US Politics - Hot takes from my cold dead hands

[Larry of the Lawn]

Wish I lived in a country where your teeth were considered part of your body for medical payments purposes.  Lol medical insurance that doesn't cover your fucking mouth, eyes, or ears.  

[Martell Spy]

US added to list of ‘backsliding’ democracies for first time
‘Visible deterioration’ in US civil liberties began in at least 2019, says international thinktank

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/22/us-list-backsliding-democracies-civil-liberties-international

Quote

 

The US has been added to an annual list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time, the International IDEA thinktank has said, pointing to a “visible deterioration” it said began in 2019.

Globally, more than one in four people live in a backsliding democracy, a proportion that rises to more than two in three with the addition of authoritarian or “hybrid” regimes, according to the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

“This year we coded the United States as backsliding for the first time, but our data suggest that the backsliding episode began at least in 2019,” it said in its report.

Alexander Hudson, a co-author of the report, said: “The United States is a high-performing democracy, and even improved its performance in indicators of impartial administration (corruption and predictable enforcement) in 2020. However, the declines in civil liberties and checks on government indicate that there are serious problems with the fundamentals of democracy.”

The report says: “A historic turning point came in 2020-21 when former president Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election results in the United States.”

 

 

[sologdin]

about the law in the U.S. being concerned with justice:

i wouldn't draw this grand inference from solitary case. the state rules may allow the prosecution to appeal an improperly low sentence.  would by contrast wait for the state supreme court to handle that appeal and announce a general rule before concluding that the criminal law (which is usually one section out of many in a state code) in that single state is unconcerned with justice. that is to say, exaggerations do not help defuse.

 

did not see this twist coming 

i wonder if he was open to BLM prior to the shooting or if the trial broke him of conservative dissociative disorder. trauma is transformative, after all.  perhaps he weighed it all and reconsidered. good on him, if so.

[IheartIheartTesla]

2 hours ago, 1066 Larry said:

Wish I lived in a country where your teeth were considered part of your body for medical payments purposes.  Lol medical insurance that doesn't cover your fucking mouth, eyes, or ears.  

Dont know about the ears, but I always suspected insurance for the eyes and teeth were structured that way because those two are intertwined with cosmetic/aesthetic stuff in a way different from the rest of the body. Sure, you can have plastic surgery, for instance, but I feel as if there is a clear deliniation with health related stuff. To give an example, you could be myopic and require glasses, but the eye doctors then start offering you designer brands for frames etc...its just crazy.

[Larry of the Lawn]

41 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Dont know about the ears, but I always suspected insurance for the eyes and teeth were structured that way because those two are intertwined with cosmetic/aesthetic stuff in a way different from the rest of the body. Sure, you can have plastic surgery, for instance, but I feel as if there is a clear deliniation with health related stuff. To give an example, you could be myopic and require glasses, but the eye doctors then start offering you designer brands for frames etc...its just crazy.

Im sure that's true, but I feel like most procedures things with teeth are more medical and functional.  

Especially for adult patients.  

Aren't insurance companies already reviewing every procedure?  Doesn't seem that tough to delineate between cosmetic vs medical (and I know there is some overlap there), but like a root canal vs braces?  Crown vs Invisalign?  Even with dental insurance I'm looking at copays and payment limits and shit.   it's just nuts.  Seems fucked up to need health insurance and that doesn't even cover half of your damn head, literally.

[Zorral]

5 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

“Good cops” who ignore “bad cops”… are not “good cops”.  I say that recognizing how difficult and dangerous it is for law enforcement officers to break the blue wall of silence.

Let me repeat.  It was the cops refusing to do anything when the real criminals showed up here in June 2021 and looted the area. For two nights.  They just wouldn't. But man do they love breaking the heads of real protestors who are just marching in the streets.

Today's talkies are all about the judge and the verdict.  Every legal expert who isn't a maga white supremacist is APPALLED by how this judge behaved in the court room.  At the very least he should have recused himself.

Again, the experts remind us that it is irrelevant that Rittenhouse, white, killed white people.  The point is those white people were there in support of a black victim.  In the USA YAY white people who support Black people are no longer white -- as that twitter shows -- and are therefore acceptable targets to be treated the same way armed people have always treated Black people since BEFORE THE SECOND AMENDMENT here in the colonies   and after nationhood.  The decrees and rights to bear arms and be part of militias - vigilantes, were always granted, even obligated, to white men to keep Black people in line.  There are histories and studies and histories and studies, on and on available with all the facts in these matters.  Yet nobody arguing in favor of poor little white boy kid Rittenhouse's persecution on behalf of BLM will study or read them. Just go round and round saying the same bs.  Refusing absolutely to engage in what verdict would be if he were BLACK.  The judge's prejudice and the refusal to recognize the difference if Rittenhouse were black is at the heart of this rondelay here.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Let me repeat.  It was the cops refusing to do anything when the real criminals showed up here in June 2021 and looted the area. For two nights.  They just wouldn't. But man do they love breaking the heads of real protestors who are just marching in the streets.

