StrangeSox

QUOTE (Brian @ Jan 8, 2016 -> 01:54 PM) "The Revenant" was excellent. Best direction and acting I've seen all year. Also best cinematography. Really felt in the scene between that and the way the fourth wall was broken a few times. Leo will get the recognition but Tom Hardy continues to roll. It was pretty much 2 1/2 hours of

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 9, 2016 -> 02:16 PM) This is a nonsequitir. Millions of people support Trump and millions are "terrible" people? I would venture to say thousands of people who like/support Trump are good people. I bet they donate to great causes, etc. I don't think you need to be a terrible person to support Trump. Some people flat out are sick of politics and definitely want a change and right now Trump is the only candidate certain to shake it all up. You can't tell me some Trump supporters are not, in fact, great individuals. Nah pretty much by definition if you support someone who is saying what he is saying you are a terrible person. There are lots of terrible people so it isn't exactly surprising. You are also using non sequitur wrong.

You don't have to be an idiot to support trump, but you do need to be a terrible person.

he looks like they took art direction from LoTR or something, and doesn't really fit well with the look of the SW universe

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Jan 8, 2016 -> 10:56 AM) Yet the market is still down this morning. Can't be a good sign. China

Sold my house on monday, technically homeless right now I guess? But my bank account looks really, really nice for the next two weeks.

292k jobs, last two months revised upwards by 50k, unemployment holds steady at 5.0% (more people returning to the job market?), but wages dipped 0.01.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 7, 2016 -> 03:29 PM) Don't buy AAPL stocks for short term gains as smarter people manipulate the stock better than you can.

How Michigan literally poisoned an entire city to save a few bucks

That entire county has 6 police officers.

FWIW, BLM Public Lands Grazing Accounts for Only 0.41% of Nation’s Livestock Receipts

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 02:14 PM) I have explained myself clearly. You have held two ideas in your head that a) there is a fringe population in the west that has acted out in illegal and damaging activities due to an ideology that they have been slighted by the fed regulation of the land. There is a fringier population among them who is currently holding land hostage by force. b) There is a larger population of people that do not support the first part of a and certainly second part of a, but do support policies in a range of exploitative grazing/mining or use of land for quads. Yet actually hold them all together as one group. My concerns are about group B, whom in all reports on your google searches on the matter, do not support the actions of A, but always caveat to sympathize with the handling of the lands under federal management. You continue to read that, and assume it's about group A. This is just simply not true. It's not easy keeping the different parts clear, but I'm the one who first pointed out to you that the Sagebrush Rebellion was a thing going back a couple of decades while you seem to have just been made aware of western tensions with federal land management (the Hammonds being sentenced for arson for repeatedly committing arson is not indicative of tensions with the BLM). I also posted the article from the not-24-years-old environmental historian describing the roots of this tension. I am very far from any sort of expert, but I have read about these issues going back several years now, so this isn't just quick google research like you keep trying to claim. Western ranchers, loggers and miners face a similar plight to that of factory workers in the Rust Belt and coal miners in Appalachia. The world has changed over the last several decades, and their way of life has largely disappeared with it for a complex web of reasons. They deserve empathy, even if I don't agree with them ideologically. No, you want leniency for the guys who repeatedly violated BLM regulations and threatened and endangered people while obstructing federal operations for over two decades now. I do not believe they deserve any, and the jury that heard their case didn't believe they deserved any. You keep implying that the Hammonds are some sort of symbol for a larger movement here. They weren't engaged in protest actions, it was just arson for their own personal gain/coverup of poaching. Who would be on the receiving end of that particular fig leaf? Who is asking for them to be released? What you said here doesn't really mean anything, though. The way the federal agencies engage with local populations has changed since the regulations first started being applied in the 70's, and it tends to be a more cooperative process now than simply "here are new regulations, follow them or be fined/jailed." Collaboration with locals is crucial, and nothing about imprisoning a couple of ranchers who showed repeatedly that they didn't think the law applied to them for malicious arson does not undermine that.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 11:32 AM) While the environmental cases should be held strong, the general use of the land as park space seems to be a huge opportunity for good will there and should be looked at. Can you explain what you mean here? The wildlife refuge is already open to the public and provides a decent amount of tourism for the local economy. If you acceded to the ranchers' demands, though, the ecosystem would be damaged, wildlife would suffer and tourism would decline.

