"I was not in my uniform, and at no point in my interaction with the staff did I identify myself as a member of the law enforcement community," Sheriff Owens said. "At no point did I indicate my position, nor did I ask the responders to do anything that they would not, had not, or have not done for anyone else who makes a business dispute call."

That's disingenuous. The 911 operator, who works for the police department, obviously knows the name of the sheriff. Any police department flags calls from police officers, including non-emergency calls. The sheriff should have known better than to waste public resources to strongarm a business when he could have simply emailed a complaint to corporate.

.ml = Marxism-Leninism

This wasn't obvious to me because ML could also mean the country of Mali or machine learning, but based on their content and moderation patterns, it's unmistakable that the ".ml" in Lemmy instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml stands for Marxism-Leninism.

Hope that clears things up.

I know that and that's why I said .ml could stand for the country of Mali. However, the .ml in lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml clearly stands for Marxism-Leninism, not Mali, the same way the .tv domain suffix often stands for television, not Tuvalu.

lemmy.ml has changed their level of transparency about their political leanings twice. Look at the history of their home page description:

April 2021 to June 2021:

The flagship instance of lemmy.

June 2021 to November 2022:

A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

November 2022 to now:

A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

Who's "we"? Sounds like a proportionate response to me.

Not necessarily a happy ending.

From the comments:

So did Dr. Baxter end up waiving the right of inspection repairs? A proper remedy in this case should include, at a minimum, the seller paying for any identified repairs (given that Dr. Baxter was in a poor position to negotiate due to the seller's illegal behavior) and any legal costs Dr. Baxter has incurred.

If the seller's (and, frankly, the buyer's) agents want to show they take this seriously, they should act to make sure that, one way or another, none of those costs are incurred by Dr. Baxter.

@Matt Thanks for reading and commenting. She did waive the right of inspection repairs, yes. She says it's a decision that she now regrets but at the time she was scared of the entire sale falling through.

It is lemmy.ml's fault that their moderators have been blocking users who criticize China or Russia from unrelated communities like the Linux one. A user's ability to participate in a Linux community should not depend on them refraining from posting criticism about China or Russia. Defederation protects lemmy.world users from having to self-censor themselves politically to participate in general interest communities.

Your conspiracy theory accusing Meta of being responsible for lemmy.world users wanting to defederate from lemmy.ml is ridiculous. Nobody forced lemmy.ml moderators to block people who criticize China, Russia, or Marxism-Leninism from all of their communities.

These lemmy.ml moderators made these bad choices all by themselves without Meta's help, and lemmy.world has the right to exclude those communities through defederation so that no lemmy.world user has to worry about whether their comment to a front page post goes against a lemmy.ml moderator's political ideology.

Calling Leninism "moderate left" is like calling Project 2025 "moderate right".

Same policies, my ass. Harris supports abortion rights, LGBT rights, more progressive tax policies, and has a stronger foreign policy strategy with respect to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, among many other policy positions that are superior to Trump's. On the other hand, Trump supports the far-right vision of Project 2025 and wants to impose ridiculously high tariffs on imported goods to sharply increase the cost of living for most Americans. Most Lemmy readers see right through your bothsidesism.

We criticize Russia-backed propaganda campaigns such as Tenet Media because they disinform voters to promote Trump, who is content with Ukraine being annexed by Russia. Crying Russophobia doesn't excuse the fact that Russia sees Trump as a tool to further Russian imperialism.

Nobody is saying that there should be no moderation at all. What we are saying is that lemmy.ml moderators tend to remove users and content that are seen as even mildly critical of China, Russia, or Marxism-Leninism, and then sometimes hide the evidence of the removals from the modlog. That's not acceptable to many people, including me.

Here's the post I think Rhaedas is referring to.

Any questions?

