Barron2024
1mo ago
How about zero? The “cap” means nothing. Why not “cap” murders, assaults, or burglaries? Enforce the damn law.
Barron2024
1mo ago
Biden was willing to give concessions on immigration by signing the most conservative immigration bill in a generation, something Republicans were on board with
Explicitly allowing 5,000 illegals per day is neither a concession nor conservative. The fact that Republicans were on board with that even for a second is just evidence that the Republican Party is useless and not conservative.
Barron2024
6mo ago
a mob invading the seat of government
This happens routinely. Hell, it happened yesterday. For some reason it doesn’t seem important to the powers that be.
Barron2024
7mo ago
These people don’t literally believe blacks are magic
Not to be snarky, but are we sure of this?
There does seem to be a lot of magical thinking applied to not just black people but “diversity”. It’s taken for granted that without black people (slavery), America wouldn’t even exist. (“Slaves built America.”) Just look at the purported benefits of diversity. Without diversity we wouldn’t have creativity, innovation, social cohesion, social justice, or equity.
It’s hard to square these claims with reality in any realistic, non-magical way.
Barron2024
7mo ago
I'm also willing to entertain the notion that Bowman is just a dumbass who was in a rush (option 2), rather than a man intent on undermining American democracy (option 3).
I agree with you. I’m sorry it sounds like I’m trolling. gattsuru has worded the point better than I can, though he can laugh at the double standard while I find it profoundly black-pilling. There’s nothing more depressing than a one-sided “justice system”. This fire alarm situation will soon be memory-holed and Bowman will face zero consequences. Meanwhile there are peaceful protestors facing 20 years in prison and the only difference is their politics. I’d like to be principled and treat Bowman as an idiot that made an accident, but that’s suicidal at this point.
Barron2024
7mo ago
The discussion isn't about whether or not he set off the fire alarm (he clearly did) but whether he did it with the intent
The obviousness of it being a fire alarm speaks to intent, I would think. Unless the defense is "I'm a huge idiot who doesn't know what a fire alarm is". If it was some special gold-plated Capitol Hill fire alarm variant I could believe it was unintentional. But it is a totally standard fire alarm you'd see all over the country.
As to the rest of your post, the real issue here is that only the left receives this much charity from the legal system and the mainstream media.
Barron2024
7mo ago
On twitter I saw this image
You can also see the fire alarm in that image. It's bright red and says "FIRE".
The building that was evacuated was the Canon Hill building across the street, not the Capitol building where the vote occurred. If he wanted to prevent a vote wouldn't it make more sense to pull the alarm in the Capitol building itself?
This is no doubt evidence that could be brought up, however it would also make logical sense to me that the whole Hill would be evacuated/go into lockdown in the event of an unplanned fire alarm in one of the complex's buildings.
The bill was passed with near-unanimous Democrat support, including from Bowman. Not to mention that Democrats have absolutely no interest in a government shutdown with a Democratic president in charge. Why would a Democratic congressman want to obstruct the voting on a bill he is in favor of?
I read somewhere (I don't remember where), that the motive could have been to buy time to actually read the bill. Which, honestly, is a great motive. I'd be in favor of multiple hours-long fire drills so that they would actually read every stupid 2000-page bill they put up for a vote. However I don't expect Bowman to be pulling the fire alarm next time the Democrats try to quickly ram through a bill.
Barron2024
7mo ago
innocent mistake
I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
your opponents can also hold you to this new standard
They already are.
He may be compelled to resign.
I would be surprised by this outcome, but it is a reasonable one. I don't actually think he should be in jail for 20 years. Just like I don't think J6 defendants should be in jail for 20 years.
Barron2024
7mo ago
How does “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so” not apply? I see no reference to trespassing.
Though it does say they can be fined, imprisoned for up to 20 years, or both. You’re probably right that they’ll fine him $20 and call it a day. Such an equitable justice system we have.
It wouldn’t be so blatant if they didn’t pre-announce the race and sex of their appointees. Even just the plausible deniability of not doing that would improve the optics.
Immediately narrowing the universe of candidates based on race and sex is definitionally racist and sexist.
The “political legitimacy” of the racial spoils system of South Africa surely provides much comfort to its citizens.
Barron2024
7mo ago
The only reason for doling out political appointments based on race, sex, etc. is “racism/sexism/etcism is good, actually”.
I do find it hard to give any charity to that view, I will admit.
Barron2024
7mo ago
And if Congress was unicameral, that would be great. But it isn't.
