I want to be sympathetic to the OP, but I really can't.
Demos really need to rally around the flag, to where even if they lose in 2022 they keep the margins as small as possible. To that end, lots of Dems want to stand with Biden, but it's not just that he's unpopular, he's unpopular and checked out. How are Dems going to rally around the Prez when he'd not even rallied around himself?
The fact that Kamala Harris is even less popular complicates things because the Dems aren't going to be rallying around her. Tbh, it's hard to say what the Dems ought to be working for.
They could start voting Republican and try to be good Americans I guess.
Well yeah, that's another problem with the prosecution's theory. If Rosenbaum is a live wire by himself, then idea that Rittenhouse provoked him is even more absurd.
Push comes to shove, I'd say the probability that Rittenhouse is convicted of something has gone up over the last three days, but if he is convicted he'll get a mistrial without prejudice shortly thereafter.
It's going to be hard for the prosecution to argue harmless error when their entire case is the result of evidence they improperly withheld from the defense.
So he pointed at gun at Rosenbaum [Joshua Ziminsky, I think - ed] and the fight was on.
This is the key point as to where the case is now. Ie, the prosecution is arguing that because Kyle Rittenhouse pointed the rifle at Joshua Ziminsky, that instigated Joseph Rosenbaum into attacking Kyle Rittenhouse, and everything followed from that.
It seems to me to be a dubious argument, but with the video in evidence the prosecution at least gets to argue it. If the video wasn't admitted (as it should not have been imo) then the prosecutors would have nothing to argue.
This is a big reason why I don't believe the idea that the judge as been unfair towards the prosecution. To me, he has been unfair to the defense. He has rebuked the prosecution for its misconduct, but he has been extremely reluctant to do anything meaningful about it.
My understanding is the prosecution is required to give the information to the defense, for slightly different reasons, and simpler ones at that. Ie, the prosecution intends to introduce it as evidence, so it's part of their case. So exculpatory or otherwise, they are obligated to disclose that to the defense, either the evidence itself if it is copy-able information, like here, or otherwise, like a knife or gun, that they have it and under some circumstances the defense gets access to inspect it themselves. Ie, Brady is about exculpatory evidence, this is different obligation.
It's probably dirty pool in any case to give the defense a compressed file. But it's much worse here, because the prosecution's use of the video explicitly depends on the super hi-dif version (and even then I don't think it shows what the prosecutors say but that's another issue). I think maybe the prosecution's justification of this has to do with their use of this video as rebuttal evidence, though tbh I'm getting pretty quickly out of my depth here.
Yeah, maybe but what's more interesting for me is what that "evidence" actually shows.
At the end of the trial, according to the prosecutors, the super hi-def drone footage shows Rittenhouse pointing his rifle at Joshua Ziminski. The defense is arguing a bunch of algorithmic and procedural things against admission, which basically they lost on. I personally haven't seen this video and I don't know if it's even been published on the internet yet.
But, the judge got off the dais and stood about 5 inches away from this huge 4 ft wide 4K monitor and watched the video. And it's pretty clear that he can't see what the prosecution alleges. I'll very interested to see exactly what's in that video when and if it's ever made public.
The judge is… well, pretty average in my estimation. This is basically what you get in a lot of courts in a lot of states around the country. Is it what happens when you elect judges? Hard to say. I don’t think judges should be elected because I think they are likely to have to make calls about cases before them which are not particularly politically popular but legally correct. Which may well be the case with the guns charge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCGpS8wdig
Have you seen this Burt, this part of the trial regarding the gun charge? Ie, not just the ruling, but the part leading up to that. It's the oddest thing. The judge is meandering, explaining to the prosecutors and the defense why the count is bogus according to the law. Then, he tries to say a few things, no particularly intelligible regarding why, in spite of that he denied the defense motion to throw it out. Then, almost as an afterthought, he throws it out. Is there some timing thing I'm missing, ie why it's procedurally correct to deny the defense motion where the parties briefed but nonchalantly grant it in open court a few days later?
I can't buy the idea that the judge is unfairly impartial towards the defense and against the prosecutors. He left the defendant on the hook for that charge until like ten minutes before the case went to the jury. And that sort of indulgence toward the prosecutors has basically governed his entire approach to the whole trial.
