Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[CGVT]

The acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, whose predecessor abruptly resigned one week ago after President Trump complained officials were not doing enough to find election fraud in the state, declared on a call with his staff Monday that “there’s just nothing to” the few claims of fraud the office was examining, according to an audio recording obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

On the call, Bobby Christine, who also serves as the top federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Georgia, suggested that he was surprised to learn the office had not found significant election fraud issues.

“Quite frankly, just watching television, you would assume that you got election cases stacked from the floor to the ceiling,” Christine said, according to the Atlanta newspaper. “I am so happy to find out that’s not the case, but I didn’t know coming in.”


https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...6d6_story.html

Jesus. Must be watching Newsmax

[iam416]

Pretty much spot on -- https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...of-government/

I think we're pretty well down the path to a quasi-Orwellian society. My solace is in the fact that Ohio isn't going blue any time soon and Federalism still exists. For now.

This may be as close as we've come WWI-era speech suppression since, well, WWI. That wasn't permanment. And when the "threat" was removed there was a gradual return to normalcy (eventually capped with a series of pro-free speech decisions like Brandenburg, albeit decades later). The risk here, IMO, is that the threat isn't viewed as PDJT, but rather as Rs. PDJT will be gone sooner or later. The Rs will not. I think it's very, very possible that the purge will expand beyond PDJT. I think it likely, actually. And that's terrifying.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Isn't Al Bundy from Youngstown Talent? Can we get him to run for office?

[Hannibal]

The only thing that matters at this point is the federal government. Most of your tax dollars go to DC and most of the laws that affect you most deeply are Federal in nature. That is why the gradual shift of state houses to the Rs doesn't matter. And, as was shown definitely in 2020, state Rs couldn't give less of a shit about the national agenda.

So DeWine being governor instead of the D means that you pay state sales tax instead of 1% higher income tax. Pfffft. Big deal.

[iam416]

I disagree rather strongly on that. Local laws affect me more. The only federal law that immediately affects me is tax law. I suppose is there are others (certainly re investments, etc) but I don't take notice of them. Perhaps I'm missing them, but the fact that I just spend a few minutes trying to think of specific Fed laws that directly impact me and came up blank speaks to this issue (or my ignorance).

[froot loops]

If you want to break up Big Tech, good.

The politics are probably good for this impeachment for the Democrats I guess. It's a way out for McConnell though that's the key you need to watch. He wants to be rid of Trump and be doesn't want him running in 2024.

Truthfully, the most important thing is what the investigations uncover.

[Hannibal]

I disagree rather strongly on that. Local laws affect me more. The only federal law that immediately affects me is tax law. I suppose is there are others (certainly re investments, etc) but I don't take notice of them. Perhaps I'm missing them, but the fact that I just spend a few minutes trying to think of specific Fed laws that directly impact me and came up blank speaks to this issue (or my ignorance).

Local -- maybe. State -- meh. Federal rules nowadays above both IMHO. The economy is almost totally national. The majority of tax dollars, both personal and corporate, go to DC. Air travel is national. The nation's health insurance is national. Immigration policy is national. Lots of stuff is theoretically left up to the states, but they seem to all follow each other when it comes to those materials (e.g. licensing of professions, drinking and driving laws, etc), and they are generally non-ideological in nature.

[iam416]

"Flag-burning and property destrution are part of a long, proud history" -- Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...uction-175763/

“Our country was started because, the Boston tea party. Rioting. So do not get it twisted and think this is something that has never happened before and this is so terrible and these savages and all of that. This is how this country was started” –@DonLemon on @CNN 11:53 PM ET, May 31, 2020

"The nationwide protests against police killings have been called un-American by critics, but rebellion has always been used to defend liberty." -- The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/...otests/612466/

"When destroying a police precinct is a reasonable reaciton." -- Slate. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...ice-fires.html

"In Defense of Destroying Property" -- The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/ac...est-vandalism/

"Violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man's neck until all of the life is leached out of his body. Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. To use the same language to describe those two things is not moral" -@nhannahjones on CBSN (NYT writer; 1619 Project Founder; Pulitzer Prizer Winner)

"Understand Protests As 'Acts of Rebellion' Instead of Riots" -- NPR https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020...s-of-rebellion

"Police brutality, white vigilantism and poverty – not property damage - are the true violence" -- The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...iots-rebellion

[Ghengis Jon]

You know, if the nation had voted for Doc Hodgeman back in 2016 like I did, we wouldn't have all these problems.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Few Americans- so many illiterate in the history of the US and citizenship - have a fucking clue about the things Talent just posted.