If we don’t care at all about sample sizes then all committees and subsets of congress should also be representative.
I'm not sure who "we" is.
Quit the semantic games for just one second please. “We” is obviously anyone who claims to care about “representation”. The Democratic Party claims that the entire country should care about that.
There is a big difference between 1) "It is fine if appointments are made in a manner such that all groups have at least some representation" and 2) "Every group should have representation which exactly matches their percentage of the population."
There are lots of minorities that are completely unrepresented in various government bodies. Let’s take the SCOTUS for instance where the last seat was explicitly promised to go to a black woman (and did), despite blacks as a group already being fairly represented. Where is the representation for the Asian-Americans? For the Senegalese-Americans? For the Australian-Americans? To the Democratic Party, “representation” is merely a giveaway to groups most likely to vote Democrat.
Barron2024
7mo ago
I was looking at congress as a whole where the sample size is more reasonable.
Of course, for decades there was a de facto "Jewish seat " on the Supreme Court.
If we truly cared about representation matching the population then there wouldn’t be a Jew on the Supreme Court, let alone an informal reserved seat.
Barron2024
7mo ago
My original comment was pithy culture warring of course, though I think the point still stands.
the two black women appointed so far have had all the conventional qualifications for the jobs at issue.
This may be true but those conventional qualifications have been poisoned by affirmative action, so it’s impossible to tell how qualified they really are. I’ve been less than impressed by Jackson’s legal acumen, though I’m not a lawyer and fundamentally disagree with her so take that with a grain of salt.
taking representation into account when appointing someone to a representative body does not seem to be unreasonable on its face.
This would be supremely unreasonable if applied to other groups like Jews. Hell, Hispanics are much less represented in Congress than blacks relative to their proportion of the population. For some reason it’s always one specific group getting this racist boost.
Barron2024
7mo ago
Don’t fear. Newsom has promised to appoint a black woman. The only relevant qualification to the Democratic Party.
Barron2024
7mo ago
Unfortunately I live in a state where my vote does not matter numerically. At least half our local-ish elections are uncontested or essentially uncontested (think Vermin Supreme-tier candidates).
Sure, I’ll vote for the only presidential candidate who at least has a reason to care about election security, it’s just that his opponents are desperately trying to throw him in jail…
Barron2024
7mo ago
I’m not opposed to the concept of a secret ballot.
You may not be opposed to it but I doubt your voting record would indicate that. So what is one supposed to do? Just let you win forever with the comforting knowledge that “at least netstack is not opposed to a secret ballot”?
Barron2024
7mo ago
Yes, I should stop getting into specific comparisons because we have many resident lawyers who will gish gallop around with liberal § characters proving that case A is never exactly like case B. And they’re probably right but I simply don’t care. I have eyes that can see that the law is applied unequally and in one direction more often than not. So whatever § says is irrelevant to me because I view it as illegitimate.
There’s no correcting this within the bounds of “the law” because anything approaching effective dissent is functionally illegal, so I won’t pretend to care about the minutiae of “the law”.
Barron2024
7mo ago
the guy who cast his electoral vote for Faith Spotted Eagle instead of Hillary Clinton got fined $1000, for example.
lol. lmao even.
If you want to argue that there has been an unfair application of justice, a good starting point would be to specify the particular crime you think particular people should have been convicted of.
Nah. I won’t do that. It’s your job (assuming you’re a lawyer, if not you probably should be) to find US Code §42.a.5.h.65.z “ackshually this crime doesn’t apply because of some tortured logic”. I just don’t care. Whatever “justice system” can result in the manifestly unfair decisions we’ve seen over the past several decades is entirely illegitimate and I won’t legitimize it by citing its scriptures.
Barron2024
7mo ago
there is no reason to expect them to attract the same sentence
They will not attract any sentence. That’s the whole point.
Barron2024
7mo ago
I await with bated breath the Russia-gaters and 2016 faithless electors getting 22+ year sentences then.
Barron2024
8mo ago
Just Google “psychology white people” or something and see that these sorts of rules are never applied fairly. This is just more lawfare against non-progressive people/causes and you don’t need to read the particulars of the case to realize it.
Barron2024
8mo ago
He’s at least as much a “scientist” as Jill Biden is a “Dr.”
Once the federal government starts aggressively deporting anyone not appearing in court, not submitting their (almost unanimously bullshit) asylum claims on time, or committing other crimes I may believe their stated motivations. Until then I will assume that any “bipartisan” legislation is just more words with which to wage lawfare against US citizens.
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