The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7d ago
This is not about NJ gun laws this is about the more general involuntary commitment process.
It's not about the more general involuntary commitment process. It's about whether entering into that process should carry the same stigma as a felony conviction with respect to gun rights.
For other rights we prohibit people from abusing them (see: restrictions on free speech such as harassment).
We don't, however, take away their typewriters, computers, or pen and paper.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7d ago
You have not proposed an alternative.
Nor do I need to. If you're actually a 2A advocate, it's not somehow the "default" that if a psychiatrist thinks a person deserves to be committed that they lose their gun rights forever. If you think that for gun rights to apply, the proponents of gun rights must come up with a solution to all crimes which could be prevented by taking away someone's gun rights, you're not a 2A advocate.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7d ago
· Edited 7d ago
The constitution is not a suicide pact, case law establishes restrictions to constitutional rights
So we've reached the "There are limitations, therefore this limitation is OK" stage of vitiating the Second Amendment.
The same for 2A. Jihadis can't have a right to nukes just because they are American citizens. That is not sensible. You can still be pro-2A and think that murders have lost their right to guns.
American citizen Jihadis absolutely have the right to guns if they haven't been convicted of crimes. We can't just have a member of the priesthood point to them and say "Man, those are some BAD muzzies" and no guns for them.
Ultimately your right to live supersedes my example crazy guys right to own a gun. If you believe otherwise you are in a gross minority.
You're not asking for a right to live; it's illegal to shoot you. You're asking for a right to safety, by taking away the guns of those who you think might shoot you based on some very lightweight procedure amounting to the word of a doctor. There's no such right.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2mo ago
We've talked a few times about New York's congestion pricing program. On February 19, Secretary of Transportation Duffy revoked authorization for this program based on two defects. One, that cordon pricing where a toll-free route exists is allowed for Interstates, but no other roads -- and in any case no toll-free route exists under New York's program. Second, that the program in fact exists to fund the MTA (state run public transportation, including the subway), not to reduce congestion. By statute any congestion pricing program requires authorization from the Department of Transportation, so this is the end of the program, right?
Wrong. Governor Hochul refused to shut it down by a March 21 deadline, calling instead for "orderly resistance". The US DOT extended the deadline until tomorrow. Hochul still refuses to shut down the program.
Unsurprisingly, there has been nothing said about the flagrant disregard for rule of law by the executive of New York.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9mo ago
Reducing taxes on blue collar work doesn't increase it's value, though it does reduce its price. The working of the market should result in wages falling as a result, though various distortions like minimum wage and required time-and-a-half may change that. Sans gaming, the undesirable consequence I'd be most sure of is that hiring fewer employees and working them longer would become even more popular than it already is, both among employees (the ones still working) and employers.
If this proposal were to pass (and I give it a big fat zero chance), gaming would of course be extreme. Give me a contract that guarantees me 41 hours a week and pays me almost all the money in the 41st hour please.
Both Harris's proposals and Trump's are absolutely terrible this time around. Tariffs are bad, tax-free tips are stupid, and this tax-free overtime idea would be be a horror show of distortion and revenue loss if passed, which it won't be. On the other side, Harris's increased tax proposals and unrealized gains tax are terrible and have a better chance of being passed. Price controls are even worse and perhaps like Nixon she could do them by executive order. So Harris is still worse but Trump is closing that gap.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
The viability of standardized tests, colorblind policy, and merit-based immigration vetting all depend on either their outcomes being race-neutral, or HBD being at least tacitly accepted. The strong belief that all racial groups are equal, combined with the demonstrated fact that they are not, means you have to give up or distort standardized tests and merit-based immigraiton vetting, and discard colorblind policies.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2yr ago
The first step to saving our civilization, at least in the sense that I care for it as a civilization, is not for tens of thousands of people to go kill the local subway-screaming bums. Lock them up? Maybe. Kill them? No.
Locking them up is an option for a political entity with a jail and a staff; it's not something an individual can do. Those political entities (the city and state of New York) have chosen to do otherwise. That means the locals either must put up with the subway-screaming bums no matter what they do, or they must use less-measured force. It's a bad situation, but it's certainly not clear that making everyone put up with the aggressive drug-addled mentally-ill violent people is better for civilization than allowing direct action be taken against them.
