Moved my response to Orhan over here, didn't want to mess up TC:
"Why are you so afraid of Muslim immigrants in Europe, didn't a couple of them developed a major vaccination for Covid?"
I'm not afraid of muslims, I don't like the islamic extremist shariaist ideology, as it's basically anti-human, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-semitic, anti-freedom, anti-everything-that's-not-radical-islam. I'd like people following such ideologies to go get lost, as I equally don't like people that follow the national socialist ideology. And good for that couple that developed a vaccine for covid, has nothing to do with this discussion though.
"There are extremist Muslims in Muslim countries too, even more so with armies and all. As to the immigration subject, hey, this is the world’s reality since the 60’s, similar to migration to urban areas. The world's have-not majority will be immigrating, with papers or not, to the places where there's plenty to go around. This won't stop who they are. You need to work with them. Why are you putting them into an extremist bundle? The Muslim communities are mostly delegated to bad industrial buildings, dissed, and treated like a terrorist bunch. Not that they are coming from places where they haven't built magnificent buildings for their spiritual practice. I got news for you, they aren't going anywhere."
I'm not putting anyone in an extremist bundle, there's simply extremist ideologies, that's just a fact. I'm not against migration and totally understand that have-nots will go places to get a better life, I'd do the same! I only don't like it when people try to force their extremist ideologies onto the communities that welcomed them, why should we go backwards? We've got rid of religious backwardness (at least here in Europe, for a while) and now step by step, we're taking steps backwards to keep the so-called peace. Turning the other cheek, again and again and again, while our gay people, our women, our Jews, our non-believers feel less and less safe or able to be themselves. The universal human rights are universal for a reason, why tolerate such intolerant ideologies in our midst?
"Major shifts in migration patterns and demographics are underway, real and robust. These people are not the former slaves that were part of the western "way." They are more "Future" than you. Get with it, be creative and respectful. Accept and move on to coexistence gear. If you can't, maybe your children can. Otherwise, your societal and individual problems and fears will only keep amplifying. Instead of burning their mosques, show your humanism and art to them. Give them a chance to like you, laugh with you. It's very urgent."
But it's not a two-way street when universal human rights are involved. Why coexist with an extremist ideology that's sole purpose is to conquer and subjugate? Would you propose the same when it's about nazis? I hope not.
"I'd stay away from politicians like Wilders, he and others like him want you to go to culture and urban warfare that there are no winners at the end and you have a lot more to lose. Open your eyes. Are kidding me? Isn't there a majority public supporting gay, women, animal, and others' rights already in? Tons of them, you included."
But some cultures are simply more developed than others, some cultures are worth protecting and some are worth to oppose or at least not to tolerate among us, we don't tolerate the head-hunting of Melanesia or canibalism either, so why turn the other cheek when it's about an antisemitic, female-oppressing, anti-democratic ideology such as islam?
"Of course, this scumbag wants their sympathy (pretty much like you, random) and sings to the chorus. But inside, he sees the ultimate warfare wiping out all Muslims from Holland. Are you this spider brain like? I don't think so, but you are scared shitless as you are resorting to demonizing Islam. It's very apparent in your posts."
There's no need to wipe out anyone, they didn't need to wipe out all the Germans to get rid of nazism either, you're overreacting...just the realisation that the islamist ideology at its core is the enemy of western liberal democratic humanistic ideals and accomplishments, and in fact humanity, just needs to sink in.
"*I wrote this with minimal editing and maybe too long. The gist of it is: if anything our humanity will help us the most. Under the circumstances of our times, nationalism is baloney and don’t fall for it. This kind of evangelistic crusade against Islam is racist, dangerous, self-serving, and abusive."
My response is also too long, sorry. But I too am positive that in the end our humanity will prevail, I don't believe in nationalism or religions (they stop people from thinking for themselves) instead I believe in our shared core universal human rights and values, and always will.
randomised
Jan 29, 21 10:46 am
I'm only referring to something minor as the universal declaration of human rights...
Orhan Ayyüce
Jan 29, 21 10:55 am
You are taking an extremist group and summary executing all..Have you been to a Muslim country? Extremist groups in Turkey are swiftly persecuted, yes, even under Erdogan gov. You are a nice guy but a little brainwashed when it comes to Islam as an Abrahamic religion. Otherwise, all this is no more than demagogy. Stop wasting my time and your own.
randomised
Jan 29, 21 11:39 am
I'm not sure I get what you mean Orhan, why me standing up for universal human rights is demagogy? What's wrong with not wanting female oppression, antisemitism or homophobia?
randomised
Jan 29, 21 11:42 am
"One persons belief doesn’t violate another persons human rights. Only actions have the potential to violate human rights. Ironically, policing belief and religion is a violation of human rights."
When a persons belief mandates the violation of other peoples human rights, then we've got a problem, and that's exactly what's happening unfortunately...
Orhan Ayyüce
Jan 29, 21 12:09 pm
Google a little databases etc. educate yourself on human rights and then we might talk. otherwise you are just talking but not walking.
It really upsets me when rando starts using the same disingenuous rhetorical tricks x-lax uses. NUANCE MOTHERFUCKER DO YOU SPEAK IT. Fucking sea lion.
randomised
Jan 29, 21 5:17 pm
There is no islamic country in the world, rich or poor, where non-muslims, women, gays or jews have the same rights, where there is a free press and a properly functioning democracy. And everywhere where there is an increase in followers of islam you see a decline in freedom and universal human rights. How is that for demonising or oppressing. And I'm sorry if this upsets SneakyPete. The ideology is equal if not worse than national socialism (and yes, the Palestinian mufti was good friends with Adolf Hitler with whom they shared the same enemies ("the English, the Jews and the Communists") , does that make all followers equal to nazis? No, of course not...
Orhan, you know just as well that the only way the islamists were being kept under control was by a sort of military dictatorship in Turkey, it's either military or religious dictatorship in islamic countries, there's nothing inbetween, even Indonesia is going downhill, fast. Makes one wonder, no? Are you claiming that under Erdoğan there is a free press and a functioning democracy?
randomised
Feb 1, 21 4:11 am
"Therefore, we shall oppress muslims”. -John Adams"
who said anything about oppressing muslims? you can oppose an ideology without oppressing its followers...
SneakyPete
Feb 1, 21 11:37 am
your knowledge of world history is terrible
randomised
Feb 2, 21 5:21 am
my knowledge of world history is still less terrible than yours...
Wood Guy
Jan 29, 21 1:27 pm
.
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 2:30 pm
I wonder what would happen if I moved to KSA because life in Canada became too difficult, and started mouthing-off about local human rights, complained about obstacles in place to join the Saudi society, claimed racism, objected to their harsh Sharia laws...what would happen to me? Would I be treated fairly or would my life be in danger from the radical Saudis?
Or would I have been in complete error for moving there - essentially, being a guest of the Saudi people - then being critical of how they live their lives wanting to change it to something they may not be familiar with or might even find threatening?
Or maybe I should just respect the Saudi way of life such-as-it-is, and not try to change anything?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 2:36 pm
This analogy, to put it lightly, is dogshit.
SneakyPete
Jan 29, 21 2:42 pm
What are you talking about, duds? This is the Mad-Libs argument. Perfectly valid.
tduds
Jan 29, 21 2:45 pm
We should aspire to be more like the Saudis.
BabbleBeautiful
Jan 29, 21 3:00 pm
What are you trying to get at?
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 3:03 pm
But then you couldn't be an American, could you? Which do you want? To be an American or to be a Saudi?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 3:09 pm
When jla and I are united against you, you're definitely in the wrong.
tduds
Jan 29, 21 3:44 pm
The beautiful thing about the American Dream (in theory at least... the thing we should aspire to) is that one can be a Saudi-American and not be forced to compromise on either.
To suggest otherwise is, in my opinion, Un-American.
What if I said, go ahead have your abortion, but don't ask me to pay for it?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 2:55 pm
I'd say you fundamentally misunderstand the global gag order and the effect it's had on international public health.
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 3:00 pm
"Gag order"??? Why is abortion equated to health, particularly woman's? Woman don't all get sick while pregnant to the degree that they need to abort. Do they?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 3:09 pm
Way to prove my point.
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 2:52 pm
What if I told you, fine don't wear a mask and maybe die of the virus, but don't ask me to follow you?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 2:56 pm
You're already free to not wear a mask, it just restricts your ability to enter certain private businesses.
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 3:05 pm
What if you go into a store to buy some food, and some people around you didn't wear masks? O you were in an elevator and someone popped in without a mask? Would you ask them to leave or would you hold your breath and look the other way?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 3:08 pm
I'd leave.
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 3:44 pm
That's good, you had a choice to leave, and you did. Now, would I be right in saying, "I don't want to pay for your abortion"? Would be my choice, wouldn't it?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 3:46 pm
See my reply elsewhere about dogshit analogies.
Non Sequitur
Jan 29, 21 3:47 pm
Aps, you can leave Canada for a lesser educated and socially backwards country. Then your taxes can be spent doing less important things. But, your current taxes support a whole bunch of really important health services and there is literally zero useful argument not to include abortion within them. Leave the fucking crucifix in the closet and let society evolve without the arcane chains of the baby jesus.
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 4:03 pm
Oh, so let me take your money, and spend it the way I want it.
"...a lesser educated and socially backwards country...", racist much? By defending your point of view, you resort to bigotry and racism. And Quebec/Canada is not racist? Bill 21? Heard of it?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 4:05 pm
Who elected you?
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 4:16 pm
Not running, nor want to. Being elected gives you the right to spend my money the way you want to? Well, fuck you! I don't spend your money on shit I want or deem appropriate. So, why are you spending my money on bs? You have been there before; No taxation without representation...?
Non Sequitur
Jan 29, 21 4:19 pm
Just because you're unable/unwilling to understand does not mean it's bullshit. You're never to old to learn something Aps and this is an excellent opportunity for you. Your choice really, and I, like everyone else, don't give a fuck about your opinion on abortion because it's intellectually poor and grossly simplistic.
tduds
Jan 29, 21 4:22 pm
Google is free, my man.
tduds
Jan 29, 21 4:36 pm
Here I fixed some things for you.
Non Sequitur
Jan 29, 21 4:44 pm
Tduds... this horse has been beaten to a fine pulp already and no point gloating over the flaming ashes. That's just poor sportsmanship... although pointing out the flaws in the anti-abortion crowd is not really a sport. A sport implies there is some level of difficulty involved.
tduds
Jan 29, 21 4:48 pm
It's Friday afternoon let me eat my low hanging fruit.
BabbleBeautiful
Jan 30, 21 8:52 am
Aps, We live in a connected world, a global village, so to speak, where our actions have real consequences that affect other human beings. You seem like the kind of guy who would tell an immigrant, "If you don't like it, leave." So, I'm going to tell you, "If you don't like it, go live off the grid, without any connection to another human being and try to live your archaic ideal of individualism and 'surviving by your own bootstraps'." But how about instead of being an curmudgeon be empathetic and accepting of your neighbors.
tduds
Jan 29, 21 2:58 pm
What if I told you that your attempts at clever "gotcha" rhetoric are tired, old, and incorrect talking points that we've all heard regurgitated verbatim for months if not years?
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 3:15 pm
What if such tired, old rhetoric is till true today as it was yesterday? What if some people are inconsiderate, selfish, and arrogant to the point that they forget. Why did your mom tell you all the time to not go into the house with muddy boots? Is it because telling you just once didn't work? Why did you dad take his belt out to whip you when you did something you thought was perfectly ok to do?
tduds
Jan 29, 21 3:28 pm
Want to emphasize that I said "regurgitated talking points" not "rhetoric." The key difference, and what you're displaying, is a lack of critical thinking and analysis.
What if the thing you thought was perfectly okay do to was, in fact perfectly okay? What if your dad is beating you for the same thing his dad beat him for, without stopping to ask why? What if your dad took his belt out to whip you for being gay? Or bringing home a black woman? What if your dad took his belt out to whip mom because her place is in the kitchen?
My dad, to his infinite credit, taught me never to accept "because I told you so" as a reason. He taught me to interrogate authority, but also to respect it when (and only when) respect is due.
It's not that things true yesterday are not true today, it's that things are not necessarily acceptable today just because they used to be. But I'm getting off topic...
apscoradiales
Jan 29, 21 4:18 pm
So, it's perfectly acceptable to take my money and spend the way you want? Hmmm....
Non Sequitur
Jan 29, 21 4:23 pm
in the way modern and current society chooses to spend it? yes, yes it is. It's not your money anyways, by that point it's everyone's money.
SneakyPete
Jan 29, 21 4:40 pm
potential for a buddy cop movie: X-Lax and the Apshole
apscoradiales
Jan 30, 21 9:37 am
BabbleBeautiful,
I once had an opportunity to work In Abu Dhabi, UAE. Office was made up of all kinds of nationalities, Canadians, English, Scotts, South African, Indian, Pakistanis....How I ended up there is a whole 'nother story for another day.
One Canadian guy got into trouble - he was caught being drunk while driving -very stupid no matter where you live, particularly in a country where drinking is highly restricted. He was sent to jail for six months, and the office manager had to send someone there twice a day to bring him food. Apparently, they don't feed you in their jails, at least at that time - maybe they do now. After his jail time, he was driven to the airport and sent flying on the next plane.