Today's talkies are all about the judge and the verdict.  Every legal expert who isn't a maga white supremacist is APPALLED by how this judge behaved in the court room.  At the very least he should have recused himself.

Again, the experts remind us that it is irrelevant that Rittenhouse, white, killed white people.  The point is those white people were there in support of a black victim.  In the USA YAY white people who support Black people are no longer white -- as that twitter shows -- and are therefore acceptable targets to be treated the same way armed people have always treated Black people since BEFORE THE SECOND AMENDMENT here in the colonies   and after nationhood.  The decrees and rights to bear arms and be part of militias - vigilantes, were always granted, even obligated, to white men to keep Black people in line.  There are histories and studies and histories and studies, on and on available with all the facts in these matters.  Yet nobody arguing in favor of poor little white boy kid Rittenhouse's persecution on behalf of BLM will study or read them. Just go round and round saying the same bs.  Refusing absolutely to engage in what verdict would be if he were BLACK.  The judge's prejudice and the refusal to recognize the difference if Rittenhouse were black is at the heart of this rondelay here.

 

@sologdin

I’m curious are you appaulled by this Judge’s courtroom antics?  He was way too chatty and casual in my view but that’s… irritatingly… within norms.  What is your view?

[Ran]

20 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Refusing absolutely to engage in what verdict would be if he were BLACK. 

If the facts, evidence, and expertise and competence of legal counsel were all the same, but Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old black open carry guy (there were one or two of them with the other open carry guys, FWIW) instead of white, I genuinely believe he would have been found innocent of all charges as well. 

The Rittenhouse verdict came in on the same day as the verdict in Florida that found Andrew Coffee, a black man, not guilty of several homicide and attempted homicide charges due to self-defense when he fired back at a SWAT team that did a no-knock raid who then killed his girlfriend when they fired back at him.

This notion that no black man would ever be found innocent of murder on grounds of self-defense is not factual. You can easily find many examples with a Google search. 

 

[HoodedCrow]

I genuinely believe that Rittenhouse would have been convicted if he were black:)

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

If the facts, evidence, and expertise and competence of legal counsel were all the same, but Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old black open carry guy (there were one or two of them with the other open carry guys, FWIW) instead of white, I genuinely believe he would have been found innocent of all charges as well. 

The Rittenhouse verdict came in on the same day as the verdict in Florida that found Andrew Coffee, a black man, not guilty of several homicide and attempted homicide charges due to self-defense when he fired back at a SWAT team that did a no-knock raid who then killed his girlfriend when they fired back at him.

This notion that no black man would ever be found innocent of murder on grounds of self-defense is not factual. You can easily find many examples with a Google search. 

 

Well, Coffee was convicted on a gun charge from the same incident and is facing up to 30 years in jail while Rittenhouse is "free as fuck" but yeah, I'm sure that anecdotal example ended systemic racism in the US.

 

2 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

I genuinely believe that Rittenhouse would have been convicted if he were black:)

 

Disagree, he would have been shot before being taken into custody.

[HoodedCrow]

Coffee’s innocent girlfriend was shot dead by police. His neighbors were at grave risk, too. Open fire in a residential apartment with no knock, what do you think BFC? ( didn’t they get the wrong address anyway?)

[Centrist Simon Steele]

5 hours ago, sologdin said:

about the law in the U.S. being concerned with justice:

i wouldn't draw this grand inference from solitary case. the state rules may allow the prosecution to appeal an improperly low sentence.  would by contrast wait for the state supreme court to handle that appeal and announce a general rule before concluding that the criminal law (which is usually one section out of many in a state code) in that single state is unconcerned with justice. that is to say, exaggerations do not help defuse.

 

did not see this twist coming 

i wonder if he was open to BLM prior to the shooting or if the trial broke him of conservative dissociative disorder. trauma is transformative, after all.  perhaps he weighed it all and reconsidered. good on him, if so.

Or, perhaps, this is a calculated ploy so he doesn't get turned down for jobs, college, etc.

