Re: Google Groups

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

In short, it's GONE.

The bean-counters didn't see any profit, so ...

On the plus, it means fewer annoying little spammers.

STILL hoping Musk will pick it up in the 'free speech' theme.

Yes, or the last gray-bearded google engineer who knows NNTP finally retires.

google may not be willing to process all the spam complaints from NNTP peers (our usenet providers).

did they ever? because it certainly didn't look like they did.

Oh no! Anyway...

Re: Re: Google Groups By: Ahem A Rivet's Shot to Bob Latham on Tue Feb 06 2024 06:14 pm

Mickey Mick Manning Central Ontario Remote Synchro centralontarioremote.com:23

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It is a sad commentary on the United States that out of over 340 million people Biden and Trump are their options for leaders, are they

That is what worries me. It started in the UK with Blair, who defended supporting the USA using faked dossiers to bring the UK parliament onside with the famous 'I believed what I was doing was right'... It was illegal, it was a high level state crime to deceive parliament, but as long as he believed it was right, then it was OK.

I would like to think not, as an American, but I am afraid they are going to be our choices again. Biden wouldn't step aside, and Trump has too many followers for anyone else to get nominated. Tim Scott seemed rather sensible, which is why he was out early. Sadly, most Americans no longer like sensible.

• SLMR 2.1a * This is a School-Free Drug Zone.

The big problem here is that, early on, the other side was actually throwing a bunch of allegations at Trump that had little basis on actual facts. If they had waited, we now know they could have found plenty of stuff that was based on facts.

Now, when anything comes out, even if it is something right out of Trump's own mouth, his supporters believe that it falls into the former category rather than opening their eyes and realizing he's really done something wrong... like claiming that Presidents should have full immunity.

For them, it is like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, and they won't even listen to people who aren't Democrats and that used to agree with them.

• SLMR 2.1a * A Crucifix? Oy vey, have YOU got the wrong vampire...

I think you've missed a few things.

Only when it suits them. When it doesn't, they will try to make it quite flexible and twist it into what they want to believe... like that a President has full immunity from criminal prosecution... and not at all what it says.

In the case of abortion, unelected, appointed justices decided to do just that... turn it back to the states and their legislatures. If you are pro-choice, this has turned out to be a bad thing for you in many states.

I am not sure that having judges be elected is a bad thing so long as they have to meet qualifications in order to be on the ballot. The alternative is to have them appointed, which means they will still have biases... it would be the biases of those who appoint vs. those who elect. Assuming they work as other appointments, if they run afoul of the political beliefs of the appointing authority, they get removed and replaced by someone who will do what they are told.

At least when they are elected, if they do a horrible job you can get rid of them come next election.

How does your country manage to completely get around political bias when it comes to judges? Honest question as here I don't see a way around it.

Not sure of the issue here. If the candidates could not advertise at all, sadly most Americans would just vote based on the party the candidate is aligned with. Come to think of it, that is probably how most do it anyway. However, for me, "pro-candidate" advertising often highlights something a candidate stands for that I really don't like, which prompts me to research the issue more and can often lead me to realize that the candidate "my party" has put forward is not the candidate for me.

I do wish there were not so many political ads, and it would be nice if the ads could only mention what the candidate supports, and not mention the other candidate at all. Most of our ads spend the majority of their air time talking about how bad the other candidate is and very little time on the candidate they are supporting.

• SLMR 2.1a * Those who live by the sword... kill those who don't.

This. Now the Democrats are stuck with a stupid problem they cannot get rid of.

• SLMR 2.1a * 5 billion years the earth takes to form, and we get THIS?

Well they are good at cutting off their noses to spite their face:

2) Believing *rigidly* in the Constitution, instead of being more flexible about it

4) Having judges be elected, and having them be allowed to decide policy matters such as abortion based on some spurious interpretation of the Constitution, instead of such questions being decided by the legislatures, where they belong.

I expect there are others.

...because that's working so well for you. /rolleyes

Take out the blue shithole cities from our crime stats and they're no worse than yours. Probably better, actually. Those blue shitholes, BTW, already have gun laws much closer to what you'd want. Again, how's that working out for them?

That "flexibility" is what has landed us in our current mess. It's a short document...maybe three or four pages, written in plain-enough English that there ought not to be nearly as much disagreement over what it means as there has been. I chalk that up to a group of politicians who seek to obfuscate and gaslight...mostly with "D"s after their names, though there are more than a few with "R" after their names who I wouldn't trust as far as I can throw them either.

Given that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, it follows that sharply curtailing the power the government has over the people would serve well to limit the extent of corruption.

Police chiefs generally aren't elected. They're appointed by mayors and/or city councils, to whom they're beholden. Sheriffs are elected, usually on a countywide basis. There are some exceptions here and there...here in Las Vegas, the city police department and the county sheriff's department merged in the early '70s, so we have a police department headed up by an elected sheriff.

The bigger problem, especially at the federal level, is the unaccountable administrative state. Congress has mostly abdicated its responsibility and let organizations like the EPA and ATF do pretty much whatever they want. At least if an elected judge proves himself to be a total fuckup, there's a chance that the voters might shitcan him the next time he's up for reelection. (Practice might have some variance from theory in this regard, given how many judges run unopposed.)

I'm not sure I'd consider that the problem so much as that they get away with blatant lies without any consequence. Theoretically, the voters would throw the bums out. In practice, most people seem to be of the mindset that while other people's representatives are scumbags and reprobates, theirs are as pure as the wind-driven snow. Why this is the case is a mystery.

That's probably as close to the truth as you can get from here.

It’s worked really well in Australia. That’s what scares the US gun nuts.

Nobody here sees their child die because someone back along the road got angry and missed when they shot at the driver who annoyed them. Nobody here has their child die while trying on clothes in a department store because a cop pulled a gun in a mall and missed. But the real kicker is in here:

America most certainly does have a gun problem.

I know nothing of arstechnica but I am very aware that the Guardian like the BBC is not interested in the truth at all. They are only interested in pushing a narrative. Subversion really.

Bob.