Even MAGA isn’t safe. There have been a lot of faces eaten by leopards, and they haven’t all been left of MAGA. If anything, this really just proves that being the token friend doesn’t protect you. Being “one of the good ones” isn’t good enough. The only thing that matters is conformity, and things like non-conforming race, gender, or sexuality will be punished regardless of who you voted for.
Also fairly common with cops to not live inside of their own precinct. Because nobody wants to be the neighbor who hands out tickets. I know a cop who does stand up comedy, but she specifically avoids doing any comedy inside of her own jurisdiction. Because her interactions are her standup content, and there’s a non-zero chance that the person she’s telling a story about could be in (or have friends in) the audience.
Yeah, the only thing banks learned from the ‘08 bubble was that they shouldn’t back securities with debts that can be disbursed via bankruptcy. Since student loans can’t be disbursed, they’re the gold standard for securities, and are a big reason why so many rich people are against student loan forgiveness.
The most frustrating part is that my grocery store has so many eggs. The shelves aren’t empty. In fact, there are cartons on the shelves which are weeks old at this point. And that means supply is outpacing demand at the current prices. People are seeing the increased prices, and simply using less eggs. Which means prices could feasibly drop while we continue to have eggs on the shelves.
This price increase is just more greedflation. Studies have shown that the bird flu issue should have only increased the price by 12-15%, but here we are with increases in the high triple digits. Why sell ten cartons of eggs at $1 each, when you could simply sell two cartons at $6 each and make more money than if you had sold ten cartons?
The US has a legal concept called fruit of the poisoned tree. Basically, if evidence was obtained by cops illegally, it can’t be used against a defendant. Essentially, the prosecution can’t use fruit that they found from a poisoned tree, because the fruit is considered tainted. For instance, let’s say cops illegally search you, and find weed. If your defense lawyer can prove that the search was illegal, the evidence (your weed) gets excluded from the trial.
There are a few exceptions, like cops being able to use evidence from someone who stole it. For instance, if someone steals a laptop and then finds CSAM on it, the laptop can still be used against the person it was stolen from. Because the initial theft was illegal, but the cops weren’t the ones who stole it; They legally obtained it from the thief who reported the CSAM and turned the laptop over. But as a general rule, if cops break the law to get evidence, the evidence is thrown out.
So if they prove that Luigi was illegally searched, it potentially excludes all of the evidence they found on him, like his written manifesto and the ghost gun in his backpack.
But this trial is already a fucking sham, so I have no doubt that the courts will turn case law on its head to rule the search was legal, even if it was blatantly illegal. Cops have a lot of leeway in how they can justify a search, so the detectives can likely just say “we thought we smelled weed, so we initiated a search” to get the search ruled as legal.
I mean, plenty of people were saying that right when he was first arrested. The dude was able to evade capture for an entire week while the entire country was on the lookout for him… He even had time to leave memeable fake breadcrumbs, like his backpack full of Monopoly money… And yet he never thought to break apart the ghost gun he used, and dispose of it in random trash cans so they’d be virtually impossible to trace back to him? He had a goddamned manifesto on him, like it was a signed confession?
Yeah, no. His arrest smells like “accidentally” disabled body cams and planted evidence.
When anger and disgust combine, you get contempt. And while the word doesn’t sound super impactful, contempt is one of the strongest emotions, and one that is often deeply rooted in your sense of identity. Because if you hold genuine contempt for something, it’s usually because it flies in the face of your core personal values. It’s an emotion that makes it difficult to even function properly when you’re near the target of your contempt; It’s the kind of emotion that drives people to violence.
Also, courts have repeatedly ruled that a punishment has to be both cruel and unusual to be unconstitutional. Which means that if the government just treats everyone like trash, it’s cruel but not unusual. Because the government is what decides what is unusual simply by adjusting how often it is used. If something is unusual and they want to change that, they just do it more so it’s considered usual.
It’s the same strategy used by Hitler and the nazis to seize control of Germany. They initially only got control of some of the smaller, “less important” government departments. And then they just started drastically expanding the reach of existing departments, declaring themselves to be in charge of other departments, consolidating loyalists, etc…
The idea is that by the time opponents have time to push back, you have already seized control and are already ousting them. Court battles take months or years, but the takeover was done in a few days.
Honestly, my initial guess was that the department used a fake name to refer to the officer. Because it’s giving big “the hardest part of making a new character is thinking of a name” vibes.
I had an idea for a community along the lines of /LeastSupremeWhites which was the same basic premise. Based on an old comment I saw a while ago, which was along the lines of “why are white supremacists always the least supreme whites?”
They also fired the workers who handled most FOIA requests, so there is nobody to fulfill them anyways.
Honestly, I don’t think that the current administration’s tactics would work without social media. Social media allows people to feel the outrage and feel like they’re making an impact, all without doing a damned thing to actually stop the current admin. Social media allows you to post online and feel satisfied with the engagement it got, because “maybe someone else will step up because of my post.” But it doesn’t actually spur any action on the poster’s part.
I’d argue that posting about it is the best case scenario for fascism, because as long as people are allowed to post they won’t be motivated to actually start fires.
And here’s a reminder that the US Army handbook on simple sabotage suggests more passive forms of sabotage if active sabotage isn’t possible. If you want to sabotage enemy war production efforts, the handbook suggests getting a job in management and then subtlety doing everything you can to grind things to a halt.
Basically, intentionally become the manglement that every office drone and factory worker hates.
Every single statement they have made about the topic should be admissible as evidence to be used against them in court during sentencing. Every single time they have suggested stricter punishments should be compiled into a list and tacked onto their sentence.