In most drug or prostitution stings, the cops attempt to control the space where the crime will occur, via surveillance etc. They are the ones who rented the hotel room, and wired it up for sound and video.
...not really. That's awesome when it can be done, but I'd be astonished if it happened more than half the time.
And they can bust in immediately upon the commission of the crime or things going sideways.
Yes, that is the premise, and it would be true here also.
With the added bonus that the attempted rapists is hardly going to try to murder the undercover cop if he figured out who she is before attacking her, considering he's not committed a crime yet. (If he does, well, hey, that solves that problem, and now he can be arrested.)
Putting a single female cop alone into space that the suspect controls (his house), and hoping that she does not get overpowered/raped/killed before the cavalry can arrive, seems like a recipe for potential disaster.
That's what a wire is for. And a gun.
I don't think you're comparing this correctly.
A rape sting is _certainly_ safer than pretty much any drug sting, where dealers routinely search people and drive around to secure locations and require all sorts of reference from other criminals and expect law enforcement interference and are all armed and willing to shoot and will _kill_ any police officer they find. (1)
Compared to that, a potential criminal taking an undercover officer back to _his house_ (Which location is known in advance.) and attempted to grab her and hold her down to rape her is almost a trivial police operation. Date rapists do not exactly search women for a wire and weapons, nor do they have armed guards in a secure location.
Of course, if this becomes common and well known, than rapists could, indeed start suspecting the police...which means less women get raped as the rapist aren't sure if someone is a police officer. Along with a few rapists overreacting and become violent and kidnapping women at gun point and searching them for a wire and tying them up before raping them...which is actually sorta a win in this fucked up world, as maybe we'd actually _convict_ such rapists.
And either way, it exposes what is actually going on in a way better than any 'education campaign' could.
1) I guess it's less safe than a prostitution sting, but that's a bit silly. Prostitution stings are probably safer than traffic stops!
@will-truman
But that seems like low-hanging fruit. Definitely pluck that. But rape is, very often, a very difficult crime to prove. That’s where I am particular concerned. Leaving you with a whole lot of cases where she says it was rape, he says it wasn’t, and you can maybe prove that sex occurred but not much else because there was no rape kit done.
I really hate this discussion format, which has apparently made it unclear what we're talking about. I don't understand why web sites seem unable to manage something people were doing on Usenet back in 1980, with nested replies. It really is rather idiotic.
Anyway, I was actually talking about arresting rapists in the context of police stings. I.e., women 'unsafely' inviting men into their house, or pretending to be drunk and asking for a ride home. Where the police arrest people because they _have personal knowledge of being rapists because that person tried to rape them_.
And, yes, I have such a low opinion of the public at large that I think entirely correct police stings will well-documented video evidence of attempted rape will not actually result in a conviction of attempted rape 100% of the time. (Or sexual assault, or whatever 'attempted rape' actually is.)
Indeed, I suspect there would be an outcry, with people getting _very_ upset at the 'targeting' of men under this, where police have complaints about a man, but not enough evidence to do an arrest, so they make an undercover easily-raped woman available for him to rape and see what happens. They will think this is unacceptable, despite the fact this is literally how every single sting operation in existence works.
I have heard various lists of things women should avoid doing. (Not victim blaming, lists that women pass around among themselves as very bad ideas. And the point isn't this list, so lets continue.)
On almost all those lists is 'If you need a place to stay, do not accept an invitation to stay at a single man's house that you are not dating'.
Why? Because it leaves women incredibly vulnerable (Especially during sleeping, showering, etc.), and in a position of owing something to the man, and him having a threat to hold over her, threatening to kick her out at 3 in the morning. It is, all in all, a very bad combination.
Now, non-acquaintances are unlikely to even consider sleeping at someone else's house, so most rape that happens that way is logically acquaintance rape.
But there's nothing inherent in that premise that _requires_ an acquaintance. There's nothing stopping undercover cops from going up to suspected rapists and asking to sleep at his house for some invented reason or another.
@kim
… are you familiar with any cases where this has actually occurred?
Erm...what?
Did we suddenly forget the topic here?
Of course I'm familiar with cases where this has actually occurred. Specifically, in cases involving _rape_, it happens all the time...events are proven that legally are rape, and yet a rape conviction does not happen. Or there is more than enough evidence to convict for assault, but somehow it magically becomes not enough when it's sexual assault.
Perhaps restricting the availability of date rape drug precursors might be a decent way to spend funds?
The war on drugs is rather a failure at this time.
I mean, I have no real objection to this if you can manage it, but 'restricting the availability of date rape drug precursors' is not actually something that local law enforcement would be doing anyway, so if you're asserting they should do that _instead_ of sting operations, that makes no sense.
I think a lot of people at that blog have missed the fact that while most rapes are acquaintance, the thing is, rapists _will_ rape someone else if they think she is vulnerable.
I.e., I think the sort of people who rape their girlfriends regularly will also rape a random first date.
All the law has to do is maneuver the potential rapist into a situation where they think they 'deserve' sex. A flirty 'drunk' girl who asks for a ride home, for example. A first date that 'runs long' and she offers to let the guy sleep on her couch. (Please be aware I'm just guessing here, and I suspect it would be easy to collect stories from actual rape victims and figure out likely scenarios.)
They aren't raping acquaintances because they have some sort of weird moral code(1), they're raping acquaintances because acquaintances are easy to find and coerce. Give them someone else who seems easier (pun intended), they'll go after her instead.
1) There probably are _some_ rapists who only think they deserve sex after dating a women 'long enough', or even rapists that will not 'cheat' on their girlfriends(?!), so I guess you couldn't catch those, but you could catch most of them.
@will-truman
There are some ethical issues with arresting someone and putting them on trial if you do not have strong reason to believe that you can convict them.
Erm, no in this case. The problem here is that society may not be willing to convict _actual_ rapists.
In an area where trial-by-jury has completely broken down and society is letting guilty people walk free, it does not then follow the ethical solution is stop trying to convict them. Especially when the reason that such crimes are gotten away with is that society does not appear to consider them criminal acts.
