US Politics: The supply chain of hot takes remains robust

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’d much rather see Gosar expelled.  But I’m glad something is happening.

Me too, but Gosar is claiming he was acting in self-defense in the video.

[HoodedCrow]

One of my friends heard anti Semitic remarks in a Walmart type store in NY. I had never heard the like in my generation. Some dude didn’t like the Hanukkah decorations. My friend said “ Hey, I’m Jewish!” and her Christian Trumpy friend chased him and told him that he was giving Trump supporters a bad name. I’ll say. Is there anything I can do other than vote?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Me too, but Gosar is claiming he was acting in self-defense in the video.

When your own family is calling you out… you can generally guess that person has gone bad.

[Kalbear]

So here's an interesting dilemma. 

Qanon folks appear to legitimately believe that they are fighting against satanic pedophiles who are harvesting their adenochrome. 

Do they have the right to shoot someone like Hillary Clinton if they happen to be near her because they have a reasonable fear for their life? Or are wanting to protect others? 

[Week]

4 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

You're the one who characterized it as "crying" and then called it "fake".  It looked to me like a panic attack.

He should receive a Razzie for that performance.

I see the judge continues to impress:

 

[Ran]

39 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Does putting yourself in a situation likely to be dangerous, while carrying a threatening weapon, putting other people in fear of their own life and safety, giving them then the right to self defense also qualify as self defence?

Open carry states such as Wisconsin presuppose that a person openly carrying a weapon in public  is not in itself a cause to fear for your life and safety such that you are justified in attacking them or attempting to disarm them.

If you fear for your life and safety when someone is walking around with a gun, you walk the other way, not charge at them or chase them when they are running away from you.

 

39 minutes ago, maarsen said:

I can't see how escalating a situation gives you the right to then claim self defense when your actions were the ones that created the dangerous situation. 

There is testimony that it seemed there were more armed than unarmed people out on the streets, referring to protesters, and there's quite a lot of footage to this effect -- Ziminski and Grosskreutz had pistols, the unknown third party who fired off a few shots after Rittenhouse did had a pistol of some sort, there's a photo or video footage of a protester brandishing a gun at a videographer, and that's before we even get to the armed milita types.

Rittenhouse being armed did not "escalate" the situation, because lots of people were armed. The question is whether he acted in some provocative way leading to Rosenbaum's attack, by which they mean did he do something specific to provoke Rosenbaum, not simply his living and breathing or carrying a weapon. 

The US laws on  guns are crazy. The culture on guns in the US is crazy. But this particular case should be decided by the law as it actually is, not as we would want it to be.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, Kalsandra said:

So here's an interesting dilemma. 

Qanon folks appear to legitimately believe that they are fighting against satanic pedophiles who are harvesting their adenochrome. 

Do they have the right to shoot someone like Hillary Clinton if they happen to be near her because they have a reasonable fear for their life? Or are wanting to protect others? 

No.  The standard isn’t that subjective.  No reasonable person believes that the allegations about Clinton have a shred of credibility.

I agree the current standard is too forgiving on the use of force.  Even under this standard that argument fails.

[Mister Smikes]

41 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Does putting yourself in a situation likely to be dangerous, while carrying a threatening weapon, putting other people in fear of their own life and safety, giving them then the right to self defense also qualify as self defence?

No.  Open-carrying a rifle in an open carry state does is not, and cannot be, considered a provocation depriving one of the right of self defense.  (And no, the fact that he is under-age is not relevant to this analysis, since that does not give adversaries the right to attack him).

Was it unwise for him to wander around Kenosha, on the naive belief that yelling "anyone want first aid" or "friendly friendly friendly" would protect him from attack?  Certainly.  But it was by accident that he allowed himself to be separated from his companion, who might have given him some backup.

But the mere fact that he became vulnerable to attack did not give others the right to attack him.

