Slashdot Mirror

Cause, you know, Chinese Democracy and all.

In one instance, I fear I will be physically attacked and harassed. In the other, I might get some jeers and scowling looks.

Guess you were never a Top Gear fan. The South has a long history of violence which you're willfully ignoring, and their intolerance and violence persist to this day. Are you a total idiot, or a useful idiot? There's no third option.

This guy was trying to DDoS hospitals.

He DDOSed the fundraising website of a single hospital. Not their internal operations.

I can't think of any excuse that would actually excuse that, and "doing it to save some child's life" is flat out unbelievable.

Read up on the case before delivering such an opinion. The hospital kidnapped a sick child because they didn't agree with a prior diagnosis. If someone treated a child I knew the way Justina Pelletier was treated, I would have zero hesitation about shooting them in the face.

Weird stuff, didn't realize that NXIVM was the same thing that Nicki Clyne (from BSG) got involved with.

Courts determined that the number of fraudulent votes was over 10 times the margin of victory.

Looks like there were lots of potentially fraudulent votes, but nobody could show that they were in-person. It doesn't matter who is on the voter rolls if malicious or incompetent officials screw it up. And there was very little evidence of malicious activity (though lots of incompetence).

Back to TFA: Kemp's office purged 700K registrations, did not notify them that they were purged, and (from this article):

After he received the list, Palast said he analyzed it and discovered that 340,134 voters were purged when they shouldn’t have been. To do this, he consulted experts who cross-referenced voter data with a number of other databases including cell phone bills and tax filings to see if, in fact, any of these voters had actually moved. Many had not.

I'm curious what system of voter purging you support which has a 50% false positive rate? I mean, government can be incompetent, but that level of incompetence is downright presidential.

How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?

Gerrymandering.

How the GOP Rigs Elections
Republican Ruthlessness and Democratic Ineptitude Got Us Here
Five myths about gerrymandering
How Michigan is an extreme example of gerrymandering
Supreme Court favors Republicans in gerrymandering cases
N.C. has the worst gerrymander in US history. What else is new?
The Atlas Of Redistricting

Not sure whats happening atm on legal weed, but a lot of the success came from the Obama Administration ordering the DEA to not to interfere with States that want to do their own thing.

No, no it did not. Obama's DEA made more busts of legal dispensaries, not less.

> Marijuana ... but it has never been part of mainstream society

Hmm, someone should of told the US Dept. of Agriculture that in 1942.
Video is: Hemp for Victory.

Rolling Stone has a great article: How America Lost the War on Drugs that briefly touches the history.

I know, damn that evil Ron Wyden. He should follow the example of the white hosue who campaigned on email security.

The revelations overcame Edgar Maddison Welch like a hallucinatory fever. On December 1st, 2016, the father of two from Salisbury, North Carolina, a man whose pastimes included playing Pictionary with his family, tried to persuade two friends to join a rescue mission. Alex Jones, the Info-Wars host, was reporting that Hillary Clinton was sexually abusing children in satanic rituals a few hundred miles north, in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant. Welch told his friends the “raid” on a “pedo ring” might require them to “sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many.

https://www.rollingstone.com/p...

and your attempts to tie the Republican party to one guy they oppose

It's not "one guy". There are a host of white supremacists and neo-nazis running as Republicans. Would you like a list?

You've got John Fitzgerald in California's 11th district. You've got Seth Grossman in New Jersey. Of course, Arthur Jones in Illinois. Steve King in Iowa's 4th. Paul Nehlan, Corey Stewart. Russell Walker in North Carolina. Patrick Little. John Abarr in Montana. Sean Donahue. Augustus Invictus (born, Austin Gillespie) I could go on, if you'd like. If we start listing the GOP candidates who are "white supremacist-adjacent", we could be here all day.

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/9/1...

https://www.rollingstone.com/p...