It's an ethical issue to arrest and charge people with crimes if you feel their guilt cannot be demonstrated by the evidence. It is, however, perfectly fine to arrest and charge people with crimes if the evidence is there, but juries are often made of misogynistic assholes so do not convict despite the evidence.
Do the police have evidence for a conviction in my scenario? Yes, in fact, the entire point of it is to give them evidence. Thus, they should arrest. It matters not how fucked up the jury is.
If in the south in the 1920s a white man killed a black man, he likely would not be convicted of the crime...that does not mean he should not be arrested and charged with it if the police were willing to do that.
@morat20
Again, one of the issues with rape is when you SAY rape people think...
Well, yeah, so the only reason to solve that is to actually start arresting people who commit 'standard' rape, the actual most common rape in the US, intimidating or otherwise coercing a date or female acquaintance into sex. (Well, apparently, the most common rape in the US is prison rape, but there's a _trivial_ way to stop all of that, and literally the only reason we haven't done that is that we don't want to. Hint: People in prison have no privacy rights, and hence can all be monitored 24/7, and hence it is literally impossible for them to commit undetected rape unless we choose not to allow them to do that. So there's yet another 'Why don't we try to stop rape?' question, but not related to this discussion.)
I'm not entirely sure how many of those would result in convictions at first, but, frankly, I could care less, and that's not actually the point here. I'd be happy if we started having some people realize such thing is illegal and you can and will be arrested for it.
And I'm not _exactly_ sure of the laws, but video-tape the entire thing and let the public see how this behavior works and how it's not acceptable.
@Kim
At some point, you're going to have to ask yourself if j r is just ignorant or is an actual rape apologist.
You’ll understand why some people might find your comment to be a bit bonkers.
Actually, I'm pretty certain it's only you who finds my comment 'bonkers', and that's because you're decided to play rape apologist, but are trying to pretend you're not.
Let's parse out what he actually just said here: There are enough people in prison in this country for things besides rape, we don't need to send _rapists_ there too.
I don’t know in what country you live. I live in the United States, the country with 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners.
Meanwhile, I live in the United States, where only 10% of _reported_ rapes result in a conviction. (And who knows exactly how many unreported rapes there are.) Even being charitably to law enforcement and assuming that the victim can only identify the rapist 75% of the time, that's still a pretty crappy prosecution rate.
We could even train female cops to act really drunk and accept rides home from strangers. There would be police backup, of course. The random navy blue Camry behind the rapist’s car? Full of cops with guns. The undercover cop’s earrings? Hidden cameras. Of course, if you’re a good guy who just drives the “drunk” female cop home, you’ll never know about any of that. (It’s possible you may get out of a speeding ticket later and not know why you’re on some cop’s good citizen list!) But you try to force your way into her house, you will find yourself on the ground within seconds.
I find myself constantly wondering that.
I'm not entirely sure how much rape this would stop...rape is actually more likely to be done via acquaintances of all sorts, and some sort of 'date men until they attempt to rape you' undercover operation seems dubious.
Actually, thinking about, that would work, but only if she's clever in what she says and wears. In reality the officer should just have to wait for some sort of coercion and have them arrested.
But I'm worried that juries would not actually convict. So the police officer would end up acting fairly odd and possibly be spotted.
Best plan: Act flirty during the date, and then when they get back to her place, just flatly refuse sex...but then don't make him leave. Let him hang out on some pretense or another. He will continue to make advances, which should be rebuffed. Date rapists think they are entitled to sex, and thus I predict, at some point of being 'strung along', the asshole will just physically attack the undercover cop.
Please note that _I_ don't think this is now normal date rapes go, but I'm trying to design this specific one so an idiotic misogynist jury can see it's an attempted rape. I think if you make most date rapists angry enough by withholding their 'deserved' sex, they will in fact turn violent, or at least start threatening...but I could be wrong there.
(Incidentally, I suspect some asshole is going to object to this as 'entrapment'. I'm warning you right now, if you think this way, you need to go away and think long and hard about why you think this way, instead of posting a followup where we will crucify you.)
But police don't do that for the same reason that...well, you know that gang-infested street where they threaten cops? Well, gee, if only there was some way that someone could walk down that street and witness a crime being committed, like threatening cops, and arrest them for it.
It is honestly astonishing when you think about the areas of society, both physical location and general interactions, where the law is regularly broken, and how the police seem unwilling to even try to deal with the problem, which they could literally do by strolling around that 'area' until they witness a crime and arrest someone. And someone else. And someone else.
Meanwhile, we have entire divisions of police officers whose job it is to drive around to stop traffic violations.
It rather makes you question the entire premise of police officers.
The entire premise of this seems to be that kids are very stupid, and don't understand that a participation trophy is, well, losing. There is no evidence this is true.
As the article points out, kids under ten or so don't really understand that concept of winning or losing at all, at least not in the abstract sense, and think everyone deserves trophies, and thinks that is true _regardless_ of whether or not they get a trophy. If you don't give them one, they will probably get upset and stop playing.
At a certain point around ten, children begin to understand how winning works, that even if they try hard they can lose...and at that point, they _know_ they lose, whether or not you give them a trophy. A trophy is not inherently valuable, it does not convey any sort of inherent message...if it's a participation trophy, they _know_ it's that.
The idea that children are, in some way, harmed by random trophies is idiotic. Either they're old enough and understand competition, and thus understand they didn't win. Or they're too young and don't understand competition and hence won't understand why both they and the other people played, and why only those guys got the trophies. (They might not even grasp they were on opposite teams.)
It is perfectly reasonable to stop giving out participating trophies past a certain age, because there's really no point in giving them out to people who know they lost, but don't pretend it's some sort of damn _moral mission_.
@will-truman
Trophies should be rewards. Photos are mementos. Nothing wrong with mementos, but trophies and ribbons should usually denote achievement or success, not participation.
The idea of 'success, not participation' is absurd. If you participate in something, you have, in fact, succeeded in participating.
What you're arguing is that they haven't succeeded _enough_ to 'deserve' a piece of metal in a funny shape with words on it, their minor success only deserve a piece of paper with words on it. They don't deserve a real medal, they only deserve a _imprint_ of a medal on the paper.
