Joe Money, Joe Problems: the November 2021 U.S. Politics Thread

"I lived in Japan! I speak Japanese!"

Hahaha, Chip Roy. Let's make this about the tyrannny of vaccine mandates.

cheer up Paul, I'm sure your immediate family will be there to comfort you.

Oh Louie Gohmert, never change.

#Rittenhouse judge says he could rule on a mistrial motion after a verdict or if the jurors ask to see the disputed drome video. https://t.co/ILthxUjm5t

— Michael Tarm (@mtarm) November 17, 2021

#Rittenhouse judge tells prosecutors: "There is a day of reckoning with respect to these things." https://t.co/dOgUp7ntXm

— Michael Tarm (@mtarm) November 17, 2021

The judge is going to let the jury see the drone video and says if it proves unreliable "it's going to be ugly" for the prosecution.

Prosecution wants them to see it on a 4K tv for best viewing. Defense is objecting, says the picture is distorted by playing an hd video on the tv

— Stacy St. Clair (@StacyStClair) November 17, 2021

ok I'm really trying to believe this is all standard trial shit but how do you justify this unless you're actively rooting for the defendant

things being "standard" and justified are different is what i've been trying to say though

pretty sure you can't declare a mistrial after a verdict though

Is it common for judges to fret at length about the authenticity of zooming in on a cell phone video?

Next you’ll tell me that this trial hinges on the difficulty of opening a PDF

all kinds of insane bullshit happens and no one should expect anything from this! i'm sorry! stop watchingggggggg

The judge is obviously a tech ignoramus, so when the defense makes a bunch of objections about video evidence he has zero clues about how valid their assertions are. The first time they did it, he demanded that the prosecution produce some expert testimony on short notice to refute their claims. It's all just the defense counsel throwing a baseless cloud of doubt onto the video and getting favorable rulings because the judge literally has no idea what they're talking about.

it seems like what happened is the defense had the highest quality version of the video, and the prosecution through some technical ignorance presented a compressed one, so the defense held onto that as some kinda ace in the hole as grounds to get the case dismissed because I guess nobody understands how video compression works

I think it's the opposite: The prosecution has a high resolution video, but when they shared it with the defense before the trial by email it was compressed. So the defense is arguing that they didn't receive the real video.

well yeah but they're saying it because I think they have the uncompressed version. at least that's my understanding. I'm probably wrong as usual though

either way right wing media circles seem to be all over this "prosecution doctored the video" idea which I guess implies there's something bad for Kyle in there

i don't know if accurate but i saw that they had *asked* for it to be emailed, which, stupid if true

back in my day, any video you had had to be put into a Vee Cee Arr or played through a camcorder plugged into the television. yew didn't get no definition, not a one

in other news Paul Gosar is the first Congressman in history to get censured for posting anime, so there's that

your mission, if you choose to accept it: send the full quality original HD video without any compression in an email, keeping it under 25MB

"Sorry, my hotmail is almost full, can you get it to me in under 10MB?"

in other news Paul Gosar is the first Congressman in history to get censured for posting anime, so there's that

― frogbs, Wednesday, November 17, 2021 3:59 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the first of many

"Sorry, my hotmail is almost full, can you get it to me in under 10MB?"

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, November 17, 2021 2:13 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're assuming he doesn't still use AOL.

Yeah, definitely giving him too much credit there.

Juno

“Fuck this guy” doesn’t quite say it

https://www.newsweek.com/minutes-after-being-censured-rep-gosar-retweets-offending-aoc-video-1650542?amp=1

these guys love the phrase "kabuki theater"

I have never seen someone on trial for murder unhandcuffed standing directly behind a judge #Rittenhouse pic.twitter.com/K8j9GPKIQJ

— Natasha ⚯͛ (@ndelriego) November 15, 2021

Whatever I’d have to say about that is unprintable.

what is he looking at?

https://i.imgur.com/qmc2Ipr.jpg

dark lol

but also one wishes there were a way to bottle and redistribute this attitude - giving the defendant the benefit of the doubt, permitting the defendant to be seen as a human deserving of mercy and consideration - and apply it to cases where the defendant is actually innocent and/or deserves it

like if any one of the millions of unjustly incarcerated people of color had gotten a trial with, like, one tenth this much slack from the court? that would be a good start

Local news coming for Lauren Boebert:

#HeyNext Commentary: We should admit we hold Republican Congresswoman @LaurenBoebert to a different standard than every other elected official in Colorado. pic.twitter.com/jxX4xna0Ar

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) November 18, 2021

denver is not local to boebert's district

Kyle Rittenhouse, who could face a lifelong prison sentence if he’s found guilty of homicide after fatally shooting two people during last summer’s protests, might have a job offer from a Republican in Congress if he’s acquitted.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said his office may ask Rittenhouse, 18, to consider working on Capitol Hill.

