The easiest way to provide all of “Trump’s perceived enemies” with legal (and financial) protection from frivolous prosecution would be for President Biden to compile an enormous list of people to pardon before he leaves office, including prosecutors, judges, journalists, pollsters and others.
Jack Smith, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Adam Schiff, Kamala Harris, additional members and witnesses of the House Jan. 6 Committee and many others come to mind.
This won’t eliminate the threats to democracy, but at least it might provide protection for some people.
Mark Henderson, Folsom, Calif.
Pardons and clemency by the President or a Governor require the person being pardoned to accept it. In accepting a pardon or clemency from the President or Governor, you are also openly admitting guilt to at least what is mentioned in the pardon. Even if you don’t explicitly say you’re guilty, accepting the pardon means you’re saying you did it unless the pardon states clearly that you are being pardoned because you’re innocent.
So, for example, if the Governor of Kansas were to issue me a pardon for, at the extreme, murdering a police officer, accepting that pardon would mean I’m admitting to being a cop killer.
Meaning, given the above, if President Biden were to preemptively pardon all the individuals so named, plus himself and others, those individuals accepting the pardons would, more or less, be an confessing and admitting guilt to at the least whatever is outlined in the pardon. Meaning it absolutely would NOT be in Biden’s interest, or the interest of the Democratic Party, to even consider issuing such pardons. But if Biden were to ignore that and issue them anyway, it would also not be in the best interest of those being pardoned to accept them.
At the same time, the pardons also eliminate any protection of the Fifth Amendment to whatever is named in the pardon, meaning the individuals who are pardoned can be compelled via subpoena from a Court or Congress to provide testimony to whatever is named in the pardon. Since a preemptive pardon is, in effect, a grant of immunity, meaning self-incrimination is impossible.
Meaning the grants of pardons, and their acceptance by those pardoned, won’t end any investigations. It’ll only amplify them.
I don’t think Mr Henderson from Folsom, CA, really thought this through.
Now I’m not going to start off by saying anything positive about the speaker here. I’m just going to dive right in and say that Gothix is wrong here.
She pulls the same fallacy I see time and time again from the right by conflating a lot of negatives with atheism. Here she starts off by saying that a sense of urgency among leftists, such as the climate alarmism, is due to leftists being atheist and trying to make their own heaven on Earth since they don’t believe in a Heaven after death. Which has a bunch of implications, but I’m not taking that tangent.
So let’s keep this just on Gothix and her statement that most on the left are atheist:
First of all if we look at the breakdown of people who tend to be involved in psychology, these people tend to lean more one way on the political spectrum. Okay they… they usually tend to be left liberals, progressives. Most people on the left tend to be secular, tend to be atheist.
Nearly 3 in 4 people in the US is Christian according to the World Religion Database as of 2020. Meaning a very substantial portion of those she’s attempting to describe are actually people who DO believe in an afterlife, don’t believe that this life and world is all there is. And the US has gotten more religiously diverse over the years as well courtesy of immigration.
Then there’s the flip side of her statement: that atheists are leftist. And, no, that isn’t the case. There is a very sizeable portion of atheists and agnostics who are conservative and libertarian – something that continues to surprise a lot of atheist talking heads. Sure the majority of atheists are left-leaning, but left-leaning doesn’t mean leftist, and progressive doesn’t mean leftist either.
The number of people who are leftist is actually relatively small. They’re very vocal, yes, but they aren’t even a plurality of everyone who falls left of center.
But there’s also a lot of political diversity among the religious, too. Liberal and leftist Christians, for example – yes, they exist. “Blue Dog Democrats” are another. The guy who penned the original Pledge of Allegiance was a Christian socialist.
So can we please stop acting like everyone who’s left of center is an atheist and everyone who’s right of center is religious? That fallacy has been floating around for so long that I see atheists repeating it. And the number of times I’ve been called a Christian merely for disagreeing with atheists is staggering…
So Gothix is just engaging in more of the same misrepresentation of atheists I’ve seen time and again.