[sologdin]

The situation is nonetheless to be viewed from the perspective of the defendant's situation, and not from the perspective of outsiders who think, for their own tribalistic reasons, that the defendant's life is worth less than those of his attackers.

the standard would likely be more something like 'reasonable person in the defendant's circumstances'--in husserlian terms, the defendant's horizon of awareness but not the defendant's actual beliefs.  here's the most recent wisconsin supreme court case i'm seeing on this:

Quote

"A jury must be instructed on self-defense when a reasonable jury could find that a prudent person in the position of the defendant under the circumstances existing at the time of the incident could believe that he was exercising the privilege of self-defense." State v. Stietz, 2017 WI 58, ¶15, 375 Wis. 2d 572,  895 N.W.2d 796. We recently described this benchmark as a low bar which only requires the accused to produce some evidence to support the proposed instruction. Id., ¶16. This standard is met even if the evidence is "weak, insufficient, inconsistent, or of doubtful credibility." Id., ¶17 (quoting another source). Furthermore, circuit courts must not weigh the evidence; rather, the evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to the defendant. Id., ¶¶13, 18. The instruction should be given based on this low modicum of evidence "unless the evidence is rebutted by the prosecution to the extent that 'no rational jury could entertain a reasonable doubt.'" State v. Schuman, 226 Wis. 2d 398, 404, 595 N.W.2d 86 (Ct. App. 1999).

state v. johnson, 961 N.W.2d 18, 2021 WI 61. that all seems fairly standard and plausible. once instructed, the jury's tribalistic beliefs take over.  good times.

 

Qanon folks appear to legitimately believe that they are fighting against satanic pedophiles who are harvesting their adenochrome. 

agreed with scot.  qanonism and other internet conspiracism is not objectively reasonable; i suspect there's lotsa cases on how to determine this, but normally there needs to be 'substantial evidence' underlying a belief for the law to think of it as reasonable--that's a quantum greater than a scintilla but less than a preponderance. the comical thing is that in the constitutional law of religion, beliefs need only be 'sincerely held' under a subjective standard in order to be protected; there is no objective reasonableness control on it.  the disaster you envision becomes a living OAC dystopia if the religious belief standard is imported to criminal law. right now, though, qanonism may be subject to first amendment protection but not self-defense in criminal law.

if this sort of fear authorized preemptive lethal self-defense such as warranted by qanonist belief, we'd've already gone through an objectivist apocalypse, as i've detailed here, as objectivism kinda regards us all as zombies to be shot.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

If you take an assault rifle to a protest, you're preparing for a fight to the death.
If you're a person who's willing to transform a protest into a fight to the death, you're a piece of shit.

It's easy to claim self-defense once you've created the situation in which you "had to" use lethal force to defend yourself.
The fact that the prosecution's job (proving Rittenhouse's intent beyond a reasonable doubt) is difficult does not absolve him of his responsibility in creating the situation for which he is being tried. Even if we did give him the benefit of the doubt, he's still the one who brought his assault rifle isn't he? For that alone, I wish he would go to jail.

This is a point too many rightwing pro-gunners refuse to acknowledge. If you have a gun on you, any place you are going you are bringing with you a mindset of killing someone/something else. If not, then you're not a responsible gun owner. They're not toys. It's why I don't (and won't ever) own a gun for self-defense. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

2 hours ago, Mister Smikes said:

If 2 people are trying to kill you (or if you are in reasonable fear that they are trying to kill you), and one has a gun, and the other does not, you are not required to permit to permit the one without a gun to wrestle your gun away from you.   Because if you do, your enemies will have 2 guns, and you will be rendered incapable of defending yourself.

And even if only 1 person is trying to kill you, you are not required to let him take your gun merely because he is currently unarmed.  He will be armed in a second or a minute if you do not stop him from taking your gun.

Good point. This is why you shouldn't be carrying guns around with you.

[ThinkerX]

29 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

No.  The standard isn’t that subjective.  No reasonable person believes that the allegations about Clinton have a shred of credibility.

I agree the current standard is too forgiving on the use of force.  Even under this standard that argument fails.

problem is, a large minority of the populace DOES believe such claims to be factual, rather than subjective.  I STILL see all sorts of right wing claims about 'Killary' which those making them deem factual beyond reasonable dispute.  Combined with this is utter contempt for the government (all decisions that do not go their way being invalid).

Rittenhouse getting off does open the door to legitimizing right wing violence that would normally be harshly prosecuted.

[Ran]

Just now, ThinkerX said:

problem is, a large minority of the populace DOES believe such claims to be factual, rather than subjective. 

We've already gone through this with the "Pizzagate" idiot who was sentenced to four years imprisonment for shooting up  Comet Pizza in DC.

The standard isn't "believe something really truly", it's whether a "reasonable person" would believe something is true. The courts are never going to find conspiracy nuts who proceed to commit crimes based on those delusional beliefs are acting as reasonable persons.

Just now, ThinkerX said:

Rittenhouse getting off does open the door to legitimizing right wing violence that would normally be harshly prosecuted.

No it doesn't. The laws have not changed one bit. People are giving this trial way more power than it actually has.