An evangelical apologist? Go figure...

https://newrepublic.com/minute...
https://www.rollingstone.com/p...
https://www.al.com/living/inde...

And next on evangelical docket? Getting rid of Sessions to protect Trump.

https://www.politico.com/story...

Entering a hotel room (Private Space) while a woman is in a state of undress, is creeper shit, and he DESERVED a bullet. What if it was a naked 10 year old and he pulled that entering unannounced BS? You Leftists are fukked in the head. Buncha pervs and pedo supporters. Pathetic.

How about entering a dressing room where 15 year-olds are putting clothes on for a Miss Teen Universe pageant? Is that creepy enough for someone to deserve a bullet?

https://www.rollingstone.com/p...

"Well, I'll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone's getting dressed and ready and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere. And I'm allowed to go in because I'm the owner of the pageant and therefore I'm inspecting it. You know, I'm inspecting, I want to make sure that everything is good.

You know, the dresses. ‘Is everyone okay?’ You know, they're standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that. But no, I've been very good."

You act like the NRA is some sort of boogy man out there operating against the will of the US public.

Yeah, about that.

https://www.rollingstone.com/p...

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/01...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

Ah, but that destroys the value in collecting such a thing in the first place. If indeed these games were considered completely lost, then finding a new copy to sell somewhere would be quite valuable indeed.

Sure, it's a selfish model, but capitalist economies kinda work that way.

I think it was in April that PUBG sued NetEase for two mobile games for copyright infringement. This copyright lawyer, Leonard French goes over that suit and discusses elements of it. While French talks about general concepts of copyright infringement like "substantially similar" requirements he also talks about specific things like PUBG's claim that NetEase "copied" guns which were real world guns is problematic as you'd expect a Tommy gun to look like all other Tommy guns.

According to your link, the guy was illegally carrying a gun

The sole evidence of which came from the testimony from a corrupt-as-hell cop, who accused Meek of pointing a gun at him. Cop's own partner laughed that one out of the room:

The whole case swung on Graham's testimony, which doesn't pass the laugh test of his former partner. "That boy [Graham] lied like it was second nature!" Walker says. "If you had your weapon drawn, [Meek's] never pulling a gun. The second he raised that weapon, he would've had one breath to live. Straight up and down, they'd have aired him out. We're talking closed casket, not open."

And that is from behind the Blue Wall of Silence. Graham was a freakshow.

starting fights in airports

You mean an airpot employee started a fight when he wouldn't take "no" for an answer on getting a photo with meek.

violating his probation

For shit like (gasp!) not telling his probation officer when he was leaving the state. Which could happen any time Meek wanted to drive over to New Jersey to pick up his kids from school. But time to get out of this rabbit hole: his first arrest and jail sentence were based on complete bullshit, the testimony of a corrupt cop who would have shot him down if Meek had actually pointed a gun in his direction. Which means every other petty probation violation is also based on bullshit, full stop.

Banks don't own the loans, the federal government owns 90%+ of loans these days.

The federal government doesn't profit on student loans. Banks do.

https://www.rollingstone.com/p...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...

Providing data is "interfering"? I'm amazed by how many people infantalize the US voter and pretend they were swayed by some junk posted on Facebook.

The iron rule of advertising: people buy advertising because it works, despite the vast majority of advertising effectively being junk.

The problem here is that junk works, and we got ourselves a president to prove it (a divisive populist who is damaging America's standing and competitiveness in the world with every second tweet, whereas Hilary would have been largely an annoying internal problem, with 20% as much brazen in-your-face factor).

You can pry "infantilism" out of my cold, disgusted hands when advertising ceases to work.

Why Democrats Should Worry About Conor Lamb's Victory — 14 March 2018

What was not to love about Trump Republicans losing in a district that's often referred to as "Northern West Virginia"? Especially after the GOP poured more than $10 million into trying to save the seat. Making the schadenfreude even more delicious, Trump threw himself into the campaign full-bore in its final stages.