News tip submission forms for Roanoke, Virginia:

• The Roanoke Times
• WSLS (NBC)
• WDBJ (CBS)
• WFXR (Fox)

@UnpopularCrow, since you have more information about this than the rest of us, would you mind submitting the details to these news organizations?

They're nothing special. Look up "shredded memory foam pillow" on your favorite big retailer's website and you'll find a better deal, especially when you add the shipping fee.

When you link a Wikipedia article, you can expect others to read it and call you out on it when it doesn't say what you claim it says. Wikipedia is very consistent with labelling fascism as far-right.

I showed clear evidence that Harris had much better policies than Trump on abortion rights, LGBT rights, taxation, and foreign policy with respect to Ukraine, and now you're trying to change the topic. Sure, I can play that game.

Trump has worse positions on Israel, fossil fuels, and border policies. All you have to do is look at what he said during the debate:

Israel

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But when she mentions about Israel all of a sudden -- she hates Israel. She wouldn't even meet with Netanyahu when he went to Congress to make a very important speech. She refused to be there because she was at a sorority party of hers. She wanted to go to the sorority party. She hates Israel. If she's president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now. And I've been pretty good at predictions. And I hope I'm wrong about that one. She hates Israel.

Fossil fuels

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: She wants to confiscate your guns and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania. If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one. Just to finish one thing, so important in my opinion, so, I got the oil business going like nobody has ever done before. They took, when they took over, they got rid of it, started getting rid of it, and the prices were going up the roof. They immediately let these guys go to where they were. I would have been five times, four times, five times higher because you're talking about 3 1/2 years ago. They got it up to where I was because they had no choice. Because the prices of energy were quadrupling and doubling. You saw what happened to gasoline. So, they said let's go back to Trump. But if she won the election, the day after that election, they'll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We'll go back to windmills and we'll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out.

Border policies

DAVID MUIR: Let me continue on immigration. It was what you wanted to talk about earlier. So let's get back to your deportation proposal that the vice president has reacted to as well. President Trump, you called this the largest domestic deportation operation in the history of our country. You say you would use the National Guard. You say if things get out of control you'd have no problem using the U.S. military.

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: With local police.

DAVID MUIR: You also said you would use local police. How would you deport 11 million undocumented immigrants? I know you believe that number is much higher. Take us through this. What does this look like? Will authorities be going door to door in this country?

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. It is much higher because of them. They allowed criminals. Many, many, millions of criminals. They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals. They allowed people to come in, drug dealers, to come into our country, and they're now in the United States. And told by their countries like Venezuela don't ever come back or we're going to kill you. Do you know that crime in Venezuela and crime in countries all over the world is way down? You know why? Because they've taken their criminals off the street and they've given them to her to put into our country. And this will be one of the greatest mistakes in history for them to allow -- and I think they probably did it because they think they're going to get votes. But it's not worth it. Because they're destroying the fabric of our country by what they've done. There's never been anything done like this at all. They've destroyed the fabric of our country. Millions of people let in. And all over the world crime is down. All over the world except here. Crime here is up and through the roof. Despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof. And we have a new form of crime. It's called migrant crime. And it's happening at levels that nobody thought possible.

DAVID MUIR: President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country

And there you have it. Harris leads on abortion rights, LGBT rights, taxation, foreign policy, energy, immigration, and many more issues.

Russian forces invaded Donbas in August 2014, when Petro Poroshenko was the president of Ukraine. Russian propaganda tries to deny the fact that Russia invaded Donbas in 2014, but the evidence is crystal clear.

What's bogus is you trying to ignore Harris's entire platform because it's clearly superior to Trump's platform. You're hoping that people don't compare the two platforms because anyone who is able to read can see that Harris has better policy positions across the board, including in abortion rights, LGBT rights, taxation, foreign policy, energy, and immigration.

In the debate, as I have shown in the parts that I quoted, Trump also claims that he "wouldn't be outdone" and would "do it harder and meaner" on the topics that you are pretending to care about. That is what people are expected to do in a debate. Even then, Trump lied about immigrants eating cats and dogs, while Harris acknowledged Palestinians' right to self-determination.

