Hey, does that guy look like a terrorist?

The one in the middle? Yeah, kinda!

Right then, blast him and his friends. They're probably terrorists too!

This is better in my head than most I think. One of my childhood friends called their butt other "doop". No idea why. So, what's happening "in Tak Pa's doop"?

Here's the thing. Even if the terrifs, somehow, didn't directly cause inflation, the fact that we are taking about inflation means that companies can raise prices and gouge just like last time.

What you said and your statement that "it's a bit like grief" are dead on. I wasn't kicked out by my parents, but I lost my dad when I was 27. I'm 40 now and still miss him but the feeling dwindles with time. I'll always miss him but the impact of that feeling will always lessen as I gain more experiences. I suppose the same is true for any trauma of a similar magnitude. I imagine there are traumas that surpass the loss of parents in magnitude, though, and some of those may not pass in the same way.

This is just a slow coup by foreign actors at this point, isn't it?

It was actually pretty interesting to listen to the sentencing. It's about 20 minutes. The judge goes through all of the options at his disposal and discusses his the rationale that he used to arrive at a prison sentence.

He had the option of sentencing her to parole, community service, or incarceration. He then described her as unrepentant, the most defiant defendant the court has ever seen, and a continuing danger to society. He also discussed that he considers how a sentence will act as deterrent for the defendant directly (not at all in this case) and for others who might seek to commit similar crimes as well as punishment. He determined that Mrs Peters would immediately go commit the same crimes again given the opportunity, that community deterrence is important, and that punishment was warranted.

He also went through her mitigating circumstances. He compared her circumstances to the typical defendant that his court sees and characterized her as extremely privileged with few mitigating circumstances and many aggravating ones. He said that she simply sought power, prestige, and wealth without a care for who she harmed. He characterized her as an unrepentant liar and a fraud who lied every chance she got including about why she kicked a police officer while on video.

Based on his rationale, he decided that removing Tina Peter's from the community was in the best interests of the community.

TL/DR The judge didn't like Mrs Peters very much.

If he won't debate, they should put together a "debate" where they take in-context Trump quotes, show them on a screen, then let Kamala respond to them. Let her rip apart his awful rhetoric and lack of policies and if he doesn't show up to defend himself, that's his problem.

I've come to the conclusion that conservatives are just people whose sense of empathy is broken. Over and over I hear about conservatives who held bigoted beliefs and only changed their minds when confronted by someone they love becoming the target of other people's identical bigoted beliefs. These people just can't empathize enough to think "what if it was my child/spouse/friend?"

Prisoners shouldn't need to pay to talk with their families. We claim that our system is intended for rehabilitation. What could possibly lead to better outcomes than the ability to keep in touch with your family; to be made to feel human while serving your sentence? The US justice system is a fucking joke and for-profit prison shareholders are the only ones laughing.

Incarceration should have no profit motive, regardless of whether that profit motive benefits a for-profit company and its shareholders or the local Sheriff's department.

I don't understand why companies who commit blatant fraud like this aren't required to disgorge all fraudulently earned money. If someone defrauds banks they get fined based on their earnings in a way that hurts. If someone defrauds consumers for "tens of millions of dollars" they are only fined $16M.

Well, actually I do understand, I just don't like it and don't like what it says about this country's priorities.

I don’t understand how 40 years of prison for a non-violent crime isn’t considered to be both “cruel” and “unusual”. It is objectively cruel. I certainly hope that it is also unusual. I certainly hope that there aren’t many more like him, imprisoned for decades for what amounts to personal-use levels of pot. 5.5 lbs of pot when you include the stem and roots isn’t that much and certainly sounds like a personal supply to me.

Oh, look, a republican who doesn't have compassion unless he has experienced similar adversity! Imagine that!

None of these people care about anyone who they don't have a personal relationship with but, as soon as something impacts someone they care about, they suddenly have compassion. And, of course, the rest of the discompassionate right wingers condemn him for having even that little bit of self interested compassion.