As far as this case goes, I think it illustrates the opposite. Ordinarily, trials are such big productions that you don't want them to be derailed by small issues, of one kind or another.
But especially in the context of this particular judge, I'm not havin' it. Judge Schroeder just wants to keep the trial on an even keel and let the jury roll with punches and sort it out. And that's a reasonable thing to want to do, but sometimes things just don't play out that way. Judge Schroeder isn't restoring order by yelling at the prosecutors in the face of misconduct. He's got other remedies and he ought to be using them: disallow their "evidence", throw out their charges, show cause the prosecutors and send their arse to the Bar Disciplinary Committee or whatever Wisconsin has.
This is an interesting post, and at the risk or making you write more words after you have already killed a million pixels, I'd like to hear more about the prosecutors and the judge.
I find the prosecutors to be very distasteful, and tbh I'm hoping they get disbarred but that is probably in vain. In any event, it's gone largely unremarked that these prosecutors look incompetent or committing malpractice, or whatever because they are force-feeding a prosecution where they have no case. If they actually did have a real case things might look a lot different.
There's been a lot of complaints about the judge, mostly from libs. But I have a hard time seeing what the substance is. I hope you don't believe that having "God Bless the USA" as his ringtone is important. And in the circumstances where he's losing his shtt against the prosecutors, it's been pretty cut-and-dried that he ought to be rebuking them. Meanwhile, his actual rulings have if anything been favorable to the prosecutors, at least that's how it seems to me. Did you have anything in particular in mind?
The woke believe and the conservatives want to believe (because it’d make their job so much easier) that woke is a fearsome political force but that simply ain’t the truth.
Sort of but not really. Basically, there's more than one kind of politics going on here and its a mistake to group them all together.
To wit, there's cultural politics, policy politics, election politics and factional politics. At least. There may be others, but those are the important ones in play at the moment.
Pertaining to me and Will Stancil, I am deeply invested against him re: cultural politics, but as to factional politics he's fine by me: let's you and him fight. The others are touch and go depending on the circumstance.
The libs, or the Woke, they are deeply invested in factional politics, maybe a bit less in cultural politics, and for now at least not as much for the others since their agenda really isn't on radar.
To that end, you should more careful than you are to say the Woke are losing (or winning) because there's more than one criteria to judge by, and they are not at all interchangeable.
In particular, it's shortsighted to say they're losing at policy politics when they are much more invested in factional politics and they're doing much better there. Will Stancil types say (and they're right) that Sinema and Manchin are the flaky types, but they themselves are dead center mainstream American Left. That doesn't necessarily get them what they want, but it's not nothing either.
But where this hurts you isn't in some Woke Leviathan that you imagine some conservative believes in. It's actually a bit simpler than that.
Because you and the Woke are fighting factional politics against each other, my team is busy putting points on the election politics scoreboard. That is, I shtt on you from my side, Will Stancil shtts on you from his side, we have a committee meeting in the middle, and sack the quarterback, ie, you and Biden.
Whether Woke is strong or weak is a complicated thing. Certainly my side is winning politically right at the moment, maybe both of us are losing culturally, though that one is itself complicated as well.
Yeah, that's what I meant, sorry for not being clear.
As to the “there is no Democratic policy without woke”, that’s silliness.
Well not really, that's the point of the earlier comment. Or in other words, you may believe this to be true, but I assure Will Stancil doesn't. He and his buddies are going to gin up lib Twitter and quasi-Establishment lib media. Lib twitter and lib media are going to bring in the Congressional Progressive Caucus and lib pols in general.
And in fact, for Will in particular, the idea isn't even about policy. It's about keeping the Demo voting base, (ie, the not Woke Demos) and low-information voters of all ideologies onside through bread and circuses and whatever media tricks, leaving the lane open for progressives to run through whatever policy _they_ want.
Now, I don't believe that. But from here, it's just that he's wrong, it's that you're both wrong.
He's wrong in that the voters (low-information or otherwise) aren't nearly as malleable as he thinks. They have real intentions and beliefs, and they are perfectly capable of propagating them, even if they are typically not expressed in policy terms.
You're wrong because you don't have enough resources to run an effective campaign, inside election season or out of it.
