to the Oval Office.
In this case I blame Smith and whoever else has been responsible for these charges. They should have been at the point they are now at least by 6 months after January 6, and it should have been all over within a year. It's completely ridiculous that this will not be settled by the following election four years later.
In this case I blame Smith and whoever else has been responsible for these charges. They should have been at the point they are now at least by 6 months after January 6, and it should have been all over within a year. It's completely ridiculous that this will not be settled by the following election four years later.
Shouldnt the blame with Merrick Garland as well ?
Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.
The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.
Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus
“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: “From China – PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real.”
After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.
(for the second time since the previous post was moved...)
Damn, the Trump administration was even more sinister than I had always thought.
Listen guys, masks are bad now, so bad we are thinking about making it illegal to wear them in public (signed: the same people who mandated masks)
https://www.wxxinews.org/new-york-public...
New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Monday that he has questions about Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to reinstate a pre-pandemic ban on people wearing masks in public.
Hochul has said that she’s considering revising and reinstating an 1845 law that bans wearing masks in public in response to increased incidents of crime and threatening behavior in the New York City subways and other places where perpetrators wear masks to conceal their identity.
She first made the comments during a June 12 interview on CNN when she was asked about some Jewish leaders’ call to ban masks in light of the rash of protests against the Israel-Hamas war, where many demonstrators wear them.
She has since repeated her views, saying she won’t tolerate individuals using masks to evade responsibility for those behaviors.
“People who are wearing masks were able to commit crimes because they're now undetected,” Hochul said on June 13. “It's a challenge for law enforcement.”
I was actually surprised that there wasn't a widely reported uptick in robberies and other crime when face masks first started becoming a thing. I figured it would be like Christmas come early for armed robbers and such.
I was actually surprised that there wasn't a widely reported uptick in robberies and other crime when face masks first started becoming a thing. I figured it would be like Christmas come early for armed robbers and such.
lol?
To be fair this has more to do with eliminating cash bail and raising the amount people are allowed to steal and other pro criminal law than it does with masks
https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-mayor-ada...
NYC Mayor Adams says he supports mask ban to curb crime: 'Cowards cover their faces'
I was actually surprised that there wasn't a widely reported uptick in robberies and other crime when face masks first started becoming a thing. I figured it would be like Christmas come early for armed robbers and such.
I highlighted the key word. I think most of us would be surprised how much crime is never reported, and how this has increased since 2020; both people not bothering to report crimes and authorities changing their own reporting/classification systems.
Knowing nothing would be done anyways and how much time it would take on my part, at this point I doubt I would bother reporting any property crime unless it was for insurance reasons.
This is one of the reasons why homicide stats tend to be the best way to gauge crime trends, as there is less wiggle room in how they are reported. Although even in this case you should be careful you are looking at solved and unsolved homicides; as since 2020 there has been a giant uptick in cases that will never be solved. So just looking at cleared cases wont give you an accurate depiction of trends over time.
You mean a stern talking to and an afternoon in court isn't sufficient motivation for criminals to change their behavior?
My wife had her wallet stolen out of her purse while sitting in a Panera with her friend a few months ago at 3:10pm.
At 3:25pm, I received the first email from one of the credit card companies about a potentially fraudulent charge at Best Buy, which was across the street from the Panera. Over the next 2 hours, the thieves hit 5 different retailers and charged just shy of $10,000 worth of goods on our various cards. Mostly Apple products, but roughly $900 worth of toilet paper and laundry detergent and other household **** at Home Depot before I noticed and got everything cancelled. I had forgotten about one of our cards because it's one only my wife carries, and they used that to hit several different Walgreens stores to buy gift cards, but thankfully the credit card company itself shut it off after the second successful purchase and then called me.
I was able to go immediately to these stores and get all the receipts and even camera footage of the woman who made the actual purchases. Best Buy had a full body HD shot of her waiting for someone to bring her all her iPads and watches. Target had a perfect camera shot of the vehicle they left the store parking lot in as well. I took all of it to the cops the same night. I knew immediately that nothing would happen because the first thing the cops asked is whether or not the credit card company was going to reimburse us for the fraud. Of course the answer is yes, and the credit card company then becomes the actual victim, and it's just a cost of doing business for them. They told me all we could seek charges for is stealing the wallet, but since there wasn't anything of real value in it, there's really not much the law can do.
Even though the serial numbers of all the Apple products was on the receipts, with our name on them, I was told Apple can't disable or assist the police with locating them.
The following week I received an update from the cops that they identified the woman in the footage, who is a known bad actor and has done **** like this before, but she could simply deny that it was her in the photos/video and they'd have no way of proving otherwise. I reaffirmed my desire to press any and all charges I could and that we'd cooperate in any way necessary with her prosecution. That update was the last one I received.
Meanwhile, my wife's photo ID (and address) is out there and she was having panic attacks just going alone to the grocery store because she felt violated and unsafe after the realization that criminals had invaded her personal space without her even noticing. She watches a lot of murder shows on TV, which probably doesn't help.
Shame on society for letting **** like this go completely unpunished.
Also, Shame on Best Buy, Target, etc for letting someone spend $3,000+ with a photo ID of someone the entirely wrong color than the person standing in front of you. I'm not going to post the picture of the thief here, but suffice to say she is not a little white woman with green eyes.
I highlighted the key word. I think most of us would be surprised how much crime is never reported, and how this has increased since 2020; both people not bothering to report crimes and authorities changing their own reporting/classification systems.
Knowing nothing would be done anyways and how much time it would take on my part, at this point I doubt I would bother reporting any property crime unless it was for insurance reasons.
This is
I use theft by value because that's reported very precisely, thanks to insurance claims.
Guys, I wasn't talking about crime in general, I was specifically talking about crimes where the perpetrators usually wear masks.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-mayor-ada...
NYC Mayor Adams says he supports mask ban to curb crime: 'Cowards cover their faces'
He's not wrong
You mean a stern talking to and an afternoon in court isn't sufficient motivation for criminals to change their behavior?
My wife had her wallet stolen out of her purse while sitting in a Panera with her friend a few months ago at 3:10pm.
At 3:25pm, I received the first email from one of the credit card companies about a potentially fraudulent charge at Best Buy, which was across the street from the Panera. Over the next 2 hours, the thieves
Are there still parts of the USA were they do not use chip readers on your credit card and you must enter a PIN # ?
CDN crooks hit Tim Hortons and buy smokes 😀
You only need to provide a PIN if you're getting cash. This goes for both debit withdraws and credit cash advances.
Stores claim they have policies to check ID above certain thresholds, but even that is ineffective if the retail worker can't be bothered to actually look at it.
If cities are proposing mask bans again, then there is clearly evidence of an uptick in masked bandits.
