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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

We will never have peace until we deal with fear in this country. Fear is at the core of a lot of things going wrong right now.

Fear of the other.

Hello. I have dark skin, therefore, I’m “the other”.

[Tami]

Hello. I have dark skin, therefore, I’m “the other”.

You know how insane that is, this whole "The Other" nonsense.

I mean, yes, there are times when having your Spider Sense on high alert is smart. Going someplace alone, at night, isn't usually smart unless you are out in the open and are confident of the area and the route.

That's just an example.

But grouping people together and being afraid of that group, is just dumb.

[numberthirty]

You know how insane that is, this whole "The Other" nonsense.

I mean, yes, there are times when having your Spider Sense on high alert is smart. Going someplace alone, at night, isn't usually smart unless you are out in the open and are confident of the area and the route.

That's just an example.

But grouping people together and being afraid of that group, is just dumb.

Unless they appear to be skinheads...

Then, it is just a sensible call.

[babyblob]

They lose the right to self defense when committing a crime, yes.

He had no right to bear that weapon, he wasn't a member of the community and he was brandishing a weapon in public, so what makes him any different from the rioters?

He is no different then the rioters really. Both sides had weapons, both sides rioters protestors counter protesters whatever title you use were out past curfew so no one had the right to be there. Both sides had people who were not part of the community this all went down in. The difference is that Rittenhouse went there to kill and found the excuse he wanted to do so and now his lawyers and a DA who is doing a bad job at best is going to let him get away with it.

[numberthirty]

He is no different then the rioters really. Both sides had weapons, both sides rioters protestors counter protesters whatever title you use were out past curfew so no one had the right to be there. Both sides had people who were not part of the community this all went down in. The difference is that Rittenhouse went there to kill and found the excuse he wanted to do so and now his lawyers and a DA who is doing a bad job at best is going to let him get away with it.

Near as I have seen?

The first guy he shot ran up, and initiated a confrontation.

Rittenhouse then ran from a group chasing him, without firing on them.

He did fire after he was attacked by them. That said, he did not actually fire a second time to kill the one one person who had actually pointed a gun at him.

Again, if this is a picture of someone who went there looking it kill?

It's a pretty funny looking picture.

[Mister Mets]

Rittenhouse was in the wrong state with an illegal weapon.

Given that, can someone please tell me how self defense applies?

You don't get to follow a robber into someone's house, shoot them, and then claim self defense.

Someone in that situation can go for a self-defense claim. It's up to a jury to determine its validity.

It's going to be a bloodbath, but I am heartened to see 58% supporting more money for climate change and social programs than infrastructure.

Not quite.

63% supported the infrastructure spending.
58% supported a specific amount of money for climate change and social programs.

There's likely significant overlap between the two groups. It could be that the five percent difference just comes down to what

Im not sure what the answer is. There is just so much craziness. I am very happy about the Infrastructure Bill there is a lot needed. but a lot of it is long term things like fixing roads and bridges and 5G. Those are needed things. But most Americans care about what is happening right now. I am spending a lot more in grocery bills right now. Along with my dad meds and our monthly bills it is pretty tight. ive cut back on a lot of things and I dont have kids to worry about like some people do.

And depending on how the Rittenhouse trial goes there is another huge issue. If the guy gets off then there will be the minority voters who will have the mind of "You promised us some change and yet not voter protections, no police reform and Rittenhouse got off." And if Rittenhouse gets off I am sure people will not take that sitting down. Officials are so worried about it they have the Guard on stand by. So the GOP can say in 2022 "Well prices rose like crazy and you got less while Biden let our cites burn."

And Hell if Rittenhouse does get off how big of a GOP fundraising campaign machine does that make him? The man who stood up against Chaos and the Woke culture. The man who stood up for our values and way of life. man the White Supremists wont be able to get toe the voting booth fast enough to vote for the guy that has Rittenhouse in his ads and the GOP will milk that cow till it is dry.