Last week, he announced a steep tariff on steel and aluminum — the one issue, more than any other, that might sway this labor-heavy district into the GOP column. "Do you think it could possibly have all been for western Pennsylvania?" Gail Collins asked rhetorically in The New York Times.

Fortunately, advertising only works up to a point. It's less effective at rehabilitating a known commodity gone sour (goodbye, Hilary, and good riddance). But still, it was effective enough to land America into the present, raging immune-response soup pot.

America's electorate is not wall-to-wall infantile: if things get bad enough, they can be roused—briefly—from their drooling stupor.

Please make sure not to miss The Expanse if you're looking for proper Sci-Fi. It's literally the best show you're not watching: https://www.rollingstone.com/t...

Please cite your evidence that shit posters on Twitter increased after Trump started running for President and that this problem didn't exist prior. I did a quick Google search from prior to Dec 31, 2015 and here's a few I came up with:

Shock Jock fired for racists Twitter Rant

Obama's Twitter Debug attracts hate-filled posts

Shocking racist tweets follow high school basketball win by all-white team

A brief history of people getting fired for social media stupidity

That last one was one month after Trump formally announced is candidacy in June of 2015.

So I've provided evidence this was happenging before Trump entered the stage, lets see if you can provide evidence of his presence making it worse. I can assure you the increased amount of vitriol coming from his opponents is easily measured, hell just look at how often people like you post on Slashdot - a news for nerds site - your vile hate for the man, but how about you show statistics of an increase in toxicity from his supporters?

The article below concurs with my memory that the bank bailouts were bi-partisan public policy across the administrations of both George W. Bushbama and Barack Bushbama. I found it by googling "Obama bank bailout" for about 2 minutes. There were a *lot* of results.

https://www.rollingstone.com/p...

The regulations don't deal with the core destructive and problem-causing issues which are also massively profitable. All regulations which have any teeth are walked back by politicians. See "How Wall Street defanged Dodd Frank". Now, Dodd-Frank was a joke for a lot of reasons, but the big reason was its intentional complexity and incompleteness and its unwillingness to deal with core issues. But even the pieces of Dodd-Frank that had small teeth were defanged.

Back in 2008, the big issue was lenders not having 'skin in the game' - they could make loans and shed all repayment risk when they sold off the loan to investors or the government. It's a license to print money and a perverse incentive to create bad debt. If you google "QRM safe harbor and risk retention", you'll get some history (QRM = qualified residential mortgage). There was an attempt to make lenders retain some small portion of repayment risk, instead of the government taking all of it, but that was walked back, as the above search will tell you.

The current Wall Street economic model is "privatize the profits and socialize the losses." Not a thing was done to address that. "Too big to fail" was never addressed - the biggest banks are even bigger today than in 2008 ("In the US, since the crisis, the six largest US banks now control nearly 70 per cent of all the assets in the US financial system, having increased around 40 per cent (against overall asset growth of only 8 per cent). JP Morgan, the largest US bank, has over $2.4 trillion in assets, larger than most countries." -- The Independent)

So. Instead the regulations are along these lines: Instead of just outlawing robbing people, they outlaw robbing people at 12 Noon. The rest of the day is fine. But then they add, 'well you can't rob people at 3 PM either'. And so on. They refuse to deal with the core issues (i.e. "you can't rob people"), instead nibbling ineffectually around the edges.

"Complexity breeds loopholes." That's the point of complex regulations - to breed loopholes. It's fantastic because it keeps competitors out of the business, because you need vast legal and accounting departments to stay abreast of the regulations. And it does little to stop the destructive behavior.

If you're implying that the information should not have been reviewed and accepted by the Court because of potential political bias and the non-disclosure of that, you're wrong. Source bias (real or imaginary) is routinely ignored by the Court in their considerations. From The Nunes Memo: Watergate, It Ain't:

Federal courts routinely rely on informants whose bias is not disclosed. The courts understand that informants are rarely disinterested parties, writes Orin Kerr, a law professor at USC who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. "When federal judges have faced similar claims" of undisclosed bias, Kerr adds, "they have mostly rejected them out of hand."