Why did he get drunk? Dunno, maybe he was an alcoholic, maybe he was lonely, maybe he was depressed, maybe living in a strange place got to him, maybe he missed his family...we will never know.
The office manager called us all in for a meeting. He told us, "Keep in mind guys, you are a guest of this country, and you need to behave like one, you don't go around telling the locals how your laws and lifestyles are in your home country in the hopes their customs will change. In case any one of you gets into similar trouble, I will not help you". None of us got into trouble, needless to say.
Just to let you know, I'm an immigrant to Canada myself. Came here as a child with my mom - dad was already living here. I had to learn English (they tried teaching me French until the teacher realised I couldn't even speak English) , had to adjust - still trying to - to this fucked-up Canadian weather, different lifestyle, lost my friends back in Europe, had to develop new. Mom got seriously ill pretty well right away, and died of Alzheimers shortly thereafter. So, I know very well what it is like to be an immigrant in a foreign country. Life is not easy when you come to a strange place - you either adjust or you don't. I sympathise with every immigrant, but fortunately, doors are always open in case you want to go back where you came from if this country doesn't suit your tastes.
BabbleBeautiful
Jan 30, 21 12:07 pm
What would you rather be called in a foreign nation in which you have little to no understanding of the cultural norms and nuances that predates you? Specially when you are a transient employee?
apscoradiales
Jan 30, 21 12:22 pm
Germans have a good word for it, "Gastarbeiter".
tduds
Jan 30, 21 2:15 pm
The Germans have a good word for everything.
apscoradiales
Jan 30, 21 2:29 pm
Yeah, sometimes they do. You have to give them credit.
Everyday Architect
Jan 30, 21 10:49 am
Aren’t there any clouds that need to be yelled at?
apscoradiales
Jan 30, 21 12:19 pm
"...x-jla
I don’t like the idea that there is some time period where you are a “guest”. Sounds like code word for sub-citizen..."
You may not like it, but that how life is. I must tell you, I was never treated badly by the locals; they were always respectful, considerate, and pleasant towards me, and other "Europeans". Indians and Pakistanis were treated like shiet, though, not only by the locals, but by the English and Scots who ran the office (even though it was a Canadian firm). When you go to a foreign country to work or visit as a tourist, you are their guest. I don't consider that to be demeaning; I think myself lucky and fortunate that they allowed me in. I have no right whatsover to waltz into another country, and demand stuff. It's like you get invited by a friend to visit - you don't go and raid their fridge, do you? Be thankful, and be considerate. Same shiet for any immigrant when they come to a foreign country, be thankful you were let in, and carry on.
apscoradiales
Jan 30, 21 12:27 pm
Just to give an example of discrimination...Office manager, a Scot, gave me and other Europeans an envelope. Two Indian co-workers sitting next to me, didn't get them. I thought I was being fired. I open the envelope, and it says that I'm being invited to the house party at the managers house, and that I'm not to tell the Indians or Pakistanis. The two Indian guys worked very hard, and were probably more in tune with locals life, including construction as well as their local building technology, yet they were treated like dirt.
apscoradiales
Jan 30, 21 12:42 pm
"Non Sequitur
in the way modern and current society chooses to spend it? yes, yes it is. It's not your money anyways, by that point it's everyone's money."
Oh yes it's my money. And your is yours. If you want Justin to send yours to his friends in Cuba to promote "women's health", you go right ahead. I don't want to! Never mind that the Cubans have better healthcare than Canadians do, particularly here in Quebec. I rather have mine be spent on homeless bastards who sleep on sidewalks in Montreal, and Toronto.
And, you may want to be a bit more respectful, and considerate of my, and others' beliefs too.
Alright?
Non Sequitur
Jan 30, 21 12:49 pm
The beliefs you’ve expressed are shit beliefs. They don’t deserve respect because they are shit. Feel free to move but your taxes are not yours to do as you want.
b3tadine[sutures]
Jan 31, 21 11:11 am
I love this page...
randomised
Feb 1, 21 4:17 am
relax, it's just a fetish of beta...
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 1, 21 5:48 am
I am not dank.lloyd.wright
square.
Feb 1, 21 10:26 am
my thoughts exactly when i saw this post... if i thought like rando, which, thank god i don't, i would ask him to answer for and accept responsibility for the entity of his nation's responsibility for unleashing such suffering on the world.
but luckily, i don't.
randomised
Feb 2, 21 5:31 am
Sigh...I never claimed that beta is dankLW, but anywho...I don't ask anyone to answer for your nations unleashing suffering on the world, I only ask why people here do support this kind of unleashing, because they still and actively vote for the ones doing the unleashing. That has nothing to do with historic events we don't have any influence on but instead has to do with actively supporting and condoning such unleashing of suffering by voting for the ones responsible. It's like voting for the nazis because you don't like the communists and overlook the concentration camps and endlösung or voting for the communists because you don't like nazis and overlook the gulags or cultural revolution, as if those are all options.
apscoradiales
Jan 31, 21 2:21 pm
Comanche...some say it was Apache, but this was Comancheria territory., so who is to know for sure.
apscoradiales
Jan 31, 21 5:28 pm
Yep. Can't think of a tribe that were not brutal to other tribes at times. Called "survival of the fittest".
SneakyPete
Jan 31, 21 6:06 pm
nothing more white then using non-white history to justify white actions
apscoradiales
Jan 31, 21 6:33 pm
Not really Pete. Just pointing out that the Natives were not all angels all the time. The Sioux were particularly brutal to their neighbouring tribes they encountered on their way west and southwest as they migrated from Minnesota. Sometimes these incidents are ignored or whitewashed for the sake of political correctness. People should really be aware of all the good, and all the bad. White people migrating west certainly had their own ways of dealing with the natives, and many were not pretty at all.
SneakyPete
Jan 31, 21 7:27 pm
Why is this relevant?
apscoradiales
Jan 31, 21 9:26 pm
Old Chinese proverb, Everything in life is relevant. It's up to you to see the relevancy, grasshopper.
b3tadine[sutures]
Jan 31, 21 10:02 pm
Wow! Both sides!
b3tadine[sutures]
Jan 31, 21 10:02 pm
Read the question again.
square.
Feb 1, 21 9:30 am
here we are, again. again.
apscoradiales
Feb 1, 21 9:47 am
Shouldn't you be working instead of wasting valuable company's time surfing the internet?
square.
Feb 1, 21 10:09 am
you made your position redundant by posting that.
but, who's to assume the company i work for (which is what i think you meant) is valuable?
square.
Feb 1, 21 11:15 am
capitalism*
tduds
Feb 1, 21 1:45 pm
Weird how you read "done more damage to the planet per capita" and decided it meant "killed more people". Weirder that you did this while, elsewhere, harping on about your staunch environmentalism.
tduds
Feb 1, 21 2:22 pm
I never said those things.
tduds
Feb 1, 21 2:29 pm
I didn't say anything except point out your curious reading comprehension. It was a critique, not a counterpoint.
tduds
Feb 1, 21 2:37 pm
Like I said. Reading comprehension.
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 3:06 pm
"Meant to be in response to the post by EA." "Was conflating you twos [sic] posts."
ok, I'll respond in kind then ... I never said those things. I was only pointing out that your curious reading comprehension skipped over the part about capitalism (stated by the OP in the meme's post). It was a critique, not a counterpoint.
square.
Feb 1, 21 11:33 am
is this a wokie?
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 1:16 pm
If anyone needed more evidence that jla is pretty singularly focused on reinforcing his affinity for libertarianism, the dank.lloyd.wright meme and his response is pretty good.
The question the meme raises was about damage to the planet and points to capitalism, and the spread of capitalism, as being incredibly damaging. However, for jla, capitalism = good ... always. So his inability to accept that capitalism might be damaging to the planet made him skip right over that to start talking about violence and body counts (10% of the world population) as the only measure of a nation's damage to the planet.
Ironically, in a twisted way, less people on the planet is arguably better for the planet ... so he misses the mark entirely.
In the world of online troll self owns ... I give this a 2/10.
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 1:18 pm
Cue idiotic attempt to defend himself in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
SneakyPete
Feb 1, 21 1:19 pm
Is lower better for the self-owning scale? Assuming the person doing the rating wants the troll to self-own?
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 2:03 pm
SP, no lower is worse. In this case it wasn't a blatantly obvious that it was a self own (i.e. it took me explaining it). This one came up in my twitter feed over the weekend and is a much better ... 10/10
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 2:15 pm
The scoring is also loosely related to this hierarchy. In the previous example, "Hot Take Harry" ended up deleting the account.
tduds
Feb 1, 21 2:21 pm
For as much as you stake your identity on being above partisan binaries, you sure love this capitalist/communist one.
tduds
Feb 1, 21 2:30 pm
Why must there be a binary choice? Most of the world already functions quite nicely somewhere in the middle. I'm happy to argue degrees but to insist on entirely one or the other is just plain silly. And of course, to insist that a degree away from one extreme is entirely the other extreme is just plain dumb.
SneakyPete
Feb 1, 21 2:35 pm
Here's a binary: jla-x is (smart/dumb). Pick one.
tduds
Feb 1, 21 2:37 pm
I honestly have trouble deciding if his statements are good faith naivete or bad faith trolling.
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 2:41 pm
I lean toward bad faith trolling more. Perhaps I'd lean more toward good faith naivete if you couple it with inability to admit he's wrong ... but then that isn't really good faith is it?
SneakyPete
Feb 1, 21 2:46 pm
Anyone who digs themselves into a position as hard as this and refuses to acknowledge any other positions as valid is either so fucking dumb as to be an indication that the human race might not make it after all OR is a troll. And trolls, all of them, can go get hit by a truck.
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 3:11 pm
lol, he just jumped up from around level 2 to level 3 on the pyramid.
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 3:16 pm
This is definitely bad faith at this point. If he can see the part in the original about mercantilism he can also see the part about capitalism (the part he just skipped over) and continues to defend because it reinforces his affinity for right-wing libertarianism (free market = good ... capitalism = good).
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 3:43 pm
Ok dude, you're obviously going to keep doing you, and since I was never really invested nor engaged in this ... I'll leave you to it.
I wAS JUst hErE tO POinT OUt You'RE BiASeD.
square.
Feb 1, 21 4:26 pm
xlax, capitalism has no doubt had many positive effects for many people. even david harvey, a marxist, concedes this. but could your small brain, even for once second, consider that capitalism is not a permanent or inevitable condition and system, and that it could, even if it has been, for x amount of years in history, more positive than negative a force, at any given moment in history, cease to be that and flip, being more negative than positive?
doubt it. i'll resort to sneaky's binary and choose the former.
square.
Feb 1, 21 4:28 pm
ps- sneaky's binary sounds like a stellar philosophical proposition.
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 4:29 pm
Yep, definitely in level 3 of the pyramid now. You can stop now and this will blow over in a day or so. Or you can double (triple? quadruple? I'm not really keeping track) down and shoot for level 4.
square.
Feb 1, 21 4:32 pm
it must be exhausting constantly existing somewhere between a level 3 and 6. who does this to themse... oh, right.
square.
Feb 1, 21 5:45 pm
i know that once you've resorted to copying me, which happens often, you've failed, but i'll leave you with this riddle that will likely prove difficult for you:
does someone need to imagine an alternative that doesn't yet exist in order to critique something that already does?
tduds
Feb 1, 21 6:54 pm
Fully-automated Luxury Space Communism will get us there, obviously.
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 6:55 pm
"Left sucks, right sucks" is not a real useful point of view unless you have a way to get to a different planet ... and have a good hypothesis as to why it will suck less.
*This has been a burn, not a request for more information. You DO NOT need to give me your hypothesis as to why you think libertarianism will solve everything. No one is asking for it.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 1, 21 7:38 pm
Luxury Space Communism
Need.
apscoradiales
Feb 1, 21 5:02 pm
square,
There is already an alternative to capitalism. It's in PRC and DPRK.
tduds
Feb 1, 21 5:10 pm
You're outta ye
r element Donnie.
JLC-1
Feb 1, 21 5:10 pm
that's just so basic, it's also boring to try and discuss with someone with the arguments of a 10 yr old.
square.
Feb 1, 21 5:15 pm
at least xlax can get out of level 1.
Everyday Architect
Feb 1, 21 5:20 pm
No there's a different pyramid for this ...
randomised
Feb 2, 21 5:39 am
Thanks for the hook, the Dutch do lead the way forward! It's called a social democracy, having both capitalism and taxes to fund a welfare state. We actually do tax the rich, anyone making over 68k pays 49.5% taxes for everything above that amount...
tduds
Feb 2, 21 12:10 pm
"I'd rather make less money than more" ok
tduds
Feb 2, 21 12:13 pm
If the difference between debt-free education, universal healthcare, childcare, good public transit, unemployment assistance, etc. and, well, not those things means I only take home 10k out of my 20k raise, please take my $10,000.
tduds
Feb 2, 21 1:16 pm
I see "People are moving out of California" is the new "Communism killed 100 million people"
tduds
Feb 2, 21 1:17 pm
People are leaving the least affordable places in the country because wages are in a decades long stagnation and the social isolation brought on by a global pandemic has changed the cost-to-benefit of the affordability / density equation. But sure, go off about "the dems"
tduds
Feb 2, 21 1:21 pm
ALSO
"a new population estimate released Wednesday by the Department of Finance found that 136,000 more people left California than moved here from July 2019 to July 2020. That makes three consecutive years of net migration out of the state.
