No doubt various TLAs have compiled dossiers on various very important people. It would be irresponsible of them not to. People who have so much power and access are intrinsic security threats, and that’s no secret to the spy agencies.

Of course they might frame it differently. They might say that they compile information so that they can make sure that the powerful person doesn’t get blackmailed, for example. It’s easy to try to phrase things in a way that suggests you’re protecting them, when the actual theoretical goal is protecting us from what they could do if things went sideways.

Will the courts shut this down? If so, which ones might do so?

The Reuters authors are far too generous to corporate leadership. No, the bosses weren’t blindsided. No, the bosses weren’t surprised. All of the demands and expectations are ones you would predict.

This kind of situation is exactly when strikes happen, and if anyone in management wasn’t prepared for it, they’re unqualified for their job. Or they’re liars. Or both.

You still have spending wars. Politicians are bought and sold every day, and any large company probably donates to politicians of multiple parties.

I don’t see the problem originating from Congress necessarily being polarized. I think the problem is that corporate and big money interests are too strong, and they fund politicians that will try to divide the people on social issues so that they can distract the people from badness happening on the economic front. In other words, I think we’re seeing a problem with corruption that’s expressing itself as polarization.

Even the term “polarization” can also be used as a trap, because it tends to be used in a way that frames politics as a linear spectrum, and your views are somewhere between these two end points. In reality everything is far more complicated. People have highly nuanced views on many different subjects with good reason, and there’s no way you can easily capture it on one single sliding scale.

Nobody is attacking your father here. At least I hope they aren’t. My questions were about your knowledge and beliefs.

If I told you that your assumptions about my background or wrong, and if I told you that I wasn’t confused, what would you say?

… It’s kind of sad, because you could have been part of an interesting discussion, but you got careless and decided that you would go into attack mode to protect someone who wasn’t being attacked from … I have no idea what you think you were protecting them from. Clearly they were trying to get a sense of why people have various intuitions, and presumably they are willing to be somewhat introspective about the things they grew up believing, too.

I think many of us, and many Important People, give a fuck. It’s just that we know to take our time and gather information before making any strong proclamations about exactly what happened. We all know that Trump would lie about everything, and initial reports from police and neighbors are notoriously unreliable.

Finally now, more than a day after the event, it feels like maybe we’re able to put together the beginning of a reliable picture about exactly what happened.

If you want to know how people feel about assassination attempts on presidential candidates, just look at what they said two months ago.

Typically the first amendment is going to protect you when you say most things. The types of things you definitely don’t want to say are specific threats.

But there was a sad situation in Colorado where the courts ruled that a guy could be locked up for saying that he wished that bad things fell upon some judges, even though he definitely didn’t say or imply that he was going to do them. So if you want to rely on the Colorado precedent, maybe there’s something to work with, but it’s a pretty terrible precedent.

That all being said, let’s not wish death on anyone. Even if it’s someone who’s done horrible things, let’s just wish that they’re forced to retire early and either get locked up in prison, if they committed crimes, or live out there lives in miserable condition in some community that we never have to visit or think about.

That’s not exactly true. He has lost a massive amount of public respect. He bought Twitter and now the company is worth much less than it was before. His credibility has gone down considerably in the last few years.

People often make bad judgments based on incomplete information. As you know, it’s a sad fact that some parents do horrible things to their children. If those children leave, never come back, and never send money, good.

Some things are common within a culture, but even in places where most people are inclined to help their aging parents, like various countries in Asia, there are still children who reasonably choose not to do so. Cultural tendencies are simply that, tendencies. If your country doesn’t have a law requiring you to provide support, it’s because lawmakers know that in some situations it might be reasonable not to do so.

Did you notice how you wrote that you would be seen as downright evil, but you didn’t say by who? I feel like that’s something you ought to consider more carefully.

You gave an example of sending your father money, but you haven’t seen him for 17 years. This raises many more questions. Does he need your money? Is your money helping? If you found out that he didn’t need your money and it’s not helping, would you stop sending it? Are you sending the money to make yourself feel good, even though it’s not helping him? How do you think he would feel if you found out you were sending him money even though you’re jobless?

Finally, you used the word “unnatural” knowing that it’s just not true. That was certainly an antagonistic approach to the issue. Is that what you intended? Was it accidental? If it was accidental, what word did you actually mean instead?

Unclear how legit they are. Don’t rush judgment, especially when the victim and his associates are narcissistic liars.

Or rather, define “legitimate”. It matters in a situation like this.

No no, the attempt was to hit theother ear. Symmetry.

You’re blaming people for being strongly anti-genocide. That’s basically absurd at face value. If you wanna argue against being a single issue voter, that’s a conversation to have. However, “I oppose genocide.” is kinda the single best single issue to rely on, if someone is inclined to be one.

All the while, Harris knows the risks. Don’t blame voters for Harris’s conscious choice. If you alienate your base, you deserve to lose your base. Deal with it… I think she still has the votes, but that is the risk for every candidate, and it always will be.

Nothing. Discovered mine long before.

Diversity, my friend. What will you do if the 401k doesn’t come through like you want? Bear in mind that the ultra rich and the big banks employ people who are really good at investing money. They have more experience and information than you. They’ll bail themselves, but not you, out in case of disaster.

“Show me the money” is not a good motto for long term savings. Inflation or poor investment can make that money disappear easily enough. Of course you don’t want to get scammed, so oversight is a good idea.

Not quite tho. He has lost in court several times. Paid for it. Forced to be there when the judge ordered it. And we shall see what happens in a few months.

But anyway, it’s no secret that the ultra rich don’t need to obey the law. That’s old news, sad to say.

People really do steal cars, my friend. A tow truck is a great way to do that, in fact. Disguising oneself as a legitimate worker is a classic tactic, not limited to the car theft world.

Did you watch the video? Your facts don’t quite match what it showed. He gave the cops his papers, and then he closed the window, because he didn’t need it open until they got back with his ticket. That’s when they started power tripping. If they wanted him out of the car, all they had to do was wait 10 or 20 seconds. It really was that simple. But they wanted violence, so that’s what they created.

What’s actually dangerous to cops? The number one thing is bad driving by the cops themselves, which is the leading cause of death for officers on duty. During the pandemic, the pandemic itself was the other leading cause I think, because many officers didn’t believe in it and they put themselves at risk.

Every year US cops shoot and kill over a thousand people. Many of those people are innocent. The risk to the average citizen is high, but the risk to the cop is much much lower. The last numbers I saw were in the hundreds, in the low hundreds, but it might even be lower than that. And now you’re trying to carve out a special situation, where the cop is not shot when they first approached the car, but is only later shot after they already got the papers from the driver, and specifically because the driver closed their tinted window. I wonder if you can find even a single example of that happening in the last year. This is an issue that I tend to pay attention to, and I can’t think of it happening in recent history.

And you might want to argue that we should err on the side of caution. First of all, that’s not the law of the land. The Constitution doesn’t allow you to do that. Second, if the situation is as rare as I think it is, almost or entirely non-existent, then what you’re talking about is paranoia. In that case, you need a psychologist, not an open window. Third, the threat to the driver and passengers is real. If the cop makes a mistake, they may draw their gun and shoot people in the car. What if an acorn falls near them? They might shoot the driver. Sadly, this is a very real situation, unlike your hypothetical. In other words, the facts are not on your side here.