[sologdin]

This is a point too many rightwing pro-gunners refuse to acknowledge. 

OAC doctrine has three principal articles:

a) arms are required to defend citizens against foreign invasion

b) arms are required to defend citizens against the public tyranny of the state

c) arms are required to defend citizens against the private tyranny of lumpenized antisocial nihilism

we know the first one is silly, considering that any enemy who defeats the US armed services and nuclear force will not be defeated by trump's voters, no matter how many or how agitated, who could not even seize an undefended and unfortified structure. the second has been tested by the US civil war and later incidents, revealed thereby to be manifestly futile. all that remains is the third one, which the supreme court, in recognizing the abject worthlessness of the other two, incorporated into the second amendment in what appears to be the worst retcon of all time.

NB that the blade itself incites to deeds of violence is not one of their principal articles.

[Larry of the Lawn]

40 minutes ago, sologdin said:

as i've detailed here

C'mon, man, give a little warning before posting erotica in the politics thread

[Altherion]

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

If you take an assault rifle to a protest, you're preparing for a fight to the death.

Not to an American "protest" -- it appears to be reasonably standard practice in states where open carry is allowed. More specifically, a lot of people at the confrontation where this happened had guns so the surprising thing is actually not that some people were shot, but that it was only this one teenager who killed anyone.

In matters not related to this incident, October's inflation report came out a couple of days ago and the official price increase relative to the previous October is 6.2%. This is significantly higher than the expected 5.9% and is the largest annual increase in over three decades (since December 1990). The most immediate effect of this on the political scene is that it is quite likely to make Senator Manchin less amenable to the reconciliation bill currently being negotiated in the House:

Quote

 

"By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not 'transitory' and is instead getting worse," he said in a tweet, following the release of the latest Consumer Price Index for October, which recorded a 6.2 percent increase, year over year, according to data Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day," Manchin said.

He has said before he's concerned a multitrillion-dollar spending package would worsen inflation and that he can't vote for a bill in good conscience that would expand social programs and that would "irresponsibly" add trillions in national debt.

 

 

[DanteGabriel]

58 minutes ago, Week said:

I see the judge continues to impress:

 

What the suffering fuck did I just watch.

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Altherion said:

The most immediate effect of this on the political scene is that it is quite likely to make Senator Manchin less amenable to the reconciliation bill currently being negotiated in the House:

One silver lining on this is that Larry Summers, the veritable whining Cassandra (sorry Kal) on inflation who also is very ideologically aligned with Manchin when it comes to this, still supports the reconciliation bill:

Quote

But Summers also said that the bills Biden is ushering through Congress would not contribute to inflation. 

“The 10 years of the two spending bills together, A, are less than the one year of what they did last spring and, B, unlike what they did last spring, are paid for by tax increases,” Summers said.

“I don’t think that’s an inflation problem. I think a lot of it is vitally needed investments in the future of our country.”

 

[HoodedCrow]

Deadwood, modern times!

[Varysblackfyre321]

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The very fact of openly carrying an assault rifle as a counter-protester is already a threat

Legally no, and Rittenhouse wasn’t there as a counter-protester.

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

And if it's true he started aiming his rifle at people prior to the attack, then Rittenhouse was acting in a threatening manner on top of that, inciting attacks on his person.

Do you have any evidence that any of those people were the people who attacked him? 
Also, once he began to flee, disengage peacefully, do you seriously whatever attack implemented on him is justified by virtue of him having brought a gun? If he was stabbed or appears about to be shot, he’s disallowed from any type of self-defense?

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Again, if a counter-protester

Not a counter-protester.

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

If they are part of an extremist movement, they are basically premeditating a homicide.

Do you understand you’re not legally allowed to beat someone or kill someone for being apart of an “extremist” views in America?

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The fact that this is difficult to prove in a court of law doesn't change the fact that we all know this.

We don’t.

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

That kid wanted to kill leftist activists.

Name one leftist activist he killed who wasn’t in the commission of assaulting him.

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The fact that Rittenhouse can claim self-defense in his case is due to US laws being deeply problematic in the first place ; no one should be absolved of the responsibility of escalating a confrontation.

Eh.

5 hours ago, Rippounet said:

assuming that one can plead "not knowing" what was likely to happen because of their actions, there is also the "duty to retreat" if you can avoid a dangerous confrontation.

But we see in the video he already did in the video.

It seems that you think once he arrived at the protest, any lefty should had moral and legal impunity to do whatever they wanted under the guise of him “threatening” them.