She was at the vanguard of a mob and crossed the one barricade between that mob and evacuating congressmen, with not nearly enough police on the other side to hold them off with non lethal means.
Ok.
I don’t think the police have to wait to see......
I don't see why not.
what said mob is going to do when it reaches the elected officials they’re there to protect.
Coulda shoulda woulda.
Cops (or anyone else for that matter) at least in principle aren't allowed to freelance the justification for the use of lethal force. I don't see any reason why this is supposed to be an exception.
I commented on this already once, and nothing has changed since last year to motivate me to change my mind. I simply can't get over the fact that Mrs. Babbitt was not an imminent threat to anybody's life or limb at the time that Mr. Byrd shot her.
First off, the Democrats will win at minimum 40% of their races, so you can’t really consider them banished.
It's not a matter of how many races they win, it's a matter of how many veto points they have.
It's very possible that after 2024 they won't have any. That will create apprehensions for a lot of voters who wouldn't necessarily be friendly to the Democrats to start voting for them again. Even voters who might like Republicans could still want significant checks on their collective power.
Still, I think it's the right way to go. When push comes to shove, there's not much difference between giving the Demos one veto point and giving them all of them.
Normie voters would like the Demos to work constructively with the Republicans, to sand away some excesses from becoming actual policy. But of course, that's not on offer. Any meaningful power the Demos get will simply be leveraged to antagonize Republicans and grab whatever power they don't have already.
As things stand, we as Americans are full of animosities against each other. Animosities which started in the political/cultural sphere, and has now filtered into America as a whole. So, apprehensions or otherwise, the way to dial down those animosities is simply to vote Republican and roll with it.
The Founders knew there could be people like Philip, but they made no provision for removing their citizenship.
Push comes to shove, that could be finessed around. But frankly, for now and for the forseeable future, that's pretty tangential and fringe-y.
What's much more relevant, what's happening now, in fact, is that the voters are, in a de facto sense alienizing or stripping citizenship away from libs, at least as it pertains to meaningful participation in the political process.
Ie the Democrats, at least operationally are controlled by a lib activist class, whose mentality with respect to the voters is give-an-inch,-take-a-mile. So the voters adapt to that by simply never giving the libs an inch.
I'm not completely up to speed with Israeli politics, so I might be corrected. But it's my understanding that that's how it works there.
Ie, there are Arab minorities in Israeli, and they have some representation in the Knesset, the legislature there.
But they are viewed by all other parties as illegitimate, so that the Knesset will not take any action with majority support, if Arab members are required to make the majority.
I think that may have changed a little in order to depose Netanyahu but for a long time at least that's how Israeli politics went.
Ok, so that was a bit of a tangent. Back here, as it relates to Philip and the Democrats, they are going to eat a bad cycle. But if it's just one bad cycle it's no biggie, both parties have eaten bad cycles before and come back.
That's where 2024 comes in. If Demos have a bad cycle in 2024 too, then we can start to think about the Democrats as the non-playing characters of American democracy.
And somehow, if that actually does happen, you can't say they don't deserve it.
Because if Trump’s on the stage, you know what the first question is going to be, and I don’t know how they can keep it from devolving from there.
No, I don't know what the first question will be, and frankly I'm not understanding you that well.
Maybe that the moderator will ask about Stop The Steal and nobody will talk about anything else?
I don't see it. I don't think it's an especially difficult circumstance for the other candidates to handle. All they need to do is talk about one or more of the many things that have happened since Trump left office that Trump hasn't done or said anything meaningful about.
And frankly his “ridiculous” nationalism is a huge part of the problem, because it doesn’t allow for any consideration of the humanity of “others.”
This is backwards, for reasons that follow pretty closely from my response to Chris a couple hours ago.
What I replied to him was a summary of how we are situated with others, specifically how the larger polity empowers us as individuals, but also imposes, legitimately imposes, duties of loyalty on us.
Libs' idea is basically to say that I can do whatever I want as long as I get away with it. Which is not only wrong as an abstract ethical proposition, but also the fact that libs are constituted that way means as a practical matter they're (and you are) less likely to get away with it.
..... I think he thinks the way anyone who is serious about their values and their political implications ought to: that disagreement is not some trivial matter, because the people who oppose those values are causing real harm, and we should not tiptoe around that.
I appreciate this comment, but nonetheless I disagree strongly with it, and my intentions are almost exactly backwards from what you're describing here.
The idea that we can disagree about actual life and death issues, or issues that affect the quality of life of hundreds of millions of people, or more, and then at the end of the day break bread as friends or mutually respectful colleagues or whatever, is actively harmful, and I wish more people talked the way Koz does.
