All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[The Cool Thatguy]

Thanksgiving is due this Thursday. Will you risk getting or spreading COVID to get dinner with relatives from other homes? Or do you plan to eat at home either alone or with those who are living in your household?

Dinner with cousins, all vaccinated and none of them flying

[Jack Dracula]

You are right in that it is really simple.

Just not what you are saying took place.

He was there for plenty of time where he did not so much lay a finger on anyone. Once other folks were actually foolish enough to attack a person holding a gun, he still let one of them live when the shot he fired was not lethal.

A while back here in Illinois, there was a two car rolling gang shootout. Kim Foxx refused to charge anyone because it amounted to mutual combat.

If the side that attacked Rittenhouse had never approached him?

What does anyone have that is anything like proof that Rittenhouse would have done anything to him?

There are sides here. Sure, one is that Rittenhouse not being there would have changed the outcome.

The obvious issue is that the other side is that if the folks in question had never confronted Rittenhouse no one would have died.

They insisted on doing that. That was the actual catalyst. Without it, nothing would have happened even with Rittenhouse being there. He acted in self-defense, and even let one of them live when he could not have.

It is obvious self-defense.

Past that, no one is discussing that the folks shot while chasing him down were taking part in the exact same vigilantism that they say Rittenhouse never should have been taking part in to start with.

That said, agreed on that they should have charged him with something that they could convict on to send a message.

They decided not to.

I’m not absolving his attackers of responsibility for their own actions. They made the decision to attack him and they paid for it with their lives. Is it really justice if Rittenhouse, who chose to be there, fully understanding the risk should walk away a free man?
Choosing to be there makes him a participant not a victim. The jury got it wrong.

[Xheight]

In the event the election were stolen, it doesn't reflect poorly on ordinary news consumers who were skeptical of claims of fraud. They would be victims of a massive conspiracy at the highest level. There would also be the problem of all the time Trump and the people on his side wasted on nonsense, which buried the useful evidence.

It is my opinion but yes it does reflect poop consumption in not being skeptical of the system as a whole not individuals which is where the political narrative has been - Evil Orange man is a sore loser.

Ordinary people do just have hunches and hints, but BS conspiracy theories do reflect poorly on people who believe them. Experts who are lying and misleading the ignorant fall in a different category. I think we should all be in agreement that anyone who does this is a reprehensible piece of **** who should be shunned by polite society until they admit all their wrongdoing.

The first is true in that a broad label is intentionally broad like any slur. And to the second if there is a genius to the fraud then it is in a system is always going to be small c conservative in that the assumption will always fall toward what has gone before and precedent and authority will granted a heavy hand. [/QUOTE]

Rulings on standing are an ordinary part of court process. We don't want every crackpot to be able to waste the time of the courts on any case they want.

which follows my above point and also happens to be the opposite of the the argument for the emergency law making, we need this unprecedented thing because it is so important to the country...

If the court didn't want to hear Braynard's evidence, even though it indicates a stolen election, there are numerous avenues available. If he could prove that 20,312 absentee ballots were cast by people who were not residents of Georgia according to Georgia law, Sean Hannity would be happy to have him as a guest. Instead, the policy expert who evaluated the claims said "None of these claims meets scientific standards of my fields of research, including survey research, political science, statistics and data sciences. There is no scientific basis for drawing any inferences or conclusions from the data presented. None of the estimates are presented with statistical measures that meet standards for evaluating evidence."
He goes over the details.
There are some very basic statistics errors.

I am sorry but that just isn't so - it is only a line of argument which uses authority not the details of the actual evidence which could have been presented and examined in court. Basically the Judge took his word.

Bryanard also refuses to share crucial information, which makes his methodology meaningless.

It wasn't for Bryanrd to make his whole case from restricted access to the election date the state holds. Catch-22

That's from your link. It's basically 27 pages of an expert saying that Braynard is either ignorant or a liar. Perhaps the expert is wrong, but there are presumably at least hundreds of others with a sufficient understanding of American election law or statistics to note any red flags.