Life doesn't work like that. You can't just have some kind of society-wide spree of murdering undesirables and find that somehow, all of the things that you actually like about liberal modernity have survived.
Are you sure? And even if not, maybe most people would prefer the aggressive drug-addled mentally-ill violent people dead over whatever they lose by that happening... perfection, after all, is rarely an option.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
It's a public university, which means there's one thing which has a chance of working -- elect DeSantis-equivalents to the governorship and legislature and pass a law banning this stuff, then appoint a Rufo-equivalent to make sure it happens. However, that won't happen because Virginia has gone blue.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7d ago
As I said, you are not a strong 2A advocate. You are not willing to, shall we say, "bite the bullet" and accept that there may be bad consequences to that right that cannot be fully ameliorated.
This is in bad faith.
No, postulating Jihadis with nukes was bad faith, because it conflated the subject we were discussing -- people who should be denied Second Amendment rights -- with the extent of the Second Amendment for everyone, in a way attempting to make limits on the latter justify limits on the former. Anyway, Jihadis have so far killed more people with guns than they have with nukes.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
5mo ago
If you want to treat women as having agency, you have to assign blame for the consequences of their decisions to them. There was no power imbalance tantamount to force here; Gaiman was rich, famous, and (apparently) charming but he had no authority over them. Writing books read by the public is not "grooming"; calling it such casts doubt on the concept of grooming. A woman's later regret does not make a man's actions any sort of offense against her. If you don't think women have agency, you may as well join the "Fight for 25".
Certainly there are conservative-morality reasons that it's wrong for an old celebrity to have sex with starstruck young women. But either such moral systems treat women as being lacking in agency, or the offenses aren't against the woman (or both).
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
8mo ago
And Trump's guilt when it comes to classified documents is so cut and dried
Is it? You know that picture with all the classified cover sheets was essentially fabricated by the FBI -- they put those cover sheets there.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
9mo ago
Nevermind that there are alternative interpretations of the US's experience with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s.
Yes, there are revisionist interpretations pushed by those who want to do it again despite the clearly destructive results from the last time.
And the US drug prohibition has not, regardless of your protestations, covered itself in glory.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
It’s both a strategic mistake and a grave political failure to use the courts to target Trump now.
Unless it works. If it's crazy and it works, it's not crazy.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7d ago
My right to be alive supersedes your right to have a gun.
My right to have a gun does not interfere with your right to be alive (which isn't a right, anyway; at best you may have a right for others not to kill you). The right to keep and bear arms may increase the danger to you, but if that's sufficient to strip it, you are not a strong advocate of the Second Amendment.
Involuntarily committed people have usually committed a crime
No, this is not the case -- especially not if you restrict "crime" to felonies. And "usually" isn't the correct standard for depriving someone of a right anyway.
It is not assessed through a jury of peers, but this is why I'm asking what you want instead, because if you want that shit gets worse - do you want to be held until the legal system gets its shit together instead of just discharged from the hospital? Do you want your taxes to balloon?
These are not in fact the options. Another option is to not deprive those who have been involuntary committed of their right to keep and bear arms once they are released.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
I recently found an interesting post about the driving/transit+walking divide that I'd like to discuss some here: If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity.
The short version of that being that pedestrians are special snowflakes who won't walk unless the built environment is just right. Meanwhile, looking at your Sioux Falls shot, the issue isn't so much "dignity" as scale. Well, that, and the fact that no one wants to walk to car dealerships. The blocks are about 0.5 mile x 1 mile. If you want to have a pancake breakfast and then head over to pick up your new handgun, that's over a 20 minute walk. It's not a matter of dignity or respect. Making the walk nicer isn't going to make it take less time.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2mo ago
Obvious sophistry. It's a way to get people from outside the city to pay for NYC transit unions.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2mo ago
When I can buy and carry a gun in New Jersey, or better yet any state in the union, I will listen to demands to respect the ultimate authority of the court system from the left. Not until then. Yes, Eisenhower executed on rulings he didn't like. He turned out to be a chump to do so, because it meant the left got the benefit of favorable court rulings in all circumstances, whereas the right got them only when the enforcement and the lower courts were ALSO controlled by the right.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
Right, because the Culture War has taught many the lesson that an invitation to engage in high-decoupling analysis is a trap.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2yr ago
In a bizarrely pro-Trump interpretation of his tweets, one staffer who was supposed to actually evaluate his tweets said that when Trump referred to "American Patriots" in a tweet, he wasn't referring to the rioters, but to people who voted for him. I have no idea why this person thought that the people who rioted weren't Trump supporters.
