Lookin4GoodArgs

joined 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (7 children)

So, I know where you're coming from because I've read stuff by Edmund Burke and other conservatives. But, unless the conservative you're talking with is the intellectual type, they probably haven't. They've probably just internalized some version of social conservatism but would also be appalled that you'd accuse them of supporting social stratification even as they support it.

I learned some time ago that this particular argumentative strategy is incredibly pointless. They don't care that you know the historical and philosophical foundation of their beliefs. For them, that foundation isn't there for them. They probably don't know it! Their life experiences inform them more than anything else.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Noncitizens aren’t totally barred from voting in San Francisco. In 2016, after multiple attempts in previous years to pass a similar measure, voters approved Proposition N, which allowed San Francisco noncitizens to vote in school board elections if they had a child who went to school in the district.

What's wrong with voting in school board elections?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

PrincessEli: Warning for violation of rule #1 and #3.

Don't automatically assume something is beyond someone's mental capability, and provide reasons for your disagreement.

(I'm gonna have to start putting names in my warning so I know how I've warned previously...)

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

Warning: Violation of Rule #1.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Warning for violation of rule #1.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Stated plainly: Floyd chose to commit a crime. He was apprehended for that crime and became belligerent during that apprehension. The arrest resulted in additional physiological stress and the release of adrenaline. This stress was not excessive by ordinary standards, though it was excessive for Floyd because of who he was and the bad choices he had made. According to Baker, “it was the stress of that interaction that tipped him over the edge given his underlying heart disease and his toxicological status.” It is in this limited sense that the arrest “caused” Floyd’s death—much as riding a roller coaster might have done.

Let's just set aside the despicable, subtle racism of "who he was" in that paragraph...

The article basically argues that, because Floyd's physiological stress was his own doing, then Chauvin should not have been tried for second-degree murder, or the intent to kill Floyd without premeditation.

Fine.

That still leaves open the possibility that Chauvin was guilty of involuntary manslaughter, or causing his death by failing to behave with the level of care a reasonable person would have exercised under the same circumstances. That's what the second part is about: "As I’ll explain in Part II, the body camera footage proves that the arrest was conducted in a professional and dispassionate manner."

Still fine.

I can concede all of that, and still dress down the practice of policing generally and that of the Minneapolis Police Department specifically, even of Derek Chauvin specifically, according to the Department of Justice's investigation of the MPD (PDF).

On December 15, 2021, Mr. Chauvin pleaded guilty to federal criminal civil rights violations, both for the murder of Mr. Floyd and for holding a 14-year-old teen by the throat, beating him with a flashlight, then pressing his knee on the teen’s neck and back for over 15 minutes in 2017.

The MPD had a record of being a shitty department and Chauvin contributed to that by being a shitty police officer. That the prosecutor's office was "struggling under the weight of unfamiliar public scrutiny" was because regular people experience the documented civil rights abuses long before they're documented and what accountability.

In the same way that the physiological stress of Floyd, coupled with Derek Chauvin's behavior, caused Floyd's death, the public anger against police that Derek Chauvin and his fellow officers generated also caused the prosecutor's office to publicly flog Chauvin for his crimes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Trump.

He's already demonstrated that he's a washed up fascist and is significantly easier for Biden to beat.

Haley is the real threat. Her target audience and Biden's are largely the same, and Haley has the advantage.

In any case, regular working class and middle class people are going to be screwed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Dershowitz said, “The 14th Amendment provides in Section 5 that Congress, not the states, Congress can enforce this provision. Now, remember who wrote the 14th Amendment, Radical Republican reconstructionists who didn’t trust the states. They would never have left the decision [on] who can run for president to South Carolina, Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama, members of the Confederacy. Of course they left it only to Congress. The idea that states, one at a time, can decide who’s disqualified is the most absurd reading of a constitutional provision I have ever seen.”

...okay, that's actually a plausible argument.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

From the article:

But for a politician like Trump, an indictment can be an opportunity because it confirms the populist narrative: See, they view me as such a potent threat that they’re threatening to throw me in jail just to get me to stop fighting for you. But they can’t scare me. Together, we will achieve vengeance!

Ostensibly for BoaT, enforcing the Constitution is corruption because Trump did all of those things. No one ever says he didn't do those things; they just say those things don't constitute insurrection, and thus Trump is "innocent". Talk about staggering mental hoops...

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