[Mister Smikes]

18 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

I genuinely believe that Rittenhouse would have been convicted if he were black:)

He would not have been prosecuted if he were black.  And if he had been prosecuted, everyone, from whites to blacks to democrats to republicans, would have called the prosecutors racist.  

[Ran]

19 minutes ago, 1066 Larry said:

Well, Coffee was convicted on a gun charge

Which he was actually guilty of, and would have been guilty of if he were white, Latino, etc.

Had Rittenhouse's weapon been a short-barreled rifle, he would have been found guilty on that charge. 

19 minutes ago, 1066 Larry said:

I'm sure that anecdotal example ended systemic racism in the US.

Interesting position to take in a thread full of people taking the anecdotal example of Rittenhouse's acquittal to prognosticate that it will now be "open season" on protestors.

In any case, bit of a straw man as I made no argument about systemic racism but rather pointed out the specious nature of the implicit claim that black men are never found innocent based on self-defense claims. They obviously are. 

[HoodedCrow]

No, he probably would be on death row, regardless of age.

[Morpheus]

*Here we would have the Bill Madison “everyone is now dumber” clip*

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

Which he was actually guilty of, and would have been guilty of if he were white, Latino, etc.

Had Rittenhouse's weapon been a short-barreled rifle, he would have been found guilty on that charge. 

Interesting position to take in a thread full of people taking the anecdotal example of Rittenhouse's acquittal to prognosticate that it will now be "open season" on protestors.

In any case, bit of a straw man as I made no argument about systemic racism but rather pointed out the specious nature of the implicit claim that black men are never found innocent based on self-defense claims. They obviously are. 

I was answering your straw man with my own.  No one ever claimed that no black man has ever* successfully claimed self-defense.  The reason people mention that hypothetical (what if Rittenhouse was black) is that black people are disproportionately victims of police brutality and more likely to be killed but he polcien. They are more likely to be convicted than white people and more likely to serve a longer sentence for the same crime.  

The specious argument here is to obfuscate Rittenhouse 's privilege with an example like Coffee.

[Zorral]

16 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

I genuinely believe that Rittenhouse would have been convicted if he were black:)

Absolutely.  They might even have dragged him from his cell (which Rittenhouse wasn't in, was he?) and lynched him.

 

55 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What is your view?

My view is that of legal experts with experience, judges themselves and / or attorneys.  I also agree with them that the prosecution did a really terrible job ... almost as though they wanted to, but that cannot be proved.

27 minutes ago, Ran said:

This notion that no black man would ever be found innocent of murder on grounds of self-defense is not factual.

You continue to go with equivalancies that are, in fact, not equivalancies, and refusing to even recognize  the multiple of multiples of multiple thousands of cases, both historic and contemporary, in which Black people who might have done this, were lynched and put into prison / executed. You also won't recognize the multiple of multiples of multiple thousands of cases, both historic and contemporary, far less serious, in which the Black plaintiff was convicted and incarcerated -- for life, such as possession of a marijuana cigarette.  Additionally You also won't recognize the multiple of multiples of multiple thousands of cases, both historic and contemporary, in which Black people were doing nothing all -- including children, and were shot by either cops or white people just for being Black.

This is what the controversy is about.  Rittenhouse, guilty or not -- the point again of all this anger from 'our side here in the USA YAY, is about -- the indescribable inequality between black and white within the very legal and criminal justice system.  The indescribable repression committed every single against people who are not WHITE MEN, and this is locked within the system.  The people who are applauding this, and making a hero/martyr of Rittenhouse are those people who plan to make it right out and out overt, not even bothering any longer with dog whistling and secret codes.

These are the people who honestly and completely believe the 2020 election was stolen, and can go out now and shoot anybody anywhere anytime -- and it doesn't even matter if the person shot is white.  This is what the legal experts are saying.

[sologdin]

I’m curious are you appalled by this Judge’s courtroom antics?  He was way too chatty and casual in my view but that’s… irritatingly… within norms.  What is your view?

the only thing that i saw was the video viewing moment when he sat casually next to the unguarded defendant.  that perhaps demonstrated favoritism.

 

this is a calculated ploy so he doesn't get turned down for jobs, college, etc.

also plausible.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

40 minutes ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

Or, perhaps, this is a calculated ploy so he doesn't get turned down for jobs, college, etc.

I agree with Sologdin that is plausible. However, there are jobs and colleges within the Trumpanista sphere that will now be closed to him by embracing BLM while his statement is unlikely to open doors already closed.