“Kyle Rittenhouse would probably make a pretty good congressional intern,” Gaetz said during a Wednesday night appearance on Newsmax. “We may reach out to him and see if he’d be interested in helping the country in additional ways.”

it's trolling, of course, but if he walks, i'm sure rittenhouse will fail massively upward. the judge, as well, probably is destined for some paid tv appearances and maybe a book deal

J.D. Vance, who’s running for Senate in Ohio, called Rittenhouse’s trial a “farce” this week. Last year, Florida state Rep. Anthony Sabatini tweeted that Rittenhouse should run for Congress, prompting some to call for the lawmaker’s resignation. And former president Donald Trump weighed in on the case soon after the shooting, saying Rittenhouse “probably would have been killed” had he not fired his weapon.

...Stinchfield, the Newsmax host, told Gaetz he might face competition in trying to hire Rittenhouse.

“I want him here at Newsmax,” the host said. “Maybe he can be a Stinchfield intern, too. He’ll have all kinds of job offers.”

Rittenhouse at absolute minimum is gonna get paraded out at GOP rallies and conventions for years

Lauren Boebert

Banana fana boebert

the kid is obviously a scumbag but he doesn't deserve to be sex trafficked by Matt Gaetz

sex traffic
isn't it Gaetz
luring right wing dollies
to a life of dates

899 lbs of fentanyl and 15,631 lbs of methamphetamine were seized at the southern border in October alone.

That much fentanyl is the equivalent of 204 MILLION lethal doses.

We need border security!

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) November 18, 2021

is this not an acceleration of orwellian practice?

George Zimmerman, help me remember. he was defended all around by conservatives, for sure. was he elevated to an icon, though, like a good person who did the right thing and should probably run for elected office?

zimmerman certainly had gop idiots working overtime to defend him (https://prospect.org/power/conservative-media-eating-zimmerman-trial/). i'm not saying that didn't happen.

what i'm saying is that now (and also with the person who was shot at the 1/6 coup attempt) it's not enough to defend them, they're actually getting elevated into public figures, people who should maybe run for elected office.

i may be a frog slowly boiling but i still notice that things are getting worse. this is fucked up. rittenhouse, who cares - he'll get acquitted, he'll be on tv and he'll get a gofundme to make him rich. hopefully we'll go away. but my point is beyond rittenhouse. there will be another one, and another. it's become almost a litmus test for the GOP and conservatives - sure, you may say you're conservative, but have you actually ruined anyone's life yet? have you hurt anyone, physically or mentally? maybe this will become a debate question in future GOP primaries, especially local ones - how many libs have you fucked up

i agree karl.

thinking about this piece again https://newrepublic.com/article/158977/madison-cawthorn-future-republican-party

It’s a further endorsement of vigilante and extra legal violence to intimidate the rest of us from activism or protesting, etc.

how do we fight this? Not asking from a defeatist standpoint, but legitimately from a "wanting to fight this" standpoint. if we know the types of politicians we need, with teeth, seem to get shoved out by the establishment picks, if Dem politicians seem reliant on rhetoric alone to solve violence, if we know the midterms are on tenuous grounds, and we know this country is armed to the teeth and terrifying...

how do we get the media to quit unwittingly being a partner to assholes who paint violence committed by liberals as carnage, even if it is truly self-defense, and all murders by conservatives treated as self-defense?

cos I'm basically feeling a lot of despair over the next few years and want a way out before I yeet myself off the planet.

radicalize people by showing them this post imo

“pay chasers” pic.twitter.com/qpszTG6Wia

— Sir Larry Olive-Tree (@larryolivetree) November 17, 2021

i'm a pay chaser

i'm a toker and a midnight toker

You mean, people who inconveniently want to live indoors and eat food? The nerve. How dare they.

welp I just shared that, "pay chasers" jfc.

it is nice to see the few asshole friends I had that a decade were saying "burger flippers don't deserve $15/hr" came around to acknowledge their assholishness when their own lives went belly up

what is this business, I'm going to apply six times under false names and keep driving up the wage demands