and it only cost $2 Million [1].
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-associate-reportedl...
Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
571–580 of 996 posts
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#572Whats up with sprinkling of "xyz is an upstanding citizen and father to n beautiful children." ? They are clearly not an upstanding citizen - otherwise they wouldn't require a presidential pardon. Being father to children is not an achievement and any two consenting healthy adult man and woman can produce them irrespective of their standing in society. And beauty of children is a criteria for pardon now? What if the…
>They are clearly not an upstanding citizen - otherwise they wouldn't require a presidential pardon
so snowden isn't an upstanding citizen either? law abiding citizen != upstanding citizen
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#573It's weird to see the Republican party embrace intellectual property theft. Levandowski stole from his employer and his colleagues at Google to enrich himself at Uber. Why would that possibly be worth a pardon?
Adam Serwer, an excellent writer, explained it: [1]
> Law and order, for this president, simply means that he and his ideological allies are above the law, while others, such as [George] Floyd, are merely subject to it.
Lewandowski's pardon request was endorsed by Peter Thiel, a huge Trump backer, so he gets to be above the law. Simple.
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/chauvin-di...
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#574According to https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/former-google-engineer-ant... "Instead, Alsup sentenced Lewandowski to 18 months, but delayed his prison time until the pandemic was under control. Levandowski also agreed to pay $756,499.22 in restitution to Waymo and a fine of $95,000." So he didn't even spend a single minute in prison. Wow
To be honest I don't know the fine details about the allegations against him and what he already paid. His reputation would definitely never be the same. The fact he didn't spend time in prison might be a good thing. I recall seeing a horrifying doco about a guy in prison who stabbed another inmate like 100 times and killed him. The stabber was already doing life in jail for murder. But his partner who helped him by…
I doubt this type of crime would land in the same type of prison this type incident you mentioned happens. But I might be wrong. If anybody knows, What chances are for convicted white-collar criminals to end up with violent cellmates of non-white collar crimes?
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#575Whats up with sprinkling of "xyz is an upstanding citizen and father to n beautiful children." ? They are clearly not an upstanding citizen - otherwise they wouldn't require a presidential pardon. Being father to children is not an achievement and any two consenting healthy adult man and woman can produce them irrespective of their standing in society. And beauty of children is a criteria for pardon now? What if the…
>They are clearly not an upstanding citizen
Your sole argument here is that they were convicted by a court for violating the law.
Are you saying everyone convicted by the criminal justice system is a bad human being? Because the pardon is by definition an admission of guilt, it doesn't exonerate them from what they did.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoa there, Roofus; have a Milk-Bone of information: "In 2017, users on the message-board site 4chan[40][41][42] aimed to convince the media and other people that the OK gesture was being used as a white power symbol. According to The Boston Globe, users on 4chan's /pol/ ("Politically Incorrect") board were instructed in February 2017 to "flood Twitter and other social media websites...claiming that the OK hand sign…
These are such weird arguments. The origins are irrelevant because it wasn't just a trick pulled on normies; white supremacists also fell for the joke. Once they started genuinely using the gesture it did become a symbol of hate. The Wikipedia article you linked says exactly that a few paragraphs below the paragraph you quoted.
The origins are totally friggin' relevant.
Firstly, the OK gesture is a deeply entrenched, familiar, everyday gesture—at least in North American culture. Only a complete moron could think that it suddenly has to do with white supremacy, and accept it for such use to the point of believing that it is a white supremacist symbol and not the OK gesture any more, so that anyone using it is a racist.
Secondly, anyone who has any doubts about it whatsoever can search for it, and learn about the 2017 4chan campaign in seconds.
Therefore, thirdly, the situations in which the gesture refers to the hoax-induced meaning are very narrow, like someone pulling the gesture on camera behind a black man's back or something like that, or a known white supremacist pulling it in courtroom. Then we know "oh, he's referring to that 4chan meme". Where by "we" I mean that minority of people who are informed about this.
And that's all it is; some damned Internet meme, and a minor one. Nobody will remember it in 5, 10, 15 years.
Do you know Dancing Baby? 1996 3D video meme of a 3D rendered dancing baby: probably the world's first viral video.
Do you remember people saying a delayed "...not!" at the end of a sentence to negate it? "I wanna be your friend ... NOT!"
Same thing, only smaller.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
The blame for what he was forced to do belongs with the officials that were violating the constitution. They should be exiled for failing to uphold their oaths. Instead, Snowden is in exile. Snowden was just the first honorable American to come across the information and he did his best to expose it safely, by giving it to journalists to release, after consulting with the government. We can't expect whistle blowers t…
> As long as they act in good faith and reasonably, they should be protected. I agree 100%.
You realize Snowden didn’t just dump all of these documents on a torrent site right? Given that he’s not a professional journalist and was risking his freedom he grabbed what he could and took it to reputable journalists to do the work of ensuring the leak doesn’t endanger others without a good reason. What else do you expect him to do? If he’d gone to a superior he’d be rotting in jail and we would have no evidence of mass surveillance in this country.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#578Paid a lot of money for that pardon I reckon even though he was clearly a criminal. The trump admin is such a sham. So glad that they are out of power - hopefully forever for the sake of the Us.
That's what I was thinking too but it is possible he'd be pardoned by any other president for the right amount. I'd just think Trump would be the easiest to obtain a paid pardon from.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are such weird arguments. The origins are irrelevant because it wasn't just a trick pulled on normies; white supremacists also fell for the joke. Once they started genuinely using the gesture it did become a symbol of hate. The Wikipedia article you linked says exactly that a few paragraphs below the paragraph you quoted.
> white supremacists also fell for the joke. Once they started genuinely using the gesture it did become a symbol of hate. [citation needed]
White supremacists didn't "fall" for the joke; they were obviously instantly infatuated with the idea of hijacking a thoroughly familiar, positive hand gesture for their purposes.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#580Paid a lot of money for that pardon I reckon even though he was clearly a criminal. The trump admin is such a sham. So glad that they are out of power - hopefully forever for the sake of the Us.
That's what I was thinking too but it is possible he'd be pardoned by any other president for the right amount. I'd just think Trump would be the easiest to obtain a paid pardon from. (cash-for-pardon)