Then I remain confused as to why you seem to have zero understanding and think pardoning a couple of ranchers who have broken the law repeatedly for over 20 years, threatened various federal employees, and endangered the lives of others would have a positive impact on local relations with the BLM. eta Nancy Langston, the author of the NYT piece I linked, is a professor of environmental history and published her first book in 1995. I am reasonably sure that she is not 24 years old and has spent more than 3 hours of google research on this topic. eta2: also I would appreciate if you would acknowledge that the Hammonds were made explicitly aware that the government was going to appeal the original sentence, that the government wase guaranteed to win that appeal, and that the sentence that would be imposed was the same deal that the Hammonds agreed to. It doesn't seem particularly "cruel" but absolutely routine.

Here's a decent primer on formation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the Sagebrush Rebellion more broadly.

Perhaps you should try reading the Vox link and the numerous links therein for some background on 1) the source of the tension over federal land management in the west and 2) the efforts to improve relations with local populations by federal agencies for years now. There are a lot of competing interests that the federal agencies need to balance, and resource extraction/grazing is explicitly one of them. When I refer to "what they want," I'm referring to the fringe of the fringe, the types that are occupying the wildlife refuge and believe that federal ownership of the land isn't even constitutional. I have no empathy for them or their ideologies, and they represent a tiny minority. Pardoning some local ranchers who repeatedly broke the law and endangered others' lives will not improve relations. They were convicted by a jury of their peers in rural Eastern Oregon. These ranchers aren't even demanding what the crazy people are demanding. The ranchers don't appear to believe that BLM regulations apply to them, but they're also not the ones turning this into a spectacle. The locals don't support the crazy land transfer demands, the ranchers don't, this is a tiny fringe and there's no reason to appease them. The local population is lockstep behind rejecting these idiots and wanting them to GTFO of there and go back to their own state.

QUOTE (Brian @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 12:58 PM) What positive concrete plans has Trump put out there? The Wall? He still hasn't explained how itll get paid for. HE'LL MAKE MEXICO PAY FOR IT!

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 12:57 PM) I said something rotten between the BLM and the western states. BLM is not national park service. I'm also not pardoning the protestors, which, the assumption would be are in for criminal prosecution at the point their snacks run out and get cold. And you are allowed to use multiple pardons. Indeed, there is no limit. illini mentioned the national US forest service, not the national park service (which turns 100 this year! get out to your parks!). The USFS also gets plenty of grief in the west. As his Vox link and my prior post pointed out, there has been conflict over federal land ownership and management since the federal government started placing restrictions on their (very steeply discounted) land leases. The land that the crazy loons are squatting on is already open to the public. Middle of winter isn't a great time, but if you like birds, it's fantastic during migration seasons. They want the public land we all can go visit any time to be turned over to private interests. I still do not see where you've explained why these two ranchers deserve a commutation of their sentence in the first place. edit: whoops wrong acronym for the forest service, it's USFS not NFS

