All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[Jack Dracula]

No you are correct in your bafflement. It was stupid to even bring this issue to a hearing. You could tell by the time Fani got on the stand and completely owned the court that this was nonsense. They were stretching the limits of credulity to even suggest that she was somehow "profiting" from dinners he was buying her etc.

And I was even harder on her at the beginning thinking dammit you knew how important this case was and they would dig up anything relevant or not. But Wade was not even her first choice to try the case. That came out too. That should have highlighted she had no intention of whatever fraud or bs profiteering.

Had her first choices accepted then he wouldn't have been there in the first place.

You’re not wrong, but the two of them could’ve recognized the significance of this case and the likelihood their relationship could be misconstrued and used to discredit them in the public eye.

[kidfresh512]

Willis could've been cloistered like a nun when not in the courtroom and Trump's lawyers STILL would've pulled this stunt. They're on orders to delay the process by any means necessary, so they're going to keep on doing stupid sh*t like this. Hell, no doubt they've already got another scheme ready to go now that the Wade gambit fell flat.

Oh of course. People still parroting the clearly debunked right wing talking points like they were true. How could she be slow walking the case when she wanted to try the whole thing by August? She didnt want to break apart the defendants and try them one by one which would have been another way to drag it out if she was somehow trying to benefit from Wade's paycheck.

Those were stupid, lazy, and desperate arguments in the first place. Having to defend who paid at dinner? When there are literally married couples who practice law or have law firms. Are every one of their cases tainted because the Husband or Wife is the boss and they both benefit from any case? It was absurd from the start.

Fani said she is ready to try the case in 30 days. Yes she will have to boot Wade but it is flat out stupid to continue acting like she was essentially getting a second check or something cause of their dates.

You’re not wrong, but the two of them could’ve recognized the significance of this case and the likelihood their relationship could be misconstrued and used to discredit them in the public eye.

No one is claiming that Fani did not make a tactical error here. She did open the door to the messy ness. Every prosecutor in all these Trump cases has to know ANYTHING they have ever done will be looked into. They will be smeared, hounded, called to testify. So yes she should have been way smarter in that regard.

[comictimes]

This is quite old, but you don't find updates about inequality anymore (imagine how bad it must be).

This viral video is right: We need to worry about wealth inequality

The original study can only be found via the wayback machine, AFAICT.



On more recent news, Attack kills 20 and injures 155 at Gaza food aid point, as Israel denies responsibility, nope, it's not deja vu, it's the same thing from a couple of weeks ago, again.

[CaptainEurope]

In this case, the prosecutor hired someone she was romantically involved with as a special counsel, even if he didn't have obvious experience in these topics.

So in addition to paying for her boyfriend out of the public purse, she also had a financial incentive to drag out the process, because the more complicated the case is, the more overtime her boyfriend gets (and this would be a bad incentive even if he never spent a penny on her.)

That's how it's a conflict of interest.

I thought it came out that the romance didn't start until they were working together on the case? The guy who claimed it started earlier totally folded as a witness.

[Jack Dracula]

I was reading about the Trump family taking over the RNC. With Donald placing another person who shouldn't have a job over a position with his daughter Lara in charge.

So... we all kinda know he's gonna f-ck the rest of those candidates and try to take all the money right ? I mean we all know you don't fire 60 people and place a family member in charge if the plans aren't to literally take what you want.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they hire some of them back after vetting them and having them sign loyalty pledges and NDAs.
Trump can now decide who gets how much for their election based on whether he thinks they’ll toe the line and do as they’re told.

[Mister Mets]

Pornhub suspends site in Texas due to state’s age-verification law







Texas is hoping that this new far right Supreme Court will just over rule the previous Supreme Court decisions with not even a new argument. Just change the ruling because their are more conservative judges.
This will be interesting how far will even GOP leaning voters who access porn even if secretly while pretending to be all holy etc be pushed before they change their voting habits? Obviously we here know there are plenty of ways to get your porn fix. But some of these major sites that are now deciding to cut their access to Texas or make any Texan user create accounts that they then might have to hide from the wife etc. get sick of the far right over reach?

From my understanding, this isn't about Supreme Court decisions but fifth circuit decisions. If there's a circuit split, the Supreme Court may hear the case.

There are a few separate questions.

The first is whether it's a good policy. For the most part, this isn't what the court should focus on (except to the extent that the practical application of the new law violates existing law.)

Then there are the questions about the extent to which age verification regulations violate free speech. Does the ability to access pornography anonymously take priority over safeguards on minors accessing it?

It doesn't matter how serious politically these folks are. Once Trump DEMANDS the money , they will cave and hand over cash. He fired 60+ people in a day because he has his flunkies in place.

