> Mega is big enough to buy entire islands, and be its own country. A corporate country. One with a very specific constitution, enshrining rights, but also?
It's a charming thought. But it can't possibly survive the brute reality that the world is full of people with guns, planes, drones, boats/ships, missiles, etc., who feel entitled to call the shots, and sometimes to take whatever they can from whomever they can.
> nobody has been killed that wasn’t carrying a gun with extra ammo or striking cops with their vehicle.
The video evidence shows beyond peradventure that Renee Good didn't strike the ICE agent — who isn't a cop — with her vehicle.
EDIT: See the NY Times's frame-by-frame, time-synchronized compilation of the various videos [0], especially starting at about 3:42 in that video [1].
The agent wasn't hit by Good's vehicle - starting at 4:53 of the video [2], he was standing well away from her vehicle (see 5:42 [3]), leaning on it with his hand on the front fender, and his feet slipped as she was trying to pull away.
He wasn't hit or run over — at most he was slightly pushed by the vehicle. His reaction — "fucking bitch" [4].
As to Alex Pretti: You're focusing like a laser on a fact — if such it be — that's completely irrelevant.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9R9dAmws6M And yes, I firmly believe the NY Times tries to get it right, and corrects their errors on the rare occasions that they make them.
> The video evidence shows beyond peradventure that Renee Good didn't strike an ICE agent
Let's not get caught up arguing about the play-by-play details. There will always be rabid disagreement regardless of merit, causing us to miss the crux of the matter. The important big-picture dynamic is that the agent set up the situation so he'd have an excuse to kill the next person who tried to drive away from him, directly contrary to ICE's own policies. That would be second degree murder, if the perp weren't a member of a protected class.
One of the above comments gives a pretty clear cut showcase of how this is not, in fact, a fact.
> I think they both contributed to the tragedy.
"Between me and Jeff Bezos we are worth several hundred billion dollars". The ICE agent contributed the bullets that made this a tragedy, the victim contributed not following the orders of people who are not police officers, I'd say it's not much of a "both" situation.
> Nobody protesting peacefully gets shot.
At least one person already has, but something tells me you'll just move the goalpost of what "peacefully" means.
> Vehicular assault protest is dangerous and illegal protest.
You need to watch the video compilation linked to above. It wasn't anything resembling "vehicular assault protest" — it was a woman trying to verrrry slowwwwly drive away and an armed ICE agent shooting her when his feet slipped.
It's a peculiar type of insanity to insist that it is the responsibility of everyday citizens to react perfectly calmly and rationally while being assaulted by armed agents of the state (themselves often acting impulsively and aggressively), and to then justify people being summarily executed when they inevitably do not.
Furthermore, it's disingenuous to talk about "unlawful behavior" while skipping over the federal government violating the much deeper laws that were explicitly written into its charter. If you want to keep closing your eyes to what is plainly in front of you, that is on you.
When you put it that way, it makes it sound like you're okay with the federal government (no matter who's in charge) having gangs of masked men kidnapping people off the streets.
You keep focusing on these small slices of the issue where you can go A+B->C "yup looks good!". Meanwhile the larger context here is exactly what's important.
Personally I'm basically ambivalent about deporting illegal immigrants. I am NOT ambivalent about the first amendment, the second amendment, abducting citizens/legal immigrants, due process and coercion, inhumane conditions, an administration that doesn't respect the loss of American life, an administration that continues to announce that their goal is to deport many more people than merely illegal immigrants, etc.
I thought Obama was running/supporting an inhumane machine as well, although I was both-sidesing at the time so I didn't see a political lever that could be pulled to affect it. But has it occurred to you that even if you consider the net actions the same, fewer people protested Obama precisely because Obama could sell those policies by engendering trust and demonstrating respect for at least some traditional American values?
Of course it is going to seem like everyone is unprincipled when you assume that to start. It's taken us what, three comments here for you to admit to yourself that I'm coming from a principled place? Three comments of you writing off everything I am saying as if I am only saying it in bad faith to try and manipulate you, rather than as part of some consistent worldview that might help explain all of the opposition you see.
And then even after that, rather than accepting it and maybe seeing that some productive understanding could be had, you launched right back into firing off a bunch of wild partisan assertions - presumably hoping that I won't continue to walk the principled tightrope as perfectly, and you can go back to writing me off!
I'll be first in line to criticize how pathetically captured the Democratic party is. I'm not and never have been a Democrat - I just begrudgingly vote conservative now that open fascism is upon us. The Democrats thought they could phone it in in 2024, just like they were able to do in 2020. Their current strategy seems to be pointing out "this is really bad!", but never sticking with it to make a solid stand - just the occasional glimmer of inspired opposition, that is then left to sputter out. Lazily hoping that in 2026/2028 things can somehow go back to business as usual. I actually think the appalling lack of any sort of discussions about how we can possibly rebuild all of our societal institutions that Trump has burnt down is one of the most appalling things about our current situation.