And to summarize, most atheists are left of center, but most of those who are left of center are religious to some degree. Simply because most people are religious to some degree. And a sizable portion of atheists are conservative or libertarian.
1. Getting Kamala as the 47th would render worthless any merchandise the Trump camp has already created branding him as the 47th President. Which, I mean… how petty can you get? I wonder if Simmons applauds evicted tenants who wreck the homes they’re evicted from.
2. She wouldn’t be VP anymore, so wouldn’t have to oversee the Electoral Vote certification on January 6th. Oh yes, we must spare her feelings in this because… let me guess… she’s a woman? Give me a fucking break!
3. She’d still be the first female President…. Yeah, UNELECTED! But suddenly that little detail doesn’t matter here? Does no one have any consistency in their political positions anymore? And personally I don’t care whether Jimmy Carter would get to be alive with the first female President.
4. “It’d fulfill his promise (to be a transitional president).” No, that’d make him a disruptive President. It’s why the idea’s never been considered by any previous President. So to consider it now is… unbecoming in the kindest terms.
And it’d also give Trump one last talking point about Biden deciding to just run away rather than face Trump one last time on Inauguration Day. Something about pulling out of the race early for his anointed successor, and running away again rather than seeing his term through to the end. I mean, Biden faced Trump and won in 2020, so why not face him again?
And, again, it’s acting like Harris is entitled to the Office.
At this point, the closest she’ll get to being President is if she and half the cabinet pull the 25th Amendment on Biden.
Jamal shows what happens when you get way too emotionally invested in an outcome that you must see that outcome by any means possible… Where “Harris will be the 47th President!” becomes “Biden must resign so Harris can be the 47th President!”
He’s not wrong. Aside from how he described Israel’s war, but everything else he said is correct.
The Democrats need to be making a broader appeal to the American people, not keep acting like it’s 2020 because Election Night showed that continually screaming “Trump is a fascist” isn’t going to work.
Yet the Democrats and leftists are doubling down. No surprise, honestly. And what’s sad is the number of leftists who are like “I guess we’re not ready for a female President”. No we’re perfectly ready for one. The parties just have to run the right candidate. Clinton wasn’t it. And Harris absolutely was not it.
You can’t run just any woman as a candidate for President and then scream “America isn’t ready for a woman President” when that candidate loses. Clinton and Harris both were anointed by the Democratic establishment, not chosen by the party’s voters. With Clinton being chosen by the party’s “super delegates”.
And worse for Harris was simply the fact she was never in a primary. And if the Democrats had sprung an emergency primary following Biden’s withdrawal, she likely would’ve lost.
But America absolutely is ready for a woman President. But, again, it needs to be the right candidate.
I’ll put it this way… if the Democrats had embraced Tulsi Gabbard in 2020 over Biden (and Sanders for the brief time he was the frontrunner until he got torpedoed by the establishment), we probably would have been RE-electing her this time around instead of Trump. And probably in a landslide reminiscent of Reagan’s landslide victory 40 years ago.
We absolutely can have a female President. But the parties need to run the right candidate. And in 4 years, sure the Republicans will likely run JD Vance. And if he picks Gabbard as his running mate, since she’s now a declared Republican, he’ll likely win. Unless the Democrats can find someone like Gabbard with broad appeal to the left and right and stop letting the identity politics rule their roost.
So to summarize, the person you’re seeing in the video rented a car from Hertz for a month and put 25,000 miles on it during that time. And Hertz is wanting to assess $10,000 against him for it.
Now one thing people seem to forget about a car rental is simply… you have to take reasonable care of the vehicle while it’s in your possession. If you damage the vehicle, you’re responsible for it. And the car rental company will try to bill your insurance or you for the damage.
Unlimited mileage does not mean zero responsibility.
So my question on this situation: did he ever get the required maintenance done?