It's like you've saw someone writing a thank-you note to someone who gave them a toaster, and leapt in and valiantly argued that it was wrong for them to do so, that they thanked the person in person so do not have to write a thank you note. Because, you see, writing people thank-you notes who 'don't deserve them' is 'coddling'! Yeah, thanks for that input.
This is a remarkably silly thing to care about, what two completely unrelated people are saying to each other vis vis-a-vis how much the first person respects what the second person did.
And, frankly, who the hell elected any of you God-Emperor of judging performance? Much less judging performance in some sort of strange absolute manner of what _method_ that other people should use to conveying that judgement?
It's like, ill-content with meddling with people's speech, you have now become meta-meddlers. 'I demand you not tell that person he participated in a thing via a shiny cup! You must instead use a piece of paper to tell him that thing that he already knows.'
Do any of you grasp how silly you sound?'
As I said, if there are asshole children due to coddling, it's because of their _parents_ coddling them, not the thirty minutes they sat with a participation trophy at the pizza place after losing a t-ball game. The idea that the problem is children that 'don't know how to lose' is idiotic...children rarely 'lose' in any meaningful sense _outside_ of sports in the first place. The problem is children who _always get their way_ because their parents will not say no to them.
I find this dislike of participate trophies rather surreal.
I am honestly baffled...would there be an objection here if instead of a 'trophy', it was a photo of the team? Would you guys be happier if it said 'Loser' on it?
When children do things, they are often given things to remember that by. Hell, when _everyone_ does things, they get things to remember them by.
I'm sure, when you come across someone with runner's number from a marathon, hanging on a wall, you immediately rip that down and stomp on it. How dare they remember that they attended such a competition if they didn't win!
I know someone who has a 'participation trophy' from _going to New York_. He didn't even compete in anything, but he has a little replicate of the statue of liberty he bought there! What a loser!
Children are not morons. They understand what winning is, and that they did not do it.
And they _also_ enjoy having a record of the time they spend _participating_ in the event.
And I must point out, if coddled kids are asses, I rather suspect that's almost entirely is a result of _parental_ 'coddling', and nothing to do with a sports team. But no, I'm sure it's that one damn trophy a year for participating instead of idiot parents.
And now, reading more, it does _indeed_ look like the House bill will, uh, not actually get through the House, thanks to the Tea Partiers.
You know, House Republicans, if you want to pretend that this disaster is caused by both sides, you do literally have to pass _something_ that the Senate refuses to pass, so that the pundits can pretend 'both sides failed to come to an agreement'.
If you fail to pass _anything_, it's not actually possible to pretend the other side is in the wrong.
It leaves the egg on the Republicans’ faces, and puts them on the record as having held a gun to the heads of the government so that they could secure an expansion of bureaucracy and a deficit hike, the exact opposite of the two issues they claim to be unified on opposing. I’m not surprised the Tea Party types are balking.
No, you have it backwards. The Senate proposed a plan to verify incomes, and the other change to the ACA was something about deferring reinsurance costs for a year or something. (I don't understand entirely what that is.)
The House is balking on _that_ bill.
It's the House that, instead of that reinsurance thing, threw in the repeal of the medical device tax. The Tea Party is apparently okay with this, and is going to pass this _instead_.
I.e, the House Republicans, including the Tea Party, apparently of its own free will, just proposed a deficit hike that _the Democrats didn't want or ask for_. By, yes, erasing a tax, but it's a tax that affects no actual voters, so that's a rather hard sell. (And a 2.6% sales tax sounds absurdly low to American ears.)
I mean, can’t they have you enter your SS#, cross-check it against your return, and if your prior year salary is under the threshold, you qualify.
*looks confused at Kazzy*
'They' who?
The people who actually want this law to work just decided to let people say whatever they want, and fix it at tax time the next year if they were wrong. That system works. So there's no reason for them to change anything.
The people who don't want this law to work are unlikely to agree to anything like you suggested, as that which would actually work. They are demanding we change to something that can't work at all, but it's not like that's some sort of _accident_. If they thought they could get away with demanding that everyone who got insurance subsidies show in person in Washington and run a marathon, they'd do _that_.
And note that _I_ don't understand what's going on with this Republican fight to lower their own staff's wages, which is almost 100% Republican talking point nonsense about how Congress 'exempted' themselves from the ACA. So Republicans propose a law putting Congress 'under' the ACA (by which they mean, putting in specific rules treating Congress differently) and then they point to those specific rules themselves as, themselves, an exception. It's complete gibberish, and confusing as hell.
Does anyone have some sort of documented explanation of the actual things that happened WRT this?
And, before I make a fool of myself in online debates, I am _completely_ right in that Congress literally does not need to change the ACA at all to stop themselves from subsidizing their own staff's insurance, correct? All they actually would have to do is...not subsidize their own staff's insurance. Right?
What I understand is, like you said, it was intended to be a poison pill, requiring Congress to be on the exchanges. Republicans proposed it, Democrats laughed and said 'Sure!'. (I.e, they didn't reluctantly take it, they had no problem with taking it.)
Then after all that had passed, everyone realized that there is no logical way for Congress to subsidize those plans. So Congressional staffers would be paying the full price of their health insurance.
And this is where you and my stories differ: The Obama administration had some legal people look at the law, and figured out, as the law was actually unclear, said 'You know what? Congress can just pay part of their exchange insurance. The law doesn't say that, but the law doesn't _not_ say that either. Technically, that might be subject to income taxes, but luckily the code is murky enough that I can have the IRS ignore that. So we'll just go with it.'
So Congress than proceeded to pass a law saying that they _would_ do that thing, subsidize their staff's health care purchased on the exchange. Which was not, really, part of Obamacare, it was just a 'How much we pay our staff' bill.
Republicans continued to scream bloody murder about (?) and now is demanding that Congress be barred, by law, from doing what Congress just voted to do. (I wonder if anyone's ever told them that if Congress _does_ want to subsidies their staff's health insurance, Congress can just _change the law_? Sometimes I get the feeling that House Republicans literally do not understand how the government works...the Congress cannot bar Congress from doing things.)
