Life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 190 years, and the defendent waves almost all of his appeal rights. All of that without needing to go through the efforst, expense, and trauma of a trial. The prosecutors were only able to get this deal because the case against them was so strong.

There is no law that says you can’t have 17.

Yes there is. It is the Judiciary Act of 1869.

Blaise Pascal is famous for 2 things:

1. Pascal’s triangle. This describes how to expand expresions of the form (a+b)^n as well as to compute how many ways there are to pick k objects out of a set of n (ignoring order.

This triangle is computed by starting with 1 at the tip, then having each element be the some of its 2 parents (except the diagonal edges with only one parent, which remains as 1)

2. Pascal’s wager. This is a theological argument for a belief in god that goes “if you believe and god doesn’t exist, nothing happens. If you don’t believe and he does exist, you suffer for eternity. The logical choice is therefore to believe”

The natural conclusion is therefore to believe in all gods. If procelatizing happens in just the right way, and no one realizes people are talking about the same god, you end up with a triangle of polytheists, where the number of gods they believe in is given by Pascal’s triangle.

Edit: gid -> god

Line item vetoes are one thing (which I oppose, but can understand).

The veto in question turns “2024-25” into “2425”

Looking the the Wisconsin constitution, there seems to be 2 relevant sections:

The first is the authority for partial vetoes.

Appropriations may be approved in whole or in part by the chief executive officer.

In my opinion, this already does not authorize, the type of creative vetoing the governor tried.

However, the constitution goes on to clarify:

In approving an appropriation bill in part, the governor may not create a new word by rejecting individual letters in the words of the enrolled bill, and may not create a new sentence by combining parts of 2 or more sentences of the enrolled bill.

It would take an obtusely literal reading of these provisions to allow for striking individual digits and puncuation marks to create new numbers.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/constitution/wi_unannotated

They probably don’t do grocery shopping or pay attention that closely to their household finances. My guess would be most of them have a spouse who is aware of the increasing prices.

Random anecdote time. A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with my parents and commented on how my fridge had a stupid amount of corn since the store was practically giving it away (post memorial day. They must have overestimated the holiday surge). The conversation went to how we couldn’t husk the corn in stores anymore (post covid), and my dad was adament they changed the policy to increase the weight and therefore cost.

Except, at least around here, corn is not and has never in my life been sold by weight. He had just been in the grocery store so rarely that he does not know how corn is sold. Since they have enough income to absorb the cost, he probably wouldn’t be aware of the increase if not for hearing about inflation on the news.

Because there has not been a draft since the 70s, where automatic registration was not feasible.

Hamas is a terrorist organization that “we” have almost no leverage over.

Israel is a democracy that we have significant leverage over.

Put another way, the “serious” calls for harder policy from the US to Israel is to condition some of the military aid. The reasom no one is calling for something similar with Hamas is that we are not giving Hamas military aid.

The only aid western countries are giving to Gaza (and, by nessesity Hamas) is humanitarian aid. And international law is very clear that conditioning that is not acceptable.

If you are Iranian elite reading this, then you have no business blaming Israel, since Hamas is the one in your sphere.

It is 34 counts, but still only a single crime. It is more analgous to robbing a single house once, but taking 34 items. Given how the bussiness records law are written, each false record is a seperate crime, but they were all done as part of the same scheme.

This is pretty common in criminal law. It is suprisingly difficult to commit only 1 crime.

Only anti-semite would acuse Bibi of lying.

Just ask the Israeli attorney general who, in 2019, indicted him on bribery and fraud charges.

And Israel obviously has the most moral military in the world. Just ask their minister of national security: convicted criminal Itamar Ben-Gvir. Specifically, he has been convicted of supporting a terrorist organization. He also never served in the IDF, because the IDF thought he was too extreme.

Just because someone says something does not make it true.

Opposition leader Lapid has indicated that he intends to support Netenyahu if his coalition falls apart due to the deal. Of course, such transactional support offers tend to be fical, and Netanyahu needs perpetual support in order to avoid jail on corruption charges.

Unfourtuantly, such a realignment (or, at least the threat of one) to a more centrist coalition is the only plausible path to a deal.

Kicking the can down the road in Gaza has been Israeli policy for over a decade. The strategy is called “mowing the grass”. The idea being you can destroy the terrorist of the week’s tactical ability to strike and buy Israel a few years of peace. Repeat this cycle every few years until ???, then magically resolve the issue.

This failed catastrophically on October 7, because the typical cycle of Gazan attack happened to allign with a catastrophic security failure on the part of Israel.