There seems to be a weird subtext in the arguments for Trump that he should be allowed to benefit from extreme claims, even if those are not proven. It seems to be hinted that it was wrong to prevent him from making claims he knew to be wrong. For example, the subtext seems to be that he should have been able to take advantage of the red mirage, and claim early on Election Night that he really won, despite the predictable phenomenon (well-known enough that I wrote about it two months before the election) of in-person Republican-leaning votes being counted prior to absentee Democratic votes. A similar suggestion is that there are too many questions about the results to take them seriously, so other procedures should be followed like state legislators sending in their teams of electors, or decisions regarding election law minutiae should be left to potentially sympathetic juries. These Trump supporters are not willing to satisfy the high burden of proof necessitated by election claims. The hint from Trump fans is that this could be used as leverage to gain some kind of concessions from Democrats, even if Trump won't be President. But the Democrats have the law on their side, and wouldn't like the precedent established by rewarding Trump and his allies for bad-faith arguments.

This I think gets to the larger political context on who forms and moves the the parties these days - I posted a link and quoted a conservative writer who pointed to the way the politically active consume news as reflective of their positions in our society. The Democratic base consists of a greater degree of the technocratic part of our society and vest 'experts' with a greater authority just as they would themselves. Hence they want a professional politician to lead the party and the country where as the GOP went to other direction. In the specifics of your argument it is telling of this in that finding people savvy enough to dig and produce to evidence to convince another technocratic minded person (likely a Democrat) is going to be a heavy lift. This is why crowd sourced gathering for fraud (even if it is poor info) is either vacant or spammed while hunting down Jan 6 participants using the same methods is flowing with information (again bad of good info not being the point). So we come back to your use of Bad Faith is to emphasize the virtue of the the status quo the conservative nature of systems not truth in itself which MUST look for anomaly as much as it looks for affirmation if it is to be scientific.

[Xheight]

I’m not absolving his attackers of responsibility for their own actions. They made the decision to attack him and they paid for it with their lives. Is it really justice if Rittenhouse, who chose to be there, fully understanding the risk should walk away a free man?
Choosing to be there makes him a participant not a victim. The jury got it wrong.

That is where your disconnect with his heroism begins I am guessing. There is very strong strain in American Culture that believes that people, not institutions, step up to others doing wrong. As someone posting on a comic message board I would think that you would begin to understand that.

[InformationGeek]

Oh WBE, look at this charmer running for Florida's 24th.

As a German, you should be grateful to men like Kyle who saved you from Hitler as y’all cowered like schnitzel.

[Jack Dracula]

As someone who grew up conservative I still can't wrap my head around the GoPs fetishization of the Police.

<Ahem>

Unelected government officials empowered to take your property without trial, your freedom with delayed due process, and even your life. When things go wrong, they answer to themselves. Attempts to use the judicial system are stymied by the fact that prosecuters need their cooperation to even function, and in civil cases they are protected by Qualified Immunity, a doctrine invented whole cloth by the Supreme Court in an unprecedented act of judicial activism.

Which is another reason why I dropped the Republican party years ago - I kept finding too many instances where the mantra of the party ceased to even apply. It's one thing to see failures of doctrine, quite another to see it constantly ignored whenever convenient.

If the goal is to set up an autocracy, rallying law enforcement to your side is a must. The good cops will eventually quit because of the toxic work environment and we’ll be left with the sort of people who will happily smash dissent when the protests inevitably happen.

[Jack Dracula]

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter is posting...

We can consider this a recruitment poster.
It makes sense to coerce heavily armed average citizens that they should heroically help the police quash dissent. Autocratic strong-men throughout history have often encouraged this kind of action.

[Jack Dracula]

That is where your disconnect with his heroism begins I am guessing. There is very strong strain in American Culture that believes that people, not institutions, step up to others doing wrong. As someone posting on a comic message board I would think that you would begin to understand that.

Your bait is weak. Fish for attention somewhere else.

