IANAL, but my understanding is entrapment is when they convince you to do something you might not otherwise have done. So if the cops create an account of a minor and message an adult asking if they want to fuck, and the answer is like “uh no, absolutely not,” and then the cops follow up by repeatedly sexting, and the adult blocks their account, but the cops relentlessly keep sexting from burner accounts, and plant people in the adult’s work and social environments who keep talking about how normal it is to fuck minors who sext you out of the blue, and then the adult is finally like “oh whatever, fine” - that’s entrapment.

Now, most people still are literally never going to take the minor up on the offer, no matter how relentless they are or how normalized it is in their environment. That’s true about most crimes. The question is how many people wouldn’t have committed that crime unless this very specific police-created situation came up, and that difference is what falls into entrapment.

I’d argue this isn’t even close to entrapment, because all they did was set up an account much like all the others that exist, and waited for others to find them. It’s no different from leaving a bike unlocked, then catching somebody who steals it. There are unlocked bikes everywhere, and people don’t suddenly decide to steal the only bike of their life because they happened to find that unlocked bike.

Of course, they could also be spending this time and money getting to the root of societal issues and fixing the core problems instead of catching a small percentage of active pedophiles and letting the rest of them continue to cause irreparable harm.

I don’t think society on a local, national, or world level is past persecution for stupid reasons, and I fall into a number of categories that certain people might go after me for if they got into power. I want to make that difficult for them.

But, perhaps the part I like most is the struggle sessions. The entire community will heavily focus on a current topic, then hash it out with good faith discussion.

I’ve never seen this - not just from that instance, but literally anywhere on the internet, even back in the forum or bb days. But I’ve been looking for something like that for years, and I’d be interested. Do you know of any specific examples of this happening?

He’s unquestionably getting pardoned. I disagree that we should feel good about another rich asshole getting off the hook because some other rich asshole wouldn’t like it.

Yeah, his alternative energy push was definitely positive, he just didn’t have the political capital or savvy to make anything of it. He admittedly walked into a pretty raw deal with stagflation and an energy crisis, but he handled them so poorly it’s hard to justify cutting him any slack. Telling the public energy is in short supply so they’re going to have to make sacrifices is a losing strategy no matter what you’re advocating for.

He’s referring to this cover from April 14, 1980: https://content.time.com/time/magazine/archive/covers/1980/1101800414_400.jpg The full article is here: https://time.com/archive/6857830/key-to-a-wider-peace/

It’s not hard-hitting journalism by any means, but it recognizes the idea that maybe not everybody loves the idea of Israel wiping out the Palestinians. That’s progress to some degree for US mass media 44 years ago.

The AP article for those that don’t want to listen: https://apnews.com/article/raiders-nfl-vegas-police-allegiant-stadium-5239b9962c23a6512fa2f694add9b9ea

The highlight for me is this:

The Las Vegas Police Protective Association, with the backing of the department, said they are concerned such technology compromises the officers’ privacy.

It’s worth noting they’re only doing this for workers, not for attendees. The police would presumably by fine with it if it were just attendees and not workers, because it wouldn’t include them.

It worked out pretty well for Carter’s policies, even if he only got one term. Carter ran openly as a centrist, and his fiscal conservatism was very popular. The left-ish wing of the Democratic party started an “Anybody But Carter” campaign during the primaries for exactly that reason. Lots of policies he advocated for got passed during his presidency: he deregulated the airlines, the trucking industry, railroads, banking - and that was a great trial run for Reagan’s followups (and Bush, and Clinton, and W).

But Carter was both too conservative and wildly incompetent for the job. With somewhat liberal Dems having the majority in both houses and universal health care being a big issue at the time, and with Ted Kennedy as majority leader trying to push it through, Carter still opposed it on the basis of cost. Of course it died, as did any other progressive or even moderately liberal ideas that cost money.

What I’m saying is fuck Carter. He’s done a great job rehabbing his image but he was a bad president his presidency is rightfully maligned by both the right and the left. But he got a lot of policies through that he liked.

Being in a position where the entire country hears his very reasonable, very easy to understand words over and over again would eventually have an effect. Even the die-hards would eventually be asking themselves if it is in fact reasonable that corporations are assfucking each and every one of us every single day. Some of them would vote in a more progressive representative.

Would he get everything passed? Absolutely not. But he would get some good stuff through.

Most things are pretty easy. One problem is having the time to do literally everything yourself. The other is deciding whether that time spent doing optional tasks is worth the time not spent doing more meaningful activities.

Seems bizarre that people are okay with public opinion being explicitly manipulated by a very small group of people with very little overlapping interest with the public, but not okay with public opinion being explicitly manipulated by a very small group of people with very little overlapping interest with the public from a foreign country.

Salmon (although there are pockets of people who still pronounce the “l”)

See, this is a weird one, because I don’t know anybody who pronounces the “L” here, but calm, balm, or psalm you would.

They really grabbed us by the Purcell.

This is actually really helpful clarification, I did just miss some of that. It’s no wealth tax, but it’s better than nothing.

Nobody would be happier than me to see that happen, but seeing how nobody’s ever done something like that before I have my doubts. Can’t remember the last Democrat that actually got more radical than the platform they ran on. Certainly wasn’t anybody in the last 50 years.

The commondreams article says “endorsement of taxes on ultra-wealthy individuals and large corporations” - your linked article says she’s raising the corporate tax rate not even up to what it was before Trump. So, sure, I guess that technically counts as the “large corporations” part, but it doesn’t meet the “ultra-wealthy individuals” language or the “billionaires tax” claim in the headlines.

I love that she says she wants to raise it somewhat. I love that she wants to give tax breaks to working class people. I don’t love that this makes it out to be something it’s not.

Considering these are bribery charges and “investigators found $480,000 in cash and more than $100,000 worth of gold bars” just at his home, I think he has plenty of money.

Strom Thurmond was already 53 when he did his 24-hour filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. I’m convinced he still could’ve done it at 100 years old when he left office fueled by nothing but hate.

Correct if I’m wrong here, but is this article just “Economist comments on something it has been claimed the Harris campaign team said, but is not explicitly mentioned anywhere in writing or in speeches”?

If she planned on taxing billionaires, she’d be shouting it from the rooftops. That’s a popular policy. It’s not going to be something she keeps in her back pocket and then when she’s president goes SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKERS. Not that she could do it by EO anyway, but honestly, this is so far from a reality it just barely qualifies as news.

The overwhelming majority of comments I’m seeing indicate they’d like to see it gone. Why are you opposed to listening to the people who create and consume all of the content in this space?