That's scary shit. The rest of it not so much.

[iam416]

If you want to break up Big Tech, good.

My solution to the current issue is to make Section 230 immunity contingent on the would-be publisher agreeing not to censor speech consistent with First Amendment law. Or rather, agreeing to subject itself to First Amendment jurisprudence. I would require any such publisher to register as "immune" to obtain the benefits of immunity. If they wish to retain control over their platform then they don't have to opt-in to 230 immunity.

This would, I think, make the law consistent with their behavior. If they truly are an open forum -- and we want to encourage that -- then we're not going to hold them liable but they are subject to traditional 1st A jurisprudence. If they want to selectively monitor and control content, then that's fine -- but at that point you're exercising control over content and once you start to actively monitor content you're assuming traditional notions of liability (negligence could apply as opposed to strict liability standard).

So, make the decision that best suits your business.

[THE_WIZARD_]

The dems are hypocritical.

The republicans are hypocritical.

This is why the swamp needed to be drained. DC is a corrupt fucking swamp. Too bad PDJT could not have been charismatic like Reagan...this could have been an amazing four years. Don't misunderstand...the left would have still gone after him but PDJT alienated pretty much everyone but the far to middle right. You can't win elections or win minds being an egomaniac glory hound...which he certainly is. Lost opportunity.

[froot loops]

Yeah I don't know that much about section 230 to have an opinion on it. Your idea is interesting, do you separate the actors in the stack or is it strictly for the social media companies. Basically is YouTube and AWS the same thing? In Parler's case it seems like they entered an agreement where they did agree to moderate messages and failed to do so. I don't really know the answers, but it appears AWS was really just exercing their contract out clauses.

It's on Parler that they were not hosted on their private servers. If they have their own private servers and they were prevented from getting on the public internet, I think that would be wrong.

[iam416]

Yeah I don't know that much about section 230 to have an opinion on it. Your idea is interesting, do you separate the actors in the stack or is it strictly for the social media companies. Basically is YouTube and AWS the same thing? In Parler's case it seems like they entered an agreement where they did agree to moderate messages and failed to do so. I don't really know the answers, but it appears AWS was really just exercing their contract out clauses.

It's on Parler that they were not hosted on their private servers. If they have their own private servers and they were prevented from getting on the public internet, I think that would be wrong.

I actually don't have to sort out anything. I just have to say -- you in or you out. A company that is likely to use 230 will know that. A company that is not will know that. Twitter, Parler, YT -- they need 230. AWS does not (as I mentioned to DSL, they're very far away from liability). Hell, I don't think Apple and Google need 230.

But, if you give 1st A application to the direct publishers then the AWS/Apple/Google issues go away. There is no "conservative" twitter or "liberal" twitter -- there's just twitters. You can ban Parler, but the people on Parler can go to Twitter and say the same thing. You can't ban them all --realistically.

So, in practice the Apps would have to abide by the 1st A. That means they could still ban misleading commecial speech, pornography and words that incite imminent lawless action (and a few other categories). HOWEVER, if they did do that they are potentially answerable in Court. The user would have recourse to figure out if the App acted properly.

The general policy idea of 230 is to further this on-line public marketplace of ideas. We recognized that importance of these services as on-line places for public discourse and wanted to foster that discource by exempting the "hosts" from liability -- the users, of course, are still liable, but the hosts -- no. If there was potential liability then the concern was the hosts would be overly-censorious as a way to avoid liability (plus, added costs). I think what I set forth pretty well captures the spirit and purpose of 230.

[froot loops]

It's crazy to think that people believed that Donald Trump was ever a viable candidate to drain the swamp. It was an amazing campaign slogan the fooled the Trumpers I guess. There is an inexaustible amount of humans more suited to drain the swamp. The Wizard is more qualified. Trump desperately wants to be accepted by the folks The Wizard would consider the swamp.