[Xheight]

Your bait is weak. Fish for attention somewhere else.

Got it. You are locked into your narrative and not looking for a discussion. Who is driving this Conspiracy btw? Proud boys? Evil Orange man? Didn't the Left just go over their incompetency?

There is a disconnect in if this is about rallying a police state then why was he there as they were failures despite the millions that have been given over to them.

As Stuart Schrader masterfully shows in Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing , US efforts to create an empire of police officers overseas after World War II had important boomerang effects on the development of local police departments back home. It further enhanced their political autonomy while supercharging them with military gear and training. In The Punitive Turn in American Life: How the United States Learned to Fight Crime Like a War , Michael Sherry

For that you need a conspiracy along the lines a Star Trek episode. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708575/?ref_=tt_ep_pr

[kidfresh512]

Thanksgiving is due this Thursday. Will you risk getting or spreading COVID to get dinner with relatives from other homes? Or do you plan to eat at home either alone or with those who are living in your household?

Using the same rules I had for my moms 70th birthday party in July. Fully vaccinated close family only. We are fully vaccinated and have boosters. Will just be her sisters, my fully vaccinated cousin. All the vaccine holdouts can stay at home and be salty, they were warned.

[Tami]

Thanksgiving is due this Thursday. Will you risk getting or spreading COVID to get dinner with relatives from other homes? Or do you plan to eat at home either alone or with those who are living in your household?

*shrug* Just me and my husband and our dog. Haven't decided if we're gonna splurge on a big meal, or keep it simple. Same as last year. We considered inviting family over, but that didn't work out.

[Tami]

How the U.S. Lost Ground to China in the Contest for Clean Energy

WASHINGTON — Tom Perriello saw it coming but could do nothing to stop it. André Kapanga too. Despite urgent emails, phone calls and personal pleas, they watched helplessly as a company backed by the Chinese government took ownership from the Americans of one of the world’s largest cobalt mines.

It was 2016, and a deal had been struck by the Arizona-based mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to sell the site, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which now figures prominently in China’s grip on the global cobalt supply. The metal has been among several essential raw materials needed for the production of electric car batteries — and is now critical to retiring the combustion engine and weaning the world off climate-changing fossil fuels.

Mr. Perriello, a top U.S. diplomat in Africa at the time, sounded alarms in the State Department. Mr. Kapanga, then the mine’s Congolese general manager, all but begged the American ambassador in Congo to intercede.

“This is a mistake,” Mr. Kapanga recalled warning him, suggesting the Americans were squandering generations of relationship building in Congo, the source of more than two-thirds of the world’s cobalt.

Presidents starting with Dwight D. Eisenhower had sent hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, including transport planes and other military equipment, to the mineral-rich nation. Richard Nixon intervened, as did the State Department under Hillary Clinton, to sustain the relationship. And Freeport-McMoRan had invested billions of its own — before it sold the mine to a Chinese company.

Not only did the Chinese purchase of the mine, known as Tenke Fungurume, go through uninterrupted during the final months of the Obama administration, but four years later, during the twilight of the Trump presidency, so did the purchase of an even more impressive cobalt reserve that Freeport-McMoRan put on the market. The buyer was the same company, China Molybdenum.

China’s pursuit of Congo’s cobalt wealth is part of a disciplined playbook that has given it an enormous head start over the United States in the race to dominate the electrification of the auto industry, long a key driver of the global economy.

But an investigation by The New York Times revealed a hidden history of the cobalt acquisitions in which the United States essentially surrendered the resources to China, failing to safeguard decades of diplomatic and financial investments in Congo. The sale of the two mines, also flush with copper, highlights the shifting geography and politics of the clean energy revolution, with countries rich in cobalt, lithium and other raw materials needed for batteries suddenly playing the role of oil giants.

The loss of the mines happened under the watch of President Barack Obama, consumed with Afghanistan and the Islamic State, and President Donald J. Trump, a climate-change skeptic committed to fossil fuels and the electoral forces behind them. More broadly, it had roots in the end of the Cold War, according to previously classified documents and interviews with senior officials in the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.

