nsplayr

If a prosecutor believes they have a case against Hunter Biden, they should go for it! Seriously! I have never understood the idea that those of us in the left love Hunter Biden and are somehow seeking to protect him 🤷‍♂️ IDGAF about that guy, he seems like a dirtbag, and I would never ever vote for him to hold public office. As far as Trump “not being allowed to participate” lolol ok. He ran for President twice already and WAS President for 4 years despite many, many scandals & criminal/legal allegations that would have sunk any “normal” person 10x over. Don’t do crimes if you want to be President, that doesn’t seem like too much to ask. The fact that he is in such a high-profile position and Jack Smith and the FL grand jury decided to charge him anyways is telling. I guarantee if he had cooperated and given back the documents (like Pence and Biden), he would have gotten that much-derided elite pass too, and people on the left would be all mad about how he slipped his way past accountability once again.

My party and the country at large already did this once TYVM 😎 It’s on Republicans to do what you’ve described above right now, in the primary. It ain’t going great so far, NGL! If Trump is the 2024 GOP nominee I’ll do everything I can to help him repeat the L he took in 2020, ideally even bigger. My BL legal theory here is very simple: if you do crimes and there is a clear case a prosecutor thinks they can win based on the evidence, they should bring the case and you should be charged. If a judge/jury finds you guilty, you should be punished. Full stop. No one is above the law. The only exception is the few offices where the constitution prescribes impeachment instead. If our system has failed at sometime in the past to achieve that ideal, which it absolutely has, we should work hard to fix it going forward. Especially hard to not repeat the exact same mistakes time and time again. Elites bypassing the justice system “normal” people would face is one such repeated mistake I am fully on board with aggressively correcting back to ideal on. We can do this right now! And I think the Trump federal indictment is a good example of holding elites accountable for pretty obvious crimes…hard to get more elite than him and he’s on tape saying he did what the charges alledge. I teach this as a moral code to my kids and I think it’s pretty much 100% in line with the values our country was founded upon. Golden rule, don’t dream small, do your best, if you make mistakes do better next time, and don’t make the same mistakes over and over and over again. Other slipperier legal theories re: Hillary, Trump, etc. just don’t hold a lot of weight to me, at least as they’ve been explained here.

If you think Hillary should have been charged and it was a grave injustice for her to slip away relatively unscathed at least legally, you should also be an enthusiastic proponent of Trump facing real justice for very similar, and I would argue more serious, alleged crimes. Why would you not be other than just naked partisanship or a false belief in “makeup calls” where two wrongs somehow make a right?

So no political leaders or declared candidates should be charged with crimes so we can “let the democratic process play out?” What alternative process do you recommend for charging people you think are currently unjustly going on with life? Was there not ample time and opportunity for Trump’s DOJ to charge Hillary if the case was there, even if just for pure political payback? Surely there was. Why did Sessions, Barr or others fail to do that? Can a prosecutor not bring charges against private citizen Hunter Biden if they wanted to? That is fine by me if there is a case a prosecutor thinks they can win. Charging sitting President Biden is highly unlikely because the legal remedy for crimes committed by the President is impeachment by the House and trial by the Senate, a process which we just so happens to have recently done! If the GOP House wants to impeach Biden tomorrow and send that trial to the Senate, ok, bring up the charges and do it. My view is that any political leader who committed crimes so serious that a prosecutor decided to seek charges and a grand jury actually brought the charges, that’s good, we should have them face the legal system. Failing to do this is just as bad a system as nakedly political charges for everyone the minute they leave office or the political winds shift. I guess I’m most troubled by you saying, “Until that comes, yeah I’d rather we not go jailing political rivals for crimes we know the other side committed.” I don’t agree. Lots of flaws and assumptions there, but also that’s just not how our legal system works. The second best time to do the right thing is right now.

Let me be clear, even though I don’t agree in full on the premise here. Many people on the right I think believe that: Hillary, the official Dem nominee for President at the time, mishandled classified information in a way worthy of felony charges. Yet for various reasons, she was let off the hook. We buggered that one! So mad!! AND Trump, the leading person for the GOP nomination today, also mishandled classified information in a way that in fact has brought felony charges. Despite this (in your mind) very similar situation, you’re now determined to exactly repeat the mistakes of the past, for what, political fairness? Equality? Is that correct?

Let me make sure I understand you correctly. You do believe that Hillary should have been charged, but specifically because she wasn’t, you now don’t think Trump should be charged now either. Is this correct? Is that what you teach your kids? Two wrongs make a right?