Across 25,000 miles, the vehicle would’ve required three (3) or four (4) oil and filter changes, depending on how the vehicle was being driven. Which given he’s putting nearly 1,000 miles per day on the car, that would mean the oil and filter would need to be changed pretty much every week, with the tires rotated at that time. The engine air filter would need replaced at least twice. Cabin air filter changed out at least once. Along with any other manufacturer-required maintenance based on the make and model as part of maintaining the warranty.
So did he have that done? I can’t find anything saying he did.
So there were likely maintenance reminders going off in the vehicle as well. Meaning he was ignoring them or figured out how to turn them off when they did come up, rather than taking the vehicle back to Hertz so they could do the maintenance or arrange for him to take the vehicle someplace to be maintained at their expense.
Driving excessive miles without adequate maintenance will damage or destroy an engine. So the engine is likely toast. And that’s damage to the vehicle per the contract. How is it not?
That also means the manufacturer vehicle warranty is void, meaning Hertz will need to rotate that vehicle from its fleet. And given the engine is toast, they can’t sell the vehicle without replacing the engine, which severely damages the resale value of the car.
Again, unlimited mileage does NOT mean zero responsibility for the car. And unless the above Tik-Toker can prove they did have maintenance done on the car, the $10,000 fee is perfectly reasonable here.
And if the fee is because he damaged the car, Hertz needs to make that clear.
Update
I was able to find one comment where the person in the video said they had maintenance done on the car. The problem is they didn’t specify whether it was only once or several times across that month
But a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions about how long an engine can go between oil changes. First of all, how long the oil can last is immaterial. The filter is more important. And even if a filter is rated for 20,000 miles – like Mobil1’s Extended Performance filter – you still shouldn’t run a filter that long.
Then there’s also what the car’s manual says. If the manual says to never exceed a specific interval, don’t do it. For example, the manual for my 2018 Jeep Compass says this:
There is no similar warning for my wife’s CR-V in the manual, but I still won’t go far over 10,000 miles on the same engine oil, even though I am using Mobil1 Extended Performance which they claim is good for 20,000 miles.
If you’re saying it’s the pickup, sorry, but you’re not correct. The dashcam owner is at fault for the collision and would be entirely liable for it. The pickup wouldn’t be liable in the least.
Take a few moments to ponder why before I get into this…
* * * * *
Road rage is little different from bullying, and bullying tends to be more about asserting dominance. So if someone engages with you in some type of bullying behavior, the onus is on YOU to attempt to disengage.
Note the phrasing: attempt to disengage. Obviously you may not be able to depending on circumstance. And while the dashcam owner, herein “DCO”, did attempt to disengage, he went about it the wrong way.
When an opposing driver, herein “OD”, is being hostile and is in front of us, our natural inclination seems to be to accelerate around and away from them, more or less trying to “run away” from a threat. You should instead brake.
In the above dashcam recording, the moment to attempt to disengage was when the OD swerved into the left lane in front of the DCO. Continuing to move forward, with the OD in front of the DCO, only played into OD’s trap.
NEVER try to swerve around a hostile OD who is in front of you. Brake or let off your accelerator and pull to the shoulder instead.
Had the DCO gone into the back of the truck instead, the DCO would’ve been mostly blameless. And I say “mostly” because, again, the DCO should’ve braked and pulled to the lefthand shoulder when the OD pulled into the lefthand lane in front of the DCO. That the DCO swerved shows situational awareness enough to react. But since brake checking is universally illegal, and the dashcam would’ve easily shown the entirety of the road rage incident, it would’ve come across that the truck was brake checking and put him legally entirely in the wrong.
But the OD being legally in the wrong doesn’t mean the DCO could’ve made a better decision. A better decision that could’ve avoided a collision and the handicaps that come with it.
In the above footage, though, the OD is legally in the wrong for how they were driving, but they are not legally or financially responsible for the collision. That falls entirely on the DCO.