While more residents may have moved away than moved in, the total population of the state still increased by a net of 21,200, up to a total of 39.78 million, by far the largest population of any state in the nation." (https://www.lamag.com/citythin...)
So, a net out-migration of three tenths of one percent and an overall population increase. "Exodus" seems like a slight overstatement.
It's so tiring looking up facts for you.
Everyday Architect
Feb 2, 21 1:53 pm
I wish more Americans understood how their taxes work. People see 49.5% tax rate and think they are paying half their income in taxes (mostly because that's how anti-tax politicians have been framing it). I've literally had to tell family members that getting a raise will not mean you take home less pay even if you break into a higher tax bracket.
"But (fill in name here) said they got a raise and their taxes went up."
"Well, I'm not sure what (fill in name here) is on about, but they're an idiot who doesn't understand how their taxes work."
In the end, it took watching a video like this for them to "get it." I had even done the math in front of them and they still didn't believe me. Apparently the Venn diagram of people who don't know how tax brackets work, and people who only trust paid actors on youtube videos, is pretty close to a circle.
randomised
Feb 2, 21 3:32 pm
I feel sorry for you x-jla, you don't know what you're missing!
Everyday Architect
Feb 2, 21 3:43 pm
jla, I said nothing about you. A little narcissistic to think I was directing my comment to you, no?
tduds
Feb 2, 21 3:56 pm
Statistics = BS. Stories jla hears on the morning talk show and regurgitates = the real deal.
You know my stance on sources. Put up or shut up.
randomised
Feb 2, 21 3:57 pm
x-jla, don't worry too much, you first need to make sure you get to those 67k ;-)
If only you'd post a source so we could actually figure out what you mean when you regurgitate stuff. Then we wouldn't have to imagine things.
tduds
Feb 2, 21 6:15 pm
Like a true capitalist, jla seems to have decided to conflate people and companies here.
tduds
Feb 2, 21 6:21 pm
Anyway, my stance is that these sorts of tax arguments don't work well comparing individual states as much as it does between nations. There are lots of reasons for this, not least of which is that federal taxing and spending dwarfs even the largest state budgets. Nevermind that people move for all sorts of reasons - not *not* because of taxes but certainly not only because of them. Plus, the increased freedom of movement of money & moneyed interests (read: the wealthy and the businesses they incorporate) means one can "live" or "incorporate" in the most financially or politically friendly state while spending a great deal of their time elsewhere. It's a race to the bottom that has little bearing on overall quality of life and even less bearing on individual benefits for all but the top ~10-15%.
Instead of comparing over-priced under-built California to tax-haven Texas, why not compare the US as a whole to, oh I dunno, The Netherlands? or Germany?
tduds
Feb 2, 21 8:40 pm
sigh...
"You mean places where people are stuck accepting whatever tax the country demands."
On the contrary most folks seem pretty content with it.
"Simply, you pay for what you get. Taxes in the U.S. have taken on a pejorative association because, well, we are never really quite sure of what we get in return for paying them, other than the world's biggest military." https://www.marketwatch.com/st...
"Although these countries have high tax rates, only four landed under the 50th benchmark. In fact, four appear in the top ten happiest countries. None of the lower-tax rate countries broke into the top ten, in contrast." https://www.lawyer-monthly.com...
"A recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Science suggests that countries with a more progressive tax system are in fact happier than those where tax rates are flatter.
In “The Political Economy of Human Happiness,” one of us (Radcliff) examined individual-level data on 21 countries over three decades and found that people are happier as tax burden increases.
This held even when accounting for other factors known to affect happiness such as income, health, employment status, gender, age, race, education, religion and so on. Similarly, the national or aggregate level of happiness went up or down with the level of taxation (again, controlling for other factors)." https://theconversation.com/wh...
Now, of course, correlation is not necessarily causation, and surely tax rate / social benefits aren't the *sole* source of satisfaction or happiness. There are also other variables within the economic / taxation system - like "progressiveness" mentioned above, and overall national wealth.
Finally, I've definitely mentioned this before, but I think the main source of dissatisfaction with taxation in the US is that our taxes don't pay for social benefits. We aren't well connected to the goods & services our taxes provide, and the messaging on the things they do provide is frankly abysmal. So we have this pervasive idea throughout the country that taxes are something "the government" takes from us, rather than something "we" pool to provide physical and social infrastructure. Ironically this sentiment seems strongest among the areas that receive the most relative to what they pay.
Simply lowering taxes won't solve this problem anymore than simply raising them will. We need to bridge the disconnect, and we need to redirect national spending to real, tangible, and visible benefits. We have more than enough wealth to do it. It's a PR problem.
Anyway I'm sure you'll respond with something somehow equal parts inane and condescending so I'll shut up after this comment.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 12:21 pm
Sounds like a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing. Let the companies in with a tax break to get the jobs for the city, and become beholden to the societal and infrastructural issues they bring with all those workers because you can't raise the money through taxes to fix those issues.
Or scare the companies away by telling them they'll have to pay their fair share so the city can deal with the issues they'll inevitably cause, and in the process doom your city to not having any jobs.
tduds
Feb 3, 21 12:24 pm
Race to the bottom!
square.
Feb 3, 21 1:07 pm
NY particularly is a Disney land city
^ this is such a dumb take, and i've only seen it from people who's reality isn't remotely close to the city. there's more to NYC than manhattan.. in fact, there are two boroughs that are each as large as the entire city of chicago, and those nearly 5 million people who would refute your ignorant disney land hypothesis.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 1:14 pm
Let's talk again in 10-15 years when those cities in AZ, TX and NV are feeling the pain of overdrawn accounts for improvements and social programs. Or, better yet, why not talk more about how the rich should be philanthropic and put money into those programs in order to make those cities better. It's not like we can't look at Seattle as an example of how your preferred system doesn't work. Bezos and Gates could single-handedly take care of any of the issues Seattleites are hoping the city will address ... yet they do just the bare minimum to feel like they can sleep at night.
Also, check your facts when you lump me in with how you phrase "you Democrats want" ... I've never claimed, nor have I ever been, a member of the Democratic Party.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 3:20 pm
Philanthropy is good, but based on history, not enough to correct the issues capitalism and lower taxes create. Even if all you want is a zero sum game, capitalism fails. If not philanthropy, what is the solution you'd propose to correcting the issues capitalism creates?*
*Again, this is rhetorical. I'm not really asking for you to pontificate.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 3:24 pm
I don't support a party.
I haven't actually supported any individual politician with anything more than my vote and my voice (and I don't mean voice in the "money is free speech" way). I have voted (and will vote) for, as well as voiced (and will voice) my opinions of both for and against, politicians from various parties.
square.
Feb 3, 21 4:09 pm
dunkkk
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 4:53 pm
Local, state, or federal election?
tduds
Feb 3, 21 4:57 pm
I know you're not asking me but I've got 10 minutes to kill.
I voted for at least one Republican candidate in every election until 2018, and I've supported some third-party & independent candidates for local positions up to and including 2020.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 5:01 pm
That doesn't surprise me at all tduds.
tduds
Feb 3, 21 5:26 pm
I would never.
I voted for Jill Stein in 2012,mostly for reasons of party representation. Ain't no way Obama was losing Massachusetts so I felt content to "throw my vote away." But seeing what Jill has become in the decade since it might be the only vote I truly regret.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 7:20 pm
I have voted for a Republican presidential candidate (Bush '04) ... when I was young and not really paying attention to politics. I have not yet voted third-party for president, though I was tempted in '16. I have voted third-party a number of times for local elections including most recently in '20. Last time I voted non-Democratic Party for a federal office was in '12, and for a state office in '18.
If your question was whether I had voted for a non-Republican Party candidate prior to '08, I think the answer would be no.
SneakyPete
Feb 3, 21 8:05 pm
Glad you guys are over here giving Don Quixote more windmills.
tduds
Feb 3, 21 8:42 pm
I agree, the Dems tacked far too right for my preference after the 2008 crash.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 9:08 pm
'04 was the first presidential election I could vote in. I was living abroad at the time and my roommate was a guy from TX who I think had some business ties in his family to the Bushes. He was was all in on Bush and I wasn't really paying attention to the election except for what I'd hear from him.
It wasn't until the next year when I had a different roommate that had close ties to Senator Chris Dodd. He (the roommate, not Senator Dodd) started questioning and challenging some of my preconceived notions about party politics and policies in general over the time we spent together. Coincidentally, Senator Dodd was traveling abroad for official business and we were able to meet with him one morning and have breakfast just the three of us. I still regret not taking him up on his offer to tag along with him for that day.
tduds
Feb 4, 21 12:45 pm
I know. And you have a point, if anything the rightward tack happened after Mondale lost in '84. Clinton was basically Eisenhower (minus the aversion to a military industrial complex).
apscoradiales
Feb 1, 21 7:06 pm
"tduds
You're outta ye r element Donnie..."
You are probably correct, I shouldn't mix with infantile midgets. Carry on with your imbecilic arguments.
SneakyPete
Feb 1, 21 7:25 pm
Go fuck yourself, gramps.
randomised
Feb 2, 21 5:41 am
you seem stuck on the bottom of that pyramid SP...
SneakyPete
Feb 2, 21 11:57 am
You (pot) and kettle can also go fuck yourselves.
randomised
Feb 2, 21 3:28 pm
Now, now...temper, temper.
SneakyPete
Feb 2, 21 4:17 pm
Public service announcement: You are on ignore and I am not removing you to see whatever bullshit you posted. I am sure it's well thought out and witty, because obviously everything you say is.
randomised
Feb 2, 21 4:22 pm
I'm sorry for your loss...
Non Sequitur
Feb 2, 21 8:44 pm
Pete... don't go insulting pots and kettles. They are responsible for my coffee... and thus, my sanity. Sweet sweet black coffee. Wait, why am I jumping into this? oh well, too late. It's belgian tripple time anyways.
The absolute pleasure this brings me, I'm actually crying, with laughter.
SneakyPete
Feb 3, 21 12:20 pm
I'm conflicted.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 12:24 pm
I know. I feel for them, I really do. But at the same time I can't help myself from taking pleasure in their misfortune. Do the Germans have a word to describe empathy and schadenfreude?
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 3, 21 12:42 pm
Nah. These aren't civil servants, these are political appointments, that means they had zero problems with kids in cages, the insurrection, the racism, the hate...fuck em.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 12:49 pm
My rationale for why I'm allowing myself the pleasure is that it's not like they're really going to suffer. They might have to dip into their savings while they find a new job, but they were always going to have to find a new job. The difference is they aren't doing it while taking their salary paid from the taxpayers' dime ... the same dime they fought to leave in the taxpayers' pockets anyway. So I hope they can manage without their avocado toast for a month or two.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 12:50 pm
Team Biden should have taken the high road here...missed opportunity.
JLC-1
Feb 3, 21 12:57 pm
what's the high road rando? how would a dutch do it?
Nobody should be in their position ever, if parental leave was a right, BUT they were appointed by politics into a position from where they did absolutely nothing to improve the lives of anybody but themselves.
high road my ass.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 3, 21 12:59 pm
^ they are right, should've taken the high road, and forced their children into cages, and sent their parents to gitmo.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 1:01 pm
Whelp, thumbs downing that hot take. The law that allowed for paid leave was only put into effect a month before they knew they were going to lose their jobs in January. They had plenty of time to figure it out. It was their administration's efforts to drag their feet on the transition that forced the new administration's hands. Let them cry about how they've earned the entitlement a little more.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 1:06 pm
With that attitude you’re not that different than what you think you’re opposing...
randomised
Feb 3, 21 1:13 pm
My above comment was supposed to follow after b3ta’s, not meant for you EA...
randomised
Feb 3, 21 1:20 pm
I don’t know but when I became a parent, my head was not at all about figuring out my parental leave situation, it was pure survival mode in and out of hospital and stuff, hell even the so-called big green head forgot to renew the archinect web domain when becoming a parent... I think parents should be supported no matter the politics, therefore missed opportunity to bridge a divide and just more fuel for more divisiveness, well done!
tduds
Feb 3, 21 1:38 pm
I think we all (well, all but two...) would agree that the US should have universal parental leave. But that's not the issue at hand here. It's also not "the parents" who spaced out on figuring out their situation, it was the previous administration (for whom they were essentially lackeys, like EA said, not civil servants) who checked out on doing much of anything. I have mixed feelings on this but I'm leaning towards playing my very tiny violin. These people are well off, well connected, and privileged. They'll be fine.