You seem to have missed the key point that the FBI and DoJ deliberately left out the political origins ...

From The Nunes Memo: Watergate, It Ain't:

Federal courts routinely rely on informants whose bias is not disclosed. The courts understand that informants are rarely disinterested parties, writes Orin Kerr, a law professor at USC who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. "When federal judges have faced similar claims" of undisclosed bias, Kerr adds, "they have mostly rejected them out of hand."

I am not sure what you are trying to say here. Using political opposition research from Foreign spies as justification to spy on an American without telling the courts that the source for the justification is political opposition research from a Foreign spy is in simple words... Very bad.

Even if that were so, from The Nunes Memo: Watergate, It Ain't:

Federal courts routinely rely on informants whose bias is not disclosed. The courts understand that informants are rarely disinterested parties, writes Orin Kerr, a law professor at USC who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. "When federal judges have faced similar claims" of undisclosed bias, Kerr adds, "they have mostly rejected them out of hand."

Not only that but he recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel!
ONLY HITLER WOULD DO THAT! TRUMP IS LITERALLY HITLER!

I don't have to be specifically worried for the Jews to be worried about Trump. Enough of his policies and attitudes are Naziesque to be chilling. That makes sense, because his daddy was a racist and maybe a Klansman. Ironically, his grandfather was deported for illegal immigration. Trump is a shining example of exactly the kind of person he wants to keep out of America: he's a rapist, no less. Wasn't rape one of the things he was worried about illegal immigration bringing to our country? I guess he'd know.

Links about Trump

Trump's lies:

In 298 days, President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims (Nov. 13, 2017, Washington Post)

In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims. (Dec. 29, 2017, Washington Post)

President Trump's Lies, the Definitive List (Dec. 14, 2017, The New York Times)

10 Falsehoods From Trump's Interview With The Times (Dec. 29, 2017, New York Times)

Trump takes credit for zero aviation deaths worldwide. (Jan. 2, 2018, Trump's Twitter account)
Replies:
"I'm gonna take credit for puppies being cute..."
"Guess who's responsible for designing the cute kangaroo pouches that keep little Joeys safe? That right, it was Me. ME. ME!"
"That's a job well done, thank you, but don't forget I gave dolphins their blowholes! Without me, they would've drowned!"

Sexual abuse:

The 19 Women Who Accused President Trump of Sexual Misconduct (Dec. 7, 2017, The Atlantic.com)

Mental instability:

Incoherent, authoritarian, uninformed: Trump's New York Times interview is a scary read. (Dec. 30, CNBC) Quotes:
"President Donald Trump tells a string of falsehoods in his recent New York Times interview that make it difficult to tell whether he is lying or delusional."
"Trump appears to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, which holds that the least competent people often believe they are the most competent."
"Trump's comments are, by turns, incoherent, incorrect, conspiratorial, delusional, self-aggrandizing, and underinformed."

Lawyers 'Telling Trump What He Wants To Hear' So He Won't Fire Mueller (Dec. 31, 2017, Huffingtonpost.com) Quote:
"The president of the United States, in their view, is out of control a good deal of the time..." People who work for Trump have to adjust to his instability.

8 of the Sleaziest Things Donald Trump Has Said (June 16, 2015, 2 1/2 years ago, RollingStone.com)

Choosing weak people to be leaders:

Trump's FCC Chairman pick Ajit Pai heralds a weaker, meeker Commission (Jan. 23, 2017, TechCrunch.com, almost one year ago)
Ajit Pai's FCC is still editing the net neutrality repeal order (Jan 2, 2018, ArsTechnica.com)

Trump picks ghost hunter to be federal judge (Nov. 15 2017, BBC News) Quote:
"The appointment of Brett Talley, 36, for a lifetime post as an Alabama federal judge is raising eyebrows because he has never tried a case."