RPA specific: the the Guard DSG bonus went up to $30K (from $15K) while the AGR bonus remained the same at $35K. Makes staying a DSG an even easier decision, you’re barely missing out on any bonus money at all! For manned it’s up to $50K for AGR. ANG FY23 AvB Implementation Policy_Final.pdf

Even if you believe this is true WRT Dems vs GOP, which I don’t agree but can understand why people feel this way…does that change how we should handle Trump’s case right now? Should the refs do make-up calls or do we just say oh well, every Congressman and higher are just exempt from these laws or what? Im genuinely asking. If you think trump did nothing wrong, ok. But if you think he seems guilty of these charges and they are for similar actions to what Hillary or anyone else on the left has done in the past…how do you handle his case? We can’t change the past, but we can decide the future. Magic wand, you’re the judge, what do you do?

I’m just laughing how Hillary Clinton still lives rent free in so many heads. Screw her, she’s gone and never holding office of any kind ever again! If you wanna charge her and are able to do so, be my guest! Meanwhile right now the leading contender for the GOP nomination just got indicted for 38 felony counts and is on tape basically saying he did exactly what he is charged with! The best time to start doing the right thing was the day you were born, the second best time is right freaking now. Trump’s actions are not defendable, are inexplicable for any legitimate purpose, and IMHO are pretty clearly criminal. Regardless of what happened in the past, which we cannot change, we should move forward with appropriate justice. If anyone on the right is big mad today and then at some point in the future is able to convene a grand jury to charge a Democratic Party leader, staffer, etc. for crimes this egregious, I will say it again in non-meme form: your terms are acceptable. No one is above the law.

It gets everywhere…

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/yes-chad It’s just a meme and a funnier way to say yes, forcefully. I’m only a mod on the CSO page that no one ever posts on lol & I have no fuckin idea how the swearing moderation works 😅

Are illegal immigrants slaves or something? Because that’s not allowed anymore. If they are we seriously should take action, you’re right! Free persons in the context of no slavery and no 3/5ths compromise = everyone who lives there, period. I did not make up this rule nor is it impossible to change if you’d like, I’m just telling you that’s what is in the constitution & subsequent judicial rulings about the census.

There is no race for the GOP nomination save for Trump’s serious legal peril. Either he wipes the floor with everyone else (already polling > 50% among primary voters), or he DNF’s the race and now it’s actually a competition between DeSantis, Haley, Scott, Pence, et. al. If there was maybe one serious challenger or two and some of the usual cranks, ok, normal race probably, Trump isn’t truly an incumbent although he kind of is as far as the GOP base is concerned. But to have MANY serious challengers get in the race, your own former VP, large state sitting governor, former governor and ambassador, sitting senator, plus former governor Christie just got in and so did the sitting governor of ND Burgum, to me that indicates they all think there’s a fairly high chance Trump will be unable to be the nominee regardless of his level of support, and therefore it’s worthwhile to give it a shot.

Fair enough. Yes I was wrong to not caveat that I meant in federal elections and copy shot that local & state elections, where some places allow non-citizens to vote, also matter. 🍻

Yea man, because it’s mandated in the Constitution to count all free persons. Since we abolished slavery and overturned the 3/5ths compromise, that’s everyone, citizen or not, as the founders intended. It’s even real early for those who can’t read so good, it’s in Article 1 Section 2. https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/Article_1_Section_2.pdf

Once again, the right wishing for a civil war. It’s not people on the left saying this. Exhibit A. I hope to god you’re not in uniform anymore with talk like this. Pro tip: some folks tried this foolishness before and they got their asses beat raw by the United States of America. I recommend we *not* do that again.

