This is my amazing stepdad who has taught me so much and been there for me when certain people couldn’t be.He took on the responsibility of helping my mom raise three children even though they weren’t his biologically and he made sure we grew up knowing how a true man should act.Love you💝

ColdNotion · 2020-08-30T03:35:00+00:00

That’s the most little brother like thing I’ve ever seen, and it somehow just makes this even better.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-30T03:32:52+00:00

This is such a sweet picture! I gotta ask though, why is that little dude in the background flipping you off?

ColdNotion · 2020-08-29T21:33:13+00:00

Part of my contention with your view is that it assumes all sides of an argument have equal validity, which simply isn’t the case. It would be one thing if our political parties were arguing purely over issues where the facts of the matter were unclear or the correct path forward was ambiguous, but this isn’t always the case. Much to the contrary, we often find ourselves in situations where one side is happy to ignore facts in favor of dogma, and for the past 20 years that side has overwhelmingly been the political Right.

Examples of this aren’t exactly hard to come by. Republicans made a major push to pretend global warming was not real, despite clear evidence to show that was wrong. They weren’t arguing over which color the dress was, they were denying its existence, and several politicians on the right continue to do so. They made similarly counter factual pushes by denying things like evolution. The right had similarly taken stances against evidence in cases where the majority of evidence supports a particular conclusion, denying that systematic racism is a thing, sticking by long-since invalidated claims that gay people make unfit parents, and denying that being transgender is anything more than mental illness. Finally, the right has a tendency to stick with policies even when evidence starts to weigh against them, continuing to preach supply side economics (sometimes called “trickle down”) and aggressive tax cuts, even after these approaches prove themselves to be unsuccessful.

Now all this isn’t to say the the left is perfect or free of flawed rationales for policies. It isn’t. However, since the 90’s the American right wing has gradually become more dogmatic, and more willing to hold the party line over actual evidence. They’ve reinforced this system with political rhetoric that allows for unjustified distortions of the truth, if not outright lies. Again, they’re not unique in using this rhetoric, but they deploy these sorts of bad-faith arguments far more than the left. Calling these two groups equal sides of the same problem ignores the clear differences in behavior between the two.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-29T14:46:20+00:00

Yeah, sure thing. Most recently, the Trump administration nominated a close political ally to head the US postal service, who then took multiple actions that limited the USPS’ ability to deliver mail on time, like banning overtime and removing mail sorting machines. This would have been controversial at any point, as its lead to significant delays in mail delivery, but many people have noted that its particularly significant in an election where we’re likely to see unprecedented rates of mail voting, especially when the data seems to increasingly indicate those mailed votes may favor the left.

Adding to this, Republican politicians on the state and federal level have long tried to undercut voting rights. The raise the specter of voting fraud incessantly, despite all available evidence suggesting this is not actually a problem, as a pretext to justify passing harsh voter ID laws. Notably, they usually require IDs for voting that people in urban areas and minority voters, who both tend to lean left, are less likely to have. At the same time as they passed these laws, Republican state legislators have also shown a pattern of closing down DMV buildings where people without IDs could go get one, at times seemingly targeting minority communities.

Republican politicians also have been known to target registered voters through overly aggressive purges of voter registries. Many Republican controlled states have passed laws that purge the voter registration of anyone who does not vote within a certain number of election cycles. Statistically, the people purged are more likely to lean left. Moreover, these laws are often designed with little concern for accountability or accuracy, leading to the purging of voters who should not have been removed. For example, when Ohio agreed to publicly release their list of 235,000 purged voters this year, which the Republican led state had not done previously, activists found that about 20% of the removals were erroneous, which meant the state had violated the voting right of about 40,000 citizens in just one year.