Not sure why you bother with Lemmy when your pro-Trump rhetoric is a better fit for Gab and Truth Social.

"Said any of that with her chest"? This isn't an Ariana Grande song. Do you know how ridiculous you sound, when Harris literally covered all of these issues in her platform, which I quoted because you are trying to pretend that she isn't "committed" to them?

Here's Trump's 2024 platform on the same issues:

6. Knowledge and Skills, Not CRT and Gender Indoctrination

Republicans will ensure children are taught fundamentals like Reading, History, Science, and Math, not Leftwing propaganda. We will defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children using Federal Taxpayer Dollars.

5. Republicans Will End Left-wing Gender Insanity

We will keep men out of women’s sports, ban Taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, and stop Taxpayer-funded Schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden’s radical rewrite of Title IX Education Regulations, and restore protections for women and girls.

4. Republicans Will Protect and Defend a Vote of the People, from within the States, on the Issue of Life

We proudly stand for families and Life. We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).

1. Rebalance Trade

Republicans will support baseline Tariffs on Foreign-made goods, pass the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act, and respond to unfair Trading practices.

Trump's platform does not mention Russia or Ukraine at all, which is not surprising considering that Russian state media employees are bankrolling pro-Trump propaganda. Trump refused to answer the question "Do you want Ukraine to win this war?" two times in the debate.

I'll take Harris's platform over Trump's platform any time, any day. You would have to be delusional or intentionally lying to claim that Harris's and Trump's policies are "the same".

Since you linked to another Wikipedia article, you should know that Wikipedia defines fascism as far-right:

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

This browser extension bypasses the paywall.

No, the article you linked says "The Third Position is a set of neo-fascist political ideologies". It does not say that fascism in general is neither left or right. I'm not talking about the word "fascist" used as an insult.

Your quote from the article describes the Third Position, not fascism in general. It does not say that fascism in general is neither left nor right. No need to get mad because you misread a Wikipedia article.

Fascism is the dictionary definition of far-right politics. You'd be hard pressed to name a similarly prominent political ideology that is even father to the right than fascism. Likewise, Leninism's revolutionary ideals place the ideology in the far left, despite its implementations not achieving those ideals. An ideology being authoritarian doesn't make it moderate on the left-right scale. Instead, the more authoritarian governments tend to be hard left/right instead of moderate left/right.

I have to disagree about right-wing ideology being about "liberty and freedom". That's the realm of libertarianism, not right-wing politics. Libertarians in the U.S. tend to be right-wing, but libertarianism and right-wing politics are distinct ideologies. Right-wing politics emphasize traditional values, nationalism, and hierarchial social structures.

You're lying, because Harris covered all of the policies I mentioned in her platform:

Restore and Protect Reproductive Freedoms

Vice President Harris and Governor Walz trust women to make decisions about their own bodies, and not have the government tell them what to do.

Donald Trump handpicked members of the United States Supreme Court to take away reproductive freedom – and now he brags about it. In his words, “I did it, and I’m proud to have done it.” He even called for punishment for women who have an abortion.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Vice President Harris has driven the Administration’s strategy to defend reproductive freedom and safeguard the privacy of patients and providers. As Governor, Tim Walz led Minnesota to become the first state to pass a law protecting a woman’s right to choose following the overturning of Roe. Vice President Harris has traveled America and heard the stories of women hurt by Trump abortion bans. Stories of couples just trying to grow their family, cut off in the middle of IVF treatments. Stories of women miscarrying in parking lots, developing sepsis, losing the ability to ever have children again — all because doctors are afraid they may go to jail for caring for their patients. As President, she will never allow a national abortion ban to become law. And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom nationwide, she will sign it.

Protect Civil Rights and Freedoms

As President, she’ll fight to pass the Equality Act to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in health care, housing, education, and more into law.