JLC-1
Feb 3, 21 1:44 pm
yes, parents should be supported no matter the politics, ALL parents and not just these opportunistic grifters.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 1:54 pm
It's a shame the Trump administration didn't push for paid parental leave for all workers and didn't push for private employers to pay their employees for parental leave when they lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Missed opportunity ... could have taken the high road.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 2:44 pm
“When they go low, we go high”
–Michelle Obama
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 3:11 pm
Matter of opinion, but I think the current administration is already going higher than the previous one. Taking this as the one example to judge them by is petty.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 3:20 pm
I’m not really judging them, just could imagine this to be a bridge worth building to cross the divide...especially when kids are involved, but I do get all the gloating that’s going on (here), finally some pay back to those mofos. It is difficult not to be like Nelson Mandela Muntz in a situation like this.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 3, 21 3:21 pm
"Politics, is never polite, and doesn't have fucks to give." - Me
I'm going to say, the high road has been taken, Melanie's family hasn't been deported, and she hasn't been arrested for immigration fraud.
SneakyPete
Feb 3, 21 3:26 pm
Petty is par for the course in this thread.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 3:35 pm
All the vindictiveness, what a way to celebrate a win.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 3:41 pm
For the record, no one is celebrating this as a win. We're finding pleasure and humor in how the republicans have for years decried entitlements and government handouts and now there are a few who want what they feel entitled to as a literal handout.
SneakyPete
Feb 3, 21 3:55 pm
Irony is lost on some.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 4:03 pm
We were already here on the PPP loans SneakyPete. Your first comment over there was basically the same. Apparently people never learn.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 4:06 pm
With “win” I meant the elections, not the cancellation of parental leave...and of course I see the irony here SP, Biden “grabbing those Trumpers by the [uterus], or is that not what you meant? (I thought you had me on ignore SP, you didn’t even last a day without me)
randomised
Feb 3, 21 4:09 pm
“ It's a shame the Trump administration didn't push for paid parental leave for all workers and didn't push for private employers to pay their employees for parental leave when they lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Missed opportunity ... could have taken the high road.”
With the Democrats in charge now, there shouldn’t be any reason not to get this done by like, yesterday...
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 4:12 pm
Not sure if SP has you on ignore or not, but he's only responded to things he can see and infer from my posts up to this point. So it's plausible he's not seeing anything you're writing (not that he needs to).
“ We were already here on the PPP loans SneakyPete. Your first comment over there was basically the same. Apparently people never learn.”
You think I don’t see the irony? Of course I see it but choose to ignore it for the sake of argument.
SneakyPete
Feb 3, 21 4:28 pm
It's like febreeze for the soul.
-------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------
randomised
Feb 3, 21 4:38 pm
Nice switching the ignore on for your screenshot but we all know you’re still reading me.
SneakyPete
Feb 3, 21 4:39 pm
The radio isn't transmitting, champ.
tduds
Feb 3, 21 4:41 pm
Worth highlighting that it doesn't appear the Biden admin did this out of any sense of vindictiveness or petty revenge. If anything it seems like a bureaucratic hiccup that the previous admin could have averted, but didn't.
tduds
Feb 3, 21 4:42 pm
We were having a pretty nuanced conversation, in fact.
SneakyPete
Feb 3, 21 4:46 pm
If the gov't was allowed to make decisions without being hogtied by the folks in Congress, there might be wiggle room for empathetic bureaucrats to do what they felt was ethical. But since certain factions in the Senate feel like they need to check the size, shape, color, and hirsuteness of everyone's genitals before they even let them into the bathroom much less pee (for the boys on mute: that's a sarcastic way of saying they feel the need to have overt and total control of everything), here we are.
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 4:48 pm
TIL the word "hirsuteness"
tduds
Feb 3, 21 4:53 pm
I'd have thought "hirsutability"
randomised
Feb 3, 21 5:13 pm
"Worth highlighting that it doesn't appear the Biden admin did this out of any sense of vindictiveness or petty revenge."
Nope, but the responses to it, at least some here, are vindictive and show petty revenge...at least in my opinion.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 5:16 pm
"We were having a pretty nuanced conversation, in fact."
Someone started micro dosing again...
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 3, 21 5:51 pm
We're barely 2 weeks past an insurrectionist regime, so forgive me if I'm not willing to delivery an FTD to racist cuck fetishists.
square.
Feb 4, 21 1:05 pm
febreze*
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 3, 21 12:18 pm
I knew it!
Non Sequitur
Feb 3, 21 1:14 pm
Lasers are fine, but where is he going to get his mutated sea bass? What does you expect him to attach them to, sharks?
SneakyPete
Feb 3, 21 3:54 pm
Republicans: LIZ CHENEY MUST GO!
Also Republicans: MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE IS OK I GUESS.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 4:14 pm
Didn’t Mitch McC call Greene’s lies “a cancer” for their party? Doesn’t sound like that’s an approving OK to me...
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 3, 21 4:31 pm
random, the Senate and the House, are two different entities, and the Minority Leader has little to offer.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 4:36 pm
True
tduds
Feb 3, 21 4:37 pm
Not even a contradiction, just full-throated white nationalist authoritarianism.
tduds
Feb 3, 21 4:46 pm
Anyway I'm taking a great deal of enjoyment from the impending GOP implosion. I hope they eat themselves alive, they deserve every bit of it.
randomised
Feb 3, 21 5:12 pm
"I hope they eat themselves alive, they deserve every bit of it."
And every bite!
Everyday Architect
Feb 3, 21 5:47 pm
jla, you know that only one of those things is in reality true, right? Just making sure you're still in touch with reality.
tduds
Feb 3, 21 5:59 pm
Dare I ask you to say which one?
Everyday Architect
Feb 4, 21 12:12 pm
Apparently Republicans only think Liz Cheney must go when they're on the record and they think their constituents will hold them accountable. When they can hide behind secrecy, they're all "She's ok I guess."
Donna Sink
Feb 3, 21 9:21 pm
Pull that Marjorie lady off her committees ferchrissake. I don’t care if it “sets a precedent “ that means in that in the future the Rs could pull Ds off committees. The second Rs voted for Amy Croupy Barrett hours before the election was proof that they would *never* play fair when they’re in power. The Ds are in power now and they have to fucking use it. Goddam.
Everyday Architect
Feb 4, 21 11:47 pm
Done
Everyday Architect
Feb 4, 21 12:11 pm
Any thoughts re: secret ballot implications comparing vote to oust Liz Cheney from party leadership last night vs. convicting Trump on impeachment?
tduds
Feb 4, 21 12:44 pm
I think Trump might easily be convicted in a secret ballot.
Everyday Architect
Feb 4, 21 1:00 pm
"Easily" might be too generous for me, especially after Rand Paul's constitutionality motion and subsequent vote last week, but I agree. I also have issues with representatives feeling like they can vote differently if they feel like they have some plausible deniability in how they voted. A part of me wants to die on that hill, but I'm not that fanatic about it in principle.
My pipe dream would be that they have a secret ballot and it turns out to be 100-0 to convict, so they don't have any option of pointing their fingers at anyone else to say they didn't stand up for Trump.
Everyday Architect
Feb 4, 21 1:02 pm
Maybe it would be better for 99-1 so they infighting can happen as they all claim to be the lone vote and avoid getting primaried by a Trumpist.
square.
Feb 4, 21 1:13 pm
seems to be some serious, albeit small, momentum building re: student loan debt forgiveness. democrats are finally getting serious about progressive, broadly popular policy. pushing for things like debt forgiveness, raising the minimum wage, stimulus checks, etc. will continue to back republicans further into their qrazy qorner.
if anything, this pandemic and the unprecedented response of the government (in terms of spending, aka the end of austerity) has really exposed the policy-based, moral, and ethical bankruptcy of republicans. that tax cut for the rich, the one major policy accomplishment during trump's presidency, isn't aging well...
tduds
Feb 4, 21 4:02 pm
Yeah square why didn't the Democrats do any of the things they had literally no power to do? We need to stop focusing on the Republicans, who *had* this power and did nothing, and look at the whole picture here.
tduds
Feb 4, 21 4:04 pm
Anyway, I hope the legislature isn't immediately hamstrung by obstructionism & gridlock the way it was from 2010-2016 (and in a different way from 2016-2020). The reconciliation process is absurd and annoying, but at least it seems like they're having an honest go at and end-run around the stupid fucking filibuster (more on this below) to implement, as you said "progressive, broadly popular policy."
The only way the Democrats are going to hold on in 2022 is to provide direct, tangible, visible benefits to average Americans, and publicize the hell out of it. Part of that starts with policy, the other part is to quit letting Republican leadership set the tone of conversation. Dem leadership needs to get on offense, something they're historically terrible at but seems to be getting better with the younger generations.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 4, 21 7:16 pm
tduds, at some point, you have to realize, even Babe Ruth stopped embarrassing the kids playing t-ball. You're the GOAT, let Timmy keep swinging at pitches no one is throwing, he'll never get a hit no matter how slow the ball moves on the tee.
tduds
Feb 4, 21 9:02 pm
Ok but my actual name is Tim so this confuses me.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 4, 21 9:08 pm
Billy?
tduds
Feb 4, 21 11:05 pm
Sold!
tduds
Feb 4, 21 4:07 pm
Good Op-Ed from Ezra Klein today:
"All of this is a choice. Every Senate rule can be changed by a simple majority vote. A simple majority could end or reform the filibuster — as we saw when Democrats ended it for most executive branch nominations and most judicial nominations in 2013, and when Republicans ended it for Supreme Court nominees in 2017. The details quickly get complicated, but a simple majority of senators could vote to loosen some of the limits on budget reconciliation, as Senator Bernie Sanders, the new chair of the Budget Committee, has suggested. The Senate is bound by nothing but its own convictions.
But this is a Senate that, collectively, has no convictions. It does not believe enough in the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold to simply abide by it. It does not believe enough in passing bills by a simple majority to make that the standard. It is the self-styled moderates, like Manchin and Sinema, who freeze the institution in dysfunction, but there is nothing moderate about the modern Senate: It is radical in its inanity, a legislative chamber designed by dadaists."
The filibuster is a hot potato that is barely above room temp at this point. I'm coming around to the idea that the only reason it is still here is so the opposite team can claim the other one did something bad when they finally get rid of it.
Imagine what it would be like if one of the teams simply got ahead on the messaging and said,
"This thing sucks and it's why we can't do our jobs (and it's their fault). We're going to fix it by getting rid of it. We'll be in the lobby signing autographs because you should all be screaming our praises like rock stars. If not right now, you'll see in a year and a half when the tangible benefits of us getting rid of it are more apparent. You're welcome."
SneakyPete
Feb 4, 21 4:50 pm
McCarthy right now is listing the things Democrats allegedly did just like Greene. But instead of using his own actions to do something different, he's painting the Democrats as the enemy and pledging to use this precedent as a weapon in the future. He could do the right thing and then have the ACTAUL moral high ground, but instead he's playing the pathetic victim.
Typical. Fucking. Politician.
SneakyPete
Feb 4, 21 4:52 pm
"We should get Americans back to work."
As if you ever do any work at all, you slime.
SneakyPete
Feb 4, 21 5:00 pm
Jim Jordan is a waste of a bad suit.
tduds
Feb 4, 21 5:36 pm
By and large, Republicans are great at messaging and campaigning but bad at governing. While Democrats are good at governing and bad at messaging and campaigning.
Who was watching the impeachment trial today? Anything important that I missed?
SneakyPete
Feb 9, 21 6:49 pm
You missed the part where the really "Schoen" lawyer defended Trump, saying he couldn't POSSIBLY have incited a large number of people as he was only one guy with a constitutionally protected right to speak, but individual Democratic lawmakers' calls for impeachment (not protected, I guess?) drove them all prematurely into the decision to impeach.
Everyday Architect
Feb 10, 21 11:57 am
So if 44 senators think this is all unconstitutional, they can just stay home, right? Only 2/3 present need to vote to convict.
tduds
Feb 10, 21 12:40 pm
I'm ignoring it. Paraphrasing a Eugene Mirman joke, asking Republicans to convict Trump "is like hiring an insincere baby with amnesia to solve a crime that it committed."
I've been catching bits and pieces today of the House Managers' case and it's being reiterated to me that they are 1) making the case that this wasn't just against Dems, or even the US in general ... this was against the GOP as well; and 2) they are asking for people to side with them that were entirely complicit in the ramp up to this, not only from election night until Jan 6, but also from much earlier in 2020 (really the last 4+ years), and have largely benefitted from it.
The GOP could save themselves here ... but they won't.
Edit: that may be too generous. The GOP could start to save themselves here ... but they won't.
^ hence why they need to try to start the "saving themselves" process.
tduds
Feb 11, 21 12:08 pm
I truly think they've been insulated from electoral accountability - thanks to a combination of our country's inherent anti-majoritarian institutions and their own decades long campaign of disenfranchisement - that they've simply forgotten about it. That or they really are arrogant enough to assume they can just break the process further to extend their immunity (frighteningly,
they might be right).
Everyday Architect
Feb 11, 21 1:05 pm
"insulated from electoral accountability" ... I like that. Well, I like the phrasing, not the actual thing itself.
The scary part is they probably think they *are* acting in a way that the(ir) electorate wants. They are more concerned about getting primaried and needing to beat other Republican challengers than they are concerned about beating Democrats in the general elections ... for exactly the reasons you've outlined.