Republican states have also made it harder to have your voice heard even if you are able to vote on Election Day. Southern Republican led states have closed down around 1,200 polling stations. This has a disproportionate impact in urban areas, where fewer polling stations have lead to hours long lines and, as a result, decreased voter participation. I don’t think I have to point out that these same urban areas tend to lean left. Republicans have also disproportionately used gerrymandering to benefit their party, and to silence pockets of left leaning voters. This is also often used to target minority voters, who yet again tend to lean left. For example, the 2011 North Carolina district map drawn by the Republican state government was eventually found unconstitutional in 2016, as the courts found it was specifically drawn with the intention of diluting the political power of black voters within the state.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-29T14:18:46+00:00

Name me a party whose politicians don't circle the wagons.

They all do to a degree, but the point I’m specifically making is that most congressional Republicans have decided to circle so tightly that they’re willing to overlook the president doing illegal and unethical things. It’s one thing to support your candidate, it’s another to openly undercut rule of law.

As evidenced by which laws?

Few laws, as the current administration and the Republicans in Congress have been mercifully bad at getting those through, but the authoritarianism comes out in policy. Just to name a few things off the top of my head:

Ignoring congressional subpoenas, fear mongering about voter fraud, intentionally undercutting vote by mail, political meddling in the justice department, pardoning political allies regardless of their guilt, ignoring multiple times when Trump tried to obstruct justice in the Mueller probe, ignoring Trump trying to coerce Ukraine into opening an investigation into a political enemy, ignoring massive violations of campaign finance law (the Trump administration seems to be violating the Hatch act on a damn near weekly basis), ignoring directing government money towards Trump properties, promoting wildly unqualified political allies to government posts, nepotism with family members, tacitly condoning street violence by right wing thugs, ignoring the administration lying blatantly without consequence, and undercutting media/protest rights ensured under the first amendment.

Is that enough examples? Give me a few minutes and I can probably throw some more your way.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-29T14:05:39+00:00

So the fact that one party has signed off on massive abuses of power, unconstitutional actions, open attempts to restrict the ability of citizens to vote, and has obstructed the functioning of government doesn’t bother you? Why is it that you find all of that, which seriously undercuts the stability of our democracy, to be less important than a handful of people acting like assholes at a protest?

I’m asking because I’m genuinely curious. I’m not condoning the behavior of the people in this video, but as with each small outbreak of violence at the recent protests, the bad actors represent a small minority within a peaceful movement making a legitimate point. Yet, we find ourselves endlessly weighing the impact of these confrontations, while ignoring the larger protests and the issues they raise. In the meantime the majority of the Republican Party has made moves that are destabilizing, norm breaking, and in many cases downright illegal, yet this doesn’t get focused on. Why?

ColdNotion · 2020-08-29T13:57:18+00:00

The difference is that Harris criticized Biden’s past policy positions during a debate, where the intent is for candidates to distinguish themselves above their competition, but it’s pretty clear they always respected each other as people/politicians. Rand Paul, on the other hand, openly called Trump an idiot, a fake conservative, and a “delusional narcissist”. Random Paul deeply disliked Trump on a personal level, but started kissing his ass once it became clear that would help him gain political power.

These are two separate issues, not comparable behaviors. I get frustrated sometimes when people default to trying to find equivalency between the parties, because the behavior of Republicans and Democrats over the past four years simply hasn’t been equivalent. There are things I don’t love about the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party is veering hard into authoritarianism based around a cult of personality. We can’t ignore that.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-28T15:30:01+00:00

These stories are interesting, but almost certainly not true. If you have your head severed your cerebral blood pressure is going to drop to 0 almost instantly, because there’s no connection to the heart. As a result, you would expect the person to become unconscious in under a second, and for brain death to occur shortly thereafter. If not a complete myth, what people were probably seeing was random reflexive responses on the faces of people who were already dead.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-28T05:43:55+00:00

Here’s what we know so far. Rittenhouse was in a verbal confrontation with a man named Joseph Rosenbaum in a parking lot at around 11:44 pm. Rittenhouse was backing away, with Rosenbaum pursuing. Rosenbaum throws a plastic bag at him, and a single gunshot is heard, seemingly from Rittenhouse. Rosenbaum then appears to run towards Rittenhouse, at which point we hear four more shots and Rosenbaum falls to the ground. We no know Rittenhouse shot Rosen multiple times, including a lethal shot to the head.

