Free Republic

Apparently, part of his prep was trying to shift his sleep schedule later.

Didn't work.

An often-overooked but absolutely awful decision.

It’s not “eldest”, but the most senior in terms of time in that rank. If date of rank is equal, the. It goes by overall time in service.

"paying in advance isn’t a tip anyway, it is telling someone what you will pay them to deliver your package to you, like the USPS or Fed-Ex.

Exactly. But hear me out....

The pre-tip feature is a way for customers to induce drivers to accept that order for pickup. Let's say someone is craving chips and guacamole from Chipotle, and it is a 20 minute drive, 8 miles. Now the driving fee is solely distance based, and the suggested tip on a $5 order may be 1$. So the total amount a driver would normally be offered for this order might be calculated at $4.00. And no driver is really going to want to accept that order.

So, the customer has an opportunity to add an additional incentive up front by promising a $6 tip. The pickup is now for $10, and a driver may well accept that. What too often happens is that the driver accepts the offer expecting $10, but after the pickup, the customer has the ability to reduce the tip - supposed to be just for bad service but some customers abuse this - and zeros it out. So now, the pickup that was supposed to pay $10 now only pays $4, and the scummy customer is laughing because they pocketed the promised tip themselves.

That's a bad system. However, the customer having the chance to offer that "pre-tip" is a good idea because it essentially is freedom of contract. Suppose you've ordered $150 worth of food from a decent restaurant, and don't want it getting cold waiting for a driver to accept the order. So, you offer an extra $20 for the order to be picked up, which will happen very quickly once it gets posted for drivers. You get your food dast, driver may have made $40 total, and it's a win-win.

Alternatively, you could just not call it a "tip" anymore and make it irrevocable, but that would screw the drive in terms of taxes and also reward bad service. That's why simply posting the percentage of times a given customer (and yo don't know their nes or anything) paid the promised pre-tip would be a fair solution.

Drivers should have the option to reflect "tip satisfaction" or something when picking up so the customer gets credit.

The reason that isn't done is 1) bad tipping has some "demographic" components, and the companies don't want to be accused of discrimination, and 2) the driving company gets their fee regardless of whether the drivers get tipped. I road along with my son when he was doing this one summer, and you can see the trends fast. But knowing that your customer has been highly rated by other drivers would be huge.

It's not "quitting". Each pickup is completely up to each driver whether to accept or turn down, and each pickup comes priced with an estimated tip that the customer can increase or not when placing the order.

What some sleazy customers do is enter a higher projected tip when placing the order, which induces drivers to accept their order, but then change it after delivery to zero tip. This is a common practices among certain ethnicities....

This is a big deal with food deliveries because the tip is often up to 50% of the order, sometimes more. That commonly happens when people order a small amount of food. So essentially, they're deliberately lying to drivers to get them to pick up an order that otherwise isn't worth their time.

Obviously, that's a different issue if the driver screws something up. But customers who always bait and switch on tips should have that exposed.

If you want to help those drivers, let them see the tipping history of their prospective customers - just the percentage of tip that customer has given over time.

Drivers will stop servicing those customers who are lousy tippers, which will mean fewer unproductive trips and higher average wages.

The selection of topics itself is susceptible to bias.

Each moderator - one chosen by each side - gets to ask questions of both candidates so they get asked both "friendly" and unfriendly" questions. Instead of pretending the moderators are unbiased, use their bias to ensure fairness.

Like lawyers for each side getting to ask questions of witnesses on direct and cross examination. That would give each candidate a chance to talk about both their positive agenda/proposals, as well as have to respond to criticisms.

No, it's "anyone who repeats mindlessly Russian propaganda" is a Russian troll. Get it right.

And once again, the truth is that Russia didn't invade Ukraine because Russian leadership was afraid of NATO. Russia only felt free to invade Ukraine because that leadership wasn't afraid of NATO.

Any reasonably well-informed, honest person knows that to be true, or at least can reason it out.

You already had with your "typical Zeeper" comment in your first post. Or did you forget?

I hope Putin is paying you guys well, because otherwise, you're just an embarassment.

Typical Russia toady.

Our borders aren't secure because Biden chooses not to secure them, not because of Ukraine. Proof of that is that Biden opened the borders long before Ukraine ever happened. And if the war in Ukraine ended tomorrow, Biden still wouldn't shut the border.

Those who pretend that the war in Ukraine has anything to do with the southern border are just repeating Russian propaganda.

Exactly. It's a crap excuse belied by their own willingness to provoke re-armament in Europe, among the very countries they supposedly fear.

It's just an excuse, not the actual reason.

No idea what you’re blabbering about...

Sure you don't. You respond only to the very first part of my post, ignore the rest, and now claim "I don't know what you're talking about" when I point out what you ignored.

As I said, some people who believe propaganda are just gullible, and some are deliberately dishonest.

If you consider Russian HISTORY to be ‘propaganda’, then so be it. But since our version of Russian History and the European version of Russian History PERFECTLY MATCH IT, regarding how Russia has been invaded, then, I guess they must be all lying.

Nice job avoiding the entire argument that the Russian leadership isn't afraid. So I'll count you among the dishonest rather than just the ignorant.