This is a wrong turn, basically for being too egocentric.
The way out of this dead end is to back up, and then to acknowledge that as our political/cultural aspirations are presently constituted, we are both empowered and circumscribed.
That is, that we are for the most part entitled to believe any number of things, some of them wild and outlandish, maybe even wild, outlandish and true in some abstract sense even. But still, we are are not necessarily at liberty to implement them as government policy.
Between us as individuals (or groups) and the statute book, there are the American nation, its people and its interest.
In this way, it is the American nation and its people that we, lib and conservative, are both subsidiary to and accountable to.
And it is the existence of this polity, the American nation and its people which creates the space for us, as lib and conservative, to live in peace together, to be friends, to break bread, etc etc, without devolving into a Hobbsean war of all against all.
And it is specifically in the context of this polity whereby Philip ought to be stewarding his citizenship in a way that's much better than what he's doing now.
This is mostly about time-orientation. That is, that DeSantis or whoever is going to be the next nominee not because voters are particular invested in his plan to lower inflation. But rather because he is addressing inflation in a credible way (or CRT or immigration or mask mandates/closed public schools, etc) which are things that the voters care about.
As opposed to Stop The Steal which to be frank even Trumpy voters don't really care about.
My suspicion is it will depend on whether the Republicans have the discipline and stomach to consolidate.
Yeah, consolidation is _an_ issue, but I don't think it's the biggest issue.
The percentage of Republican primary voters who intend to vote for Trump in a primary or caucus is a much bigger deal, and the variance of that is really big, depending on what happens between now and two years from now.
No one else talked about how Mexico would pay for a wall.
Nor did anyone else talk about how when you were a celebrity you could sexually assault any woman you chose with impunity.
That's true. But for a lot of Republicans, those things were basically irrelevant and could be ignored. On the other hand, Trump also opposed any meaningful cuts in Social Security or Medicare, opposed outsourcing American labor to China, and opposed the tendency toward kinetic foreign policy in a way that was relatively unique or more credible among Republicans.
And it was _those_ things that won him the nomination.
Yes, legitimate Americans whose primary motivation is the best interest of the United States, as opposed to gratuitously acting out animosities against Republicans.
No Philip. Gov Abbott isn't as well regarded among Republicans and normies as some other GOP pols in office, but when it comes time to actually pull the lever, no legitimate American is going to empower Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in 2022.
Therefore Abbott wins by a lot. At least ten points unless there's some grid failure or other scandal between now and then.
That’s part of why I think a single candidate like DeSantis would be a strong primary opponent. A crowded primary would have everyone running against Trump, which puts him on the attack and puts his name in every headline.
It could work out that way, but you can't really choreograph that in advance. But also, there's some reason to think it cuts the other way as well. As non-Trump candidates enter the race, they are going to be talking about current events and not 2020. The drama and narratives around that are something that Trump will have to keep up with and adjust to, and I don't think he necessarily can or be willing to.
Supposedly Trump in going to announce for President before the midterms which to me at least is significantly bad news for the GOP if it happens.
As to actually winning the nomination, I'm not buying it. Trump has more ego investment from the base and not as much actual support. One thing in Trump's favor is that when the votes start, he doesn't need a majority of GOP primary voters. In a divided field, he could win with a consistent 35-40%.
Against Trump, there's a long time between now and then. I don't think Trump can win the nomination without running an actual campaign, and I don't think Trump intends to to campaign.
Related to that, Trump is in objective terms a really bad candidate and the longer this process goes on, that will be more and more apparent.
....I suspect Abbott may actually lose to Beto, and his political career will effectively be over.
This isn't right. The statewide races in Texas in 2022 are all about the margin of victory for the GOP. If there is a power grid breakdown before Election Day, all that means is that Abbott wins reelection by 5 points instead of 30. Texas is a reddening state. Its a reddening state because the US is a reddening country and Texas is part of that.
The idea that Beto O'Rourke kinda maybe looked like he was running close to even for a couple weeks against Ted Cruz is likely the high point for statewide Texas Democrats for 20 years or so.
No no. The people who are saying this basically aren't paying attention to anything that's happened since Jan ^ really.
I'll find a link if I need to, but there was a poll of Republicans, or rather a series of polls of Republicans asking whether they viewed themselves as party supporters or Trump supporters. And party supporters has gained like 30 points relative to Trump supporters over the last six months or whatever.
Even Trump's endorsements aren't worth very much, in Georgia, Alabama or Ohio, which are very Trumpy states in the party.