Profiting personally:

Trump has now spen

Links about Trump

Trump's lies:

In 298 days, President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims (Nov. 13, 2017, Washington Post)

In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims. (Dec. 29, 2017, Washington Post)

President Trump's Lies, the Definitive List (Dec. 14, 2017, The New York Times)

10 Falsehoods From Trump's Interview With The Times (Dec. 29, 2017, New York Times)

Trump takes credit for zero aviation deaths worldwide. (Jan. 2, 2018, Trump's Twitter account)
Replies:
"I'm gonna take credit for puppies being cute..."
"Guess who's responsible for designing the cute kangaroo pouches that keep little Joeys safe? That right, it was Me. ME. ME!"
"That's a job well done, thank you, but don't forget I gave dolphins their blowholes! Without me, they would've drowned!"

Sexual abuse:

The 19 Women Who Accused President Trump of Sexual Misconduct (Dec. 7, 2017, The Atlantic.com)

Mental instability:

Incoherent, authoritarian, uninformed: Trump's New York Times interview is a scary read. (Dec. 30, CNBC) Quotes:
"President Donald Trump tells a string of falsehoods in his recent New York Times interview that make it difficult to tell whether he is lying or delusional."
"Trump appears to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, which holds that the least competent people often believe they are the most competent."
"Trump's comments are, by turns, incoherent, incorrect, conspiratorial, delusional, self-aggrandizing, and underinformed."

Lawyers 'Telling Trump What He Wants To Hear' So He Won't Fire Mueller (Dec. 31, 2017, Huffingtonpost.com) Quote:
"The president of the United States, in their view, is out of control a good deal of the time..." People who work for Trump have to adjust to his instability.

8 of the Sleaziest Things Donald Trump Has Said (June 16, 2015, 2 1/2 years ago, RollingStone.com)

Choosing weak people to be leaders:

Trump's FCC Chairman pick Ajit Pai heralds a weaker, meeker Commission (Jan. 23, 2017, TechCrunch.com, almost one year ago)
Ajit Pai's FCC is still editing the net neutrality repeal order (Jan 2, 2018, ArsTechnica.com)

Trump picks ghost hunter to be federal judge (Nov. 15 2017, BBC News) Quote:
"The appointment of Brett Talley, 36, for a lifetime post as an Alabama federal judge is raising eyebrows because he has never tried a case."

Profiting personally:

Trump has now spe

Why is it your only counter argument is to bring up two news sources that are not at all relevant and unmentioned?

Because I do not wish to be limited by your selection bias?

You're not disproving the point, which is that our credible, mainstream media staffed by highly educated, erudite journalists, regularly produces fake news.

So Fox News and Breitbart are staffed by uneducated, mouth breathing monkeys, and that excuses their well-documented tendency for producing fake news? Selection bias.

It's a simple matter of psychology: post misleading news, wait for people to react, it's something known as "impression formation". Once an impression has been formed, it sticks. This is how they psyop the masses.

Scary how well the description fits.

The greatest danger to our nation comes from a free press that chooses sides in the political process. And that has openly and unapologetically taken place.

Openly, with fanfare, and long before you portray it to have happened.

No fake news at Breitbart. No sir.

Myth. US prisons are not full up with people for marijuana convictions, especially not for simple possession.

Of the 750K annual US marijuana arrests:

About 40,000 inmates of state and federal prison have a current conviction involving marijuana, and about half of them are in for marijuana offenses alone; most of these were involved in distribution. Less than one percent are in for possession alone.

There are 2.2 million US prisoners at the state and federal level, so less than 2%. It's such a small % that the keepers of the keys (do they use keys anymore?) can keep their prisons full by delaying parole releases.