I hate feeling this down about the future but I am really worried about it. But other then voting I dont know what else I can do? Everyone said 2021 was going to be so much better. But I aint seeing it.

To be fair, some of the infrastructure spending may be relevant next year when the election occurs.

I don't think minority voters are going to riot because of a Not Guilty Rittenhouse verdict. It's a story of a white guy who shot other white people. White protesters don't necessarily have a high approval rating among minority voters.

[babyblob]

Near as I have seen?

The first guy he shot ran up, and initiated a confrontation.

Rittenhouse then ran from a group chasing him, without firing on them.

He did fire after he was attacked by them. That said, he did not actually fire a second time to kill the one one person who had actually pointed a gun at him.

Again, if this is a picture of someone who went there looking it kill?

It's a pretty funny looking picture.

There were those posts on his social media that a lot of people made a big deal about after this happened. The ones where he said he was going to restore order or something like that. Hoping that some one tries something etc... There were stories on a few news networks after the shooting about these posts. How true these stories are I dont know. if they are true then yes he went there looking for all kinds of trouble. And lets be honest anyone who goes to a riot from out of state carrying a loaded gun yea they are looking for trouble. Not just him but the other so called defenders of law and order that went and the rioters carrying guns themselves.

[numberthirty]

...

I don't think minority voters are going to riot because of a Not Guilty Rittenhouse verdict. It's a story of a white guy who shot other white people. White protesters don't necessarily have a high approval rating among minority voters.

Never mind that a jury deciding that it was(or was not...) self-defense won't make much of a difference in police accountability when it comes to minority communities.

[babyblob]

I don't think minority voters are going to riot because of a Not Guilty Rittenhouse verdict. It's a story of a white guy who shot other white people. White protesters don't necessarily have a high approval rating among minority voters.

Maybe this will be the case and I hope it is. maybe I am listening to too much click bait about possible riots if he does get off. I honestly do not know what the reaction will be.

[numberthirty]

There were those posts on his social media that a lot of people made a big deal about after this happened. The ones where he said he was going to restore order or something like that. Hoping that some one tries something etc... There were stories on a few news networks after the shooting about these posts. How true these stories are I dont know. if they are true then yes he went there looking for all kinds of trouble. And lets be honest anyone who goes to a riot from out of state carrying a loaded gun yea they are looking for trouble. Not just him but the other so called defenders of law and order that went and the rioters carrying guns themselves.

While I'm not so sure about "Looking..."?

They are certainly increasing the odds that it will wind up happening.

Which is why I feel like civil court is the place for this.

(Well, outside of that the prosecutor should have just went for lesser "Weapons Related..." charges that he could have actually successfully prosecuted...)

[Tami]

Unless they appear to be skinheads...

Then, it is just a sensible call.

Appearances can be deceiving.

[The Cool Thatguy]

If that is the case?

Why wasn't this trial over in a half an hour?

Clearly, that state is allowing him to present a "Self-Defense..." defense in a situation where you believe he should not be able to.

As for the rioters...

Are any of them even being charged with anything?

If not?

How does any of that even figure in?

Why isn't this trial over in half an hour?

Because Kyle happens to be the right skin color for everyone to ignore that a gun's only function is to kill.

[JB]

The truth is that the justice system in general needs a major overhaul. One of the men killed was convicted multiple times for raping children. How he was even out on the streets that night is beyond me.

[worstblogever]

Y'know, not a fan of that crime, for sure, but that doesn't justify some teenaged twat becoming a vigilante murderer.

[Mister Mets]

The truth is that the justice system in general needs a major overhaul. One of the men killed was convicted multiple times for raping children. How he was even out on the streets that night is beyond me.

I wanted to factcheck this claim, but it seems to be mostly true.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...s/?arc404=true

Joseph Rosenbaum was troubled.

When he was 13 his mother was sent to prison for two years, and Rosenbaum was sent off to a group home, where he began using heroin and methamphetamine, according to court documents. By 18, he was in prison for sexual conduct with five preteen boys, the children of people who had taken him in after his mother told him to leave her house, according to a presentencing report. He spent most of the next 14 years behind bars.