The question remains: what comes next. The US’s complaint from October 8 on has been that Israel has no day-after plan. Without a day after plan, all that destroying Hamas will accomplish is have the next round be conducted by a terrorist group not called Hamas.

Every tactical move Israel makes today harms its strategic position for the day after plan. At the beginning of the war, some strategic concessions were needed to adress the very real tactical concerns. But there are massively diminishing returns.

Maybe I’m too used to deciphering GovSpeak, but the report does not obsolve Israel of anything.

The article quotes the report in saying:

[The department does not] currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance [in Gaza]

However, that is a very selective quote, that is not at all what the report says.

The actual quote reads:

While the USG has had deep concerns during the period since October 7 about action and inaction by Israel that contributed significantly to a lack of sustained and predictable delivery of needed assistance at scale, and the overall level reaching Palestinian civilians – while improved – remains insufficient, we do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance within the meaning of section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act.

Which translates into: “Israel is definitely obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid. However, since US law says that puts restrictions on us, we talked to our lawyers who found a way for us to say that they are not”

They are not even being subtle about it. The only way the state department could have been any clearer would be to say “current policy is a clear violation of the Foreign Assistance Act”. And a US agency is never going to say that.

Blinken is releasing the reports thr president wants released. The actual intelligence is provided in classified reports provided to the president and some members of Congress. What gets made public is a policy decision that flows down from the top.

Short term yes, but it is a strategic risk long term.

Part of the reason Democrats are turning on Netenyahu (and, by association, Israel) is genuine policy concerns and grassroot pressure.

However, another part of his problem with Democrats is that he has spent the past decade inserting himself into US politics as a Republican alligned figure. That both makes Democratic politicians more willing to oppose him, and gives the Democratic base a permission structure for opposing him.

This is aid through the Karem Shalom border crossing, which is at the border of Gaza, Egypt, and Israel. Egypt does not, and never has, controlled this crossing. The checkpoint into Gaza is on the Israeli side of the Egypt/Israel border and has always been administered by Israel.

Egypt, of course, controls its borders, and so is able to prevent aid from reaching the crossing through Egypt. However, Egypt has no control over aid that reaches the crossing through Israel.

This is in contrast to the Rafah crossing, which is entirely on the Egypt/Gaza border, and so would require Egypt’s cooperation to open. That crossing remains closed.

It is good that Egypt is allowing aid to Karem Shalom; and their refusal to allow it through the Rafah crossing would be a warcrime but for the technicality that they are not a party to the war.

However, the same benefit to this move could be accomplished by passing aid through Israel. Israel is a party to this war, and so is under a legal requirement to allow aid in. US law also requires that Israel do so in order to receive military assistance [0]. Further, Israel is under specific instructions from the ICJ to allow in humanitarian aid. And Israeli leadership is likely to be issued a warrent by the ICC for (among other things) blocking tge delivery of humanitarian aide.

Israel requirement to allow humanitarian aide to Gaza through Israel is not some new concept. Nor is it asking for some unheard of generousity from the Israeli people to their enemy. It is simply their longstanding obligation for waging a war in compliance witg international law. An obligation they claim (externally at least) that they are meeting. So, Egypts assistance should be completely irrelevant to the Karem Shalom crossing.

The reason we need Egypt here is that Israel is not complying with its obligations. Part of the difficulty is a minority of Israeli citizens taking matters into their own hands. To the Israeli government’s credit, they are providing some security to protect aid deliveries from Israeli protesters.

To their detriment, this protection is opposed by National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, who has also said I am against the fact that they attack and burn trucks, it is the cabinet which should stop the trucks

There has also been reporting of IDF members leaking aid movements to protesters; although I am not sure hiw widespread that is.

[0] A requirement that the US is not enforcing.

So, what problem does this pier solve?

It gets aid to the border of Gaza. But once that aid is at the border it still needs to be loaded onto trucks and distributed by land.

In contrast, we have been able to get aid to the border by land for decades.

What is the problem that land based deliveries faced, that maritime based deliveries will not?

Same as the last time. The US has been clear that no US boots will be on the ground in Gaza, so we will either: A) wag are finger and request an Israeli investigation if it appears the rocket came from Israel or B) issue a strongly worded statement condemming Hamas for the deliberate attack.

What are these known solutions to domestic violence?

Fully funding shelters is good. However, the victims that reach of point of reaching out to even contact help are just the tip of the iceberg. If your solution doesn’t kick in until then, it does not address the other 90%

None of which are called terrorists by the BBC.

The BBC has a long standing policy against calling people/organizations terrorists.

Their position in this case says nothing about how they view Hamas. The position of those complaining about it says a lot about how they view the role news organizations.