But yes, ethnicity still plays too large a role in sentencing, so you're not completely wrong.

For anyone wanting to follow this advice, I'd recommend the Rolling Stone article The Great American Bubble Machine as a good introduction.

They closed the entire DMV for several years in order to prevent people from acquiring an ID?

No, they focused heavily on the offices that minorities could conveniently use, which was kinda revealing.

The freaking blog you pointed to is a lie,

Identify one falsehood in it. Go ahead.

there are a lot of other things going on into making those decisions, you can get an ID at the post office, from the DMV through the mail or online.

Yes, racists are practiced at finding excuses for their behavior, literacy tests and poll taxes were usually defended under those same terms. Including you know, misinforming the public about the situation.

But hey, if you want the state to mail out ID to everybody, go ahead and propose it.

You need an ID to buy booze, medicine and cigarettes, you're saying no black person buys booze, medicine or cigarettes?

Actually, I've found that sales clerks will rarely bother me about booze or cigarettes even if they are supposed to get ID, but I understand some people do have complaints about that process, medicine is somewhat different, but then, there are problems with pharmacists denying people's prescriptions. And don't even get my mother started on the way they hassled her about her diabetic testing strips refill, then tried to bill her after they FAILED to give her the number of strips she needed the first time when she asked for more. She gets quite irate at them.

If you close 31 DMV offices you do not "save only $100,000" ... argh, there is just so much wrong with this that it's not even worth pointing out. If it isn't obvious that this is partisan bullshit grasping at straws to make a point then you're dumber than you realize..

Sure man, you come right after an accusation that relied on false counter cries of racism and bigotry to ignore actual racism and bigotry, and you think it's other people who are full of partisan bullshit.

Sorry man, there's a reason it keeps being revealed.

And it gets worse as apparently it was Bentley's paramour behind it.

Crickets, eh? Interesting sound they make.

But is the question moot? http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/lists/20-best-saturday-night-live-political-sketches-w481607/the-question-is-moot-102084-w481905/

We had Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."

I've got the most 'basic bitch' white boy name in the world, I swear. There are hundreds of people with my exact same first and last name in every state of this nation. Even if you add my middle name, you'll still find dozens of matches in a state like California or Florida. Add date of birth? I've had at least one exact match (first, middle, last, DOB) like that while going to physical therapy. Now I'm going to have to double check that I am properly registered to vote, even though I do not live in Indiana.

We had Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."

Were you silent when they came for private sector Pensions?
Did you speak up when they came for Union pensions?
Where you concerned when they attacked teachers pensions?
Did you raise the alarm when they undermined public sector pensions?


Make no mistake, they'll get to you soon.

Go ahead, show us how bad it is there.

Seriously? I did a Google search on "Chicago dead voters" and this was the first hit:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/20...

In all, the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.

That's just the ones they found so far.

So far, then, you found next to nothing then. 119 people. 229 times. Some of which are likely not actual problems. Over 10 years. In a county with 5 million people. Go find us a real problem instead.

I went to check more recent news on voter ID laws and perhaps you've been busy like I have the last couple days and were unaware that Trump and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have been going back and forth the last few days over voter fraud problems in Chicago. I didn't know this until today but it's apparently been on the news a bit for a week now.

People don't know how bad it is in Chicago because no one has taken the time to take a good look at it.

People have been complaining about Chicago for decades now. Yet they haven't taken a good look? Seems like there's a problem there. Maybe people just want something to complain about, rather than actually find real problems,

We won't know how bad it is until we look either. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel seems pretty adamant on keeping the federal government from looking too. Why would that be?

He knows how incompetent Donald Trump is?

I know that "if you have nothing to hide then we should be free to look" is not how the government should treat people. That is how people should deal with the government though.

Indeed, the government has been at fault.

It's obvious that Wells Fargo has deeply ingrained corruption that is harmful to consumers to such an extreme that the bank should be broken up and sold off. Wells Fargo should cease to exist.