But to address the red herring you raised about propaganda versus history, exactly which "history" are you talking about? The invasion of Russia by Napoleon in 1812? The invasions by Germany in 1914 and 1941? Because if you go just by that "history", then the French must still be afraid of being invaded by Germany, just as they were in 1870, 1914, and 1940. Because that's "history" too, right? But the French aren't afraid of being invaded by Germany. So...why not?

The answer is because history didn't stop at the end of WW2, and Russia (at least the leadership) and France both know that. Current Russia leadership is fully aware that after WW2, the Soviet Union/Russia became a nuclear armed superpower, and since the fall of the Soviet Union more than two decades ago, western militaries have dwindled to the point where the Germans don't even have a single deployable tank brigade. Not one.

You don't think the Russians know that?

Further, pacifist movements throughout western Europe (often financed/supported by Russia itself) wrought similar havoc among the military establishments throughout NATO. The nations of NATO had zero stomach for anything approaching offensive military operations against anyone, and that pacifism was only growing stronger over time.

You don't think Russian leadership was perfectly aware of that reality either?

Because I do. And that's exactly why they believed they could get away with this attempted conquest of Ukraine without triggering NATO military intervention. In other words, Russia invaded Ukraine because it wasn't afraid of NATO.

Russia was afraid of being invaded. You can make the claim that it was irrational, but there is a lot of HISTORY to back that up, at least in their minds.

Oh, I'm sure many of the Russian people may have believed that, because they've been fed it as a useful line of propaganda by their own government. Gullible westerners have accepted and repeated that as well. But apart from being irrational, it is clear from the actions of the government that the Russian leadership itself did not share that fear:

First, Ukraine was nowhere near being admitted to NATO -- wasn't even on a timeline of any kind. And if it ever got to the point when there was the typical years-long timeline set, Russia knows that it takes a long time for that to happen, with lots of debates, benchmarks, etc., and that any one single member state could stop it. So the alleged "fear" of Ukrainian ascension to NATO was wildly premature.

Second, if Russia truly was (even if irrationally) afraid of invasion from the West, then why risk provoking the feared NATO into a military confrontation by invading Ukraine?? Russia's invasion of Ukraine actually strengthened NATO. Keeping Sweden and Finland out of NATO has been a major strategic goal of Russia for many decades, but this war caused that exact thing to happen. It further triggered significant rearmament by member states in the exact alliance Russia supposedly feared. That is not the action of a nation afraid of western invasion.

And Third, Russia was perhaps a three years away from having most major NATO powers completely dependent upon Russian fossil fuels. That alone would have been the perfect guarantee that Russia wouldn't be invaded, and Russian leadership knew that. But they choose to give up that additional guarantee of no western invasion to invade Ukraine. Again, emphatically not the action of a country motivated by fear of conflict with the West.

Anyway, that wasn’t why they invaded Ukraine, although the invasion may have happened later anyway.

Well, if you agree that isn't why they invaded Ukraine, then why do Trump and so many others make that patently false claim? Ignorance, or dishonesty? Because those are the only two options.

I just can't stand the dishonesty. If a budget hawk wants to argue "we shouldn't be spending a penny of U.S. taxpayer money on Ukraine", I respect that position. It's a legitimate one and wouldn't cause me to withhold a vote even though I disagree and believe it is in the interests of the U.S..

But the idea that Russia invaded Ukraine because it was afraid of being attacked by NATO is absurd. Anyone who makes that point is either dishonest, or ignorant. From the top down. And either way, knowingly or not, they're advancing false Russian propaganda.

"Russia attacked Ukraine because of NATO expansion" is a pathetic joke of an argument. If Russia truly feared NATO, the last thing it would have done was antagonize NATO by invading Ukraine. Russia felt free to invade Ukraine precisely because it didn't fear NATO.

And what was there to fear? The strongest economic powers in Europe were in the process of letting their militaries atrophy into almost nothing. No honest person with half a brain thought that NATO was getting ready to invade Russia. Furthermore, as everybody including Putin knows, Russia's nuclear arsenal meant that NATO would never invade Russia anyway.

The highly predictable truth was that it was only Russia's invasion of Ukraine that reinvigorated NATO. Putin was willing to risk that not because of some bogus fear of NATO, but because he wanted to grab Ukrainian territory and knew that he would lose his chance to do so if Ukraine joined NATO.

The level of dishonesty of those here who argue the opposite is staggering. Or I suppose just plain stupidity is always a possibility as well.

No. Went immediately from being sufficiently pissed at the conviction that I would vote for Trump, to being "nope, leaving that line blank."

Will never vote for someone who supports appeasing Russia. Ever.

I'm not an attorney but is not a jury's job to decide how to vote in a trial and based on what factors — not a prosecutor's? And isn't it a prosecutor's job to ensure justice is served, by prosecuting individuals accused of crimes? Yes, and yes.

I am an attorney, and the answers are "no" and "no". The jury decides facts, not law, and it is the judge's job to instruct the jury as to what facts constitute a crime. Bad instructions often result in bad verdicts.

A prosecutor's job is to promote justice, which many, many times involves deciding not to indict someone despite them being "accused" of a crime. They simply decide on their own they don't think the conduct is illegal, or that it isn't worth prosecuting, or that the facts don't support it.