Gdanning
6mo ago
And what of all the similar conflicts which were resolved without engaging in full-throated war? Northern Ireland is an obvious example. More importantly, this claim:
you cannot expect certain groups to coexist in the same space peacefully for long
Is empirically false, because violence between such groups is the exception, not the rule
an atrocity in the present may prevent a greater atrocity in the future.
That is a great argument for assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, but not so great for killing all 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip, "everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers," in order to avoid 600 deaths of Israelis, or even 60,000. Because the latter is not a "greater atrocity" than the former.
Gdanning
5mo ago
the Iraqis and taliban helped them come to their senses with a firm and proper lessons in not sticking one's nose where it doesn't belong
Yeah, the Iraqis did such a great job teaching that lesson that they are still using the constitution that Americans wrote for them. Let's be clear: the Iraqi "insurgency" was not some sort of anti-Imperialist endeavor; it was a civil war. That is why the "insurgents" killed vastly more civilians than they did coalition troops.
And the Taliban was so good at teaching that lesson that they killed all of an average of 100 US servicemen per year
Gdanning
5mo ago
takes shots at carjackers
If the car was unoccupied, it was not a carjacking, which requires the threat or use of force against a person. It was merely an attempted theft or auto burglary.
Link includes a photo of him sitting around with an embarrassed smile on his face while Kessler is splayed out on the pavement waiting for an ambulance.
An ambulance which, according to the sheriff, he himself called. I don’t know exactly what happened nor what exactly this guy's level of moral culpability is (though he probably is guilty of at least involuntary manslaughter, but if his post-crime conduct is to be used to assess that culpability, then all of conduct should be included, not just some of it)
Gdanning
4mo ago
That brings us back to Hanukkah, which again, is not an important Jewish holiday. This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday
In Israel, Christians have the right to paid days off on several Christuan holy days. AFAIK, Jewish employees in the US are not entitled to paid leave on Hanukkah, nor on any other Jewish holy day.
I am a bit, um, obsessed with the "sex recession": the dramatic decline in sexual activity in high school and college-aged people. Sex is perhaps the most human activity there is--the physical enactment of our Darwinian imperative, the raison d'etre of so many hormone-drenched adolescents. And yet: young people aren't having sex. Why?
As always when the data only goes back 30 years, we need to consider the possibility that the rates were just unusually high in the 90s, and have since returned to the norm (see, eg, the recent increase in suicide rates, which has simply brought us back to the rates of the mid-1980s. Which is normal, the rates of 10 years ago, or the rates of now and the mid-1980s?).
The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights
Well, if the Declaration of Independence is to be believed, it is government's job to preserve the rights of their people, so how is that a problem?
Edit: Note also that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And note that the issue in the linked case, as well as in the Satanic Temple case, is really freedom of speech, not freedom of religion. See here
Gdanning
5mo ago
Apparently Maryland requires that if you have been diagnosed with sleep apnea:
- you report it to the DMV 2.you have to use a CPAP machine
- your CPAP machine has to send data to the state showing that you're using it regularly for 70% of each night
So, since this set off my bullshit detector, I looked at the state's webpage which lists a number of conditions which must be reported, and says that subsequently, the state
>may send you several forms to complete. They also may send you a form for your physician to complete. After you return the forms, the DW&S Division then will make a decision about whether your situation should be referred for an opinion from the Medical Advisory Board (MAB). The MAB is a group of doctors who works with the MVA in analyzing customers’ driving abilities. If the MAB is involved, they (the MAB) may ask you for more information, or to attend a meeting.
So, clearly, neither #2 nor #3 above are "required."
Gdanning
5mo ago
Attempted murder in CA requires the intent to kill. The vast majority of people who punch others in the face do not intend to kill.
Murder does not require the intent to kill, but even someone who forms the intent to kill during an altercation is often guilty only of voluntary manslaughter.
But most accidental deaths resulting from a simple assault are involuntary manslaughter.