Cut Taxes for Middle Class Families

Vice President Harris and Governor Walz believe that working families deserve a break. That’s why under their plan more than 100 million working and middle-class Americans will get a tax cut. They will do this by restoring two tax cuts designed to help middle class and working Americans: the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Through these two programs, millions of Americans get to keep more of their hard-earned income. They will also expand the Child Tax Credit to provide a $6,000 tax cut to families with newborn children. They believe no child in America should live in poverty, and these actions would have a historic impact.

Unlike Donald Trump, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz are committed to ensuring no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes. They believe that we need to chart a New Way Forward by both making our tax system fairer and prioritizing investment and innovation. They will ensure the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations pay their fair share, so we can take action to build up the middle class while reducing the deficit. This includes rolling back Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, enacting a billionaire minimum tax, quadrupling the tax on stock buybacks, and other reforms to ensure the very wealthy are playing by the same rules as the middle class. Under her plan, the tax rate on long-term capital gains for those earning a million dollars a year or more will be 28 percent, because when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth and creates jobs, which makes our economy stronger.

Stand With Our Allies, Stand Up to Dictators, and Lead on the World Stage

Five days before Russia attacked Ukraine, she met with President Zelenskyy to warn him about Russia’s plan to invade and helped mobilize a global response of more than 50 countries to help Ukraine defend itself against Vladimir Putin’s brutal aggression. And she has worked with our allies to ensure NATO is stronger than ever.

I agree with you on preferring the US sending support to Ukraine in the form of equipment and strategic guidance instead of troops at this stage. European countries have a different balance of considerations due to their proximity to Russia, and I trust them to make the right choice on the level of support to provide.

The extension supports over 500 sites and needs to modify the page to show the paywalled content, so the permission list includes over 500 domains. There's no good alternative to these permissions. You can inspect the source code to verify that the extension's behavior is legitimate.

The context is that Trump has had a long history of making sexual comments such as "grab them by the pussy" and comments on the size of Arnold Palmer's penis.

The other part of the context is that your entire Lemmy comment history is full of Trump apologia. You are the only person in this comment chain who is trying to explain away Trump's obvious sexual innuendo as something else, when the video is right there for everyone to see. And a user named "damnedfurry" accusing someone else of being a "pornsick coomer" for calling out Trump reeks of projection.

You must be mistaking Lemmy for Truth Social, because nobody on Lemmy is buying your garbage.

You're calling fascists "moderate right" and liberal democrats "far-right" because Nazis did some things that you agree with? What exactly did the Nazis do that makes you think fascism is more moderate on the left-right axis than liberal democracy? It looks like you're either completely ignoring the social policies of fascism, or your understanding of the terms "moderate right" and "far-right" is way out of line with how most people understand them.

I'll take Wikipedia over a Lemmy comment with no sources that is arguing that fascism is more moderate than it actually is. The Wikipedia articles I linked to are cited, and the citations look very credible to me.

(I'm fully aware of the two-axis political model you mentioned, which is why I distinguished libertarianism from right-wing politics even though libertarians in the U.S. tend to be right-wing.)

Obviously, I am thinking for myself by rejecting your argument that fascism is "not hard right wing". And you still haven't provided any sources for your argument. It's clear to me that fascism is both far-right and authoritarian, and being authoritarian doesn't prevent fascism from being far-right.

Imagine looking at this and desperately sanewashing Trump to pretend that he's not simulating oral sex with his mic at his pathetic rally.

Go ahead and explain in your own words what you think Trump is doing in this video.

Most people use "left" to refer to anti-capitalism, be it Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, etc, and not to refer to Capitalism but with large safety nets.

Yikes, your Overton window is completely unbalanced if you think that "most people" exclude liberal progressives from the "left". Look at any mainstream news channel or read any mainstream news website, and you'll see that most people have a much more inclusive definition of left-wing politics, which encompasses center-left politics.