We're not likely to see positive and communitarian politics if Trump is dominating the Republican party. But guess what, Trump isn't dominating the Republican party, and his influence is dissipating further every day. And we don't have to invest ourselves in cosplay, cute nicknames, and theatrics any more.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Justice for Ashli Babbitt”
Ok.
I don't see why not.
Coulda shoulda woulda.
Cops (or anyone else for that matter) at least in principle aren't allowed to freelance the justification for the use of lethal force. I don't see any reason why this is supposed to be an exception.
"
Yeah, but no.
https://ordinary-times.com/2021/08/27/capitol-police-officer-michael-bryd-interviewed-about-shooting-death-of-ashli-babbitt/#comment-3525148
I commented on this already once, and nothing has changed since last year to motivate me to change my mind. I simply can't get over the fact that Mrs. Babbitt was not an imminent threat to anybody's life or limb at the time that Mr. Byrd shot her.
On “Trump Will Blow Through the 2024 Primaries”
It's not a matter of how many races they win, it's a matter of how many veto points they have.
It's very possible that after 2024 they won't have any. That will create apprehensions for a lot of voters who wouldn't necessarily be friendly to the Democrats to start voting for them again. Even voters who might like Republicans could still want significant checks on their collective power.
Still, I think it's the right way to go. When push comes to shove, there's not much difference between giving the Demos one veto point and giving them all of them.
Normie voters would like the Demos to work constructively with the Republicans, to sand away some excesses from becoming actual policy. But of course, that's not on offer. Any meaningful power the Demos get will simply be leveraged to antagonize Republicans and grab whatever power they don't have already.
As things stand, we as Americans are full of animosities against each other. Animosities which started in the political/cultural sphere, and has now filtered into America as a whole. So, apprehensions or otherwise, the way to dial down those animosities is simply to vote Republican and roll with it.
"
Ok.
"
Push comes to shove, that could be finessed around. But frankly, for now and for the forseeable future, that's pretty tangential and fringe-y.
What's much more relevant, what's happening now, in fact, is that the voters are, in a de facto sense alienizing or stripping citizenship away from libs, at least as it pertains to meaningful participation in the political process.
Ie the Democrats, at least operationally are controlled by a lib activist class, whose mentality with respect to the voters is give-an-inch,-take-a-mile. So the voters adapt to that by simply never giving the libs an inch.
I'm not completely up to speed with Israeli politics, so I might be corrected. But it's my understanding that that's how it works there.
Ie, there are Arab minorities in Israeli, and they have some representation in the Knesset, the legislature there.
But they are viewed by all other parties as illegitimate, so that the Knesset will not take any action with majority support, if Arab members are required to make the majority.
I think that may have changed a little in order to depose Netanyahu but for a long time at least that's how Israeli politics went.
Ok, so that was a bit of a tangent. Back here, as it relates to Philip and the Democrats, they are going to eat a bad cycle. But if it's just one bad cycle it's no biggie, both parties have eaten bad cycles before and come back.
That's where 2024 comes in. If Demos have a bad cycle in 2024 too, then we can start to think about the Democrats as the non-playing characters of American democracy.
And somehow, if that actually does happen, you can't say they don't deserve it.
"
Ok.
"
Well yeah, that was 18 months ago. More Republicans cared about it then.
But new events change things, and Trump isn't in office and isn't instigating any meaningful narratives.
"
No, I don't know what the first question will be, and frankly I'm not understanding you that well.
Maybe that the moderator will ask about Stop The Steal and nobody will talk about anything else?
I don't see it. I don't think it's an especially difficult circumstance for the other candidates to handle. All they need to do is talk about one or more of the many things that have happened since Trump left office that Trump hasn't done or said anything meaningful about.
"
This is backwards, for reasons that follow pretty closely from my response to Chris a couple hours ago.
What I replied to him was a summary of how we are situated with others, specifically how the larger polity empowers us as individuals, but also imposes, legitimately imposes, duties of loyalty on us.
Libs' idea is basically to say that I can do whatever I want as long as I get away with it. Which is not only wrong as an abstract ethical proposition, but also the fact that libs are constituted that way means as a practical matter they're (and you are) less likely to get away with it.
"
He does for now.
"
I appreciate this comment, but nonetheless I disagree strongly with it, and my intentions are almost exactly backwards from what you're describing here.
This is a wrong turn, basically for being too egocentric.
The way out of this dead end is to back up, and then to acknowledge that as our political/cultural aspirations are presently constituted, we are both empowered and circumscribed.
That is, that we are for the most part entitled to believe any number of things, some of them wild and outlandish, maybe even wild, outlandish and true in some abstract sense even. But still, we are are not necessarily at liberty to implement them as government policy.