The Biden Administration has a weird top-and-bottom coalition. Obama did too, but this is a different one. The Biden Administration is like having an army where the generals and the corporals are on the same page and ready to fight, but the sergeants through captains are rooting for the enemy. And armies just can't win if they work that way.
Point is, _you_might think Woke is just the bumper sticker on _your_ car, but the Woke surely don't think that. And they're going to be fighting you for the steering wheel every mile. Good luck getting somewhere with that.
The academy is the academy and twitter is (alas) twitter but there’s no excuse for Democratic politicians in office to indulge in this stuff or to let its incendiary language get smuggled into their operations. It’s all downside and no upside.
There's a Left twitter guy named Will Stancil who I sometimes read who thinks this is all weak sauce (and the same for Philip and the OP to some extent). In fact, I think he is somewhere by you IIRC you live somewhere in the Land of No Sun.
It's kinda funny, because for me at least he's right on a couple of points (including this one) and horribly wrong about everything else.
Thing is, I really don't know what the Democrats want to stand for if, hypothetically they weren't Woke, or even gave it up now.
It's going to be hard to cheerlead for this latest infrastructure bill that passed the House (as the OP would have them do) if the activist class views this as a meager consolation prize at best.
As you're probably aware, this bill was delayed in the House for several months because lib activists and the Congressional Progressive Caucus desperately wanted for intraparty leverage against the reconciliation bill failing.
I suspect that the Demo political establishment, and lots of Demo voters are either indifferent to Woke or at some level hostile to it. But lib staff, press, activists and pundits are deeply committed to Woke and its cultural attachments. And as of yet, there's no idea as to how Left politics in America are suppose to work without them.
Yeah I saw that and I might write something there but for the most part I don't wade into that sort of thing much.
I will say that I am quite surprised at the extent to which Rittenhouse seems to be completely blameless in the whole episode.
There's some on the Right who've said "Well he'll be found not guilty by the jury and he should but still, it was reckless and incendiary and he shouldn't have been there." but I don't agree. It certainly would be reasonable to stay at home for the safety of his own person if he felt that way but other than that I gainsay a single thing he did.
I would have agreed with this a few months ago. As things have progressed though this is an unfair characterization of Kyle Rittenhouse. The trial has shown pretty clearly that a hero is exactly what he is.
This is a case that should have never been brought, that's the prosecutors' fault.
As it stands now, this case shouldn't see a jury. That's the court's responsibility. Most courts are reluctant to do this, because it humiliates the prosecutors, unnecessarily maybe, and the depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, prosecutors offices are strong and might retaliate. Still, you gotta draw a line somewhere, and this case is well past it.
The problem with the burn it all down and start again folks is that they are a minority that does not realize it and can’t quite convince the majority that BS Jobs by Dan Graeber is the best book ever written. But I do think there is a substantial portion of the 20-40 something population that did everything it was told to do education wise and are now stuck with huge student debt bills and precarious prospects compared to their elders. “More neoliberalism/triangulation” will not help this group.
I endorse, at least mostly. The man's name was David Graeber, not Dan, a London-based American Marxist who unfortunately died recently. In fact, his twitter account is still online even if Mr Graeber himself isn't.
In any event, I've read a fair amount of his stuff (though not his book); and for the most part I found it very impressive. Among other things, it has been almost completely ignored by the Right and mainstream punditry, but there are some relevant circumstances where the hard Left is friendlier to the Right (I say friendly but really it's probably better described as ideologically simpatico) compared to mainstream liberals.
And those circumstances are primarily about institutionalism. For example, I am much much more supportive of the political aspirations of Bernie Sanders compared to Liz Warren. And I have much more respect for the worldview of Liz Warren than that of Kamala Harris.
Or, there's a very weird intellectual lacuna on the Left where the ideology of cultural Marxists is a much much different thing than the cultural critiques of traditional Marxist (almost directly opposed sometimes even).
The funny thing is, for most of us this sort of thing seems offhand to be associated with the political fringes, but really it's not. It's really about competing centrists, where one group is protected by jobs in bureaucracies in government, universities, hospitals, and the like. And they're political/cultural focus is largely about reinforcing the institutional power of those bureaucracies. And there's another group who's over-educated but underemployed and often carrying debt (as Saul said), whose economic and social aspirations are often thwarted by those very same bureaucracies.