[Malvolio]

Thanksgiving is due this Thursday. Will you risk getting or spreading COVID to get dinner with relatives from other homes? Or do you plan to eat at home either alone or with those who are living in your household?

Just a few ham steaks for me and my g/f, unless her father's g/f invites us over at the last minute. We live right down the street from her.

[Mister Mets]

It is my opinion but yes it does reflect poop consumption in not being skeptical of the system as a whole not individuals which is where the political narrative has been - Evil Orange man is a sore loser.

The first is true in that a broad label is intentionally broad like any slur. And to the second if there is a genius to the fraud then it is in a system is always going to be small c conservative in that the assumption will always fall toward what has gone before and precedent and authority will granted a heavy hand.

which follows my above point and also happens to be the opposite of the the argument for the emergency law making, we need this unprecedented thing because it is so important to the country...



I am sorry but that just isn't so - it is only a line of argument which uses authority not the details of the actual evidence which could have been presented and examined in court. Basically the Judge took his word.

It wasn't for Bryanrd to make his whole case from restricted access to the election date the state holds. Catch-22




This I think gets to the larger political context on who forms and moves the the parties these days - I posted a link and quoted a conservative writer who pointed to the way the politically active consume news as reflective of their positions in our society. The Democratic base consists of a greater degree of the technocratic part of our society and vest 'experts' with a greater authority just as they would themselves. Hence they want a professional politician to lead the party and the country where as the GOP went to other direction. In the specifics of your argument it is telling of this in that finding people savvy enough to dig and produce to evidence to convince another technocratic minded person (likely a Democrat) is going to be a heavy lift. This is why crowd sourced gathering for fraud (even if it is poor info) is either vacant or spammed while hunting down Jan 6 participants using the same methods is flowing with information (again bad of good info not being the point). So we come back to your use of Bad Faith is to emphasize the virtue of the the status quo the conservative nature of systems not truth in itself which MUST look for anomaly as much as it looks for affirmation if it is to be scientific.

You talk about your opinion but I'm unclear about what it is. Are you skeptical of claims of fraud, or do you think the election was stolen?


The term "ignorant" isn't meant as a slur. It's objectively true. Pretty much everyone on the planet is ignorant about something. Ignorance can often lead to people being mistaken, as they make assumptions that have no basis in reality. This gets into the Dunning-Kruger effect, the way ordinary people with low ability will overestimate their own abilities at something because they don't have the framework and competence to understand it. It becomes easy for people who know a little bit about something to trick those who don't know as much, and this is something we should oppose.


Sometimes we will need emergency regulations. There are still procedures for putting those into place. There is a bad-faith argument from the left pushing for the permanent adoption of emergency regulations without ever making it clear that it was meant to be temporary, framing it as a matter of regression rather than as something that was successful and that should be made permanent (someone can make a good-faith argument that early voting or other emergency provisions worked well and should become part of the standard process going forward.) Bad-faith arguments on the left don't excuse bad-faith arguments on the right.

Braynard could always present his evidence, much of which wasn't based on restricted evidence. It is worth noting that more data has been released since then, for anyone to investigate whether there were shenanigans in the election.

As for technocrats and experts, these are the people who are supposed to evaluate complex systems. There are going to be plenty of right-wingers, who would have all the incentives in the world to expose massive election fraud. It would be very useful for the careers of many Republicans if they could prove that 50,000 votes in Georgia were manufactured.

The alternative to technocrats evaluating evidence is people who have no idea what the hell they're doing, like the Arizona state senate auditors checking ballots for bamboo fibers.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ots-audit-2020

[shooshoomanjoe]

Just a few ham steaks for me and my g/f, unless her father's g/f invites us over at the last minute. We live right down the street from her.

That's what my brother in law does, invite us over a few days before. We didn't go there last year because of COVID. That weekend, his entire family (wife, 2 kids and 2 in laws) were sick with COVID so it's a good thing we didn't show up.