From what I understand, we already have an income verification system.
It's called the _income tax_ and auditing.
What we're talking about here is the original idea of a _pre_-income verification system. Where people, before they get subsidies, somehow have to verify their income _next year_ will be below a certain amount.
This is, rather obviously, somewhat stupid, so the Obama administration just said 'Look, report what you think it is, we won't check. If you're wrong and you make more than that, however, you'll have to make up the difference in subsidies on your taxes that you shouldn't have gotten.'.
Republicans 'prefer' (1) we use the completely unworkable system of verifying _next year's_ income.
1) And by 'prefer', I mean, 'There was something trivial wrong with Obamacare and everyone realized it and fixed it, so Republicans demand we actually do it so things break.'
The Maddow blog is reporting that the Republican House, continuing their proud traditions of rejecting Democratic caves, is going to reject this.
They will instead demand that their own staff be barred from their government subsiding their health insurance (Which is a WTF on top of that...isn't Congress in charge of how much their staff is paid anyway? Why the hell would they have to fuck around inside Obamacare to bar _themselves_ from covering part of their own staff's insurance?) and demanding the medical device tax be removed.
And thus ii shall be dubbed: The 'Medical Device Tax and Congressional Staff Paycut' Default of 2013.
Aka, the time we defaulted over a $3 billion dollar a year tax that absolutely no one fucking cares about(1), and what has to be less than $10 million dollars in government employee salary which Congress could reduce anytime it wants.
1) You know, a _lot_ of those 'medical devices', things like pacemakers and hip replacements and prosthetic limbs and whatnot, are used for the _elderly_, aka, people on government insurance, or veterans, aka, people on government insurance. So I rather suspect if you actually went and asked _any_ medical device company if they'd rather leave the medical device tax intact, or have the Federal government not continuing Medicare reimburses or Medicaid grants, they'd almost certainly rather just pay the tax. Maybe I'm just being sympathetic to an industry that is annoyed they got hit with a random tax that really doesn't seem to have been that great an idea, but I'm pretty certain they aren't lunatics who want the House to break the country over them.
@shazbot9 Conservatives and libertarians may not like [the mandate] but it is good and necessary that we socialize the costs of health care and the risk of needing healthcare.
Conservatives liked it just fine. It was their idea.
Also, having the government require people to purchase things may be an overreach of government powers and/or might be a bad idea, (Not that I think so), but the one thing it really can't be called is any form of socialism.
Socialism is the exact opposite concept, where the government produces the things (Aka, operates the means of productions) that people voluntarily buy. The government saying 'You must buy X from private businesses' is, if any political ideology, in the direction of 'fascism'.
Please note that I don't think it's actually 'fascism', anymore than the I think the government building and operating a toll road is 'socialism'. I just find it really weird some people in this world have decided to call 'The government forcing the purchase of stuff from private individuals' 'socialism', when it is literally the opposite of that concept.
In 'socialized medicine', the government would be producing and selling health care, and it would be paid for by private individuals. And if the government produced it and then gave it away, that would be 'communism'. (Of course, it wouldn't actually, as those terms describe entire economic systems, not interference in individual markets...the government providing free roads to everyone, for example, does not make our entire economic system 'communism'.)
@blaisep And you’re also right, there’s no evidence it’s happening: we’re just now beginning to collect the data.
There's at least a little evidence the ACA will do that: Insurance companies seem to think the ACA will do that, hence their oddly competitive and low rates on the exchanges.
That doesn't mean they can't be wrong, of course. But insurance companies, at least ones still in business, are rarely wrong with their predictions.
@pierre-corneille Your idea sounds interesting, and I’ll need to mull it over
It's worth mentioning that this is essentially what we _already_ do, but for some reason just for 'essential' services. This has absolutely no constitutional basis whatsoever, nor is there actually any definition of 'essential' anywhere.
So I say the president should just say 'As far as I am concerned, the entire Federal government is essential. You want it to stop functioning, well, you're the legislature and you can do that. But you have to actually _do_ that, you can't just ignore-the-budget into a government shutdown.'
Actually, I think the president should go the other way, and shut down every single aspect of the government he can. That's it, it's over, everyone go home. Then we'd never do it.
Of course, I'm the sort of person who has argued in the past that, in any hostage situation, the police should give people sixty seconds, and then just shoot through the hostage or storm the bank or whatever. Sure, we'd have casualties at once, but then people would _stop taking hostages_.
Same with a government shutdown. Let's blow the place up, leave government buildings unattended for looting, no FBI, no social security, no military pay...and let's see if it _ever_ happens again.
But as that is unrealistic, I say the president should just continue to assume the same budgeting as before unless told otherwise.
4. It takes two. This is happening because neither side will yield to the other’s demands.
This is, incidentally, complete bullshit.
The Democrats have no 'demands'. They want the government to continue functioning. That is not a 'demand', that is a basic premise of lawmakers, or rather it _should_ be.
The Republicans are the ones making the demands.
You do realize how this actually breaks the country if it works, right? If any group can shut down the government until they get what they want. You do actually _understand the problem_, right?
...you know, I'm reminded of all the times that the Democrats and Republicans were fighting each other, and the Democrats would reach across the isle and say something like 'We'll get on board with your spending cuts if you will get on board with our revenue increases', and the Republicans turn around and say 'Well, we both clearly agree on tax cuts, so let's do that. We can vote on your revenue increases separately.'.
Well, now _both_ houses of Congress have passed a CR that keeps government running, and under _Republican_ logic, that means we should just agree to that part and try the Republican's 'defund Obamacare' later. (Oh, wait, you mean they already have tried it? Repeatedly? Well, sucks to be them.)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Always act like everything’s your fault”
In most drug or prostitution stings, the cops attempt to control the space where the crime will occur, via surveillance etc. They are the ones who rented the hotel room, and wired it up for sound and video.
...not really. That's awesome when it can be done, but I'd be astonished if it happened more than half the time.
And they can bust in immediately upon the commission of the crime or things going sideways.
Yes, that is the premise, and it would be true here also.