Rittenhouse briefly approaches the body, then begins to flee shortly thereafter when more people arrive. He calls a friend on his cellphone, and appears to say “I shot somebody.” In the background protesters identify Rittenhouse as the shooter and several people begin to call to stop him. At about 11:50 pm Rittenhouse is filmed running down the street away from two men trying to catch him. When Rittenhouse trips, the man closest to him, Anthony Huber, seems to try to pin him to the ground, and may have hit Rittenhouse’s shoulder with the skateboard he was carrying as he did so. Rittenhouse fires one point blank shot at Huber, who stumbles backwards, fatally shot in the heart. The second man in pursuit, Gaige Grosskreutz, is a few feet back and pauses when Rittenhouse shoots, crouching while covering his head. When he stands back up a second later, video captures Grosskreutz holding a handgun, although it isn’t entirely clear if it was drawn before or after Rittenhouse shot Huber. Grosskreutz does not fire the gun, nor does he appear to point it at Rittenhouse. As he stands back up Grosskreutz takes a few steps towards Rittenhouse, who responds by shooting at least three more times, with one bullet badly wounding Grosskreutz in the arm. Rittenhouse then flees the scene.

All in all, what evidence we have STRONGLY suggests Rittenhouse committed murder. His initial confrontation with Rosenbaum doesn’t seem to have risen to the level of requiring a lethal response, and what video we do have suggests Rosenbaum didn’t even begin to run at Rittenhouse until the latter had already fired once. Five minutes later, in the confrontation on the street, Rittenhouse shoots Huber, who had at that point only tried to hold him down, and then Grosskreutz, who had not fired at or physically touched Rittenhouse. The only people who have a viable argument for self defense in this case are the people Rittenhouse shot.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-28T05:21:20+00:00

He was being chased because he had just murdered his first victim. Other demonstrators were trying to stop him out of concern that he was a threat to people present (he was), and in the hopes they could hold him until police arrived (instead he fled the state).

ColdNotion · 2020-08-28T05:19:52+00:00

A kid that made a terrible decision. A kid that got chased down after making that terrible decision. A kid that heard gunshots while being chased, tripping, and being attacked.

I want to push back on this, because while the exact details of this case are confusing, I don’t think what you’re saying is accurate. From what I can tell nobody was armed during the initial confrontation during which Rittenhouse shot his first victim. That individual and Rittenhouse were in a confrontation, during which the victim threw a plastic bag, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that man was armed, much less that he fired.

The second confrontation occurred as Rittenhouse was fleeing two men trying to catch him, seemingly to detain him for shooting the first victim. One of the pursuers seems to try to pin down Rittenhouse with his skateboard when the shooter tripped. Rittenhouse shot this man in the heart. Another man in pursuit a short distance behind was visibly holding a cellphone and pistol, but I haven’t seen evidence that he raised or fired his weapon. That man briefly paused and covered his head when the man with the skateboard was shot, and then was himself shot in the arms seconds later when he began to move forewords again.

So no, Rittenhouse wasn’t being attacked or shot at based on the evidence we have. Instead it seems like he responded to an argument by murdering one man, and then when two men tried to detain him he murdered one and badly injured the second. I’m still waiting to see what evidence police and prosecutors put forward, but what we actually know makes this seem pretty clear cut.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-27T21:21:10+00:00

I had a similar situation with my mom. I was talking about how hard it was to survive on the wages I got paid straight out of college, and she off handedly mentioned that she had made the same amount. I plugged it into an inflation calculator then and there, which stated that her income had been nearly double mine when adjusted for inflation.