To me, that's just further evidence that the party is nearly, if not already, gone. When someone who has been embedded in the party long enough to make it to this level of government is worried about the party turning on them, enough to prevent them from making the difficult choices, it's pretty much over for the party they once knew. Seeing the antics of the GOP in AZ, and the fact they even had a vote on Liz Cheney is telling.
Everyday Architect
Feb 11, 21 4:39 pm
^I'm waiting to hear how it's the Democrats fault. You're failing us jla. You have one job here. [winking face emoji]
Everyday Architect
Feb 11, 21 7:37 pm
There's the x-both sides-jla we've been waiting for. I see it took you 4 posts to make your point too. Glad to have you back at full strength.
square.
Feb 12, 21 9:43 am
equivocating what happened over the summer and what happened on january 6th shows any lack of critical thinking skills, and is purely a republican talking point.
square.
Feb 12, 21 10:14 am
“You can moan and groan, but he was far more explicit about his calls for peace than some of the BLM and left-wing rioters were this summer when we saw violence sweep across this nation,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said in defending Trump before the House voted 232-197 to impeach the president for inciting an insurrection.
again, not arguing your "points," just noting the fact that your per usual, your talking points are eerily similar to the most far-right members of congress.
tduds
Feb 12, 21 12:01 pm
Jesus fucking Christ not this again. *leaves*
Everyday Architect
Feb 12, 21 12:15 pm
I'm watching jla make his arguments in front of the Senate right now.
tduds
Feb 12, 21 2:51 pm
Tiltin' at windmills again, are we?
square.
Feb 12, 21 3:28 pm
the irony is it takes more dogmatism to adhere to the idealized form of belief that both sides are exactly equivalent, all the time.
SneakyPete
Feb 12, 21 3:35 pm
It gives him the freedom in his brain (I have acknowledged all sides) to spout his bullshit (Dems and progressives are the bad guys) free of cognitive dissonance.
tduds
Feb 12, 21 5:10 pm
No cult would suffer you.
proto
Feb 10, 21 12:59 pm
huh
square.
Feb 11, 21 1:20 pm
more than enough evidence that if tRump and the republicans hadn't been in charge, things would have been much, much better.
this is the lowest of hanging fruit, and you still can’t grab it.
tduds
Feb 12, 21 3:34 pm
square it's important to see both sides here. And by both sides I mean we need to only and endlessly talk about the evils of Democrats.
tduds
Feb 12, 21 5:09 pm
The existence of individual sub-jurisdictions doesn't amount for much when you consider their place within the overall jurisdiction. A state, regardless of the party of their Governor, can only get so far within the confines of the national policy.
tduds
Feb 12, 21 5:09 pm
"so where is this 40% coming from?" The study is linked in the article. Do your own homework.
tduds
Feb 12, 21 5:29 pm
Again, the answers you seek are in the article, the study, and other articles about the study that are going around this week.
SneakyPete
Feb 12, 21 5:54 pm
He seeks no answers.
your conscience
Feb 11, 21 5:20 pm
i think something would have to literally shatter the earth for trump to get convicted. this is an incredible waste of time
SneakyPete
Feb 11, 21 6:11 pm
The Republicans are wasting all of our time because they refuse to do their jobs. If this was Benghaz instead of the fucking capital, they'd be all over it. But This loss of life requires HEALING and MOVING ON because it was incited by and controlled by their lord and savior Donald Trump.
square.
Feb 12, 21 9:40 am
those who are saying this is a waste of time, because of the republican response, have an acute case of myopia. the democrats are following public opinion on this, and know that it's a winning issue both morally and politically, to frame trump, accurately, as the instigator of this historically embarrassing and destructive episode.
it might have been "a waste of time" trying to convince secessionist senators of anything by the same logic, but history hasn't exactly looked kindly upon them, and thank god for the politicians who did not heed the sort of advice you are giving, allowing our country, albeit much later, to heal and move on.
Wood Guy
Feb 12, 21 11:10 am
The impeachment trial is basically theater, but important theater--it's the only official punishment against his actions. Without it, there would be zero reason for Democrats to not storm the Capitol in 2024 if a Republican wins. Precedent matters, or it should.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 12, 21 2:47 pm
I know it's already been stated, but Jlax is the dumbest mf I've seen on this site. "...it's a waste of time, because it won't curb trumpism, it will embolden it." I wonder, is there possibly a counterfactual that will disprove this moronicism? I wonder, does it actually exist, that doing nothing, DOING NOTHING, will actual curb trumpist? You fucking seething idiot. Shoot yourself.
tduds
Feb 12, 21 5:07 pm
Better posthumously convict MLK then, while you're at it.
WTF is up with McConnell’s bullshit pedantry in avoiding responsibility to convict this impeached president? Too late to convict because he’s out of office?!? Especially when McConnell specifically delayed a senate trial...
Wood Guy
Feb 16, 21 10:57 am
Ignoring the name, we have a centrist party currently in power that should have broad appeal. What we need is a Progressive party as powerful as the right wing. There's not a lot of space between Democratic and Republican platforms to squeeze in a whole new party.
Wood Guy
Feb 17, 21 8:12 am
No successful party is going to combine right and left, even if they share a distaste for autocratic/authoritarian governance, because the core values are so different--right is self-oriented, left is collective-oriented.
Koww
Feb 13, 21 7:28 pm
the onus was on the democrats to persuade republicans. they failed, to the surprise of no one. people need to stop electing incompetent officials...this requires education and campaign finance reform... hope we can get it done in the next 50 years. also requires trust and tolerance. right now every move by anyone is assumed to political in motive. not sure how that can be transcended.
Everyday Architect
Feb 13, 21 10:53 pm
The point of the impeachment was never about Democrats persuading Republicans, at least not those in the Senate anyway (maybe some of the more moderate Republican voters). The point was to make it as embarrassing as possible for those Republicans to vote to acquit. The trial was always about the show, they teed up witnesses perfectly ... and then took the L everyone knew they were going to get anyway and went home for Valentine’s Day.
It was like watching the team losing by 21 points in the Super Bowl with 2 minutes to go get a 1st and goal ... then just pack it up and say “well we weren’t going to win anyway so let’s just hit the showers.” Unless you were going to make a spectacle and make them look bad, the impeachment was a waste of time. The impeachment, really any impeachment, was always political and they didn’t even try to score any political points.
tduds
Feb 17, 21 5:36 pm
"The wise man bowed his head..." you know the rest.
Donna Sink
Feb 16, 21 10:49 am
Ranty update on my homeless friend's situation: Still no housing and it is *truly* Kafkaesque. She can't be accepted to the affordable apartments because, even though she has a state ID, the state ID address isn't accurate because she's been bumped to so many temporary housing situations over the last year, and she doesn't have a birth certificate AND social security card to prove her ID, because she's homeless and *big surprise* has lost pieces of paper while living on the street. You can't get a SScard without a birth certificate, and vice versa, unless you come to the office in person, which they won't allow because of COVID, so you have to do it through the mail, which takes 6-8 weeks, but if she can't produce it in 2 weeks she loses her place on the waiting list for the affordable apartment, an apartment that she needs so she has an address so she can update her state ID to be accurate, so that she can get an apartment so that she's not living on the street.
Capitalism is a sickness. The USA is terminal.
Wood Guy
Feb 16, 21 10:55 am
Ugh. We are very good at keeping the poor down. Kudos for supporting her.
SneakyPete
Feb 16, 21 11:46 am
The system is working as intended.
randomised
Feb 16, 21 12:41 pm
“The computer says no”
Donna Sink
Feb 16, 21 3:11 pm
archi-dude there is some truth to that statement, but the bigger truth is that the bureaucracy exists in its current form because in the Reagan years we were taught to think of government as able to be "run like a business" and that "public-private partnerships" are better than "big government" and that government agencies need to make a profit. So when it costs a bunch of money to administer a system, like say the DMV, the government is constantly trying to show how responsible it is by squeezing its budget to make it more "efficient" and "create synergies to maximize leanness" and all that other business bullshit rather than make it run perfectly but be accused of wastefulness. My attitude towards waste is: bring it. If every child in this country is fed and every human housed and every pothole filled (lower priority LOL) and every toxic chemical cleaned up then I don't give a damn how much it costs.
randomised
Feb 16, 21 3:55 pm
“I don't give a damn how much it costs”
Would be priceless!
SneakyPete
Feb 16, 21 4:24 pm
Money exists to rationalize and perpetuate the lies that allow the system to continue.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 16, 21 8:34 pm
Donna, you're correct of course. Capitalism and Bureaucracy are ouroboros. The idea that solving the problem is contrary to effective governing, is exactly what capitalism wants; break the government, to prove government doesn't work, to create more private sector governance. The point, end result, of Marxism is to solve the problems of the people, so we can get rid of bourgeois asshat, be free, and happy. We work, to pay bills, and debt - ouroboros - not to be happy. Thank capitalism.
randomised
Feb 17, 21 2:20 am
Dude, they first and foremost escape poverty and oppression...it’s not like they run away because they have a startup idea they really need to pitch to Silicon Valley, they don’t even know what capitalism is, they just want out...
randomised
Feb 17, 21 2:29 am
Bureaucracy/big government can be found in any political or ideological system and its running successfully is not necessarily tied to the politics. Capitalism and bureaucracy can easily go hand in hand...it’s a great way to keep people busy and employed, it’s nice to know that for the incompetent underachievers there’s also a job available, what if they’d all be sacked because the government is run like a fortune500 company...who’s going to feed them and prevent the Revolution from happening in such a dog eat dog world?
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 17, 21 6:35 am
"We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism."
Donna Sink
Feb 17, 21 9:06 am
I mean let's be realistic: we could spend a billion dollars on federally-employed social workers so that every human had a main contact person to help them navigate the system, then the system wouldn't be keeping people down. Alternatively, if we invested a billion dollars in making all the different agencies communicate completely and transparently so that a human didn't have to run all across town to get any information, the system wouldn't be so hard to navigate and regular people could do it. Instead we have the Texas power gird: vastly underfunded, operating on short-term thinking to survive the next round of budget cuts rather than actually having the security to be able to focus brainpower on solving the problems we face as a society.
randomised
Feb 17, 21 1:15 pm
It’s actually capitalism that promotes repetition, the more the better, variation is anticapitalist as it is inefficient and expensive and screws up the profit margins, you know for the sake of efficiency and cutting costs...by your own analogy capitalism is a form of insanity(!)
randomised
Feb 17, 21 3:45 pm
Global warming “a few side effects”? Mass extinction of species “a few side effects”? Global refugee crisis “a few side effects”? Mass deforestation and loss of habitats “a few side effects”? The so-called side effects of capitalism are worse than the presumed benefits when looking at the big picture holistically, no?
BabbleBeautiful
Feb 17, 21 4:03 pm
Here we go again...capitalism and free-trade vs socialism/marxism...
As I understand it now, ERCOT, is a private non-profit organization and it exists so to rid itself of gov't regulations. In other words, a private organization. Look at where that got them.
-1 for capitalism and privatization.
The issue is and always will be the PEOPLE running the system - whatever that system is.
randomised
Feb 17, 21 4:11 pm
Oh and speaking of side effects of capitalism...Marxism itself is a side effect of capitalism too ;-)
tduds
Feb 17, 21 5:33 pm
Good Riddance Limbaugh.
Everyday Architect
Feb 17, 21 5:38 pm
Bringing back memories of being a high school grad framing houses where the boss would tune the jobsite radio to his show every afternoon ... I certainly won't miss him. I do miss working with those guys sometimes though.
SneakyPete
Feb 17, 21 5:40 pm
In before someone criticizes you for celebrating the death of someone whose entire thing was being hateful and rooting for the demise of rhetorical foes.
tduds
Feb 17, 21 6:25 pm
In the (almost definitely apocryphal) words of Mark Twain: "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
Non Sequitur
Feb 17, 21 6:27 pm
Please let me know where to send my thoughts and prayers.
Wood Guy
Feb 22, 21 12:18 pm
There are very few people I would wish dead, but I have to say that the world is a better place with Rush gone.
tduds
Feb 24, 21 5:04 pm
...
SneakyPete
Feb 24, 21 6:07 pm
Tduds, for a second there, before I realized you had posted an image, I thought archinect had broken.
tduds
Feb 24, 21 6:31 pm
"Can't trust google!" *incessantly posts links obviously pulled from google searches*
idk seems like you're finding what you're looking for.
tduds
Feb 24, 21 7:07 pm
I'm not defending Google. You're *using* Google and I'm just pointing it out.
tduds
Feb 24, 21 7:08 pm
We're on page 9 of this thread and you still haven't figured out that I'm not making counterpoints, I'm debunking / dunking on / laughing at you. I gave up taking you seriously months ago. Catch up.
tduds
Feb 24, 21 7:13 pm
sure you are honey.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 24, 21 8:14 pm
This,
Is gold.
tduds
Feb 24, 21 8:32 pm
wise.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 24, 21 9:09 pm
tduds, and by that I mean, SEVEN comments, to your three, the ratio alone, but actually not getting anywhere after SEVEN. Is extraordinary.
b3tadine[sutures]
Feb 25, 21 1:33 am
TEN to 3.
randomised
Feb 27, 21 9:15 pm
Libertarian? ;-)
randomised
Feb 28, 21 3:34 am
Was just kidding
Non Sequitur
Feb 28, 21 7:33 am
I like the sexy eye-shadow+mascara eyes, Dark Vader helmet and classic brushy moustache on the potato head. Red high heels optional tho, depending on the day’s schedule.