With the added bonus that the attempted rapists is hardly going to try to murder the undercover cop if he figured out who she is before attacking her, considering he's not committed a crime yet. (If he does, well, hey, that solves that problem, and now he can be arrested.)
Putting a single female cop alone into space that the suspect controls (his house), and hoping that she does not get overpowered/raped/killed before the cavalry can arrive, seems like a recipe for potential disaster.
That's what a wire is for. And a gun.
I don't think you're comparing this correctly.
A rape sting is _certainly_ safer than pretty much any drug sting, where dealers routinely search people and drive around to secure locations and require all sorts of reference from other criminals and expect law enforcement interference and are all armed and willing to shoot and will _kill_ any police officer they find. (1)
Compared to that, a potential criminal taking an undercover officer back to _his house_ (Which location is known in advance.) and attempted to grab her and hold her down to rape her is almost a trivial police operation. Date rapists do not exactly search women for a wire and weapons, nor do they have armed guards in a secure location.
Of course, if this becomes common and well known, than rapists could, indeed start suspecting the police...which means less women get raped as the rapist aren't sure if someone is a police officer. Along with a few rapists overreacting and become violent and kidnapping women at gun point and searching them for a wire and tying them up before raping them...which is actually sorta a win in this fucked up world, as maybe we'd actually _convict_ such rapists.
And either way, it exposes what is actually going on in a way better than any 'education campaign' could.
1) I guess it's less safe than a prostitution sting, but that's a bit silly. Prostitution stings are probably safer than traffic stops!
"
@will-truman
But that seems like low-hanging fruit. Definitely pluck that. But rape is, very often, a very difficult crime to prove. That’s where I am particular concerned. Leaving you with a whole lot of cases where she says it was rape, he says it wasn’t, and you can maybe prove that sex occurred but not much else because there was no rape kit done.
I really hate this discussion format, which has apparently made it unclear what we're talking about. I don't understand why web sites seem unable to manage something people were doing on Usenet back in 1980, with nested replies. It really is rather idiotic.
Anyway, I was actually talking about arresting rapists in the context of police stings. I.e., women 'unsafely' inviting men into their house, or pretending to be drunk and asking for a ride home. Where the police arrest people because they _have personal knowledge of being rapists because that person tried to rape them_.
And, yes, I have such a low opinion of the public at large that I think entirely correct police stings will well-documented video evidence of attempted rape will not actually result in a conviction of attempted rape 100% of the time. (Or sexual assault, or whatever 'attempted rape' actually is.)
Indeed, I suspect there would be an outcry, with people getting _very_ upset at the 'targeting' of men under this, where police have complaints about a man, but not enough evidence to do an arrest, so they make an undercover easily-raped woman available for him to rape and see what happens. They will think this is unacceptable, despite the fact this is literally how every single sting operation in existence works.
"
Or to put it another way:
I have heard various lists of things women should avoid doing. (Not victim blaming, lists that women pass around among themselves as very bad ideas. And the point isn't this list, so lets continue.)
On almost all those lists is 'If you need a place to stay, do not accept an invitation to stay at a single man's house that you are not dating'.
Why? Because it leaves women incredibly vulnerable (Especially during sleeping, showering, etc.), and in a position of owing something to the man, and him having a threat to hold over her, threatening to kick her out at 3 in the morning. It is, all in all, a very bad combination.
Now, non-acquaintances are unlikely to even consider sleeping at someone else's house, so most rape that happens that way is logically acquaintance rape.
But there's nothing inherent in that premise that _requires_ an acquaintance. There's nothing stopping undercover cops from going up to suspected rapists and asking to sleep at his house for some invented reason or another.
"
@kim
… are you familiar with any cases where this has actually occurred?
Erm...what?
Did we suddenly forget the topic here?
Of course I'm familiar with cases where this has actually occurred. Specifically, in cases involving _rape_, it happens all the time...events are proven that legally are rape, and yet a rape conviction does not happen. Or there is more than enough evidence to convict for assault, but somehow it magically becomes not enough when it's sexual assault.
Perhaps restricting the availability of date rape drug precursors might be a decent way to spend funds?
The war on drugs is rather a failure at this time.
I mean, I have no real objection to this if you can manage it, but 'restricting the availability of date rape drug precursors' is not actually something that local law enforcement would be doing anyway, so if you're asserting they should do that _instead_ of sting operations, that makes no sense.
"
I think a lot of people at that blog have missed the fact that while most rapes are acquaintance, the thing is, rapists _will_ rape someone else if they think she is vulnerable.
I.e., I think the sort of people who rape their girlfriends regularly will also rape a random first date.
All the law has to do is maneuver the potential rapist into a situation where they think they 'deserve' sex. A flirty 'drunk' girl who asks for a ride home, for example. A first date that 'runs long' and she offers to let the guy sleep on her couch. (Please be aware I'm just guessing here, and I suspect it would be easy to collect stories from actual rape victims and figure out likely scenarios.)
They aren't raping acquaintances because they have some sort of weird moral code(1), they're raping acquaintances because acquaintances are easy to find and coerce. Give them someone else who seems easier (pun intended), they'll go after her instead.
1) There probably are _some_ rapists who only think they deserve sex after dating a women 'long enough', or even rapists that will not 'cheat' on their girlfriends(?!), so I guess you couldn't catch those, but you could catch most of them.
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@will-truman
There are some ethical issues with arresting someone and putting them on trial if you do not have strong reason to believe that you can convict them.
Erm, no in this case. The problem here is that society may not be willing to convict _actual_ rapists.
In an area where trial-by-jury has completely broken down and society is letting guilty people walk free, it does not then follow the ethical solution is stop trying to convict them. Especially when the reason that such crimes are gotten away with is that society does not appear to consider them criminal acts.
It's an ethical issue to arrest and charge people with crimes if you feel their guilt cannot be demonstrated by the evidence. It is, however, perfectly fine to arrest and charge people with crimes if the evidence is there, but juries are often made of misogynistic assholes so do not convict despite the evidence.
Do the police have evidence for a conviction in my scenario? Yes, in fact, the entire point of it is to give them evidence. Thus, they should arrest. It matters not how fucked up the jury is.