I think for the older generations it’s genuinely hard for them to understand just how economically deep in the shit younger people are. We’ve taken on significant debt to get college educations, debt that our parents would never have dreamed of, and yet we’re making less money than our parents were at the same stage of their life. They were able to save for cars, homes, and raising kids. We couldn’t afford those investments even if we didn’t have student loans to worry about.

At a certain point, this system is going to become unsustainable. You have an entire generation that can’t afford most large purchases, and that’s going to hurt the economy in a big way. Moreover, we aren’t going to be able to financially support our parents generation in their old age like they did their parents. If you think senior care is a problem today, imagine the same system trying to handle the massive baby boomer generation, but with longer life expectancies and less money to work with.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-27T19:56:42+00:00

The answer is yes, and that’s not just me being difficult. One of the unique challenges in the US is that race and class have been tied together so deeply that you can’t make a solution effective at resolving inequality in one domain if it doesn’t also fight inequality in the other. A policy aimed just at class is going to underserve communities of color that face structural barriers unique to their communities, and thus end with only poor white people getting the full benefit. A policy aimed just at race isn’t going to solve the massive class inequality which has left many Americans of all races struggling to get by.

It’s intersectional approaches, or its ineffective approaches. Picking one over the other is a recipe for seeing much of your efforts squandered. You may be able to make some positive change, but by looking at the situations holistically, you can have far more of an impact.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-27T17:31:34+00:00

No, why would it be? Is there any indication that the assault happened because the victim was a member of a legally protected class? If that wasn’t the motivation for the assault, this isn’t a hate crime.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T23:29:52+00:00

I’ve had a couple of nights where I sat wondering if my girlfriend, who is an international student, would end up getting arbitrarily deported by one of Trump’s half baked executive orders.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T22:37:20+00:00

Do you have any other examples of companies selling products that are explicitly legal, and selling them in legal ways, and finding themselves liable? I cannot.

Absolutely! Off the top of my head Purdue was sued by multiple state governments for in part for almost exactly this issue. They supplied opiate pain medications to doctors and pharmacies that they knew were failing to comply with state laws and/or regulations. As a result, even though Purdue didn’t directly commit an illegal action when they distributed their products, their actions were found to be negligent, thus opening them to civil liability.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T22:02:51+00:00

I feel like you're kind of expecting gun manufacturers to do the police officers work for them. If I was a gun manufacturer I would probably make sure the person I'm selling to has a license. If they are selling guns illegally, the police should remove their license. Gun manufacturers sometimes sell to thousands of stores. Expect them to launch investigations on all of them is a little rediculous.

Except, I literally just explained that gun manufacturers wouldn’t be expected to investigate sellers, provided a relevant real world case, and discussed why the PLCAA protects them from actions they should be liable for. In the Bull’s Eye case, Bushmaster was held liable because they knew the store they were supplying had regulatory compliance issues, and yet they did not stop supplying them. They didn’t need to investigate, they already had the relevant information, the lawsuit regarded their decision to make an unsafe choice in spite of that information. The lawsuit punished them for that negligent decision, and led to them improving how they conducted business, which was a win-win for the public. However, the PLCAA essentially makes lawsuits like that one impossible.

You’re constructing an argument against a scenario that doesn’t exist, hasn’t existed, and won’t come to exist if the PLCAA is repealed.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T21:29:06+00:00

One issue is that there are so many crimes committed every day that people would love to hinge blame on a gun manufacturer. It would result in massive legal fees for gun companies which seems like a sneaky leftist way to put gun manufacturers out of business.

That’s not how the law works. If the PLCAA was repealed, manufacturers would have every right to counter sue for damages and/or ask for the defendants to cover their legal fees, just like in any other industry. As much as some people dislike guns, I don’t think they’re going to waste their own money personally bringing frivolous suites against manufacturers. Moreover, it would take dozens of law suites to put any strain whatsoever on the bigger manufacturers, which are multi-million dollar businesses, not to mention put them out of business. This is a boogey man argument, not an actual likely outcome of repealing the PCLAA.