Wood Guy
Feb 28, 21 4:45 pm
I don't know a single person to the left of center who thinks the potato thing is worthy of discussion. Private company, more inclusion, fewer words. Don't you have something more substantial to worry about?
A friend of mine, politically centrist, had this to say: "My company sells over a quarter million pounds of seed potatoes every year. I've never seen a potato with a cock or a vag, or an apron or a mustache. Even biologically speaking, potato tubers have zero sex or gender. The plants themselves are hermaphroditic (both male and female)."
Non Sequitur
Feb 28, 21 5:22 pm
um... exhibit A below.
Wood Guy
Mar 1, 21 9:29 am
Yeah woke culture, that's the real problem in this country.
"It’s undoing all of the progress that we saw from the 60’s -present."
I'm sorry everyone, I gotta take the bait. Please elaborate on all the progress that woke culture is undoing. Seriously. Lay it out 'cause I gotta hear this. Take your time. None of this off-the-cuff hot take crap you're known for that under the slightest scrutiny falls apart. Convince me your statement above is actually true.
tduds
Mar 1, 21 5:34 pm
hmm...
Non Sequitur
Mar 1, 21 7:05 pm
OooooooOoOoooOoO hmmmm
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 12:40 am
Ok, so nothing then. Can't say I expected anything more. If I were trying to make your argument I'd start with defining what woke culture is, naming progress that has been made since the 60's, then show definitively how the culture you previously defined is undoing that progress. But that's just me. You're obviously trying Bannon's "flood the zone with shit" approach. It's not convincing anyone.
tduds
Mar 2, 21 12:46 am
I see a pile of conclusions, but a weak thesis and absolutely no supporting evidence. D+ effort, generously.
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 12:48 am
For my last term paper in college I turned in a paragraph that just said, "If you, the professor, don't know this already ... I can't help you." I obviously got 100% because that's how the world works.
tduds
Mar 2, 21 1:17 am
It would seem we've yet again reached the point you inexorably drag every discussion towards, where one of us has to take the time to explain that it's not so much your ideas that are bad, as your piss-poor ability to expand upon or defend them that makes them / you unworthy of a serious response. And, just as inevitably, whether through some sort of emotional defense mechanism or simple trolling, you'll assume as a tacit acknowledgement of victory. Rinse, repeat, fuck you.
tduds
Mar 2, 21 11:03 am
Ok maybe what I said above was a little harsh.
Still, C- on that last reply
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 11:44 am
I'm not asking for what the prominent voices are saying to support whatever they are arguing. I'm asking *you* to support what *you* are arguing.
Your comment, "It’s undoing all of the progress that we saw from the 60’s -present," seems oddly specific yet vague and nondescript and I'd like you to elaborate so I might be able to understand what you're getting at. If you need to quote prominent voices, go ahead. But just like you, I can say woke culture (whatever that means, you still haven't defined it) is progressing us more than anything since the 60s and provide no supporting evidence. I mean that's cool and all, but it gets us nowhere.
BTW, anytime anyone says that something is obvious if you just think about it ... it usually means it isn't obvious and they have no supporting evidence, or they are too lazy to provide supporting evidence.
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 11:50 am
"But here’s on obvious thing- racism." Good set up to lay out the topic (though it isn't obvious).
"The goal was once to make race a less important, less deterministic factor in ones identity. Content of character, judge individuals, etc. Thats an undeniably true and modern view." Who's goal was this, where was this goal laid out and defined? You'll need to provide some supporting evidence if you want me to believe this is "undeniably true."
"It’s also effective and has over time led to progress. Since the 60’s race relations have gotten way better because of that notion." Perhaps, but I think the argument was also that it wasn't doing enough and there are still plenty of people that aren't progressing and holding us as a society back. See all the people that came out and starting saying the racist stuff out loud once it was seen as acceptable because POTUS was giving them hugs and warm feelings.
"The woke movement rejects this notion, and instead pushes a bs critical race theory intersectionality narrative. They view race as the most important aspect of ones identity. It’s not. This is not only a false narrative, but it literally is the definition of racist." Define "woke movement." Link to a source on "critical race theory intersectionality narrative" that supports your statement that "they view race as the most important ..."
"Listen to Coleman Hughes or read his essays on the subject. He covers this in great depth and clarity." Provide some links to sources you find most illuminating on the subject. Or give some quotes of in context of your argument.
It's really not that hard to make a strong argument.
tduds
Mar 2, 21 4:19 pm
If you just read and think all of the things I've read and thought in my lifetime, and ignore all the things I have not read or thought, the conclusions I've reached are self evident.
No, actually, I won't tell you what I've read. How dare you.
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 4:28 pm
I'm not arguing anything. I'm just asking you to explain your argument.
I'm also not asking for a term paper (I only brought up the idea of a term paper as I riffed on tduds' letter grade because it was funny). All I'm asking for is a coherent argument. This is the last time I'm asking for it. If you can't present one, I'll just assume you have no idea what you're talking about.
square.
Mar 2, 21 4:31 pm
i see we're still doing this, huh?
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 4:32 pm
I'm giving you permission to get into the weeds (not that you need it). But it is *your* argument so *you* need to present it if you want to get into the weeds on it.
Non Sequitur
Mar 2, 21 4:33 pm
I came here to discuss potato head builds.
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 4:34 pm
I never gave you any "umm hmm" or whatever. I just want to hear you lay out a coherent argument.
tduds
Mar 2, 21 4:35 pm
My argument is that you suck at making a point, and when asked to elaborate, you stubbornly refuse to. I even said this explicitly a few posts ago, and roughly 2-3 times per month since we first began discussing politics several years ago, so I don't know why it's unclear.
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 4:40 pm
NS, if you keep discussing potato head builds, you'll undo all the progress we've made since the 60s. You know, the progress that said potatoes have penises or vaginas.
tduds
Mar 2, 21 4:47 pm
Please define "woke culture"
Everyday Architect
Mar 2, 21 4:53 pm
If something is not universally defined and accepted, the starting point to define and come to a consensus on it. Not just say it exists and if you don't think so you're not reading and thinking the same way as me. Applies to both Bigfoot and "woke culture."
Thanks, I'm won't get into the definition with you, but thanks for providing it. Now, please explain how what you just defined is "undoing all of the progress that we saw from the 60’s -present." You might first start with defining what that progress is so we are all on the same page, then show how "woke culture" is undoing it.
square.
Mar 3, 21 11:50 am
i can recognize abstractly the there are issues with "woke" culture- but this mr potato head thing is making a mountain out of a mole hill.
are there people who's worlds are so small that they are enraged by the brand removing mr? while mr and mrs still exist as products?
this is not an issue to the majority of americans; sometimes it's important to recognize when you're spending too much time in your internet bubble.
Everyday Architect
Mar 3, 21 12:15 pm
.
square.
Mar 3, 21 12:25 pm
"i don't see race" is definitely one of my favorite mlk quotes.
Non Sequitur
Mar 3, 21 12:46 pm
Sorry, been a busy morning and I meant to post this last night. See above build, inspired by this thread's discussions.
square.
Mar 3, 21 1:13 pm
just fyi, that's not mlk.
Everyday Architect
Mar 3, 21 1:18 pm
So is it racism, racial relations, and/or racial tension that has seen progress from the 60s until today. You bring up all three in your post but they aren't all the same and you really only make statements that there has been progress with racial relations, and that racial tension has been reduced through overly broad statements. You note that colorblindness "has led us into a better place since the 1960s" but don't address that "a better place" does not equal "the best place" or "a place where racism is solved."
Nor have you really addressed that "woke culture" is undoing, or will undo, "all the progress" that has happened with regard to race since the 60s. All you've done is say that MLK advocated for colorblindness, and that woke culture rejects it (which in itself could be a topic of hot debate without even getting into the undoing progress thing). The whole time apparently assuming that we've actually reached the form of colorblindness that MLK advocated for (or at the very least getting there) and that rejecting it would be detrimental to society. It's a big leap and you haven't really provided supporting arguments in favor of making that leap.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 2:51 pm
The sheer depth of misunderstanding is kind of impressive.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 3:06 pm
Yeah that's the common line. Yet there are vanishingly few (not zero, but very few) examples of this happening where the things being said were not deserving of the backlash.
Everyday Architect
Mar 3, 21 3:08 pm
"in the past stupid people believed that race determined one’s characteristics...it caused lots of problems...we now know that race is a trivial factor..."
One might argue that that trivialization of race and other identity characteristics is the reason we are where we are today with regard to race and identity, both good and bad (you seem to only be focusing on the good while ignoring the bad). All of this isn't to say that one's individual characteristics are not important and that only their racial identity or other group identity is important. Rather it's to say that you can't simply negate *any* part of someone as trivial simply because you want to ... whether it's their race, gender, etc. or other characteristic of their individuality not tied to a group identity.
Also, I said I wouldn't get into your definition of woke culture but I kind of need to now as none of this is really related to your definition of "woke culture" unless you assume this "ideological mindset" is part of the "socially progressive creed" you put in your definition as "absolute, utopian, unquestionable, and unreasonable." You haven't defined what "socially progressive creed" is (let alone why it is absolute, utopian, unquestionable, and unreasonable) so all it really does right now is allow you to lump together anything you don't like and categorize it there as unacceptable and therefore a problem with "woke culture." So what is the socially progressive creed that your definition relies on?
tduds
Mar 3, 21 3:09 pm
There's a sleight of hand here where you're defining things in terms that people who identify with the movement you're talking about would not use or agree with. You're telling people what they think and then telling them that they're wrong. But your interpretations are simplified and quite frequently mis-conflating unrelated things. It would take a lot of time and effort to really dive into this and you'll just dismiss it anyway so I'm gonna go do something else. I really should just ignore this thread permanently.
Everyday Architect
Mar 3, 21 3:53 pm
So I see we aren't going to respond to my valid questions or criticisms then and instead just flood the zone again. Cool.
There is what is, and how we navigate it. What is cannot change. The past is the past. We should not ignore the past, or its effect on the present. We can however empower ourselves and our culture with a mindset that creates a new path, maybe it's woke-ism, maybe it's not. You say woke-ism is not the right tool box to navigate this reality, but you've offered nothing of substance to support that view. It’s completely counterproductive and divisive.
Everyday Architect
Mar 3, 21 4:09 pm
Your last statement is also a very high-level, lack-of-details view for someone that said, "I’d like to get into the weeds" just yesterday. Seems to me that someone started getting into the weeds and couldn't handle it.
square.
Mar 3, 21 5:06 pm
Identity politics in general (race being one major parameter) places emphasis on group identity over individual identity.
i'll be honest- there are parts of this i agree with. critical race theory puts primacy on identity through race above everything else. one can't deny race as identity, but overemphasizing it rejects the other conditions (social, economic, political) that also make up identity.
the problem is your cram 30 thoughts into 3 sentences, and when paired together they are incredibly incoherent.
The narrative of victims and oppressors is not a healthy, accurate, or effective way to promote the interracial “brotherhood” that MLK preached, and that we (people growing up pre 2000’s) learned.
this is the next sentence, a rambling, unconnected thought about oppression and exploitation, aka your typical "anti-marxist" bent.
if you stuck to one idea, these might be real conversations. instead you throw whatever latest youtube video you watched in the wall and hope something sticks. there's not debate here. no conversation. just you talking to a wall.
Everyday Architect
Mar 3, 21 7:41 pm
I've learned from the past and realized that trying to argue with you without first establishing what page you're on is pointless because you always seem to be on a different page. So I wanted you to define the page you were on, so we could at least speak the same language from the beginning.
I mean you tried to take a comment about how one party is focusing on covid relief and the other is focusing on potato genitalia so you tried to use that to say that wokeness is undoing all progress in the past 50 years (like it was even close to the same page). I'm sorry, that needs a little explaining if you want anyone to take it seriously. Apparently that's too much of a chore for you.
tduds said it earlier, "My argument is that you suck at making a point, and when asked to elaborate, you stubbornly refuse to." I've given you every chance to make your point, you just stubbornly refuse to do so. You wanted to get in the weeds, I'm down here playing in the dirt while you stubbornly refuse to do so.
At this point all I've been able to gather is 1) you think wokeism is bad. 2) You think it's bad because it rejects colorblindness (citation needed). 3) You think colorblindness is good because it was supported by MLK (citation needed). 4) Colorblindness has been the source of all racial progress in the past 50 years (citation needed). Conclusion: Wokeness is undoing all progress in the past 50 years including, but not limited to, Mr. Potato Head's penis.
Is there any other way to connect the dots you've actually laid out here? I could argue with you on points 2, 3, 4, and your conclusion, but it would be worthless unless you're willing to actually define what page the debate will take place on. I'd provide the page and the context but you'd just dismiss it without offering anything substantial to rebut it except some zone flooding shit.