Trump's corrupt, and capable of stupidity, but looting the RNC doesn't seem like it'll be a smart move.

He wants to be President, for his legacy, for his ability to shut down investigations and for the money he can make on a Truth Social IPO (which will be more valuable if he's President-Elect than if he's lost two presidential elections in a row.

I'm not sure I follow.

Admittedly, I've been out of school for nearly 30 years, and I don't have kids. So I don't know how schools operate today. But when I was in grade school, I got In School Suspension twice for fighting (didn't start it, but I ended it). In high school, I got an after school suspension for being late to a class (despite having a note from a teacher excusing my tardiness, as I was finishing up a time-sensitive project for her). And I know plenty of kids got in trouble for various reasons, and there was hardly every pushback from parents over that.

Our district did have a school where all of the really troubled teens got shipped off to, so that may have been a pipeline to prison. But that's just conjecture on my part.

A lot of modern educational discourse is against penalties for students.

An argument is that penalties like suspension take students out of the classroom, setting them back academically and leading to an increased chance of dropping out and incarceration.

That would be how the School to Prison pipeline works.

https://www.educationnext.org/provin...adult-arrests/

I thought it came out that the romance didn't start until they were working together on the case? The guy who claimed it started earlier totally folded as a witness.

I don't know if they proved when the relationship started either way, but at that moment, we still have a problem of a prosecutor paying a romantic partner and having incentives to slow-walk the case.

[CaptainEurope]

Some good news from my neck of the woods:

Germany is on track to achieve 2030 climate goals according to new
@GermanEnvAgency
projections. Energy transition is the basis of this success. Emission reductions of 65% by 2030 are now in reach.

Germany released 673 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in 2023. That's a reduction of ten percent compared to 2022. Compared to 1990, we've reduced emissions by 64%, more than the expected 49% just a short while ago.

[CaptainEurope]

I don't know if they proved when the relationship started either way, but at that moment, we still have a problem of a prosecutor paying a romantic partner and having incentives to slow-walk the case.

Yes, I saw Popehat make that argument as well -but slow walking is exactly what Trump wants from his trials, so again it makes little sense to me.

[CaptainEurope]

Another fun aspect of Ken Buxit: His is the "safer" GOP district that Lauren Boebert, of the Boebert crime family, wanted to switch to. Now he's resigning in a hurry, which gives her two options:
- Run for the seat now and vacate her old seat ASAP, which would mean another special election and this time with a real chance the Democrats will pick up the seat, which would cause problems for the Speaker and her party.
- Stay in her old seat and risk being voted out in November.

[Jack Dracula]

Yes, I saw Popehat make that argument as well -but slow walking is exactly what Trump wants from his trials, so again it makes little sense to me.

The point may be that it doesn’t have to make sense because conservatives will keep repeating it anyway - as evidenced here.

[Mister Mets]

Another fun aspect of Ken Buxit: His is the "safer" GOP district that Lauren Boebert, of the Boebert crime family, wanted to switch to. Now he's resigning in a hurry, which gives her two options:
- Run for the seat now and vacate her old seat ASAP, which would mean another special election and this time with a real chance the Democrats will pick up the seat, which would cause problems for the Speaker and her party.
- Stay in her old seat and risk being voted out in November.

She's already at risk of losing; I'm not sure she's the favorite to win the primary.

She's stuck with a choice of the bad publicity of leaving Congress for political benefit, or from the possibility of someone else raising their profile because they can run for the full term and for the special election (the vacancy election and primary are both on June 25.)

The smartest move would be to cut a deal with a lesser-known candidate, and back them in the vacancy election, in exchange for their support in the primary. That person will raise their profile by being in Congress for a few months, so they'll get something out of it.

But she's not smart or disciplined, and this isn't guaranteed to work.

Another problem is that even if she wins the primary, the person who wins the vacancy is a potential primary rival in 2026, where it will be more of a 1 on 1 race. Right now, she's running against two state representatives, two former state senators, a radio host and others.

Yes, I saw Popehat make that argument as well -but slow walking is exactly what Trump wants from his trials, so again it makes little sense to me.

Honestly, people who want Trump prosecuted have more reason to be upset with Fani Willis, if it's possible she compromised the case because of her love life.

For Trump, it's a useful delay and his team can make BS arguments about how the entire case is tainted and should be thrown out, which is not how this works.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Pornhub suspends site in Texas due to state’s age-verification law

Texas is hoping that this new far right Supreme Court will just over rule the previous Supreme Court decisions with not even a new argument. Just change the ruling because their are more conservative judges.
This will be interesting how far will even GOP leaning voters who access porn even if secretly while pretending to be all holy etc be pushed before they change their voting habits? Obviously we here know there are plenty of ways to get your porn fix. But some of these major sites that are now deciding to cut their access to Texas or make any Texan user create accounts that they then might have to hide from the wife etc. get sick of the far right over reach?