That's not how it looks to me. Her vehicle seems to come close and might even touch the agent's leg — maybe (the narration says no). But "hitting him" doesn't seem to be a reasonable way to describe it, even granting that the video clip is in slow motion.
The agent was leaning significantly forward, and suddenly acquired backwards momentum just when the car got close, despite his center of mass being in front of his feet. The only way he could move like that was by getting hit by the car.
> The only way he could move like that was by getting hit by the car.
He had a hand braced on the left-front fender and was leaning against it, with his feet maybe a yard away — apparently on icy pavement. The vehicle could well have pushed him as it moved; that's not the same as hitting him.
So she rapidly accelerated at him, and her car pushed him away, either by hitting his torso or his arm. And that in the 1-2 seconds the agent had to figure out her actions and intent, he arguably made the wrong call, is rephrased as:
"Speech is disallowed if someone with any authority feels like killing you"
See my edited comment, with a link to the NY Times's frame-by-frame, time-synced compilation of various video angles. She didn't run over him or even hit him.
It only takes that to be a «nazi» sympathiser huh. And my comment flagged. You might need to go read up on what the nazis were like. I’m in Europe. We _really_ know what the nazis were like — they occupied my country. I live in a street named after resistance fighters who died fighting them. You’re extremely naive and disrespectful of the victims of the nazis.
Here in (South-adjacent) Texas, if someone asks if I'm Christian, I'm likely to respond, "Well, I'm Episcopalian, if that counts" — because to some folks in this neck of the woods, Episcopalians aren't really Christians.
> Some kids really do just run into the road seemingly randomly. ... sometimes (perhaps very rarely, but it only takes once and bad luck) forget to look both ways.
Just this week I was telling my law school contract-drafting class that part of our job as lawyers and drafters is to try to to "child-proof" our contracts, because sometimes clients' staff understandably don't fully appreciate the possible consequences of 'running into the street,' no matter how good an idea it might seem at the time.
Term limits make the problem worse; the main fix is to abandon strict single-member-district first-past-the-post for a more proportional system for legislative elections (for Presidential elections the problem is harder, both because there is no good, easy fix for an inherently single-winner election and because almost any meaningful change will require a Constitutional amendment which is quite difficult even if you can nail down what to do.)
For the House, using a multimember ranked ballots system like Single Transferrable Vote in districts capped at a size of 5 members in states with more than one rep would work tolerably well (especially if combined with increasing the total number of seats beyond the currently-legislated fixed 435.) This does all of support more parties, reduce or eliminate [depending on the exact method chosen] spoiler effects for voting first choice for parties that don't win seats reducing the need for tactical voting, reduce incumbent protection without removing voter choice [because parties are encouraged to run more candidates than they are likely to win], and produce a body that better represents the preferences of the electorate.
The Senate is more complicated because of the 1/3 per class rule, but it can be made slightly better (in order from smallest to largest changes), by:
1. Adopting a single-winner ranked choice method instead of first-past-the-post for Senate elections.
2. Increasing the size of the Senate to three seats per state (electing one Senator from each stare in each of the three two-year classes), combined with #1.
3. Increase the size of the Senate to six (2/state/class) or nine (3/state/class), using a ranked ballots multiwinner proportional system like STV for elections. (3/state/class keeps the majority a significant threshold.
Because of the Constitutional manner of apportioning electors, increasing the size of the House makes Presidential election voting power more equal by population while increasing the size of the Senate makes it less; for this reason, if doing the fixes for Congress discussed above, I would favor not increasing the size of the Senate by a greater multiple than thet of the house, so three per state in the Senate would go with at least a 50% increase in the size of the House, 2/state/class would go with at least tripling the House, 3/class/state would go with at least a 4.5× on the size of the House.
All are very-sound ideas. Regrettably, they'd be tough to explain to the voters — and the vested interests would oppose fiercely.
A good start might be to just triple the size of the House to approximately match the Repr.-to-population ratio when the present 435 number was legislated.
> I'm constantly surprised at how many cultural conventions are mysteries to modern generations.
Some of my law students are only dimly aware of Jerry Seinfeld. And when I play a bit of the organ solo from Procul Harum's 1967 Whiter Shade of Pale (to illustrate a copyright-royalties point), I'm lucky if one person recognizes it.
It's a charming thought. But it can't possibly survive the brute reality that the world is full of people with guns, planes, drones, boats/ships, missiles, etc., who feel entitled to call the shots, and sometimes to take whatever they can from whomever they can.
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