It doesn't appear that he was there as a protester. He was released from a hospital after a suicide attempt, and trying to visit his fiancee despite a restraining order.

Hours after he was released from the hospital, Rosenbaum stopped by a pharmacy in Kenosha to pick up medication for his bipolar disorder, only to discover that it had closed early because of the unrest.

He visited his fiancee, who was living in a cheap motel room, but she told him he couldn’t stay the night. She had pressed charges against him a month earlier after a fight in which he knocked her down and bloodied her mouth. If Rosenbaum violated his no-contact order, she warned, he could be sent back to jail.

“I want to fix things,” she recalled him telling her. “I want to get myself right.”

She was open to reconciling. “I just want you to be you,” replied the fiancee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she has received threats to her life.

It's possible he mistook Rittenhouse for someone he had encountered earlier.

In videos from that night, Rosenbaum often appeared agitated. When a member of the Kenosha Guard, a self-proclaimed militia, pointed his gun at him, Rosenbaum became enraged and dared the man, who was White, to kill him. “Shoot me, n-----!” he shouted. Several protesters rushed to calm Rosenbaum.

“You’re going to get us all shot,” one of them recalled telling him.

At 11:45 p.m., Richie McGinniss, a reporter with the conservative Daily Caller, spotted Rosenbaum, his T-shirt wrapped around his head, chasing Rittenhouse down the street. It’s unclear what provoked the confrontation, though Rittenhouse’s attorneys speculated in a video released last week that Rosenbaum may have mistaken the teenager for a similarly attired member of the Kenosha Guard he confronted earlier at the gas station.

Rosenbaum pursued Rittenhouse down Sheridan Road and into the parking lot of a car dealership that would soon go up in flames. He threw his hospital bag at Rittenhouse, missing him, and charged at the teenager.

Anthony Huber was a friend of Jacob Blake's.

Blake and Huber weren’t close enough to share cellphone numbers, but they had friends in common and had smoked marijuana together, friends said. When Huber learned Blake had been shot, “he was in a f---ing state,” Gittings said.

They talked under the moonlight about how police shootings had been happening for decades in America, and how the difference today was the ability to record it and instantly broadcast it to the world.

So that became the mission: Documenting the protests for posterity. They sketched out a plan on the porch of the crumbling, paint-chipped house that had been the source of so many problems in Huber’s life.

Huber said his mother was a hoarder, according to Gittings and Huber’s friends. The layers of garbage and cat feces that accumulated in the house had been a source of constant stress for Huber, who also was battling a bipolar disorder that went undiagnosed until he was an adult.

In 2012, Huber brandished a butcher knife and threatened to “gut” his brother “like a pig” if he didn’t clean the house. The family told police that Huber choked his brother with his hands for 10 seconds before letting him go and retreating to the skate park. Convicted of strangulation and false imprisonment, he was placed on probation but violated the terms and was sent to prison in 2017. When he came home, he got into another argument over the state of the house. This time, he kicked his sister, and went back to prison on a charge of disorderly conduct in 2018.

Huber chased after Rittenhouse with a skateboard after Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum.

Huber was part of the crowd at the gas station trying to calm Rosenbaum down after a self-styled militia member pointed his gun at the protesters. And he was standing just down the street from the car dealership when Rittenhouse fired the shots that killed Rosenbaum.

“Stop him,” a voice screamed as Rittenhouse jogged down Sheridan Road, according to Grosskreutz’s video footage.

“Get his a--!” someone else yelled.

Huber told Gittings to take cover in a nearby alley. “I tried to grab him,” Gittings said. “I tried to stop him.”

But Huber, skateboard in hand, adrenaline pumping, was already gone.

Rosenbaum and Huber didn't deserve to die. But the standard is a different one. It's about how likely it is that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense in encounters with mentally ill people who chased after him, both under intense personal stress.