I set my VPN to Houston just to see what I get:

Dear user,

As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors.

While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing identification every time you want to visit an adult platform is not an effective solution for protecting users online, and in fact, will put minors and your privacy at risk.

Attempting to mandate age verification without any means to enforce at scale gives platforms the choice to comply or not, leaving thousands of platforms open and accessible. As we've seen in other states, such bills have failed to protect minors, by driving users from those few websites which comply, to the thousands of websites, with far fewer safety measures in place, which do not comply. Very few sites are able to compare to the robust Trust and Safety measures we currently have in place. To protect minors and user privacy, any legislation must be enforced against all platforms offering adult content.

Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it.

The safety of our users is one of our biggest concerns. We believe that the only effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to verify users’ age on their device and to either deny or allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that verification.

We call on all adult sites to comply with the law. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas. In doing so, we are complying with the law, as we always do, but hope that governments around the world will implement laws that actually protect the safety and security of users.

We encourage you to:

Learn more about device-based age verification* solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.
Contact your representatives and demand device-based verification solutions that make the internet safer while also respecting your privacy.
*Device-Based Age Verification refers to any approach to age verification where the personal information that is used to verify the user’s age is either shared in-person at an authorized retailer, inputted locally into the user’s device, or stored on a network controlled by the device manufacturer or the supplier of the device’s operating system. Whether through pre-installed content blocking and filtering software, the disabling of web-browsing permissions, or other means, the user will then be prevented from accessing age-restricted content over the internet unless they are age-verified. To come to fruition, such an approach requires the cooperation of manufacturers and operating-system providers.

[AnakinFlair]

In this case, the prosecutor hired someone she was romantically involved with as a special counsel, even if he didn't have obvious experience in these topics.

So in addition to paying for her boyfriend out of the public purse, she also had a financial incentive to drag out the process, because the more complicated the case is, the more overtime her boyfriend gets (and this would be a bad incentive even if he never spent a penny on her.)

That's how it's a conflict of interest.

Man, Musk got played here.

This has helped Lemon's reputation.

For Willis, I think the fact that she was trying to fast track the trials works against the theory of her dragging out the process to enrich herself or her boyfriend. Also the fact that her boyfriend wasn't her first choice for the job.

I'm not sure there was a real conflict of interest here. What there was is incredibly bad optics, and maybe something she ultimately gets fined for by an ethics board.

As for Lemon- I wonder if the interview was completed, and then Musk pulled the plug. If that's the case, I hope Don posts it on YouTube or finds another way for it to get out. Anything that makes Musk uncomfortable makes me smile.

A lot of modern educational discourse is against penalties for students.

An argument is that penalties like suspension take students out of the classroom, setting them back academically and leading to an increased chance of dropping out and incarceration.

That would be how the School to Prison pipeline works.

Thanks for that explanation. I don't necessarily agree with that- during my suspensions, I had to still do my classwork, so I don't feel that I missed out on anything. Then again, I never really learned well from lectures- I prefer to read and do the work myself, so maybe it was easier for me to still learn in suspensions. Frankly, if I had been allowed to get away with half the stuff I did in school, I would probably be in prison right now.

[babyblob]

Nathan Wade has resigned from the Trump Case. More Delays.

And Trumps hush money trail has been delayed at least 30 days.

[Username taken]

Pornhub suspends site in Texas due to state’s age-verification law







Texas is hoping that this new far right Supreme Court will just over rule the previous Supreme Court decisions with not even a new argument. Just change the ruling because their are more conservative judges.
This will be interesting how far will even GOP leaning voters who access porn even if secretly while pretending to be all holy etc be pushed before they change their voting habits? Obviously we here know there are plenty of ways to get your porn fix. But some of these major sites that are now deciding to cut their access to Texas or make any Texan user create accounts that they then might have to hide from the wife etc. get sick of the far right over reach?

Beyond this case, I think a larger discussion needs to be had on how to regulate porn online.

I think porn is far too readily accessible for kids these days. I don't even know why people pay for it, there are thousands of sites that carry it.

I think porn was easier to control when it was strictly on home video. Kids had to go out of their way to get it but these days, all major search engines and even some social media sites carry it. One doesn't really have to look deep to gain access to it.

I really don't know how to approach this and I'm not saying that a flat-out ban is the way to go, just that content moderation is something that needs to be discussed regarding the internet.