If in the south in the 1920s a white man killed a black man, he likely would not be convicted of the crime...that does not mean he should not be arrested and charged with it if the police were willing to do that.
"
@morat20
Again, one of the issues with rape is when you SAY rape people think...
Well, yeah, so the only reason to solve that is to actually start arresting people who commit 'standard' rape, the actual most common rape in the US, intimidating or otherwise coercing a date or female acquaintance into sex. (Well, apparently, the most common rape in the US is prison rape, but there's a _trivial_ way to stop all of that, and literally the only reason we haven't done that is that we don't want to. Hint: People in prison have no privacy rights, and hence can all be monitored 24/7, and hence it is literally impossible for them to commit undetected rape unless we choose not to allow them to do that. So there's yet another 'Why don't we try to stop rape?' question, but not related to this discussion.)
I'm not entirely sure how many of those would result in convictions at first, but, frankly, I could care less, and that's not actually the point here. I'd be happy if we started having some people realize such thing is illegal and you can and will be arrested for it.
And I'm not _exactly_ sure of the laws, but video-tape the entire thing and let the public see how this behavior works and how it's not acceptable.
@Kim
At some point, you're going to have to ask yourself if j r is just ignorant or is an actual rape apologist.
"
You’ll understand why some people might find your comment to be a bit bonkers.
Actually, I'm pretty certain it's only you who finds my comment 'bonkers', and that's because you're decided to play rape apologist, but are trying to pretend you're not.
Let's parse out what he actually just said here: There are enough people in prison in this country for things besides rape, we don't need to send _rapists_ there too.
I don’t know in what country you live. I live in the United States, the country with 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners.
Meanwhile, I live in the United States, where only 10% of _reported_ rapes result in a conviction. (And who knows exactly how many unreported rapes there are.) Even being charitably to law enforcement and assuming that the victim can only identify the rapist 75% of the time, that's still a pretty crappy prosecution rate.
"
We could even train female cops to act really drunk and accept rides home from strangers. There would be police backup, of course. The random navy blue Camry behind the rapist’s car? Full of cops with guns. The undercover cop’s earrings? Hidden cameras. Of course, if you’re a good guy who just drives the “drunk” female cop home, you’ll never know about any of that. (It’s possible you may get out of a speeding ticket later and not know why you’re on some cop’s good citizen list!) But you try to force your way into her house, you will find yourself on the ground within seconds.
I find myself constantly wondering that.
I'm not entirely sure how much rape this would stop...rape is actually more likely to be done via acquaintances of all sorts, and some sort of 'date men until they attempt to rape you' undercover operation seems dubious.
Actually, thinking about, that would work, but only if she's clever in what she says and wears. In reality the officer should just have to wait for some sort of coercion and have them arrested.
But I'm worried that juries would not actually convict. So the police officer would end up acting fairly odd and possibly be spotted.
Best plan: Act flirty during the date, and then when they get back to her place, just flatly refuse sex...but then don't make him leave. Let him hang out on some pretense or another. He will continue to make advances, which should be rebuffed. Date rapists think they are entitled to sex, and thus I predict, at some point of being 'strung along', the asshole will just physically attack the undercover cop.
Please note that _I_ don't think this is now normal date rapes go, but I'm trying to design this specific one so an idiotic misogynist jury can see it's an attempted rape. I think if you make most date rapists angry enough by withholding their 'deserved' sex, they will in fact turn violent, or at least start threatening...but I could be wrong there.
(Incidentally, I suspect some asshole is going to object to this as 'entrapment'. I'm warning you right now, if you think this way, you need to go away and think long and hard about why you think this way, instead of posting a followup where we will crucify you.)
But police don't do that for the same reason that...well, you know that gang-infested street where they threaten cops? Well, gee, if only there was some way that someone could walk down that street and witness a crime being committed, like threatening cops, and arrest them for it.
It is honestly astonishing when you think about the areas of society, both physical location and general interactions, where the law is regularly broken, and how the police seem unwilling to even try to deal with the problem, which they could literally do by strolling around that 'area' until they witness a crime and arrest someone. And someone else. And someone else.
Meanwhile, we have entire divisions of police officers whose job it is to drive around to stop traffic violations.
It rather makes you question the entire premise of police officers.
On “Then Have A Mercy Rule”
The entire premise of this seems to be that kids are very stupid, and don't understand that a participation trophy is, well, losing. There is no evidence this is true.
As the article points out, kids under ten or so don't really understand that concept of winning or losing at all, at least not in the abstract sense, and think everyone deserves trophies, and thinks that is true _regardless_ of whether or not they get a trophy. If you don't give them one, they will probably get upset and stop playing.
At a certain point around ten, children begin to understand how winning works, that even if they try hard they can lose...and at that point, they _know_ they lose, whether or not you give them a trophy. A trophy is not inherently valuable, it does not convey any sort of inherent message...if it's a participation trophy, they _know_ it's that.
The idea that children are, in some way, harmed by random trophies is idiotic. Either they're old enough and understand competition, and thus understand they didn't win. Or they're too young and don't understand competition and hence won't understand why both they and the other people played, and why only those guys got the trophies. (They might not even grasp they were on opposite teams.)
It is perfectly reasonable to stop giving out participating trophies past a certain age, because there's really no point in giving them out to people who know they lost, but don't pretend it's some sort of damn _moral mission_.
"
@will-truman
Trophies should be rewards. Photos are mementos. Nothing wrong with mementos, but trophies and ribbons should usually denote achievement or success, not participation.
The idea of 'success, not participation' is absurd. If you participate in something, you have, in fact, succeeded in participating.
What you're arguing is that they haven't succeeded _enough_ to 'deserve' a piece of metal in a funny shape with words on it, their minor success only deserve a piece of paper with words on it. They don't deserve a real medal, they only deserve a _imprint_ of a medal on the paper.
It's like you've saw someone writing a thank-you note to someone who gave them a toaster, and leapt in and valiantly argued that it was wrong for them to do so, that they thanked the person in person so do not have to write a thank you note. Because, you see, writing people thank-you notes who 'don't deserve them' is 'coddling'! Yeah, thanks for that input.