Mmm, we’ll we’re gonna have to disagree on that. Respectfully of course 🥃 I have pretty well developed political views and follow politics extremely closely. I am aware of the candidates and party I support, the policies they enact, and the values underpinning the whole thing, even if you don’t like them or think only misguided, gullible fools could even possibly like them. Locking people up for weed is & was bad! Biden’s 90s crime bill was bad in some regards! Some of Harris’ actions as DA and AG were also bad! I support drug legalization and my party does not yet top bottom, but I’m hopeful we’ll get there. Still punching my ticket for Biden 2024 eyes wide open. I do think Harris sucks FWIW, I wish we could figure out how to dump her off the ticket… Of all the criticisms I make, I try not to just disbelieve folks’ stated views and values, even if they are wrong IMHO. Lots of people on here throw around accusations of others being weak, gullible, blind, etc. and A) not everyone knows everyone IRL so how are you even able to make that kind of weighty judgement? and B) life just works better when you take people at their word as being complex yet genuine. You could say you believe in some absolutely wild, contradictory shit and I will tell you I think you’re wrong, but I will try my best not to call you naive, sheltered, brainwashed, weak, a sheep, or ask about your workout routine 😅 Anyways…RFK Jr. is an unfit crank who would get bitch-slapped by his dad (who I think would have made a fantastic President) if he were alive today. Remind me, did Trump have primary debates against anyone in 2020? There were 4 candidates who ran against him, including three who had held major elected office before (2x US reps, 1x governor). No, of course not. Fuuuck no they did not. They dropped those debates faster than a whore’s panties. There was also no GOP party platform in 2020, not even an attempt to codify guiding values and policies that supported those values. And I’m not even surprised or mad at the decision to forgo debates against noners! Trump was clearly going to be the nominee as a sitting President. So yea I’m not gonna really feel bad that fail-son RFK Jr. doesn’t get a party-endorsed stage to spout BS from and I’m also not gonna find criticism of that stance from Republicans credible at all. Maybe you’re not a Republican, and in that case, my argument is the same as the Republicans was in 2020 and I guess you can be mad at both parties then if you want.

That appears to apply to legal residents, not illegals immigrants, it’s for local elections only, and this story is about Montpelier, VT! Are those potential voters even changing the outcome of local things they’re voting on? I’m filing this under DGAF. It’s below my line. If you wanna get all spun up on this cool. If somewhere local wants to let legal permanent residents vote on local stuff, ok cool. Didn’t apply to federal elections, no data on if recent non-citizen immigrants vote in any particular way on local issues, no data on total numbers vs regular citizens.

😂ok so women‘s votes should count less or…what are you saying? It’s a real wonder why women usually vote Dem overall…with men on the right like you it’s truly a mystery 🧐 You can say that again! I can’t quickly find a dataset that breaks down voters by geography and then also gender, but overall the gender gap for 2020 was very similar to what it was in the 2018 midterms, about 11 points. Keep in mind Trump did better with women overall in 2020 than in 2016, so he closed the gender gap from one election where he was running to the next yet he won the first one and lost the second. With that in mind, the flip of the suburbs was the whole story. As you can see above, 2020 Trump did better in the cities, better in rural areas, but lost the suburbs by 5 more points than the GOP did in 2018, and he did 13 points worse than his own performance in 2016. Oof. A lot of voters live in the suburbs, including the lion’s share of your persuadables. Going back to the gender gap, think about 2016, there was a larger than average gender gap in 2016 due to a woman being the nominee for the Dems, yet Trump wins. Silly women voters, you’re so careless and wrong! But wait, now for the re-elect against a fellow old white guy in Biden, Trump wins more women in 2020 than in 2016, yet loses the suburbs by 11 vs winning it by 2. Looks like it was suburban men to me that delivered for Biden if anything! You’d know for sure with tabbed-out data where you could see suburban men & women split out in black and white, if I find that with a little more digging I’ll post it. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/