Something else to keep in mind is that BLM, National Forest Service and Fish & Wildlife have different missions than the National Park Service. There's already lots of mining, logging and grazing on BLM and NFS land, it's just that it's controlled and restricted rather than clear-cut-the-trees, burn-everything-for-grazing, strip-mine-it-all anything goes environmental destruction. Drive around the Olympic Peninsula and you'll see lots of signs indicating when various tracts of NFS lands were last harvested and when they're next scheduled to be harvested. As for turning control of various federal land over to the states, at least Utah has done a cost estimate on this. They found that it would be prohibitively expensive to maintain all that land at the state level, meaning it'd mostly get sold off to private interests and/or would be left in very poor states of management. They could be profitable only if they dumped most of the land, leased a bunch of it for oil extraction and oil prices stayed high. And just gotta stress again, the ranchers that are in jail are not making crazy "ALL FEDERAL LAND OWNERSHIP IS ILLEGITIMATE!" demands, and they want the yahoos to go away. Those guys took the ranchers' issue over sentencing and made it about their much more ideological and much crazier fight over federal land ownership and management in the west.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 11:32 AM) There's an argument. I'm not advocating that any law be imposed. By law, they should go back for the correct sentencing. Hence the pardon, a legal maneuver. The pardon is a political move. For one, there is clearly something rotten in the west right now between BLM and local population. Sending someone back for more time after time served seems more cruel than the correct sentencing applied already. If you want to send them back for child abuse, that's a different case entirely. While the environmental cases should be held strong, the general use of the land as park space seems to be a huge opportunity for good will there and should be looked at. As far as the sentencing was concerned, all parties knew upfront that the judge was disregarding the law, that the prosecution was going to appeal and that resentencing was almost 100% going to be the outcome. To add to that, the original plea deal that the Hammonds agreed to included five year sentences. The judge decided to throw that agreement out and impose his own sentencing in direct contradiction of the law. As the Popehat link explains, this is pretty banal legally. There's nothing abnormal about resentencing when a judge doesn't follow the law, and that includes sending people back to prison to serve the appropriate sentence even if they've already been released from the initial sentence. What is the positive political outcome of pardoning these guys? Why them instead of countless of others that are far more deserving? Have they even asked/petitioned for a pardon, or has it been a bunch of out-of-staters? What message does it send to the Yokel Haram clowns if that's your response? Regarding public land in the west, there's been "something rotten" between BLM/various federal agencies and ranchers/miners/loggers for several decades, even in cases (such as this one and the Bundys!) where the ranchers who hate the BLM get sweetheart land lease deals that are about 10% of the normal grazing land lease rates. These people generally reject any sort of environmental concern and really any restriction whatsoever on how they use public land and only see agricultural, extractive industrial, or destructive recreational (e.g. guys who want to be able to blast through fragile ecosystems and culturally important sites on ATVs) purposes for the land. They want the land turned over to private parties (generally themselves!) for free, or they want to be able to graze/log/mine the land at will with no restrictions or requirements. It's not their land, it's all of ours, and they want that changed. The refuge the bozos are occupying is open to the public, and tourism is an important part of the local economy. The park is crucial for migratory birds, so lots and lots of birders head there each year. The local population doesn't really seem to have a problem with the refuge. You also need to keep the ranchers and their sentencing separate from the militia guys--the ranchers aren't demanding that all BLM land be turned over or anything crazy like that. They're pursuing their legal fight through the courts on non-crazy/normal grounds.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 09:31 AM) Unless you think the President should pardon every person who receives a mandatory minimum sentence that is harsher than what the sentencing judge would have imposed actually that would be pretty awesome

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 09:19 AM) Except you are literally supporting the mandatory minimum overriding that judges decision in this case. I disagree that Obama should pardon the two ranchers or that a five year sentence "looks ridiculous." Whether or not there was any mandatory minimum, I think five years sounds like a reasonable sentence for their crimes and history. Unless you think the President should pardon every person who receives a mandatory minimum sentence that is harsher than what the sentencing judge would have imposed, these guys shouldn't receive any special treatment and don't have a very sympathetic case anyway. As the law stands right now, yeah, I do support the circuit court enforcing the law instead of letting a district judge arbitrarily decide to ignore the law because it sets a pretty terrible precedent and not just for sentencing. I think appellate courts forcing lower courts to follow existing law is necessary for a fair justice system. Re-sentencing when trial judges don't follow the law is what happens routinely. I also support the abolition of mandatory minimums. This is not contradictory to also believing that judges need to adhere to the law as it currently stands. If there had been no mandatory minimum, there would not even be a mechanism for the government to appeal the initial sentence (which absolutely everyone was aware would happen when the initial sentence was handed down), and that would be fine.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 09:04 AM) Yeah I don't know what else to say except b****ing about how low a punishment a judge gave in a case and going to bat for the mandatory minimum is literally the argument that makes mandatory minimum. Nah, because I can simultaneously oppose mandatory minimums while still disagreeing with specific sentences in specific cases. I would not have cared much (or known!) if they had only received their original sentences, but I also don't think five years is out of line given their history of not caring about damaging private and public property and endangering lives. Nothing about thinking a specific sentence was too light necessarily implies support for universal mandatory minimums. Judicial discretion means that sometimes you'd disagree with what judges decide, and that's okay! I can be annoyed by that "affluenza" judge in Texas while recognizing that, in the aggregate, judicial discretion in sentencing is much, much better than mandatory minimums, three-strike laws etc.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 6, 2016 -> 08:58 AM) You can't be against mandatory minimums and suddenly go to bat for them when its a constituency you don't like, that is literally why mandatory minimums exist and are so hard to get rid of. Looking at sentences for wild firefighters that set fires for work and caused significantly more damage their sentences were higher but time served appears to be marginal. Penalties were huge for damage. I can be against the concept of mandatory minimums and still think that in specific Case X, the mandatory minimum was still actually a fair sentence that should have been imposed regardless of the existence of a mandatory minimum. How you go from "I think five years is actually a decent sentence for what they did and given how s***ty they've been in the past" to "OMG LIFE SENTENCE WAY TO GO 'TOUGH ON CRIME' DEMOCRAT!" is still a mystery.