I was looking for a “minimal” Linux distro with a desktop. And why the desktop when this is a virtualization server? VirtualBox’s user interface.
Basically I just got fed up with having to deal with the command-line with VirtualBox. I use VirtualBox on my Windows desktop a LOT, so having that UI for managing the virtual machines on Cordelia is, more or less, something I can’t really do without anymore. Since I have a couple projects coming up for which I want to be able to create and remove VMs more-or-less on-demand.
I’m also using a third-party Pi-KVM from Geekworm to remotely control this system, so a web UI (e.g., Proxmox) isn’t necessary for controlling the virtual machines. Though I will still be using Portainer CE to monitor and control the Docker containers.
With Rocky, I did not like the desktop installed with its “Server with GUI” option. And I didn’t want to mess around in figuring out how to add a desktop to an installation without one. That also meant Arch was definitely NOT in the running here.
But the “Server with GUI” option did mean it was above Linux Mint in the contention. Well above it, actually. My singular gripe with Mint – but also the main reason it exists – is the inability to control what is installed. Meaning I’d be going in and removing a lot of things before I started adding in what I wanted.
That it was based off Ubuntu is the only reason I considered Mint. Since that meant it wouldn’t be too far off what I previously had. And I would’ve been able to use the official repositories for Docker and VirtualBox.
But in trying out Manjaro’s “Minimal” distribution (specifically with KDE Plasma) in a virtual machine, I was very pleasantly surprised at how little was installed. With Docker and VirtualBox also installed, the entire installation footprint on the main boot partition is… not even 10 GB.
Proxmox wasn’t even a consideration.
Why not Proxox?
I’ve already written before on why I decided to move away from Proxmox. So unless those gripes have been corrected – specifically the one about not being able to make incremental updates without going through substantial steps – there’s nothing to discuss.
And I fully understand why Proxmox does that. But I don’t have to go along with it. And I won’t be.
500GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SATA Inland QN322 2TB QLC NVMe
The migration
The 500GB drive is the main OS drive. There were a few things sitting in my home folder that I just moved to the 2TB NVMe. I also copied off the entire /etc/fstab file to the NVMe drive so those could be restored with a simple copy/paste. Then it was a matter of just installing Manjaro with the open source drivers, again using the “Minimal” version of the distro for the smallest installation footprint, going with the KDE Desktop – though I may redo the installation later using the Cinnamon installer.
With Manjaro installed, the next major step was restoring the fstab entries and mounting the media folders on Nasira.
Then came installing Docker and VirtualBox. My only gripe here being that there is not any official VirtualBox or Docker builds for Arch (and, by extension, Manjaro). I very much prefer that over relying on builds in a distro’s repository, but I think I can live with that. Here are the guides I followed:
The only necessary step I forgot to take before installing Manjaro was completely purging the old Docker folder. For storage space more than performance, I had it sitting on the NVMe drive as well. And I needed it completely gone to avoid conflicts – simple rm -rf (with sudo) and mkdir command combo. Configuring Docker to use that folder is straightforward, especially if you have jq to make the JSON file:
# Install jq with this command:
# sudo pamac install --no-confirm jq
sudo systemctl stop docker # If it's running
sudo mkdir /etc/docker
echo '{}' | jq '."data-root"="/path/to/new/docker"' | sudo tee /etc/docker/daemon.json
sudo systemctl start docker
Side note: if you work with JSON regularly – e.g., creating JSON files for server configurations during deploys – and you’ve never used or heard of jq, you really need to check it out. It can eliminate a LOT of complication. Anyway…
Plex was the only critical Docker container for restoration, but also the easiest to set up. I had everything critical living outside any Docker volumes, with it all being connected in via the -v switch. So getting Plex back online was just a matter of running my update-plex.sh script I first mention in my article about migrating Plex from a VM to Docker:
With the latest versions of Docker, you actually do NOT need to create volumes in advance of creating the containers unless you’re restoring data into them. When running the above script for the first time, Docker will automatically create the portainer_data volume. You do not need to run docker volume create portainer_data first.