Forgive me, I combined a couple things. The LP claimed credit after the fact. Whether they funded and organized it is the matter of dispute.
As far as the "conspiracy" goes, I think you're out to lunch on that one. The nature of the incident is not something you do on a spur-of-the-moment lark. Among other things, we know they are Demo staffers, and we know they coordinated. It's not a conspiracy to ask on who's say-so they coordinated.
Uh huh, Democratic operatives did something bone headed like that and then a rogue republican group provided cover?
No North, we know the Demo operatives did it because they were the ones identified at the scene. The Lincoln Project supposedly funded/organized/claimed credit for it after the fact. The "conspiracy" is that we don't necessarily believe them.
I dunno, it doesn't seem like conspiracy nonsense to me. The people they identified were staffer-level people with ties to the institutional Democratic party. Lincoln Project are rogue Republicans.
Lincoln Project is primarily about scam fundraising and Left agitprop on cable news and social media. If they're into guerilla theater as well, it would be a first AFAIK.
No, I think the Demos did this, especially because it was intended to reinforce the McAuliffe campaign themes.
“Camden Layton, the finance director for Virginia Young Democrats, and Colleen Wachenfeld, who is associated with Virginia Democrats, both appeared to be pictured in the five-person group clad in caps and white shirts. Shortly after Twitter users noted Layton and Wachenfeld’s resemblance to the mysterious torch holders, they both made their social media accounts private.”
Lol, imagine sending out a woman, a black guy, and three white dudes out to impersonate white supremacists. I wonder whose idea this was, maybe it was theirs but I doubt it. At least one of them should sue the Democrats. At least they could get a clean conscience out of the deal.
You're probably aware, but most of the Right seems to think this _wasn't_ the Lincoln Project, that they're trying to jump on the grenade in service to the Democrats.
Frankly, at this point I don't think it matters. Youngkin is going to win. I wouldn't have believed it two or three weeks ago, but I'm sure of it now. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he wins by 5+ points.
It's not just that the Macker campaign is desperate, and that Youngkin is surging in the polls. But this latest incident is going to leave a mark. I don't think the ex-GOP NoVa white collar libs are going to like having their emotional buttons being pushed in the service of a lie, ie basically what the OP is about.
My impression is Sanders, Warren, and AOC really think it’s in the national interest to fight inequality, and the best way to do that is enact a bunch of central planning and/or wealth destroying and/or culture war policies.
Yeah, that's exactly right. The point being, the libs are getting out in front of their skis.
The can try to persuade us that we should empower them to solve inequality, and they do try but that's not really the point. Whether we agree or not, they're just going to steam ahead with whatever means are available.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Joe Biden Needs to Be The Next Democratic Nominee”
I want to be sympathetic to the OP, but I really can't.
Demos really need to rally around the flag, to where even if they lose in 2022 they keep the margins as small as possible. To that end, lots of Dems want to stand with Biden, but it's not just that he's unpopular, he's unpopular and checked out. How are Dems going to rally around the Prez when he'd not even rallied around himself?
The fact that Kamala Harris is even less popular complicates things because the Dems aren't going to be rallying around her. Tbh, it's hard to say what the Dems ought to be working for.
They could start voting Republican and try to be good Americans I guess.
On “The Kyle Rittenhouse Trial: Em Carpenter’s Blunt Take On The Whole Thing”
Well yeah, that's another problem with the prosecution's theory. If Rosenbaum is a live wire by himself, then idea that Rittenhouse provoked him is even more absurd.
Push comes to shove, I'd say the probability that Rittenhouse is convicted of something has gone up over the last three days, but if he is convicted he'll get a mistrial without prejudice shortly thereafter.
It's going to be hard for the prosecution to argue harmless error when their entire case is the result of evidence they improperly withheld from the defense.
"
This is the key point as to where the case is now. Ie, the prosecution is arguing that because Kyle Rittenhouse pointed the rifle at Joshua Ziminsky, that instigated Joseph Rosenbaum into attacking Kyle Rittenhouse, and everything followed from that.
It seems to me to be a dubious argument, but with the video in evidence the prosecution at least gets to argue it. If the video wasn't admitted (as it should not have been imo) then the prosecutors would have nothing to argue.
This is a big reason why I don't believe the idea that the judge as been unfair towards the prosecution. To me, he has been unfair to the defense. He has rebuked the prosecution for its misconduct, but he has been extremely reluctant to do anything meaningful about it.