This is a remarkably silly thing to care about, what two completely unrelated people are saying to each other vis vis-a-vis how much the first person respects what the second person did.
And, frankly, who the hell elected any of you God-Emperor of judging performance? Much less judging performance in some sort of strange absolute manner of what _method_ that other people should use to conveying that judgement?
It's like, ill-content with meddling with people's speech, you have now become meta-meddlers. 'I demand you not tell that person he participated in a thing via a shiny cup! You must instead use a piece of paper to tell him that thing that he already knows.'
Do any of you grasp how silly you sound?'
As I said, if there are asshole children due to coddling, it's because of their _parents_ coddling them, not the thirty minutes they sat with a participation trophy at the pizza place after losing a t-ball game. The idea that the problem is children that 'don't know how to lose' is idiotic...children rarely 'lose' in any meaningful sense _outside_ of sports in the first place. The problem is children who _always get their way_ because their parents will not say no to them.
"
I find this dislike of participate trophies rather surreal.
I am honestly baffled...would there be an objection here if instead of a 'trophy', it was a photo of the team? Would you guys be happier if it said 'Loser' on it?
When children do things, they are often given things to remember that by. Hell, when _everyone_ does things, they get things to remember them by.
I'm sure, when you come across someone with runner's number from a marathon, hanging on a wall, you immediately rip that down and stomp on it. How dare they remember that they attended such a competition if they didn't win!
I know someone who has a 'participation trophy' from _going to New York_. He didn't even compete in anything, but he has a little replicate of the statue of liberty he bought there! What a loser!
Children are not morons. They understand what winning is, and that they did not do it.
And they _also_ enjoy having a record of the time they spend _participating_ in the event.
And I must point out, if coddled kids are asses, I rather suspect that's almost entirely is a result of _parental_ 'coddling', and nothing to do with a sports team. But no, I'm sure it's that one damn trophy a year for participating instead of idiot parents.
On “Democrats need to get out of the Republicans’ way”
And now, reading more, it does _indeed_ look like the House bill will, uh, not actually get through the House, thanks to the Tea Partiers.
You know, House Republicans, if you want to pretend that this disaster is caused by both sides, you do literally have to pass _something_ that the Senate refuses to pass, so that the pundits can pretend 'both sides failed to come to an agreement'.
If you fail to pass _anything_, it's not actually possible to pretend the other side is in the wrong.
"
It leaves the egg on the Republicans’ faces, and puts them on the record as having held a gun to the heads of the government so that they could secure an expansion of bureaucracy and a deficit hike, the exact opposite of the two issues they claim to be unified on opposing. I’m not surprised the Tea Party types are balking.
No, you have it backwards. The Senate proposed a plan to verify incomes, and the other change to the ACA was something about deferring reinsurance costs for a year or something. (I don't understand entirely what that is.)
The House is balking on _that_ bill.
It's the House that, instead of that reinsurance thing, threw in the repeal of the medical device tax. The Tea Party is apparently okay with this, and is going to pass this _instead_.
I.e, the House Republicans, including the Tea Party, apparently of its own free will, just proposed a deficit hike that _the Democrats didn't want or ask for_. By, yes, erasing a tax, but it's a tax that affects no actual voters, so that's a rather hard sell. (And a 2.6% sales tax sounds absurdly low to American ears.)
At least, that's how I understand the situation.
"
I mean, can’t they have you enter your SS#, cross-check it against your return, and if your prior year salary is under the threshold, you qualify.
*looks confused at Kazzy*
'They' who?
The people who actually want this law to work just decided to let people say whatever they want, and fix it at tax time the next year if they were wrong. That system works. So there's no reason for them to change anything.
The people who don't want this law to work are unlikely to agree to anything like you suggested, as that which would actually work. They are demanding we change to something that can't work at all, but it's not like that's some sort of _accident_. If they thought they could get away with demanding that everyone who got insurance subsidies show in person in Washington and run a marathon, they'd do _that_.
"
And note that _I_ don't understand what's going on with this Republican fight to lower their own staff's wages, which is almost 100% Republican talking point nonsense about how Congress 'exempted' themselves from the ACA. So Republicans propose a law putting Congress 'under' the ACA (by which they mean, putting in specific rules treating Congress differently) and then they point to those specific rules themselves as, themselves, an exception. It's complete gibberish, and confusing as hell.
Does anyone have some sort of documented explanation of the actual things that happened WRT this?
And, before I make a fool of myself in online debates, I am _completely_ right in that Congress literally does not need to change the ACA at all to stop themselves from subsidizing their own staff's insurance, correct? All they actually would have to do is...not subsidize their own staff's insurance. Right?
"
I'm not entirely certain that's completely right.
What I understand is, like you said, it was intended to be a poison pill, requiring Congress to be on the exchanges. Republicans proposed it, Democrats laughed and said 'Sure!'. (I.e, they didn't reluctantly take it, they had no problem with taking it.)
Then after all that had passed, everyone realized that there is no logical way for Congress to subsidize those plans. So Congressional staffers would be paying the full price of their health insurance.
And this is where you and my stories differ: The Obama administration had some legal people look at the law, and figured out, as the law was actually unclear, said 'You know what? Congress can just pay part of their exchange insurance. The law doesn't say that, but the law doesn't _not_ say that either. Technically, that might be subject to income taxes, but luckily the code is murky enough that I can have the IRS ignore that. So we'll just go with it.'
So Congress than proceeded to pass a law saying that they _would_ do that thing, subsidize their staff's health care purchased on the exchange. Which was not, really, part of Obamacare, it was just a 'How much we pay our staff' bill.
Republicans continued to scream bloody murder about (?) and now is demanding that Congress be barred, by law, from doing what Congress just voted to do. (I wonder if anyone's ever told them that if Congress _does_ want to subsidies their staff's health insurance, Congress can just _change the law_? Sometimes I get the feeling that House Republicans literally do not understand how the government works...the Congress cannot bar Congress from doing things.)
"
From what I understand, we already have an income verification system.
It's called the _income tax_ and auditing.
What we're talking about here is the original idea of a _pre_-income verification system. Where people, before they get subsidies, somehow have to verify their income _next year_ will be below a certain amount.