Bizarrely pro-Trump? The tweet was this:
"The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!"
Were there 75,000,000 rioters? Did Trump actually say in this very tweet he was referring to people who voted for him?
What this release amounts to is many people inside Twitter were looking for a reason, any reason, to ban Trump, and despite some initial resistance by some more process-oriented people, he was indeed banned.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
7mo ago
It was easy for ProPublica to find a fertile topic here since they were willing to fertilize it with bullshit themselves. Which is to say, they skirted the truth in ways which I think are properly characterized "lies", even if someone might be able to say "well, technically...". One of the clearest cases is
But Texas’ new abortion ban had just gone into effect. It required physicians to confirm the absence of a fetal heartbeat before intervening unless there was a “medical emergency,” which the law did not define.
If you check the Texas code on abortion, Chapter 171, you find
Sec. 171.002. DEFINITIONS. In this chapter: [...] (3) "Medical emergency" means a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that, as certified by a physician, places the woman in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.
So how can ProPublica say the law did not define "medical emergency"? Well, "the law" in that case was Subchapter H, Section 171.201 et seq. The definition of "Medical emergency" was pre-existing in Section 171.002. Same chapter, and you can see above the definition explicitly applies to the whole chapter (including the new law). So as close to a lie as you can get without technically being an untruth.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
10mo ago
The political class is baffled by the fact that most people think the economy is bad and that inflation is a major problem.
The political class isn't baffled. Maybe journalists are baffled because they're high on their own supply, but this isn't a case where the numbers say one thing but the feeling on the ground is different. The numbers are in fact mediocre. Unemployment is increasing. Job growth numbers were recently revised downward big-time -- and this was pretty much expected. Inflation was obviously terrible over the past few years and is still above that 2% benchmark. Yes, various flacks have been pushing the idea that the economy is doing just fine, but they're mostly not honestly wrong; they're lying. For the Democrats, this is their best strategy because they're stuck with responsibility for the economy.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
And you'd prefer if the Soviet Union still existed? Even if the alternatives are both bad, the better one is still better.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
Carlson tells us that the man who incited a riot must not be punished or else we'll get more riots.
Trump did not incite a riot in any way, shape, or form. There is simply no reasonable line you can draw between Trump's statements (which, among other things, were not made at the site of the riot) and the riot. Not by the Brandenburg standard, and not by any standard which has been applied to any politician since Brandenburg.
I realize you're not American and may not be familiar with American freedom of speech traditions and jurisprudence, but there simply isn't a serious question here, and anyone who IS familiar with such traditions and jurisprudence knows it. You simply cannot take take the fact of a riot, and anodyne political statements made as part of a political demonstration ("I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."), and infer from the latter an attempt to incite the former. Nor can you do things like "Trump claimed the election was stolen; if the election was stolen violence would be justified; therefore Trump called for violence". That's just not valid. The test is that the speech must be intended to cause imminent lawless action, and it must be likely to cause it. Ex ante likely, that is, though that doesn't much matter because it fails the "intent" test. Telling a group to march to the Capital to make their voices heard is unquestionably protected speech of the sort even Robert Bork would accept.
So you are probably right that Trump will not get his immunity. And given a DC jury, chances are pretty good that he'd be convicted; contrary your claims, I think a D.C. jury would convict Trump of anything up to and including murder without evidence of a victim. And he may indeed go to prison. And if that causes widespread violence, everyone involved in his imprisonment absolutely deserves it. I doubt it will, though; the part of Trump's base capable of widespread violence is wholly infiltrated by the FBI and/or cowed by the Jan 6 response, and the rest is all bark and no bite.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
I guess massacring civilians and gangraping dual citizens who post on social media about supporting Palestine has that effect.
The horror cherry on top of this cake of horror is this won't change anyone's minds. Pretty much nobody is going to stop supporting the Palestinians over Israel because of this, not even most of the survivors of the Rave for Peace.
Not everyone, Black Lives Matter thinks all three should be prosecuted. Because the mentally ill homeless are ordinary people's social and moral superiors and raising a hand against them, regardless of provocation, is verboten -- and black homeless especially so, of course.
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