Between us as individuals (or groups) and the statute book, there are the American nation, its people and its interest.
In this way, it is the American nation and its people that we, lib and conservative, are both subsidiary to and accountable to.
And it is the existence of this polity, the American nation and its people which creates the space for us, as lib and conservative, to live in peace together, to be friends, to break bread, etc etc, without devolving into a Hobbsean war of all against all.
And it is specifically in the context of this polity whereby Philip ought to be stewarding his citizenship in a way that's much better than what he's doing now.
"
Sometimes yes, in this case no.
This is mostly about time-orientation. That is, that DeSantis or whoever is going to be the next nominee not because voters are particular invested in his plan to lower inflation. But rather because he is addressing inflation in a credible way (or CRT or immigration or mask mandates/closed public schools, etc) which are things that the voters care about.
As opposed to Stop The Steal which to be frank even Trumpy voters don't really care about.
"
The "party of insurrection" is pretty clearly ignoring the "insurrection" so this really doesn't fly.
"
Yeah, consolidation is _an_ issue, but I don't think it's the biggest issue.
The percentage of Republican primary voters who intend to vote for Trump in a primary or caucus is a much bigger deal, and the variance of that is really big, depending on what happens between now and two years from now.
"
Its more orientation than issues. I mean, orientation is constituted by issues, but still it's the orientation that matters.
Trump's orientation is Stop The Steal. That's not the case for grassroots Republicans, even Trumpy ones.
"
That's true. But for a lot of Republicans, those things were basically irrelevant and could be ignored. On the other hand, Trump also opposed any meaningful cuts in Social Security or Medicare, opposed outsourcing American labor to China, and opposed the tendency toward kinetic foreign policy in a way that was relatively unique or more credible among Republicans.
And it was _those_ things that won him the nomination.
"
What can I say pertaining to your citizenship, other than you're doing a piss poor job of stewardship for it.
Somebody has to call you out for it, and I drew the short straw.
"
Yes, legitimate Americans whose primary motivation is the best interest of the United States, as opposed to gratuitously acting out animosities against Republicans.
"
No Philip. Gov Abbott isn't as well regarded among Republicans and normies as some other GOP pols in office, but when it comes time to actually pull the lever, no legitimate American is going to empower Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in 2022.
Therefore Abbott wins by a lot. At least ten points unless there's some grid failure or other scandal between now and then.
Probably more than ten at the end of the day.
"
In 2016 Trump had important things to say, and moreover was the only one who would say them. None of that applies now.
"
It could work out that way, but you can't really choreograph that in advance. But also, there's some reason to think it cuts the other way as well. As non-Trump candidates enter the race, they are going to be talking about current events and not 2020. The drama and narratives around that are something that Trump will have to keep up with and adjust to, and I don't think he necessarily can or be willing to.
"
Supposedly Trump in going to announce for President before the midterms which to me at least is significantly bad news for the GOP if it happens.
As to actually winning the nomination, I'm not buying it. Trump has more ego investment from the base and not as much actual support. One thing in Trump's favor is that when the votes start, he doesn't need a majority of GOP primary voters. In a divided field, he could win with a consistent 35-40%.
Against Trump, there's a long time between now and then. I don't think Trump can win the nomination without running an actual campaign, and I don't think Trump intends to to campaign.
Related to that, Trump is in objective terms a really bad candidate and the longer this process goes on, that will be more and more apparent.
"
This isn't right. The statewide races in Texas in 2022 are all about the margin of victory for the GOP. If there is a power grid breakdown before Election Day, all that means is that Abbott wins reelection by 5 points instead of 30. Texas is a reddening state. Its a reddening state because the US is a reddening country and Texas is part of that.
The idea that Beto O'Rourke kinda maybe looked like he was running close to even for a couple weeks against Ted Cruz is likely the high point for statewide Texas Democrats for 20 years or so.
On “Student Loan Forgiveness: Watch What Unfolds from Here”
No no. The people who are saying this basically aren't paying attention to anything that's happened since Jan ^ really.
I'll find a link if I need to, but there was a poll of Republicans, or rather a series of polls of Republicans asking whether they viewed themselves as party supporters or Trump supporters. And party supporters has gained like 30 points relative to Trump supporters over the last six months or whatever.
Even Trump's endorsements aren't worth very much, in Georgia, Alabama or Ohio, which are very Trumpy states in the party.
"
That's right, positive and communitarian.
We're not likely to see positive and communitarian politics if Trump is dominating the Republican party. But guess what, Trump isn't dominating the Republican party, and his influence is dissipating further every day. And we don't have to invest ourselves in cosplay, cute nicknames, and theatrics any more.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.