Do you really expect a gun manufacturer to do an investigation on all of the stores they supply? If a store sells a gun to a person who should not legally own a gun, Then the store itself should be held accountable. If a gun manufacturer sells a gun to a store that doesn't have a license to sell guns then I could see where you could hold the gun manufacturer responsible.

I don’t expect them to investigate every store they supply, but I do expect them to follow basic safe sales regulations and to stop supplying stores known to be out of compliance. A perfect example of this is a 2002 lawsuit that stemmed from the Beltway Sniper killings. The store that sold the shooters their gun, Bull’s Eye Shooting Supply, was found to have failed to keep records required under the law, and couldn’t account for over 200 weapons that were supposed to be in their inventory. Bushmaster was also sued, because it was found they kept on supplying Bull’s Eye despite having knowledge of these issues. As a result, both companies paid a monetary fine, and Bushmaster changed their distribution policy to avoid similar mistakes moving forwards. That’s how the legal system is supposed to work, yet the PLCAA would make that case extremely difficult to bring forwards today.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T21:04:56+00:00

Last weekend an officer was hit in the head with a brick. Are you going to try to hold the brick manufacturer liable?

I mean, I think it would be a silly lawsuit, but people still have a legal right to bring it to court. Their case would get thrown out, and they would probably end up ordered to pay the defendant’s legal fees, but that’s their right. Gun manufacturers shouldn’t have a special exemption from this process.

Moreover, let’s imagine that in this case Brick Corp, a brick manufacturer, had been wholesaling their bricks to Shady Building Supply, a retailer. Brick Corp knows that Shady Building Supply hasn’t been tracking their sales, and that they’ve been giving bricks to people to throw at cops or commit other crimes. As such, Brick Corp could be sued for negligence regarding their decision to supply a store they knew was not in compliance with the law.

However, the PLCAA act of 2005 makes similar cases all but impossible to bring against gun manufacturers. Moreover, the PLCAA allows gun manufacturers to escape the majority of lawsuits related to safe design practices, regulation, safe sales practices, and advertising. It essentially gives them blanket protection from all but a very small section of potential civil suites, and raises the bar needed to bring suites against them for issues not protected by this law. As a result, gun manufacturers have little incentive to focus on safety, following regulation, or safe sales, because they literally can’t be held accountable most of the time.

Gun manufacturers design weapons that can kill people on purpose. Obviously they are going to have committed in action that contributed to making the shooting more deadly.

Nobody is denying that guns can be deadly, but a gun being a gun isn’t enough for a lawsuit. The accuser has to be able to prove the manufacturer took actions that heightened the risk for illegal use. For example, it could be negligently distributing firearms to a store known to be out of compliance with state laws. Alternate, advertising that seemed to encourage illegal use or emphasized killing capacity could be the basis for a suite. Even then, you need to be able to convince a judge that the manufacturers actions were irresponsible enough to result in legal liability, which isn’t easy by any means. Again, rolling back the PCLAA don’t place an undue burden on gun manufacturers, it just removes their ability to avoid the system every other business is required to go through.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T20:46:13+00:00

I’m more enthusiastic than I expected to be, given that I wasn’t at all when he first secured the nomination. I had major concerns about how his campaign was being run in the primaries, his ability to adjust to new challenges quickly, and that he would alienate progressives (myself included). To my surprise his campaigning since winning the primary has been solid, he’s been remarkably on point with his speeches, and he not only formed, but actually seemed to have listened to, the unity councils with progressive representatives. Given that Biden had as much to risk as he had to gain by agreeing to shift left, I have a huge amount of respect for that decision, even if he’s not the candidate I wanted.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T20:39:41+00:00

This is a pretty reasonable move to make. This ain’t putting any special burden on gun manufacturers, it’s just removing their immunity to the type of civil suites literally almost every other industry in the US has to deal with. The accuser will still have to prove that the manufacturer committed an action which contributed to the shooting, the only difference is now they have a chance to make that argument in court.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T02:09:33+00:00

I’ll give you a day to give a reason for this that isn’t super antisemitic...