Gdanning
6mo ago
Now someone may counter by saying that it doesn’t matter how much material prosperity you may have if you don’t have political rights and “freedom”, defined in some nebulous way that aligns with how westerners think of it. Except that empirically, people behave in the complete opposite way, gladly sacrificing those things for higher prosperity.
Except that empirically, many people also gladly sacrifice prosperity, or even their lives, in an effort to obtain or preserve civil rights and, more importantly, the dignity that recognition of rights entails. Your analysis is way too neat; it fails to explain, among other things, the actions of the Hamas fighters who died in the attack; surely, if they valued prosperity above all things, they would be pushing for the recognition of Israel's right to exist, or staying home playing video games, or doing anything other than risking their lives. It also fails to explain why people ever quit jobs when they are treated in a way which they consider unjust. Nor even why people will often refuse to patronize a store with the lowest prices, but rudest employees, in town. Nor why some people choose to sacrifice income and comfort to live in rural areas where they are left alone.
Not all actions are instrumentally rationality; there is such thing as value rationality as well ["Value-rational behavior is produced by a conscious “ethical, aesthetic, religious or other” belief, “independently of its prospects of success.”6 Behavior, when driven by such values, can consciously embrace great personal sacrifices. Some spheres or goals of life are considered so valuable that they would not normally be up for sale or compromise, however costly the pursuit of their realization might be."].
Bottom line: Whether Arabs in Israel are "better off" overall simply because they have greater material comfort is a normative question that has no single correct answer.
Gdanning
4mo ago
Depending on exactly where the posters are placed, you kind of do, given the First Amendment.
Gdanning
6mo ago
I'm pretty sure OP isn't proposing the killing of literally every Palestinian in Gaza,
I'm pretty sure OP is proposing precisely that, since OP said, "But if Gaza had been erased from the world years ago, everyone from squalling infants to doddering grandfathers, you would not have this problem."
Gdanning
5mo ago
Muslim immigrants from where? India, home to about ten percent of the world's Muslims? Indonesia? The Balkans? Even Trump's original "Muslim ban" did not apply to 90% of the world's Muslims.
Gdanning
4mo ago
Did the Colorado Supreme Court provide a more serious and deep analysis of the First Amendment jurisprudence, at least? "The district court also credited the testimony of Professor Peter Simi, a professor of sociology at Chapman University ...
The Court's discussion of the First Amendment issue runs from page 16 to page 32 of the opinion. I don’t know if that analysis is correct, but it is disingenuous to imply, as you do, that it nothing more than a citatiin to the testimony of a single witness.
Gdanning
4mo ago
The young people aren't having sex.
I want to note that the linked data is only re: "ever had sex," not "are having sex", which is not the same thing. For example, the data here says that, while 38 percent of teens have had sex, only 27 percent are currently sexually active. I know a young man who lost his virginity at 13 when he and the young woman were drunk at a party, and that was it for him for years. It might be that such opportunities are fewer these days (more helicopter parenting, other avenues of entertainment). I would like to see trends re the pct sexually active.
Gdanning
4mo ago
My condolences. I can tell you that, re civilian deaths, the mere fact that Israel is not targeting civilians does not necessarily absolve them of war crimes, because "attacks that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof and that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" are also barred. How that might be determined by third parties is not clear to me.
Gdanning
5mo ago
There are a couple of problems with this question.
Everyone of us know how riots, revolts and political radicalism are born
Those are very distinct phenomena. Conflating them is highly problematic.
a segment of the population, resented or alienated by material means
This is not very clear, but if it is meant to refer to economic deprivation, it has been clear for decades that economic deprivation is a poor predictor of participation in political violence; at best, the relationship is highly contingent. Eg:
There does appear to be an inverted “U” relationship between terrorism and the factors of education and wealth, although that relationship might be contested in terms of measurement validity. Some of this complexity probably stems from the conflation of the revolutions/rebellion literature and the terrorism literature, because much of the former focused on peasant rebellions or the role of the “masses” in fomenting revolution. More-recent demographic research has revealed that individual participants in terrorist groups and in terrorist violence are both more educated and more financially well off than was previously believed—although this was no surprise to scholars who studied anarchist and other social revolutionary terrorist groups in the 1970s. However, the emerging picture of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq suggests that they fit the old model of the undereducated, unemployed, alienated terrorist far better than the new model. This contrast, too, might be better understood by distinguishing types of terrorism.