"
My understanding is the prosecution is required to give the information to the defense, for slightly different reasons, and simpler ones at that. Ie, the prosecution intends to introduce it as evidence, so it's part of their case. So exculpatory or otherwise, they are obligated to disclose that to the defense, either the evidence itself if it is copy-able information, like here, or otherwise, like a knife or gun, that they have it and under some circumstances the defense gets access to inspect it themselves. Ie, Brady is about exculpatory evidence, this is different obligation.
It's probably dirty pool in any case to give the defense a compressed file. But it's much worse here, because the prosecution's use of the video explicitly depends on the super hi-dif version (and even then I don't think it shows what the prosecutors say but that's another issue). I think maybe the prosecution's justification of this has to do with their use of this video as rebuttal evidence, though tbh I'm getting pretty quickly out of my depth here.
"
Yeah, maybe but what's more interesting for me is what that "evidence" actually shows.
At the end of the trial, according to the prosecutors, the super hi-def drone footage shows Rittenhouse pointing his rifle at Joshua Ziminski. The defense is arguing a bunch of algorithmic and procedural things against admission, which basically they lost on. I personally haven't seen this video and I don't know if it's even been published on the internet yet.
But, the judge got off the dais and stood about 5 inches away from this huge 4 ft wide 4K monitor and watched the video. And it's pretty clear that he can't see what the prosecution alleges. I'll very interested to see exactly what's in that video when and if it's ever made public.
"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaCGpS8wdig
Have you seen this Burt, this part of the trial regarding the gun charge? Ie, not just the ruling, but the part leading up to that. It's the oddest thing. The judge is meandering, explaining to the prosecutors and the defense why the count is bogus according to the law. Then, he tries to say a few things, no particularly intelligible regarding why, in spite of that he denied the defense motion to throw it out. Then, almost as an afterthought, he throws it out. Is there some timing thing I'm missing, ie why it's procedurally correct to deny the defense motion where the parties briefed but nonchalantly grant it in open court a few days later?
I can't buy the idea that the judge is unfairly impartial towards the defense and against the prosecutors. He left the defendant on the hook for that charge until like ten minutes before the case went to the jury. And that sort of indulgence toward the prosecutors has basically governed his entire approach to the whole trial.
"
As far as this case goes, I think it illustrates the opposite. Ordinarily, trials are such big productions that you don't want them to be derailed by small issues, of one kind or another.
But especially in the context of this particular judge, I'm not havin' it. Judge Schroeder just wants to keep the trial on an even keel and let the jury roll with punches and sort it out. And that's a reasonable thing to want to do, but sometimes things just don't play out that way. Judge Schroeder isn't restoring order by yelling at the prosecutors in the face of misconduct. He's got other remedies and he ought to be using them: disallow their "evidence", throw out their charges, show cause the prosecutors and send their arse to the Bar Disciplinary Committee or whatever Wisconsin has.
"
This is an interesting post, and at the risk or making you write more words after you have already killed a million pixels, I'd like to hear more about the prosecutors and the judge.
I find the prosecutors to be very distasteful, and tbh I'm hoping they get disbarred but that is probably in vain. In any event, it's gone largely unremarked that these prosecutors look incompetent or committing malpractice, or whatever because they are force-feeding a prosecution where they have no case. If they actually did have a real case things might look a lot different.
There's been a lot of complaints about the judge, mostly from libs. But I have a hard time seeing what the substance is. I hope you don't believe that having "God Bless the USA" as his ringtone is important. And in the circumstances where he's losing his shtt against the prosecutors, it's been pretty cut-and-dried that he ought to be rebuking them. Meanwhile, his actual rulings have if anything been favorable to the prosecutors, at least that's how it seems to me. Did you have anything in particular in mind?
On “Democrats Confront The Real Limits Of Their Messaging Problems”
Sort of but not really. Basically, there's more than one kind of politics going on here and its a mistake to group them all together.
To wit, there's cultural politics, policy politics, election politics and factional politics. At least. There may be others, but those are the important ones in play at the moment.
Pertaining to me and Will Stancil, I am deeply invested against him re: cultural politics, but as to factional politics he's fine by me: let's you and him fight. The others are touch and go depending on the circumstance.
The libs, or the Woke, they are deeply invested in factional politics, maybe a bit less in cultural politics, and for now at least not as much for the others since their agenda really isn't on radar.
To that end, you should more careful than you are to say the Woke are losing (or winning) because there's more than one criteria to judge by, and they are not at all interchangeable.
In particular, it's shortsighted to say they're losing at policy politics when they are much more invested in factional politics and they're doing much better there. Will Stancil types say (and they're right) that Sinema and Manchin are the flaky types, but they themselves are dead center mainstream American Left. That doesn't necessarily get them what they want, but it's not nothing either.
But where this hurts you isn't in some Woke Leviathan that you imagine some conservative believes in. It's actually a bit simpler than that.
Because you and the Woke are fighting factional politics against each other, my team is busy putting points on the election politics scoreboard. That is, I shtt on you from my side, Will Stancil shtts on you from his side, we have a committee meeting in the middle, and sack the quarterback, ie, you and Biden.
Whether Woke is strong or weak is a complicated thing. Certainly my side is winning politically right at the moment, maybe both of us are losing culturally, though that one is itself complicated as well.
"
Yeah, that's what I meant, sorry for not being clear.
Well not really, that's the point of the earlier comment. Or in other words, you may believe this to be true, but I assure Will Stancil doesn't. He and his buddies are going to gin up lib Twitter and quasi-Establishment lib media. Lib twitter and lib media are going to bring in the Congressional Progressive Caucus and lib pols in general.
And in fact, for Will in particular, the idea isn't even about policy. It's about keeping the Demo voting base, (ie, the not Woke Demos) and low-information voters of all ideologies onside through bread and circuses and whatever media tricks, leaving the lane open for progressives to run through whatever policy _they_ want.
Now, I don't believe that. But from here, it's just that he's wrong, it's that you're both wrong.
He's wrong in that the voters (low-information or otherwise) aren't nearly as malleable as he thinks. They have real intentions and beliefs, and they are perfectly capable of propagating them, even if they are typically not expressed in policy terms.
You're wrong because you don't have enough resources to run an effective campaign, inside election season or out of it.
The Biden Administration has a weird top-and-bottom coalition. Obama did too, but this is a different one. The Biden Administration is like having an army where the generals and the corporals are on the same page and ready to fight, but the sergeants through captains are rooting for the enemy. And armies just can't win if they work that way.
Point is, _you_might think Woke is just the bumper sticker on _your_ car, but the Woke surely don't think that. And they're going to be fighting you for the steering wheel every mile. Good luck getting somewhere with that.
"
There's a Left twitter guy named Will Stancil who I sometimes read who thinks this is all weak sauce (and the same for Philip and the OP to some extent). In fact, I think he is somewhere by you IIRC you live somewhere in the Land of No Sun.
It's kinda funny, because for me at least he's right on a couple of points (including this one) and horribly wrong about everything else.
Thing is, I really don't know what the Democrats want to stand for if, hypothetically they weren't Woke, or even gave it up now.
It's going to be hard to cheerlead for this latest infrastructure bill that passed the House (as the OP would have them do) if the activist class views this as a meager consolation prize at best.
As you're probably aware, this bill was delayed in the House for several months because lib activists and the Congressional Progressive Caucus desperately wanted for intraparty leverage against the reconciliation bill failing.
I suspect that the Demo political establishment, and lots of Demo voters are either indifferent to Woke or at some level hostile to it. But lib staff, press, activists and pundits are deeply committed to Woke and its cultural attachments. And as of yet, there's no idea as to how Left politics in America are suppose to work without them.
"
Actually, no. There is a good guy in this story, it's Kyle Rittenhouse (which frankly surprises me a bit).
"
Yeah I saw that and I might write something there but for the most part I don't wade into that sort of thing much.
I will say that I am quite surprised at the extent to which Rittenhouse seems to be completely blameless in the whole episode.
There's some on the Right who've said "Well he'll be found not guilty by the jury and he should but still, it was reckless and incendiary and he shouldn't have been there." but I don't agree. It certainly would be reasonable to stay at home for the safety of his own person if he felt that way but other than that I gainsay a single thing he did.