Alas, that is the opposite of what will happen. Remember when WAMU was sold to Chase, possibly the most corrupt bank in America? I was a WAMU customer. WAMU was claimed to be insolvent, but they were doing a lot better than the banks we bailed out. When the going gets tough, the biggest, most politically-connected banks win. Wells Fargo is about as endemic an infection of a bank that the USA has ever known. The chance that there will be any significant come-uppance is nil.

> If you really wanted to end gun violence, you'd address the root causes: gangs, drugs-such as the opioid epidemic, criminal culture, etc.

We already tried that. The government wasn't making enough money.
A serious WTF!

"Name & Shame" also another successful way:

How America Lost the War on Drugs
7. THE HARVARD MAN
http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

https://web.archive.org/web/20...

7. The Harvard Man

For the cops on the front lines of the War on Drugs, the federal government's fixation with marijuana was deeply perplexing. As they saw it, the problem wasn't pot but the drug-related violence that accompanied cocaine and other hard drugs. After the crack epidemic in the late 1980s, police commissioners around the country, like Lee Brown in Houston, began adding more officers and developing computer mapping to target neighborhoods where crime was on the rise. The crime rate dropped. But by the mid-1990s, police in some cities were beginning to realize there was a certain level that they couldn't get crime below. Mass jailings weren't doing the trick: Only fifteen percent of those convicted of federal drug crimes were actual traffickers; the rest were nothing but street-level dealers and mules, who could always be replaced.

Police in Boston, concerned about violence between youth drug gangs, turned for assistance to a group of academics. Among them was a Harvard criminologist named David Kennedy. Working together, the academics and members of the department's anti-gang unit came up with what Kennedy calls a "quirky" strategy and convinced senior police commanders to give it a try. The result, which began in 1995, was the Boston Gun Project, a collaborative effort among ministers and community leaders and the police to try to break the link between the drug trade and violent crime. First, the project tracked a particular drug-dealing gang, mapping out its membership and operations in detail. Then, in an effort called Operation Ceasefire, the dealers were called into a meeting with preachers and parents and social-service providers, and offered a deal: Stop the violence, or the police will crack down with a vengeance. "We know the seventeen guys you run with," the gangbangers were told. "If anyone in your group shoots somebody, we'll arrest every last one of you." The project also extended drug treatment and other assistance to anyone who wanted it.

The effort worked: The rates of homicide and violence among young men in Boston dropped by two-thirds. Drug dealing didn't stop -- "people continued what they were doing," Kennedy concedes, "but they put their guns down." As Kennedy reflected on the success of the Boston project, which ran for five years, he wondered if he had discovered a deeper truth about drug-related violence. If the murders weren't a necessary component of the drug trade -- if it was possible to separate the two -- perhaps cities could find a way to reduce the violence, even if they could do nothing about the drugs.

In 2001, Kennedy got a call from the mayor of San Francisco that gave him a chance to examine his theories in a new setting. The city had experienced a recent spike in its murder rate, much of it caused by an ongoing feud between two drug-dealing gangs -- Big Block and West Mob -- that had resulted in dozens of murders over the years. Could Kennedy, the mayor asked, help police figure out how to stop the killings?

Kennedy flew out to San Francisco and met with police. But as he researched the history of the violence, it seemed to confirm his findings in Boston. Though both Big Block and West Mob were involved in dealing drugs, the shootings were not really drug-related -- the two groups occupied different territories and were not battli

Um, no. It's convenience and it's the way people prefer to consume their music.

All of the same RIAA bullshit is still there. And artists are getting screwed even more so.

Nothing has changed much in that regard. The recorded music industry only changed the medium and now we can buy a la cart songs instead of a CD with one good song and 9 to 10 fillers.

The model I have seen work is artists GIVE away their music (sometimes unofficially) so that folks will come to their shows and buy merchandise.