"Huge chore to bring [me] up to speed" ... please. You're not even close to being at my speed. Come back when you're ready to have a debate.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 8:26 pm
"He expects me to argue as if he’s unaware of the many arguments that have been made already"
Hey, not all of us spend our entire day digesting Reason, Federalist, and National Review blog posts.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 8:35 pm
The "dream" of King was to someday build a society in which colorblindness was possible, not to simply decide to be colorblind while still inhabiting our current - quite racist - world. Until we've done the work to undo the cultural & systemic racism built into our world by our ancestors, insisting that we ignore race is to insist that we ignore the pressures and prejudices that have been foisted upon people throughout their entire life *because* of their race. It's callous and it's lazy.
"you are really saying that identity is immutable, because race is immutable." No, we're saying that we still live in a world where your outward appearance affects your lot in life, and in order to be anti-racist you need to acknowledge that experience in your interactions with people of different backgrounds - whether that's people of color, people of different genders, nationalities, orientations, etc.
You speak of "a place of heightened enlightenment and perspective" and our counterpoint is that this is the work that needs to be done to get there. We're certainly not there yet.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 8:35 pm
Guess I failed (again) at quitting the thread.
Everyday Architect
Mar 4, 21 2:25 pm
I'm going to quote tduds because I let the MLK colorblindness stuff go without comment because I was trying to get to something larger without following jla down the rabbit hole, but it shouldn't be left without comment because it is a completely bad take on Dr. King's work and legacy.
"The 'dream' of King was to someday build a society in which colorblindness was possible, not to simply decide to be colorblind while still inhabiting our current - quite racist - world. Until we've done the work to undo the cultural & systemic racism built into our world by our ancestors, insisting that we ignore race is to insist that we ignore the pressures and prejudices that have been foisted upon people throughout their entire life *because* of their race. It's callous and it's lazy."
That is all. I'm going to enjoy a long weekend without feeling the need to get involved in arguments on the internet.
randomised
Feb 28, 21 2:33 pm
“ “Diplomacy is back!” President Joe Biden declared at the Munich Security Conference last week. But so is bombing Syria, apparently. Biden has only been president a bit more than a month, but he has already ordered his first bombing campaign. (It took Trump four months to do the same.)” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/26/biden-iran-deal-diplomacy-syria
bowling_ball
Feb 28, 21 6:07 pm
What are you trying to say with that? "Haha! Your guy did the same thing our guy did, which makes your guy worse!"? Something like that? Everybody knows that Biden is a centrist. I don't know enough about Syria specifically, but speaking personally I don't support what I consider to be global military over reach, and violently meddling in the affairs of others, regardless of who's in the White House.
bowling_ball
Feb 28, 21 9:02 pm
Deep state? Trojan horse? Establishment? GTFOH with your conspiracy nonsense. Maybe if Trump hadn't so completely and utterly fucked up everything he touched, he'd still be in office. I think I'm putting you on ignore now.
randomised
Mar 1, 21 4:08 am
All I’m trying to say bb is po-tah-to puh-tei-tow...same shit different president
tduds
Mar 1, 21 11:21 am
By the nature of their job I'd argue all presidents are essentially war criminals. But only Trump was *gleefully* a war criminal. Important distinction, if you ask me.
tduds
Mar 1, 21 12:07 pm
I think begrudgingly accepting the moral quandary of an inherited broken system (even if one were to want to change it, institutional inertia would mean any substantial change takes years) is morally superior to indulging in and actively worsening the system. Not by a lot, but certainly not equivalent.
Put more simply: I disagree with Biden on policy and individual actions &I'm happy to call him out when his admin disappoints me. I disagreed with Trump on philosophy, character, and direction and I think he nearly brought the system down entirely.
Better isn't necessarily good, but "not good" isn't just as bad. All things exist on a spectrum. It's not inconsistent to recognize improvement while also recognizing room for further improvement.
tduds
Mar 1, 21 12:09 pm
That's all I gotta say about that.
tduds
Mar 1, 21 1:02 pm
The style is not what offends me. The content is what offends me. I'm a brash as fuck Bostonian, but I do it to call out assholes, not be one. Trump is an childish asshole who appeals to other childish assholes. It's nothing to do with "delicate sensilibites" and everything to do with people who were quietly shitty people inside and got permission from him to be loud about it. It's quite simple.
tduds
Mar 1, 21 1:20 pm
"The people who voted for him are not responsible for his bad deeds."
I never said they were. Of course you're not responsible for the actions of people you publicly support, but your continued vocal support of that person is - in light of those actions - reprehensible itself. Again this is simple. Quit making me expand on obvious ethical philosophy.
tduds
Mar 1, 21 2:16 pm
It was a proverbial 'you', obviously.
tduds
Mar 1, 21 2:18 pm
It's exhausting to keep up with this tendency to introduce a wholly novel concept and/or metaphor with every reply. Good day.
Wood Guy
Mar 1, 21 6:48 pm
Tduds, you do know what they say about wrestling with pigs, right?
b3tadine[sutures]
Mar 1, 21 7:18 pm
Everything America does in the Middle East can be traced to decisions made right after World War 2. We're managing shit that is 70 years old. If we can stop fucking around, and end the "war" with Iran, we'd actual set a course where 70 years from now, we can have a better situation, and lessen the Saudi bullshit. Political courage is lacking, fuck the Saudis.
randomised
Mar 2, 21 4:34 am
no time to raise minimum wage at home but all the time in the world to kill somewhere on the other side of the world, Biden sure shows his cards :-(
randomised
Mar 2, 21 10:57 am
no, I was convinced it would pick up again, continue if not intensify...as posted before:
tduds
Mar 1, 21 11:26 am
Well here's a simple uncontroversial opinion that certainly won't ruffle any feathers around here:
"I do not mean that modern American Republicans are communists. Rather, I mean that the Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes."
If I recall correctly, neo-cons, trace their lineage to Trotsky?
Chad Miller
Mar 2, 21 9:38 am
Meh, it's wishful thinking that the current republican party will implode under it's own failures but it won't. We have a two party system and it's going to be nearly impossible for the current republican party to be forced to change itself.
Chad Miller
Mar 2, 21 2:01 pm
Their formula is hate.
Wood Guy
Mar 2, 21 2:26 pm
To be fair, I know enough R's that I am confident that they are fueled by more than hate. There is also a lot of fear. In fact I think fear is the engine that drives them, and hate is a result.
Chad Miller
Mar 2, 21 5:49 pm
Racism, bigotry, sexism, and homophobia are hate.
tduds
Mar 2, 21 6:02 pm
The anger, like the hate, is a product of exploited fear. They know exactly what they're doing, but they were too arrogant to realize that eventually they'd lose control of the asylum.
atelier nobody
Mar 2, 21 6:13 pm
I've been characterizing the Republican Party the same way since not long after I left it:
Republican Base: We fear/hate those people so much that we'll accept policies that hurt them, even if those policies also hurt us.
Republican Establishment: Economic policies that hurt everyone (except our rich donors and ourselves, of course) coming right up.
atelier nobody
Mar 2, 21 6:32 pm
I used "those people" as a catch-all term. There are separate (but often overlapping) constituencies for "those people" being blacks, white liberals, illegal aliens, LGBTQ, perfectly legal Latino permanent residents and citizens, non-Evangelical Christians, "coastal elites", intellectuals, women's' libbers, etc.
Chad Miller
Mar 2, 21 6:49 pm
Racism and homophobia do play a huge part in this. The current republican party has used it to stir up fear in their base and claim that they are the only ones who can protect them from all the bad things they say non whites and LGTB people are trying to do to 'Murica.
"All the reasons for the GOP’s turn against democracy — backlash to racial progress, rising partisanship, a powerful right-wing media sphere — remain in force after Trump. The leadership is still afraid of Trump and the anti-democratic MAGA movement he commands.
More fundamentally, they are still committed to a political approach that can’t win in a majoritarian system, requiring the defense of the undemocratic status quo in institutions like the Senate and in state-level electoral rules."
To use the Soviet comparison, the only reason the Party was able to hang on for so long was the lack of competition. The GOP is approaching this level of out-of-touch-ness, and so the natural inclination is to undermine the mechanisms of accountability that would otherwise keep them in check.
If we had a fair democracy, the Republican party would win very few elections, either driving them towards reform or irrelevance, from which a new 2nd major party would eventually emerge. The only reason the Democrat/Republican divide seems remotely competitive is through a combination of a rural advantage enshrined in The Constitution, and good old fashioned disenfranchisement. They're staking their own success on undermining democracy. The "other side", to put it simply, isn't.
"Did you read the chart in that article?" There are 13 charts, in fact. Did you read them?
"Majority believes fraud occurred." despite *overwhelming* evidence to the contrary, and in line with a series of lies fed to them by elected Republicans and right wing media.
"Majority believes voting should be easier." Re-read that. A *huge* majority (looks like around 80%) believe voting *should not* be made easier.
I feel like its important at this point to distinguish between Republican *voters* and Republican *representatives* (and the same for Democrats).
The charts represent mostly polls of voters, but from those results conjecture a narrative about elected representatives (and their media sycophants). For example, the so-called "Big Lie" about election fraud. The voters believe it because the representatives & the media machine planted it and amplified it. I'm not saying the voters are anti-democracy, I'm saying the reps & pundits are, and their ploy is working.
Nevertheless, the point remains that the Republican Party policy is deeply unpopular, and they only win elections through lies and disenfranchisement. If you think otherwise, feel free to plead your case.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 1:09 am
Notice the word "possibility"
tduds
Mar 3, 21 1:10 am
Please stop responding to events with hypotheticals.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 1:11 am
Please stop responding to events with hypotheticals.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 1:12 am
I frequently change my mind in light of new evidence. Do you not?
tduds
Mar 3, 21 1:13 am
No.
the Republican Party policy is deeply unpopular, and they only win elections through lies and disenfranchisement. If you think otherwise, feel free to plead your case. Otherwise, go to bed.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 10:50 am
No I suggested they're losing because their platform is quite unpopular, and instead of pivoting to a more popular platform they're using what little power they have left to make voting harder. Hell, they literally torched the official platform in 2020 and exist solely to do what Trump wants (look at the National GOP Convention statement, it is exactly this and nothing more). They're also spinning up a propaganda campaign that seems to be working among their most fervent supporters, which is troubling.
I thought it went without saying but I guess I need to say it: The main difference I see between election skeptics on the left and election skeptics on the right is that, on the left these people tend to be far-left, out of the mainstream of Democratic identity (many would balk at being labeled "Democrat" or "Liberal", and largely a "bottom-up" kind of thing. On the right, it's much more "top-down", and completely in line with the mainstream of Republican identity, to the point where it's a primary motivator of their actions within government. Yes, this exists on "both sides" but in wildly different capacities.
You want to talk about 2016? Then look at the two candidates' answers to the debate question "Will you accept the results?"
tduds
Mar 3, 21 11:44 am
"...
allowed the Dems to bend laws, act outside of certain traditions, etc" Give examples.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 11:47 am
I agree but that's not what we're talking about right now.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 11:54 am
Lot to unpack there but short answer is *eyeroll*
tduds
Mar 3, 21 11:57 am
I've said it before but here we go again: For someone so fervently anti-partisan you frequently and uncritically parrot Fox News narratives. I've got a busy workday ahead so I doubt I'll have time to pick apart the subtleties of the 3 things you just said, but suffice to say each one could be its own longform article. Maybe I can find some articles...
You know what might be nice in a 2-party, binary star, inevitable implosion, death spiral scenario? That the third party that wants to assert itself as the alternative to that scenario, and eventual savior of cosmic implosion, would come up with new content that isn't just regurgitating the major talking points of one of the stars caught in the death spiral as a way to criticize the other star in the death spiral. Cause in that way it sounds less like the third party is trying to save us, and instead is simply trying to replace one of the stars.
tduds
Mar 3, 21 2:50 pm
Not holding my breath there.
Everyday Architect
Mar 3, 21 11:52 am
Thanks Biden. My state has now reversed policy to allow teachers to get the vaccine, and I made an appointment for my wife to get her first dose next week.
She then goes and shows off by finding an appointment for herself on Friday through a different provider. Which was really the plan all along. Book something just to get it on the calendar, then try to find something better if we could and cancel the first appointment.
b3tadine[sutures]
Mar 3, 21 3:37 pm
You mean to tell me, Government, works?
Everyday Architect
Mar 3, 21 3:48 pm
Well, leadership from the federal level in this case worked.
square.
Mar 4, 21 9:29 am
Dr. Seuss! Mr. Potato Head! Why the Culture Wars Have Never Been Dumber
"..it’s worth stressing that the entire episode is embarrassing for everyone involved and deeply stupid. It’s emblematic of the state of the culture wars right now, in which bad-faith nonsense is continuously elevated into existential importance."
couldn't have said it better. this stuff is such a stupid distraction from the material concerns of real americans.
Wood Guy
Mar 4, 21 10:43 am
Good, smart, simple article. Thanks for sharing.
square.