I’m sure we’ve all heard this misconception: that if you’re going to slash someone’s tires, slash only three so insurance won’t pay for it. So if you only slash three, you’ll leave them stranded with a big bill to replace the tires. Slash all four, though, and insurance will rescue them from their misfortune.
So let’s get into this.
Will insurance cover slashed tires?
Yes it will, provided your insurance includes it. You typically need comprehensive coverage that includes vandalism, since slashed tires are considered vandalism. So if you don’t have comprehensive coverage, you’re on your own. But you may not be completely out of luck if your insurance will at least pay for a tow to a shop to have the tires replaced. It just means the tires and labor will be out of your pocket.
But if you have comprehensive coverage, that doesn’t mean insurance will still pay for it. Whether they will depends on your deductible.
Replacement cost vs. Your deductible
This is the crux of the matter.
Back in 2007, my car was broken into. Thankfully the only damage to the car was the rear passenger-side window. And my insurance deductible was $500. Replacing a broken window is, obviously, less than $500. It was about $275 out of pocket, if I recall correctly. So my insurance wouldn’t pay for it. Oh well.
So whether insurance will pay for slashed tires is going to depending on the insured’s deductible. If the deductible isn’t substantially more than the cost to replace the tires, then insurance isn’t going to pay for it. But, there’s more…
Other costs
If you slash someone’s tires, the tires aren’t the only cost going into it. Since the vehicle will likely need to be towed, and getting that vehicle towed is going to be harder the larger it is. And with comprehensive insurance coverage, towing is going to be covered. So because of those other costs that go into getting the tires replaced before even getting to the cost of the replacement tires, it’s likely going to be more than someone’s deductible – unless that deductible is sky high.
Plus if you slash three tires, all four still need to be replaced anyway unless the tires are less than about 5,000 miles old. And along with the cost of the tires, there’s also the labor that goes into actually replacing them. Doing a full tire replacement on my wife’s CR-V, for example, came to about $1,500 at Firestone for OEM-equivalents.
And even if only one or two tires are slashed, meaning two to be replaced, there’s still the cost to tow the vehicle and inspect it for other damage.
And speaking of “other damage”, there is also potential damage to the suspension and/or undercarriage that will need to be inspected to determine if additional parts replacements are needed beyond just the tires.
And the cost of all of that which exceeds the deductible would be paid by insurance.
Conclusion
So yeah, the idea that insurance won’t pay out if you slash only three tires is definitely not true unless the insurance coverage doesn’t include vandalism, or the insured has a sky-high deductible.
Given the details that have come out about the shooter that attempted to take out Trump, or rather… the surprising LACK of information on him, there’s one possibility that really needs to be considered, which is played into with Wikipedia’s move to have a separate article about the kid as I pointed out: his motivation wasn’t political, but for notoriety….
No one has been able to pin down any motive. Statements about his political beliefs are all over the place. He was a registered Republican but gave to left-leaning causes… That kid was probably looking to be remembered for something.
And now he will be. He’s basically… gone viral because of this.
Which is actually MORE scary, when you think of it. That someone would consider such an act not because of ideology, but to “go viral”. That so much attention gets foisted onto the perpetrators of events like this that it only sets the stage for someone else to try this, also knowing they’ll be remembered for years because of it.
Notoriety breeds copycats. And the prospect of going viral has caused people to do some pretty despicable things. Probably about time we take another very hard look at where social media has taken us.
It’s been noted time and again that giving notoriety to the perpetrators of mass homicide events and attempts at mass homicide events breeds copycats. People who want notoriety because they feel invisible or unwanted by society. Want their name remembered even if it’s for evil reasons.
Which is why a lot of media organizations have taken stances against giving notoriety to those perpetrators.
So why is Wikipedia doing the exact opposite here?
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