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Mudguard

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  1. Have you been able to catch her in the act of destroying something? If not, correcting her when she is actually doing the act works way better than trying to correct her after the fact. If you have and that didn’t work, you can try getting her some toys to destroy.
  2. To be clear, I'm still voting. I'm just leaving some sections blank.
  3. I'm leaving my choice for presidential candidate blank for the primary. Doesn't matter right now anyway. The US Senate race in CA is interesting though.
  4. Yeah, Smith appears to be a very meticulous and aggressive prosecutor, which is another reason I doubt he would have dropped a charge that he felt confident that he could prove. Smith is throwing the book at Trump. Also, the insurrection charge under 18 USC 2383 is probably the only charge that would disqualify Trump from holding office. Even if Trump is convicted on all the other charges, he can still hold office, and if he wins, presumably could pardon himself from jail. No way he would drop such a consequential charge if he had the ability to prove it. Also, from what I understand, no one has been charged under section 2383. None of the rioters that have been sent to jail, and there have been dozens if not hundreds of them, have been charged for insurrection. Why not? There isn't the same time pressures for these defendants. It's because proving insurrection on these facts is not the slam dunk that people think it is.
  5. Dropping a charge of course simplifies the case, but I haven't seen a good explanation why the insurrection charge is more complicated to prove than the other charges. What are the elements in proving an insurrection charge that makes it so complicated? Can you cite something that supports this view? All the analysis of the public evidence that I've seen suggests that the evidence has ambiguities that a defense could use to support their case. The public speech Trump made wasn't going to be enough. Smith needed additional evidence that Trump wanted that mob to storm the capital and disrupt the proceedings. As far as I'm aware, there wasn't any smoking gun found. If Smith had that type of evidence, the case would be a slam dunk and I really doubt he would omit the insurrection charge. Even if the additional charge would lengthen the trial by a week or two, and that's very generous given the overlapping facts, that wasn't going to make or break the timing.
  6. Take what you hear from legal commentators with a grain of salt. Most of them recently thought that the SC wouldn't take up the immunity case, and they were all wrong. Unless Smith has publicly commented on his reasoning for not filing a charge on insurrection, or the analyst claims to have inside information on internal deliberations, it's pure speculation. Also, plenty of other commentators believe the reason was tied to the difficulty of proving the allegation. For example, from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/us/politics/trump-indictment-jack-smith-charges.html
  7. I can believe that Garland wouldn't have appointed Smith if Trump didn't run. But I don't buy the idea that Smith didn't bring the insurrection charge because he wanted to streamline the case. A lot of the facts for the charges he did file concern the events of Jan 6th, so there's already a large overlap between the insurrection charge and the other charges he filed. I think part of the problem is that there is so little caselaw around this charge, in addition to the elements of insurrection not being well defined, that he would need overwhelming evidence of insurrection before he would feel confident enough to bring a charge. And I don't think the evidence is close to overwhelming. It's certainly arguable, but that's a long way from a very strong case.
  8. I didn't get this impression from reading the opinion. Conviction under 2383 would bar Trump from from holding office, and this was even conceded by Trump's attorney's during oral argument, with the caveat that Trump's attorney claimed that Trump was immune from prosecution. So depending on what happens in the parallel immunity case, Trump could still be blocked from holding office under 2383 if the SC rules against his immunity claim. Unfortunately, the charge was not brought, so this is a moot point. Also, Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel, and from all indications, Smith has had full discretion and authority to bring the insurrection charge under 2383, but presumably felt like the case wasn't strong enough to his standards.
  9. Yeah, as far as I'm aware, the DOJ hasn't brought a charge under that provision of the criminal code.
  10. They got Commander when he was about 4 months old, so they were responsible for raising and training the dog in that environment. I find it very unlikely that they properly trained and socialized their dog, and then it grew up to want to bite everyone anyway. Both dogs that they tried to raise in the White House turned out the same way, while the other dogs grew up in a different environment, probably in a traditional home, and probably when one or both of the Biden's had more time to devote to the training of their dog. If they waited to bring in trainers after their dog started to bite people, then that's really too late. The failure was not correcting early behaviors that indicated aggression when the pup was growing up.
  11. Are you referring to the dog bite article? If so: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/21/politics/commander-biden-secret-service-bites-white-house/index.html Actually, it’s 24 dog bites just to Secret Service agents. That number doesn’t include other staff that were bit.
  12. I saw that article. Ridiculous and highly irresponsible of the Bidens. After the first bite, they were on notice that their dog had a serious problem. But to let their dog bite over 20 people is crazy. For a normal person, that would be grounds for civil lawsuits and potentially even criminal liability.
  13. Well, Jill Stein and the Green Party may have helped Trump get elected over Clinton, so there is that. And I think she is running again this election cycle.
  14. I'm a big fan of the community college system. First year of college at most 4 year universities, at least in the sciences and engineering, consists of taking introductory classes in math, physics, chemistry, etc. where the class size is often over well over a hundred, and the quality of the instruction can be pretty shit, depending on the professor. At research focused institutions, teaching is secondary to publishing for professors trying to get tenure, so you can end up with some pretty shitty professors teaching your courses. For the basic intro courses, the instruction at community colleges is unlikely to be worse, and could even be better in many cases. If I could do things over, I would have done the first year at a community college, and then transferred to a 4 year institution to take the more advanced courses and complete my degree. Would have saved a lot of money if I did it that way. Tuition at private universities is crazy now, at least in the US.
  15. Don't want to derail the thread, so this is the last I'll say on this topic, but I agree that Big Pharma definitely has it's problems, and is driven like other for profit companies by making as much money as they can. Based on the biggest settlements list posted by kissdbyefire, significant problems include pushing for off-label uses, payment of kickbacks to doctors, and hiding risks and adverse events from research and clinical trials. All these are driven by greed. Last two are outright illegal, and the first two also implicate shady doctors, without which the first two cannot happen. But I also agree with karaddin that Big Pharma is not an evil boogeyman, and does a lot of good. It's possible to do good and make a profit at the same time. Also agree that nationalization of the industry or converting them to nonprofits would not lead to better results. There could definitely be more regulation, such as price regulation and off-label use regulation, but we would need a functional Congress to do anything in the US, and large lobbyist groups for both Big Pharma and other health care industries would be against it.
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