The recording is considering a marketing expense. And a few of them just let fans do all the heavy lifting of recording (even giving them access to the sound feeds) and distribution. Phish is an example.

Umphrees McGee actually has it down to a science. Phish's method is just a copy of what the Grateful Dead did for years (but then again, so is their entire band of Trust Fund Kids)...

Um, no. It's convenience and it's the way people prefer to consume their music.

All of the same RIAA bullshit is still there. And artists are getting screwed even more so.

Nothing has changed much in that regard. The recorded music industry only changed the medium and now we can buy a la cart songs instead of a CD with one good song and 9 to 10 fillers.

The model I have seen work is artists GIVE away their music (sometimes unofficially) so that folks will come to their shows and buy merchandise.

The recording is considering a marketing expense. And a few of them just let fans do all the heavy lifting of recording (even giving them access to the sound feeds) and distribution. Phish is an example.

It was Bill Clinton, A FUCKING DEMOCRAT that federally deregulated the banks and federally instituted the racist 3-strikes law.

We were told that this sort of stuff would have been a Republican wet dream. THE DEMOCRATS DID IT

And the Dems wonder why they can't win elections.

Because Rockoon is such a demented liar that he states easily disproven falsehoods?

Yeah, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act was totally named after 3 Democratic Congressmen. Wait. Sen. Phil Gramm (R, Texas), Rep. Jim Leach (R, Iowa), and Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R, Virginia). Hmm. Of course, we could just forget the Bush administration, because obviously they weren't capable of doing anything, so it's unfair to hold them responsible for running the country.

As for three strikes, the flaws of it were pointed out in 1995. Republicans? They've had 22 years. They've done what now?

At least Clinton has the grace to admit his mistakes. The new Sheriff is committed to ignoring that.

If you want to say that Democrats don't win elections because America is infected with such a fanatical zealotry of lying GOP stalwarts that substitute their own reality, I guess that's an idea. Anything else? You're just being as much a liar as Rockoon.

The real story with elections, of course, is that the game is rigged.

SO far they claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election ...

Really? The only ones I have seen make that claim are pundits on Fox News and Breitbart trying to defend their 'Dear Leader', the greatest negotiator of all time. Most of the rest of the media claims the Russians hacked the DNC and used carefully timed leaks of that information in an attempt to influence the voting behaviour of the US electorate.

How about Rolling Stone? Are they an alt-right media outlet, too?

Some of the potentially most affected people are trying: http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

You're only laughing at Breitbart because your corporate master told you to.

"Laughing at" is inaccurate. "Disgusted by" is more accurate. They've been involved in several of the big conspiracy theories including the Birthers & Pizzagate. I don't see that kind of behavior from CNN. Buzzfeed maybe. Here are some of their more notable headlines.

If you're only paying attention to one particular narrative, then you're a chump. Doesn't matter what that narrative is. There is really no way to choose "A" news source. You have to pick several with opposing narratives.

I agree with that, but you need credible news sources. Breitbart exists at the very fringe of being considered "news".

Remember when Slashdot trolled us with this story about it: FCC Considers Fining Stephen Colbert Over Controversial Trump Joke?

Turns out, there was nothing actionable and the review was pro forma. Oh well. Guess we got trolled. Just like most OMG! FCC and OMG! Trump stories.

People in the cybersecurity community have expressed skepticism about Russia's involvement in the e-mail hacking of the DNC. The media, by and large, decided to ignore them and go with the narrative that Russia was involved, This article in Rolling Stones articulates very nicely both the lack of evidence and the media's reaction.

Critics of Energy Star say the government should get involved in the marketplace only when absolutely necessary.

Please define absolutely necessary.

When it benefits the person involved, otherwise it's government overreach.

An example illustrating use by the uninformed, the common Tea Party rant: "Keep the Government out of Medicare." A good read is, The Truth About the Tea Party:

As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending ...