ChiGoose

I normally don't feed the trolls, but I wanted to clarify this in case anyone thinks this is a good point. For the purposes of this post alone, I will concede that Trump saying peacefully means he didn't incite anything and that this was all on the mob or the FBI or whatever. We have video, from the rioters themselves, checking Trump's posts during the riot. At one point, he tweeted about the Capitol Police being good and that they shouldn't harm them. The reaction to this from one of the rioters was "well, he didn't say not to harm the members of Congress" Then, later, when Trump finally releases the video calling for everyone to go home (after getting them to omit the word "yesterday" because it was too hard), the rioters see that and believe that they are being ordered by Trump to leave, so they do so. Here is the video of the shooting: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/capitol-shooting-that-led-to-ashli-babbitt-s-death-captured-on-video-99180613572 You can see the officer's gun on the left, and you can see Babbitt climbing through the door on the right. The family would have *a* case, but I don't think it would be a slam dunk. They could definitely win it, but given the facts of the case and how cases about police shootings have gone, I would think the officer would be more likely to be acquitted than convicted.

The HIMARS seem to be making a huge difference.

My best guess is that if you watch the video, the officer who fired was right next to the barricade that Babbitt was breaching while the other officers were at a distance. They may not have though their lives were in immediate danger due to the distance. We actually know the answer to this. Trump tweeted out the video for them to go home, so they did. There are videos from the rioters seeing that message and deciding to leave.

Candidate for Governor Lee Zeldin attacked at an event in Rochester: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-rep-lee-zeldin-attacked-stage-new-york-campaign-event-witnesses-say-rcna39493 Utterly bizarre that the dude just slowly walks up to Zeldin. Thankfully he only had pointed brass knuckles and was restrained before he could use them to stab Zeldin.

I think at best you can make it a gray area, but for what it's worth, it was investigated and the officer's actions were found to be justified. Some things that lead me to believe the shooting was likely justified: There had been reports that day that some of the rioters had weapons. The rioters had broken through the outer barricades and through the doors and windows in the capitol The rioters were in the process of breaking down the makeshift barrier constructed to protect the members of Congress and their staff behind it The rioters ignored orders from an officer with his gun drawn to stand down The rioters broke through the glass on the door One of the rioters was actively climbing through the opening when the officer fired at them I think it is reasonable for the officer in that situation to be afraid for the life or safety of themself or the people they are protecting. If you want to argue that the officer should have somehow arrested that singular person without endangering themselves by putting them in a compromised position, sure. Obviously the preference would be that nobody is shot or killed. But there's no guarantee that the officer could safely de-escalate the situation. At this point, the rioters have ransacked the Capitol and the officer was standing between them and innocent people. .When one of the rioters starts climbing through the barrier, I think it's reasonable to be concerned that they have malicious intent and/or they will be just the first of many getting through the barricade.

An absolutely classic @SoCal Deek Straw Man. Totally make up what someone said and have them have to respond to it as if it was what they actually said when you know it wasn’t. A bit early in the morning for me, but I guess I’ll take it on. As I said, if rioters violently break into a building and start smashing through barricades, then I believe a cop is justified in using lethal force to protect themselves and the innocent people they are protecting if the only barricade between them and the rioters is being torn down. Obviously I would never ever support cops shooting indiscriminately into a crowd, and you know that. But you want to play the political hack and say that the words I typed mean something totally different because you know that the mouth breathers like DRsGhosy will eat it up. Good job. I hope the internet points made you happy.

Babbitt was with a group of people trying to violently break down a barricade and get to members of Congress. They ignored calls to stand down and because of that, she was killed. No investigation needed. She died as a direct result of her actions. If Antifa stormed the Capitol and one of them was shot dead while trying to break through a barricade, we wouldn’t need an investigation either. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Gas prices are high, inflation is high, there’s a war in Europe, etc… The out-party doesn’t have to have solutions, they just need to point to the problems of the in-party. The average American doesn’t spend a ton of time on understanding politics or the economy. They just look at their paycheck vs the cost of goods and see that one party is in charge. Well, we must need a check on that party to fix things! This is why the GOP doesn’t even need to run on a solution for inflation. They can just say the Dems are in charge and inflation is bad, therefore, you best vote for the GOP. Hardcore Dems blame Putin, hardcore conservatives blame Biden and the average American has no idea but they know things are not great and that one party is in charge, so maybe it’s time for the other party to get a shot. In the end, it’s not the policies that matter, it’s what makes the voters feel good, or what makes them feel less bad.

Sure thing. Partisanship: We live in a hyper polarized society built on a two party system. While proper governance requires compromise, our politics incentivize an “Us vs Them” mentality. Even if a bill is incredibly popular with the American public, your incentive is to oppose it if passing it would mean a win for the opposition party. It brings the worst part of politics into the gears of government and grinds everything to a halt, resulting in everyone being mad at the government but the people in charge having no incentive to change their behavior. Failure of the news media: It used to be that we would get news in printed papers, long form magazines, and an hour each evening on the tv from trusted sources. News, by and large, wasn’t an important commodity. It was a small part of the day. Now, we have cable news, 24/7 news cycles, social media, internet news, and an unending stream of information. This incentivizes companies to publish the most salacious or rage-inducing stories. In the contest between emotion and logic, logic doesn’t stand a chance. Since the advent of CNN, our eyeballs have become a commodity and the best way to keep them engaged through the ad break is to make their owner mad. So what was once a small landscape of people providing the news is now a giant mess of sensationalism trying to keep us engaged by manipulating our emotions. Lack of shared facts: Given the decentralization and sensationalization of the news media, we no longer live in a shared reality. We consume the “news” that makes us feel better or smarter or superior. If a news source says something we disagree with or upsets us, we switch to one that will agree with us and comfort us. This has led to the destruction of a shared reality. We cannot agree on facts, we cannot agree on much of anything. We just seek out the news that tells us what we want to hear and dismiss anything else as biased or outright lies.

Partisanship, failure of the news industry, and a lack of shared facts.

I generally try not to react to them because they are the singular dumbest person on PPP, but sometimes they say something so stupid, I cannot help myself.

Ashli Babbitt died because she was a terrorist who was stopped by the police with lethal force.

The thing that has struck out to me so far is that everyone was asking Trump to make a statement to tell everyone to go home but he refused all of them. Then, the national guard was deployed and he changed his mind and made the video and told people to go home.

That's because you're a sheep. This is clearly a ploy to hide him from the public and test run Kamala as the candidate in 2024. The Deep State has not been satisfied with Sleepy Joke's performance so they made a deal with the reverse vampires in the KHive to boost Kamala for the next two years for the eventual take over. In the meantime, Pelosi is working with the woke liberal law enforcement across the country to rig ballots for the election to ensure the Dems win. I also saw from a secret government insider that AOC is planning on going to Guantanamo to use the anti-adrenochrome they extracted from the terrorists to age herself enough so that she will be 35 and can join as the VP on Kamala's ticket. Then, once Kamala is inaugurated after the stolen election, she will immediately step down and AOC will take over and enact socialism across the entire country. It's all so obvious. /s

I think a scenario in which a third party candidate gets so powerful they can dictate to their voters to hold off on supporting another party until they get certain concessions and then, once they give the signal, all of their voters will support that major party in acknowledgement of the concessions seems... almost impossible. Years ago, I stumbled upon CGP Grey's video on FPTP and it changed how I viewed elections and electoral systems. There is vast room for improvement, but even something as simple as a referendum to change to ranked choice would make a tremendous difference. Personally, I would love us to move to multimember districts with STV for the House, but baby steps... Bonus points: Twitter HATES him. Twitter ain't real life, people.

We can get around it through voter referendums like Alaskans did in 2020 with Measure 2. I think NYC recently adopted it as well. I think people are so fed up with the status quo and the partisanship that if we can find a way to put the question to them and not the politicians, there's a chance to get something done. You're right that if the politicians have a say, they will not willingly give up their power. So we need to work around that.

This has to be fake right? He's not *this* loony, is he?

Criminal probe opened into deletion of Secret Service Jan. 6 text messages Ok, I am officially revising my assumption from Option 2 to Option 3.

It all depends on the kind of electoral reform that is enacted. Personally, I think the simplest fix that has the biggest potential to make a difference is ranked choice voting (nothing will solve everything, there is no panacea, but we can make steps to a better system). In ranked choice voting, voters rank the candidates according to their preference. If a single candidate gets 50%+1 of the vote, they win. If no candidate does, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the voters' second preference. This process repeats until either a candidate gets 50%+1 or there's just one candidate left. This helps break the "us vs. them" mentality because Candidate A will want to try to convince Candidate B's supporters to select them as their #2 choice in case Candidate B is eliminated. At first, it'll probably just be different flavors of Dems and Republicans running with multiple candidates from the same party in the race. But eventually, it should pave the way for viable third parties. You could have people pick the Libertarian candidate at #1 and the GOP as #2, or the Green Party as #1 and Dems as #2. Those third parties will no longer play the spoiler roll and will have an easier time getting supporters.

We have a first past the post electoral system that suffers from the spoiler effect. It is nearly impossible for a third party to emerge in such a system because it tends to compete with the party that is more ideologically aligned to it and therefore benefits the party less ideologically aligned. If we truly want to break the stranglehold of the two current parties, we need to reform how we do elections.

It was the dumbest rallying cry of a very vocal minority of people. No police have been defunded, many police budgets went up. It's not surprising that Biden supports increased funding for police.

It honestly doesn’t seem that way. It seems more like people pointing out the problems with Dobbs and you hand-waving them away, assuming they’ll eventually be fixed.

One of my friends works for the local Dems. They have been texting me quotes from GOP senators supporting the legislation all day. They are hoping against hope that there are enough GOP votes to get this to pass. I guarantee you that if you polled Dems, they would much rather the GOP helps them pass this than it tank.

I don't understand how someone can hold this view and also say this will all be ok if we trust the process that elected officials will fix these problems.

We should all be advocating for non-partisan electoral reforms like ranked choice voting. That would get rid of the spoiler effect that prevents third parties from succeeding and give a real chance for better options to emerge.