Gdanning
4mo ago
You are looking only at short-term effects. The studies look at more medium and long-term effects. Those immigrants do not just increase the labor supply; they also increase the demand for goodsm which in turn increases the demand for labor. That is why "complicated analysis," not mere "common sense" is necessary to evaluate the effect of immigration on the labor market.
Gdanning
4mo ago
"normalize" means to not be on a war footing against them, or maybe even be trading with them.
No, it means establishing diplomatic relations with them, and thereby recognizing them, not the regime in Taiwan, as the legitimate government of China.
And, it was a huge deal at the time. Kissinger and Nixon were named Time Magazine Men of the Year, and there is a reason that "Nixon to China" is a well-known figure of speech.
Gdanning
4mo ago
But that is a different issue: A government is free to speak as it wishes, so it can place or remove its own monuments as it wishes. The question here is whether, if it opens a forum for outsiders to speak, it can permit some to speak but refuse to allow others to speak. From the Boston case:
The government must be able to decide what to say and what not to say when it states an opinion, speaks for the community, formulates policies, or implements programs. The boundary between government speech and private expression can blur when, as here, the government invites the people to participate in a program. In those situations, the Court conducts a holistic inquiry to determine whether the government intends to speak for itself or, rather, to regulate private expression.
Gdanning
6mo ago
Give up. Most human beings are apparently incapable of distinguishing between an empirical issue and a normative issue, and most people who post here are very much not an exception, in my experience.
I think if you consult the linked source, you will find that a 7.5% unemployment rate for African Americans is in fact quite low in historical terms. The data starts in 1972, and from then until Jan of 2017 the African American unemployment rate had almost never been below 7.5%, and then only very briefly.
More importantly, the issue is not whether Obama is a good guy, or did a "good job." It is whether OP's specific empirical claim is correct, and it does not seem to be.
Gdanning
4mo ago
American teachers have their own classroom(?) instead of it being the room for a specific year(?)
American teachers generally have their own rooms, but they are assigned each year. Though in practice usually it is the same room every year, unless something changes.
and so they get to decorate it like it's their own personal space(?)
They can decorate it as they wish, unless a rule prohibits certain types of items. Most districts require even-handed treatment of controversial issues, so the Israeli flag probably was not kosher, no pun intended.
not a teacher deciding to bring in their toys and hobbies to plaster all over the walls.
What is wrong with that? All else being equal, a teacher who is seen by students as an individual human being, rather than as a bureaucrat, will likely be more effective on many dimensions.
Gdanning
7mo ago
And I believe this is the part pertaining to SOL
That provision has nothing to do with the statute of limitations. CA Penal Code sec 1385 simply permits the court to dismiss charges or enhancement allegations "in the interests of justice." The relevant CA penal code section re statutes of limitations is Section 799, which states that prosecution for rape "may be commenced at any time."
what was the evidence against Masterson? Near as I can tell none. There were 3 victim testimonies,
That is enough, if the jury believes them.
All we're left with is he said/she said,
That is very common in criminal trials (as well as civil trials). And determining who is lying and who is telling the truth is what juries do. The unanimity requirement (and CA uses 12 jurors, unlike some states) and beyond a reasonable doubt standard of proof hopefully provides some protection for defendants; that being said, I share your criticism of lengthy or nonexistent statutes of limitations. I am merely describing the law and explaining how the conviction happened, not defending it.
In Georgia, a "terroristic threat" has little to do with terrorism; it includes includes a threat to commit any crime of violence with the purpose of terrorizing another, and is a misdemeanor unless the threat suggests the death of the threatened individual.
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