That's the same data I'm using, great. And it shows exactly what I said, total crime is down slightly and violent crime is up slightly from 2020 to 2021. The official 2022 data should be out next month...I'm not sure why it takes 7 months to compile & verify, but that's how the TBI works. When compared to a long historical record though rather than just year-to-year, crime of all types in Nashville is way down from the 90s. So even if there's a 69% surge next year in some category (which we should not accept & work to correct the negative trend!), I am still able to say, "US cities in 2023 aren't shitholes, they're way better & safer than when I was growing up" and be correct. 247WallStreet.com isn't exactly a credible outlet, and their headline is greatly at odds with what's in the actual story. Even their actual story, using 2020 FBI UCR data, shows that Nashville is the 41st most dangerous urban area, and OBTW that excludes many major populated areas that don't report their data to the FBI, like NYC, Phoenix, LA, most places in Florida, Illinois, etc. That particular dataset from the FBI represents less than half of the US population, so it's hardly comprehensive. So yea, when you take out a massive number of other urban areas from consideration & comparison, I guess Nashville does seem really dangerous! Probably not the best way to truly understand the reality of the situation though. This is a better local news source, reporting on preliminary 2022 data, but it's still got some flaws. Let's talk murder specifically since you're most concerned with the worst violent crime, which is understandable. Like I linked to before, murders were particularly low in Nashville in 2013 and 2014...let's do whatever we can do repeat that and drive the murder rate even lower! BUT, I'm having a hard time wetting my pants over the 2021 number...it's almost exactly average looking over a nearly 60 year timespan, and again, it's like 25% lower than in the 90s when murder peaked in the city. From the story, they say the preliminary data shows murders were up 7.1% compared to 2021, which I again will emphasize is bad. That would put murders at ~15.9 per 100K...the highest since...2017. Looking at even a few years of trend, the numbers are: 2016: 12.5 2017: 16.5 2018: 13.1 2019: 12.2 2020: 16.5 2021: 14.8 2022 15.9 (preliminary data) That's just not a super compelling dataset to support the narrative that (sic) "XXX city is a shithole, it's rapidly getting worse, lock your kids away and open-carry an AR-15 to Kroger." I know you haven't said those things, but that's definitely the vibe I get from others on the right, as well the narrative incessantly pushed by Fox News. They tell their views that cities are dangerous, you shouldn't go there, they're burning down, you need a gun to protect yourself on daily errands or tourist visits, etc. and that is just not the case. The WKRN quote your bolded about how "Murder is up 82.8% in 10 years!" is both correct and misleading of the broader trend. Like I said, 2012 and 2013 were apparently lower years for murder. 2021 was almost exactly average and 2022 preliminary data would show slightly above the 60 year average. I'll say it again, we should work hard to get back to those per capita levels of murder (or go to zero!), but to me it's not house-on-fire news to say "Murder was way down for two years, and now it's back to historical average levels." Ok. I can tell you from lived experience that the city felt no safer nor more dangerous from year to year in that timespan, all of which I lived in Nashville proper. 2017 didn't feel super dangerous! 2019 didn't feel so much safer! It's noise on a relatively static trend. Heck, even the bar graphs you showed from that WKRN story are honestly pretty damn flat an indistinguishable year-to-year, certainly not showing a dramatic rise. 🤷‍♂️ So maybe by the crime metrics alone I was wrong to say, "Nashville has never been better." I apologize. It was better in 2019. Funny enough, the same mayor that was elected in 2019 is still the Mayor today (John Cooper, a very moderate, pro-business Dem), so IDK exactly how you want to attribute praise & scorn for both the five-year low in murder and the five-year high in murder, because they happened under the same guy's leadership. As someone else pointed out, citing granular crime data in order to sweepingly indict one political party doesn't work that great...Dems have been mayors of Nashville continuously since like the 1950s ,and crime has waxed, waned, and waxed again. It's almost like specific local policies, state policies, national policies and trends, and the overall mood of the country matters a lot more when it comes to crime than the letter next to a Mayor's name when assessing if a city is "safe" or not at any given time.

Well I don't personally vote for idiots like the SF DA who doesn't want to enforce the law and I don't support defunding the police. That's how I do it when I've voted in local elections in urban places! I do also advocate for legalizing most drugs because I legitimately think that would help A) end the death-by-fentanyl epidemic, B) allow the police to focus on crimes other than drug use, and C) would give adults more freedom to legally do things they want to do and will do anyways, illegally, if the laws remain the same. We've already legalized weed in the majority of states without a ton of negative repercussions. Good thing we locked away people for weed-related crimes for decades! /sarcasm Just like the prohibition of alcohol, the War on Drugs has failed and we need different policies.

Y'all do know that people who are not US citizens can't vote, right? I mean, are we talking US-born second-generation adults with latino/hispanic heritage? Please elaborate on how non-citizen immigrants, either here legally or illegally, are factors in US elections.

Well, that is one opinion! Let's stay focused on cities though, immigration is an entirely different issue. In your construct of makers and takers, how should we measure who "makes" and who "takes?" Should it be median income by zip code? GDP? Taxes paid? Productivity per capita? Net contributions to state budgets? I'm open to your idea being true and would be interested in your analysis of overwhelmingly urban & Dem-voting areas vs overwhelmingly exurban, rural & GOP-voting areas in any of those metrics. I don't suspect you're going to find that the GOP-voting areas are "making" more than the Dem-voting areas however... Your ideas about how the suburbs lean is a bit of a holdover from the 90s. Biden in 2020 and Obama in 2008 before him won the suburbs of most cities, which won them their elections. Suburbs are in modern times so split I'd hesitate to claim they are representative of either party, they're representative of both fairly equally. https://www.brookings.edu/research/bidens-victory-came-from-the-suburbs/