This is, rather obviously, somewhat stupid, so the Obama administration just said 'Look, report what you think it is, we won't check. If you're wrong and you make more than that, however, you'll have to make up the difference in subsidies on your taxes that you shouldn't have gotten.'.
Republicans 'prefer' (1) we use the completely unworkable system of verifying _next year's_ income.
1) And by 'prefer', I mean, 'There was something trivial wrong with Obamacare and everyone realized it and fixed it, so Republicans demand we actually do it so things break.'
"
The Maddow blog is reporting that the Republican House, continuing their proud traditions of rejecting Democratic caves, is going to reject this.
They will instead demand that their own staff be barred from their government subsiding their health insurance (Which is a WTF on top of that...isn't Congress in charge of how much their staff is paid anyway? Why the hell would they have to fuck around inside Obamacare to bar _themselves_ from covering part of their own staff's insurance?) and demanding the medical device tax be removed.
And thus ii shall be dubbed: The 'Medical Device Tax and Congressional Staff Paycut' Default of 2013.
Aka, the time we defaulted over a $3 billion dollar a year tax that absolutely no one fucking cares about(1), and what has to be less than $10 million dollars in government employee salary which Congress could reduce anytime it wants.
1) You know, a _lot_ of those 'medical devices', things like pacemakers and hip replacements and prosthetic limbs and whatnot, are used for the _elderly_, aka, people on government insurance, or veterans, aka, people on government insurance. So I rather suspect if you actually went and asked _any_ medical device company if they'd rather leave the medical device tax intact, or have the Federal government not continuing Medicare reimburses or Medicaid grants, they'd almost certainly rather just pay the tax. Maybe I'm just being sympathetic to an industry that is annoyed they got hit with a random tax that really doesn't seem to have been that great an idea, but I'm pretty certain they aren't lunatics who want the House to break the country over them.
On “Just Stop”
I'm having trouble figuring out the intersection of 'stamps' and 'children' myself. How are children ever going to see stamps?
Is this some sort of new ironic thing with children, them purchasing stamps? What do they _do_ with them? Stick them on their phone?
On “What’s in a Maiden Name?”
Didn't calling them 'Professor X' get confusing? Unless you actually went to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. ;)
Hey, wait a second. Shouldn't Professor X's name actually be Doctor X? I'm pretty certain he has _several_ doctorates.
On “Honest Questions about Obamacare”
@shazbot9
Conservatives and libertarians may not like [the mandate] but it is good and necessary that we socialize the costs of health care and the risk of needing healthcare.
Conservatives liked it just fine. It was their idea.
Also, having the government require people to purchase things may be an overreach of government powers and/or might be a bad idea, (Not that I think so), but the one thing it really can't be called is any form of socialism.
Socialism is the exact opposite concept, where the government produces the things (Aka, operates the means of productions) that people voluntarily buy. The government saying 'You must buy X from private businesses' is, if any political ideology, in the direction of 'fascism'.
Please note that I don't think it's actually 'fascism', anymore than the I think the government building and operating a toll road is 'socialism'. I just find it really weird some people in this world have decided to call 'The government forcing the purchase of stuff from private individuals' 'socialism', when it is literally the opposite of that concept.
In 'socialized medicine', the government would be producing and selling health care, and it would be paid for by private individuals. And if the government produced it and then gave it away, that would be 'communism'. (Of course, it wouldn't actually, as those terms describe entire economic systems, not interference in individual markets...the government providing free roads to everyone, for example, does not make our entire economic system 'communism'.)
On “On Obamacare and the Real U.S. Healthcare Crisis, Part I: A Look In The Rearview Mirror”
@blaisep
And you’re also right, there’s no evidence it’s happening: we’re just now beginning to collect the data.
There's at least a little evidence the ACA will do that: Insurance companies seem to think the ACA will do that, hence their oddly competitive and low rates on the exchanges.
That doesn't mean they can't be wrong, of course. But insurance companies, at least ones still in business, are rarely wrong with their predictions.
On “Shutdown Open Thread”
@pierre-corneille
Your idea sounds interesting, and I’ll need to mull it over
It's worth mentioning that this is essentially what we _already_ do, but for some reason just for 'essential' services. This has absolutely no constitutional basis whatsoever, nor is there actually any definition of 'essential' anywhere.
So I say the president should just say 'As far as I am concerned, the entire Federal government is essential. You want it to stop functioning, well, you're the legislature and you can do that. But you have to actually _do_ that, you can't just ignore-the-budget into a government shutdown.'
Actually, I think the president should go the other way, and shut down every single aspect of the government he can. That's it, it's over, everyone go home. Then we'd never do it.
Of course, I'm the sort of person who has argued in the past that, in any hostage situation, the police should give people sixty seconds, and then just shoot through the hostage or storm the bank or whatever. Sure, we'd have casualties at once, but then people would _stop taking hostages_.
Same with a government shutdown. Let's blow the place up, leave government buildings unattended for looting, no FBI, no social security, no military pay...and let's see if it _ever_ happens again.
But as that is unrealistic, I say the president should just continue to assume the same budgeting as before unless told otherwise.
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4. It takes two. This is happening because neither side will yield to the other’s demands.
This is, incidentally, complete bullshit.
The Democrats have no 'demands'. They want the government to continue functioning. That is not a 'demand', that is a basic premise of lawmakers, or rather it _should_ be.
The Republicans are the ones making the demands.
You do realize how this actually breaks the country if it works, right? If any group can shut down the government until they get what they want. You do actually _understand the problem_, right?
...you know, I'm reminded of all the times that the Democrats and Republicans were fighting each other, and the Democrats would reach across the isle and say something like 'We'll get on board with your spending cuts if you will get on board with our revenue increases', and the Republicans turn around and say 'Well, we both clearly agree on tax cuts, so let's do that. We can vote on your revenue increases separately.'.
Well, now _both_ houses of Congress have passed a CR that keeps government running, and under _Republican_ logic, that means we should just agree to that part and try the Republican's 'defund Obamacare' later. (Oh, wait, you mean they already have tried it? Repeatedly? Well, sucks to be them.)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.