Christianity Today Op Ed

[Jaecp]

Honestly, hardly anyone cares who put them up any more. They are there, and the reason they are being assailed is who they are, not who put them there.

I mean, you could be right, but I still very expressly said that the people who put them up were racist fools reacting to civil rights stuff. Sam shared a chart, ages ago, that showed when those statues had been erected and they came in a few waves mostly and we're mostly reactions to black people getting more rights

[Mountain Man]

No one denies Andy had a milkshake thrown at him

Brandon Farley, who is an associate of Andy Ngo and has worked with him, thinks the part where he got hit was staged. He notes that nobody who struck Ngo hit him in the face, but the back of the head, and that he didn't recognize the guy who did it and hasn't seen him since. He also noted it was weird for Andy to fly if he really sustained the injury he claimed.

Even just having a milkshake thrown at you meets the legal definition of assault.

But seriously, he "staged" injuries serious enough to require a trip to the hospital? That's "Prestige" level of commitment right there (film reference). I certainly hope you have better evidence than an associate of Ngo with unverified suspicions.

[Jaecp]

Watch the video. The guy sucker punched Ngo then runs off into the crowd. He didn't hang around to be "recognized" through a mask and hoodie.

Where was Farley by the way? Is he in the video?

Aye yai, yes a punch is a brief moment in time. You get that these things have been ongoing now for 3 years, right? It's not like there are 100% new people every time. It's very strange that an unknown guy did this and hasn't been seen since

As for where Farley is? No idea. There's a half dozen to a dozen local right-wing videographers that cover these things. I was at pioneer square when the event occured a few blocks away at Chapman square

What I can tell you is that I haven't been able to find the guy who struck Andy that day and that, per farley, Ngo was not struck in the face by said guy

There are a number of details that don't add up and some questions I'd love to see answered. Anyone can put on a black bandana and hoodie, after all. More than one person tried to do that at Occupy Ice related events but quickly for caught. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will sue the guy for fraud related to that 200k GoFundMe and we can get access to the medical records to see if there really was a brain bleed because that part is, as Farley said, very strange. It's my understanding that you're not supposed to fly with one because of the change in air pressure or something.

The whole thing is just really weird and has gotten less clear over time

[Teallaura]

Quote it

Eta:

If you can't disentangle the racist fools that put up those monuments during the civil rights eras from Southerners, in general, today, that is on *you*

No. I already apologized and I don't need to listen to your self righteous excuses.

[Mountain Man]

If they admit to recognizing them then they're put into the position of having to turn one of their own in. So it's much easier to claim that you have no clue as to who the attacker was.

The fact is, if they were on the up and up then they would have no need to disguise themselves.

[Sam]

Both sides try gerrymandering. Where the Democrats are in power they do so with gusto. As for shutting down polling places that typically is done at a local level so if it is happening in places where the Democrats are the majority like urban areas then in nearly all cases you can thank Democrat officials for doing it.

This is incorrect on both counts; Democratic legislatures do gerrymander but not with the frequency or extremity that Republicans have in the past decades. Regardless, a good citizen opposes gerrymanders from both parties. Would you support independent redistricting, verified by the numerous mathematical fair districting models, in your state?

Closing polling stations is usually something handled by county or state officials, not municipal. It's Republican officials, in most locations, closing down stations in Democratic-leaning districts. But, here again, a good citizen advocates for fair and consistent access to voting. Opening locations so that the wait time for white-majority precincts is equivalent to minority-majority precincts should, if people are being sincere, universally agreed to.

--Sam

[Jaecp]

No. I already apologized and I don't need to listen to your self righteous excuses.

Excuses?

I called dead racists racist fools and then you got angry at me over it.

That's not an excuse. That's you messing up, giving a tepid apology and then not reflecting afterwards.

Be better

[Sam]

Oh no! the whole "disenfranchising voters" thing! No, requiring ID is not disenfranchising anyone. And gerrymandering is a legal practice and both parties engage in it.

And yes, beating up people for wearing hats is worse. The democrats and liberals have gone nuts. They even held a kangaroo court to try to take down a sitting president after three years of trying. Riots, fire bombs, beating up conservatives. Accosting Republican government officials in restaurants and on the street. Trying to actually change the constitution to eliminate the electoral vote so a liberals in a few states can take every election and "disenfranchise" most of the states. Wake up Sam. The authoritarian nazis are the Democrats.

So this actually is something that's right out of the fascist playbook. We saw, for example, how Texas disallows student ID for voting but allows gun registration, despite the studies showing the disenfranchising effect of such choices. We know plenty of studies now (and we've been over it before) showing how Strict Voter ID does not protect against in-person voter fraud but does disenfranchise a significant percentage of voters, mostly those who lean Democratic. We know that gerrymandering is inherently anti-democratic and can actually mathematically examine gerrymanders across the country. We know that the Fourth Circuit ruled that North Carolina's Republican gerrymander targeted black voters "with almost surgical precision".

And all that is disregarded over some vague (and incorrect) fear of "liberals in a few states" "taking every election". Real, measurable efforts to secure a minority party election over the democratic majority are ignored or defended by use of propaganda.

Now that's something that leans pretty heavily into fascist ideology and rhetoric and can be called such without constructing a contradiction.

--Sam

[Jaecp]

Yeah, if my state gerrymandered we wouldn't have a single Republican congressperson. One at best.

[Sam]

It would be an excellent exercise, as an aside, to try and generate a map where winning a popular vote in a few states could possibly be enough to elect a president. The Electoral College can theoretically be won with 23% of the popular vote. How many traditionally blue states would have to have 100% of their voters vote for a Democratic nominee before reaching a national majority?

--Sam

[Jaecp]

I mean, all the more reason to get rid of the EC really. It's existence is directly tied to compromises we made with slave states 250 years ago. It disenfranchises so many people and makes our elections super weird

I think the minimum number of states is 11. Once Texas is no longer full of voter suppression and goes blue we're going to see a cataclysmic shift in our nation's politics

[lilpixieofterror]

I mean, all the more reason to get rid of the EC really. It's existence is directly tied to compromises we made with slave states 250 years ago. It disenfranchises so many people and makes our elections super weird

I think the minimum number of states is 11. Once Texas is no longer full of voter suppression and goes blue we're going to see a cataclysmic shift in our nation's politics

[Sam]

There's voter suppression when Democrats win, too. That's kind of the point of voter suppression: it's made to be a perpetual factor of elections.

--Sam

[JimL]

Well that's because it's always republicans trying to suppress the vote, Lilpix. See how that works?

[lilpixieofterror]

Well that's because it's always republicans trying to suppress the vote, Lilpix. See how that works?