We’ve had this discussion before. You both think the DP is wrong and we shouldn’t execute without 100% certainty. I don’t agree because humans don’t have perfect knowledge in the real world and various arguments haven’t changed those starting points.
That should save about 100 posts.
That’s not quite my view, but we can still save the 99 posts remaining.
that’s not what i said. i said that we shouldn’t execute even with 100% certainty. maybe the exception being someone like osama bin laden or hitler or something.
OK, so Transition!
Biden looking into someone who wants to protect the environment to the EPA.
EEEEEEEE-PAAAAAA!
Maybe the Education Department will be filled by someone actually interested in the education of students instead of the profits of for-profit institutions.
Hoping that the head of the EPA controls the population of grizzly bears so that we won’t need guns in schools
You also need to consider the probability of sending the wrong person to jail for life in prison. Some people would prefer a quick execution to life in prison.
So, to me, the question is what is an acceptable false conviction rate for crimes that have either a life or death penalty. Without giving it much thought, for me, that number would be pretty low, in the 0.0001 to 0.004 range.
I think it’s difficult to get false convictions that low without abandoning convicting anyone. That said, once we’re past ceding the power of life and death to our government I think the next step is to pull the bloodlust back from these crazy long sentences for many crimes.
Long story short 60 year olds who committed a crime when they were 18 are not worth keeping in prison.
This computer hack for some reason has me very suspicious.
Anyone else think Trump has something to do with the security hack?
I could see him being involved with the whole not caring. The notion that he was an active participant… maybe? He’d seem too much of a leak risk. He couldn’t even keep his own impeachable offenses under wrap. Dude literally asked China to meddle in the election on TV.
My sister said this when I asked what my family thought which I like:
“Well actually I know he did. He fired a bunch of the top cyber security people. I guess the question is whether it was intentional or gross incompetence.”
Oh yeah I agree with his gross incompetence helping to allow the attack go unnoticed. When we’re like oh shit we got hacked, who is the guy leading our defense against this!? Oh snap Trump fired him a while ago because he was insufficiently loyal, damn.
Fact: Trump’s administration cut cybersecurity. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/15/white-house-eliminates-cyber-adviser-post-542916
“John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser, was maneuvering to cut the cyber coordinator role, in a move that many experts and former government officials criticized as a major step backward for federal cybersecurity policy.”
It would surprise me to find out Bolton was a traitor. It seems much more likely he’s out of touch regarding technology and his mind is stuck in the 20th century. So, Trump’s incompetence and the incompetence of his staff created/enhanced weaknesses in our defenses. The administration’s focus on the past allowed competitors to move past us, to move forward into the future leaving us mired in a 20th century mindset.
Interesting article that kind of makes me wish he was just going to ghost out after Christmas. His promises of “WILD” protests on January 6th is disturbing to me. This assessment of his mental health is even more disturbing:
Nice objective source. Very unbiased.
(Not even going to bother to read.)
Nice column. Good read. Thanks for sharing.
…I don’t know if Russia would care about a leak. It’s not like we’re about to bomb them about it. The nice thing about espionage is that there’s no accountability. Especially now, when we have so much domestic strife.
I haven’t read about the hack, but I would think it’s too hands-on for Trump to be directly connected. I guess we’d imagine Trump placing a spy in charge but it seems… unlikely? to be that simple?
My read of the article says No, he’s not going to crack. He’s not going to sit in his room and refuse to come out.
“He’s going to go back to Mar-a-Lago, to MAGAstan, as I call it, and he’s going to return to standing ovations and applause beyond what you can comprehend,” [Michael Cohen] said, “because these sycophants that are there will continue to bolster his ego and he can go from table to table, listening to people placate him about how the election was stolen from him."
Trump has a future after the WH. He has a political war chest, friendly news outlets, devoted fans, R politicians who desperately want his blessing a fear a negative tweet, people who will tell him he was the greatest president ever and agree the Ds stole the election. He will get plenty of publicity for his constant attacks on Biden.
He’ll be living on 3 acres of some of the most expensive real estate in the country, where the weather is glorious in the winter, with other wonderful options when FL gets too warm.
He could worry about tax or criminal court cases, but he has skated on many legal skirmishes in the past. These are irritations, not existential threats.
Yes, his relevance may (or may not) fade over time. It it does the decline will be slow enough that it won’t provoke a crisis for him.
I think he will do lots of damage in the next 30 days, but he won’t start a nuclear war - the military will refuse to carry out that order.
I am interested in your assessment of Trump’s mental health.
Apparently, the residents of Palm Beach don’t want him to live there, and also say that since it is a resort and not a permanent residence (as it was when first built, by a real millionaire and successful businesswoman (who also inherited her fortune, but didn’t lose it even once)), he can’t live there permanently.
Also, fun fact: he wanted to buy it and was rejected, so he bought the land between it and the ocean and threatened to build a structure that would ruin the mansion’s view of the ocean. He then bought Mar-a-Lago for 2/3 of his original asking price.