Also serious, wtf is up with the upvotes on this Reddit?

ColdNotion · 2020-08-26T01:25:24+00:00

Exactly. All these Republican congressmen suddenly grew a spine when Biden was +10 in the polls for a second month in a row. They’re trying to pretend they care now to escape responsibility later, but make no mistake they’ll go right back to pissing on the constitution if Trump wins a second term. If Biden loses, they need to be held accountable to the highest possible degree.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-25T07:03:58+00:00

The problem isn’t with your argument against food waste, it’s that endless buffets and refills actually aren’t particularly wasteful. Both are more or less prepared to order, and actually are quite efficient at providing a lot of food at low cost, which is why these businesses exist. It might be more helpful to focus on things like grocery store waste or agricultural subsidies that lead us to overproduce certain crops.

ColdNotion · 2020-08-24T19:12:50+00:00

Was that wrong morally or did they just fail?

It was both. On the practical side, the officers at the scene badly missed an opportunity to apprehend Blake before he got to his car, and then seemingly violated use of force policies/the law by shooting him when he did not pose an immediate threat. From the evidence available, this seems to have been bad policing. On the moral side, we have to question the ethics of a system that allows officers to shoot unarmed people and not face severe scrutiny as a result. Police departments should look at incidents like this one, recognize them as the tragedies they are, and try to figure out how to avoid having similar incidents ever occur again. Instead, we've repeatedly seen departments stand adamantly behind their officers and refuse to acknowledge any fault, learning nothing from these shootings.

I mean if I had just tazed somebody I probably wouldn't expect them to get up and start walking.

Personally, this is why I'm keeping an eye out for more details about this case. If Blake had been tased, officers should have restrained him then while he was incapacitated, and its confusing why he wasn't. That being said, this doesn't excuse the officers' subsequent failure to act, nor the shooting.

I don't think you have to be under arrest to be a risk to an officer.

Nobody is claiming this. It doesn't matter if he was being placed under arrest or not, the shooting would be unjustified either way.

And he had a history of gun violence.

I hate arguments like this, because they try to demonize the victim as a way to excuse police behavior. It doesn't matter what his history was, that doesn't make the actions of the officers involved any more or less justified. Cops don't have the right to act as impromptu executioners because someone has a criminal past, they're expected to follow the same procedures and regulations for everyone. Moreover, I find it unlikely that the officers would have known this information at the time when they were interacting with Blake.

This argument is totally irrelevant to the facts of the incident.

As far as whether or not it was actually a gun I mean we'll find out.

Sure, we will, but I'm guessing Blake wasn't reaching for a gun. Usually when a shot suspect was armed police release that information quite quickly, especially in situations where the community is upset. Barring evidence to the contrary, I'm going to lean towards an assumption that he was unarmed.

However, lets imagine that Blake did have a gun on his person. Even if that were the case, the shoot still would not have been justified. From the video itself we can see that Blake was not facing towards the officer who fired upon him, and as such did not present an imminent threat. Moreover, shooting a suspect who seems to be reaching for a weapon, without any visual identification of a weapon or information to suggest they are armed, is likely in violation of departmental use of force policies. Its hard to imagine any set of circumstances that would have made using lethal force the correct choice in this scenario.

Police are tained to shoot people if they are resisting and reach for something that they cannot see.

First off, they're not. Officers are trained on specific use of force policies that dictate when they're allowed to shoot a suspect, not just to gun down anyone who might be reaching for a weapon or struggling with them. Second of all, Blake appears to have been passively resisting, and was not in a violent confrontation with the officers in the period we see on video. He was walking away, he was not aggressive, and its difficult to understand why the confrontation ended with him being shot.

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