"
I would have agreed with this a few months ago. As things have progressed though this is an unfair characterization of Kyle Rittenhouse. The trial has shown pretty clearly that a hero is exactly what he is.
On “A Victim, By Any Other Name”
This is a case that should have never been brought, that's the prosecutors' fault.
As it stands now, this case shouldn't see a jury. That's the court's responsibility. Most courts are reluctant to do this, because it humiliates the prosecutors, unnecessarily maybe, and the depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, prosecutors offices are strong and might retaliate. Still, you gotta draw a line somewhere, and this case is well past it.
On “From CNBC: Early voting hits record high in Virginia ahead of dead-heat governor’s race”
I endorse, at least mostly. The man's name was David Graeber, not Dan, a London-based American Marxist who unfortunately died recently. In fact, his twitter account is still online even if Mr Graeber himself isn't.
In any event, I've read a fair amount of his stuff (though not his book); and for the most part I found it very impressive. Among other things, it has been almost completely ignored by the Right and mainstream punditry, but there are some relevant circumstances where the hard Left is friendlier to the Right (I say friendly but really it's probably better described as ideologically simpatico) compared to mainstream liberals.
And those circumstances are primarily about institutionalism. For example, I am much much more supportive of the political aspirations of Bernie Sanders compared to Liz Warren. And I have much more respect for the worldview of Liz Warren than that of Kamala Harris.
Or, there's a very weird intellectual lacuna on the Left where the ideology of cultural Marxists is a much much different thing than the cultural critiques of traditional Marxist (almost directly opposed sometimes even).
The funny thing is, for most of us this sort of thing seems offhand to be associated with the political fringes, but really it's not. It's really about competing centrists, where one group is protected by jobs in bureaucracies in government, universities, hospitals, and the like. And they're political/cultural focus is largely about reinforcing the institutional power of those bureaucracies. And there's another group who's over-educated but underemployed and often carrying debt (as Saul said), whose economic and social aspirations are often thwarted by those very same bureaucracies.
"
America is healing.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html
On “The Lincoln Project Takes a Trip to the Theater”
Forgive me, I combined a couple things. The LP claimed credit after the fact. Whether they funded and organized it is the matter of dispute.
As far as the "conspiracy" goes, I think you're out to lunch on that one. The nature of the incident is not something you do on a spur-of-the-moment lark. Among other things, we know they are Demo staffers, and we know they coordinated. It's not a conspiracy to ask on who's say-so they coordinated.
"
No North, we know the Demo operatives did it because they were the ones identified at the scene. The Lincoln Project supposedly funded/organized/claimed credit for it after the fact. The "conspiracy" is that we don't necessarily believe them.
"
I dunno, it doesn't seem like conspiracy nonsense to me. The people they identified were staffer-level people with ties to the institutional Democratic party. Lincoln Project are rogue Republicans.
Lincoln Project is primarily about scam fundraising and Left agitprop on cable news and social media. If they're into guerilla theater as well, it would be a first AFAIK.
No, I think the Demos did this, especially because it was intended to reinforce the McAuliffe campaign themes.
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I've been wrong before, but this ain't it. I expected Biden to win bigger than he did.
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Lol, imagine sending out a woman, a black guy, and three white dudes out to impersonate white supremacists. I wonder whose idea this was, maybe it was theirs but I doubt it. At least one of them should sue the Democrats. At least they could get a clean conscience out of the deal.
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You're probably aware, but most of the Right seems to think this _wasn't_ the Lincoln Project, that they're trying to jump on the grenade in service to the Democrats.
Frankly, at this point I don't think it matters. Youngkin is going to win. I wouldn't have believed it two or three weeks ago, but I'm sure of it now. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he wins by 5+ points.
It's not just that the Macker campaign is desperate, and that Youngkin is surging in the polls. But this latest incident is going to leave a mark. I don't think the ex-GOP NoVa white collar libs are going to like having their emotional buttons being pushed in the service of a lie, ie basically what the OP is about.
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America is healing.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html
On “Parliamentarian Rules “Dreamers” Fix Can’t Be Done Through Reconciliation: Read It For Yourself”
Yeah, that's exactly right. The point being, the libs are getting out in front of their skis.
The can try to persuade us that we should empower them to solve inequality, and they do try but that's not really the point. Whether we agree or not, they're just going to steam ahead with whatever means are available.
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