Mar 4, 21 10:51 am
np- i love new republic, it has thoughtful, sober analysis that like you said is easily digestible. another point i really liked:
Never mind that Mr. Potato Head is gender neutral by design—you can make it look however you want! Never mind that the allegation also wasn’t true—Hasbro was still making Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads, it had just changed the name of the umbrella brand. And never mind that, in the end, it’s a toy potato.
it's just further proof that the right, aimless without their cult-of-personality leader, are now almost entirely a party of grievance. i miss the days of debating conservative economic policy.
square.
Mar 4, 21 11:05 am
Have you noticed that [xlax] treats every instance of leftist lunacy as a [part of a larger trend], and every instance of right lunacy as [an isolated incident]?
see, it's easy to make incredible generic sentences instead of engaging with the specific ideas at hand.
tduds
Mar 4, 21 11:07 am
Way to talk past the sale. This can't be an isolated incident of "left lunacy" since it isn't lunacy or leftist at all. It's a manufactured outrage and you're out there guzzling bait.
Wood Guy
Mar 4, 21 11:07 am
Yes. Just once I'd like to see him make one, salient response and move on instead of spamming every comment with multiple responses that don't say anything. But maybe that's just me. I guess it's a numbers game for him?
square.
Mar 4, 21 11:09 am
it's a combination of delusions of grandeur, paranoia, and distraction from the most shiny grievance of the day.
Wood Guy
Mar 4, 21 11:12 am
No, you are using the article to spew the same multiple points you always make. Have you noticed how every other forum regular puts their thoughts into a single response? That's good forum etiquette.
Chad Miller
Mar 4, 21 11:13 am
No, you're just typing a lot of text without saying anything.
tduds
Mar 4, 21 11:17 am
Here are the topics at hand:
"Dr. Seuss Enterprises won’t be publishing new versions of six books"
"Hasbro is still making Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads, it just changed the name of the umbrella brand."
Please, please explain how in the hell these two events are remotely "left lunacy."
tduds
Mar 4, 21 11:38 am
Dr Seuss is not getting cancelled.
To reiterate: "Dr. Seuss Enterprises won’t be publishing new versions of sixbooks"
SIX. BOOKS. Less than 10% of his published work, and among the *least* popular. More than that, the Seuss estate itself elected to stop publishing these books. No one made anyone do anything. No one cancelled anyone. It's a manufactured outrage. Take the L, man.
square.
Mar 4, 21 11:39 am
the article that he claims he "read"
clearly went right over his head.
square.
Mar 4, 21 11:44 am
his attempt at debate completely stunk
on which all of archinect was able to dunk
Wood Guy
Mar 4, 21 11:51 am
"Be less white" or "be less of an asshole?" If being less of an asshole makes a company more money, seems like a win/win to me. Manufactured rage from wackos who think potatoes have genders aside.
gibbost
Mar 4, 21 11:52 am
Just my casual observance, but it seems the neurosis is not from the left but more the odd fascination on the right to bring it to everyone's attention all the time. In the case of Hasbro or the Dr. S Foundation, each of these enterprises simply asked themselves 'how can we do better, how can we be more inclusive?' Many of Dr. Seuss' books touch on environmental awareness, listening to the minority, raising up the weak, and in general, being a decent person (or creature). The Foundation doesn't have to be defensive about racism because they know that the author never intended to hurt with his words. They're simply acknowledging that some of their catalogue is outdated and needs retired. Why does the right have this weird obsession with pointing out the natural progression and evolution of the world getting slightly better each day at a time? Oh yeah, because they see it as a slight against them. 'Your win, is my loss--poor me.'
Wood Guy
Mar 4, 21 12:25 pm
If the majority thought it was a good idea for you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?
SneakyPete
Mar 4, 21 12:32 pm
Nah, but if the minority claimed they had won the poll suggesting he jump, he'd bitch and moan about being prevented from doing so and then whine about how his taxes were being wasted on the facility at which he was being treated at no further cost.
square.
Mar 4, 21 12:33 pm
xlax- the majority of the country does not give a shit about mr potato head. they care about raising the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, federal stimulus checks, and health care- all of which enjoy upwards 70% support nationwide.
the irony is that you are the one who is out of touch obsessing about the decisions of private company's toys and children's books.
tduds
Mar 4, 21 12:36 pm
This is the free market at work.
tduds
Mar 4, 21 12:36 pm
80% of people believe a thing that this isn't an example of. Cool. cool.
tduds
Mar 4, 21 1:06 pm
lol you're all over the map, man. I'm bored, see you in a day or two when you make some other unrelated issue into a crusade about the only thing you're able to talk about.
SneakyPete
Mar 4, 21 1:26 pm
...
Chad Miller
Mar 4, 21 1:58 pm
x-jla - you're an idiot
Chad Miller
Mar 4, 21 2:10 pm
You're an idiot.
The books where pulled because they where the lowest selling of all of the Seuss catalog - almost zero sales. During market research with a focus group of teachers in the US the six books in question where identified as ones that they didn't use. The teachers also mentioned that there where questionable racial characterchers illustrations in the books as well. Even the late Dr. Seuss said that the six books in question where disappointments and because of his racial drawings in it they should never be sold again.
The company owning Seuss' work decided to pull the six books because they weren't selling, no body was using them. AND they had racial characterchers from early on in Seuss' career as a cartoonist.
No on 'canceled' the books.
Wood Guy
Mar 4, 21 2:42 pm
jla, this game is old. I'm not interested in playing anymore. If anyone wants to have actual discussions, I'm all for it. Your style of "debate" is a complete waste of time.
square.
Mar 4, 21 2:49 pm
we were making progress when people ignored him and talked to each other instead. unfortunately, his verbal vomiting is like a car wreck and hard to ignore sometimes, especially by a select few.... while the occasional collective dunking is helpful, trying to engage him point for point is completely useless if others hope to raise the level of discourse beyond toy potatoes and imaginary conservative greivances.
tduds
Mar 4, 21 3:10 pm
I'm all for trying to revive this thread again by ignoring or disregarding these rants, to the best of my ability.
tduds
Mar 4, 21 3:35 pm
Honestly attempting to counter the right's pretend outrage lends it a legitimacy on which they can further their platform, yes. Quit falling for it.
I dunno man you seem like the angriest one
around here by a long shot.
SneakyPete
Mar 4, 21 4:33 pm
IM NOT SHOUTING YOURE SHOUTING
square.
Mar 4, 21 4:45 pm
dunkkk.
vs what xlax thinks dunking is.
Everyday Architect
Mar 4, 21 5:45 pm
Also the one most "religiously" dedicated to a cause.
Everyday Architect
Mar 4, 21 5:55 pm
^lol
Wood Guy
Mar 4, 21 6:01 pm
^^lolol
I knew it--he thinks the one with the most comments wins!
tduds
Mar 4, 21 6:19 pm
Halfwit Calvinball world champ right here.
randomised
Mar 4, 21 7:08 pm
“I retire champion”
Undisputed!
square.
Mar 4, 21 8:10 pm
please, retire. preferably somewhere off the grid.
Donna Sink
Mar 5, 21 9:03 am
Oh man. I just felt a deep pang of sadness over the loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I miss him.
square.
Mar 5, 21 9:15 am
ugh, for real. every time i see him in a movie it's heartbreaking.
tduds
Mar 5, 21 12:35 am
Say what you will about Hillary, she knows how to hire good social media managers.
tduds
Mar 5, 21 2:44 pm
Barr killed Epstein, duh.
proto
Mar 5, 21 4:05 pm
maybe it was a virus...
tduds
Mar 5, 21 4:26 pm
I've been trying to figure out a good Epstein-Barr Virus joke for well over
a year. The setup is so obvious, yet any clever construction has so far eluded me.
tduds
Mar 5, 21 6:38 pm
what
tduds
Mar 5, 21 8:02 pm
ahhhh I get it.
Friday brain.
SneakyPete
Mar 5, 21 5:46 pm
CAN WE PLEASE STOP CALLING THEM MODERATE DEMOCRATS?
It suggests, in very real language, that the other Democrats are:
This is unhelpful to our discourse and has become normalized. I'm also starting to hear mainstream media call it the "Democrat Party."
For fuck's sake, as much as certain rabid, mouth-breathing members might suggest, the media spends WAY more time giving a shit about offending and cow-towing to the GOP than they ever have the Democrats.
tduds
Mar 5, 21 6:42 pm
Call them what they are: sane Republicans.
tduds
Mar 5, 21 6:42 pm
I'm also with you on "Democrat Party" - like nails on a chalkboard every time I hear someone say it.
proto
Mar 5, 21 6:58 pm
well, that is the purpose: to demonize the other
That said...I don't necessarily agree with SP that "moderate democrat" is problematic. No one has exclusive right to to the majority view & describing moderates as distinct from progressives isn't divisive as much as descriptive. The label isn't a smear from the GOP but a self-described one.
SneakyPete
Mar 5, 21 7:04 pm
It's the same issue I have with pro-life and pro-choice. They are cynically chosen self-labels which intentionally cast the people who disagree as bad, not just people with different opinions. The opposite of moderate (excessive, etc) is not what the rest of the democrats are, the opposite of pro-choice (anti-choice) is not what the opposition is, same with pro-life (anti-life?).
proto
Mar 5, 21 7:43 pm
I see what you mean, but, at some point, we can only use the language that we have. Perhaps the exclusionary aspect is more in the eye of the beholder/ear of the listener? But my perception may be jaded by my predilections...
tduds
Mar 5, 21 8:02 pm
I'd counter that we have lots of language, and it's not much effort to carefully choose the pieces of it we employ.
SneakyPete
Mar 5, 21 8:16 pm
People often claim I'm overly concerned with the meaning of words, but I figure that makes them anti-semantic.
Non Sequitur
Mar 11, 21 11:03 am
X-jla, please edit your comment and list in alphabetical order please.
square.
Mar 11, 21 11:33 am
yes, there are some people who can be described with certain adjectives, and others who can be described using entirely different adjectives!!
The Stimulus Bill Is a Step Toward Aggressively Fighting Poverty
BuT bOtH sIdEs.
it isn't perfect, but even jacobin can recognize that it's the most significant bill in terms of fighting poverty in decades. at this point it's clear who each party represents, both in words and actions.
randomised
Mar 13, 21 3:13 pm
Curious when they will raise minimum wage, hope they can keep the momentum going...
b3tadine[sutures]
Mar 12, 21 8:48 pm
Byyyyeeeeee....
randomised
Mar 13, 21 3:06 pm
But did you realise other people have feelings?
Wood Guy
Mar 13, 21 3:28 pm
Jla, you need more mdma. Or maybe some psilocybin.
Wood Guy
Mar 13, 21 5:05 pm
I haven't tried LSD but from what I've heard, shrooms may give you more of the "we're all connected" feeling that right-libertarians seem to be missing.
Wood Guy
Mar 13, 21 6:28 pm
"government mandated community or good will" is not the goal of the left, at least not for most of us. It's about not leaving the less fortunate behind while the selfish and greedy bask in their riches. I'm left/libertarian; I get the desire to keep government involvement out of things. But the right--authoritarian and libertarian alike--are entirely focused on themselves and their own needs without understanding or feeling responsibility to the rest of the world. Maybe if you try some shrooms you'll get it.
bowling_ball
Mar 13, 21 7:56 pm
So you want to severely restrict government but want to implement UBI. Well I see no contradiction there.
Wood Guy
Mar 14, 21 11:08 am
Labels can be useful. Or more specifically, categorizing viewpoints. But if you really believe in UBI as a solution for addressing poverty and oppression, I agree with you.
I don't see how we can address the climate crisis and other environmental concerns without government help; people in general are far too selfish and self-oriented to do it on their own. The few of us who try are still not doing enough, and are regularly ridiculed for trying.
While spontaneous order may be possible in some cases, entropy is far more common.
Wood Guy
Mar 14, 21 1:57 pm
I share many of your utopian ideas above. Say we absolve government--every individual is free to do as they wish, around the world. Some realize that if they pool resources they can live easier, more productive lives.
But there is in-fighting because humans are jealous creatures. Small groups start to form, leaders emerge, whether by personality or force.
Small groups join forces to become larger groups, to hoard resources and share labor. The groups are too large for each individual to have a say--they can either choose to take their changes and leave the group, or stay and benefit from sharing of labor and resources. The smaller groups send their leaders as representatives to make decisions. Voila, government.
Although I would love to live in a world of equality and freedom, I can't see any system surviving without some form of government.
curtkram
Mar 14, 21 2:07 pm
i think jla needs to look into a guided ayahuasca trip.
bowling_ball
Mar 14, 21 3:16 pm
Every culture and society on the planet has some form of government, and has for thousands and thousands of years. It's the only realistic way to get anything done beyond one's own personal subsistence. This entire argument is ridiculous. We can argue about the right strategy - reform, clean slate, whatever - but no society can exist (nevermind thrive) without government.. without it, you're left with individuals living as islands to themselves.
Wood Guy
Mar 14, 21 4:08 pm
Jla, if the long game means a post-apocalyptic timeframe where the earth's climate and biodiversity are nearly destroyed and humankind has mostly killed each other off, then I agree--libertarianism/anarchism may well be the rule. Hopefully that's after my time on earth but at the current pace I'm not sure it will be.
Have you read Guns, Germs and Steel? It's well researched and has a different conclusion.
square.
Mar 15, 21 12:42 pm
yes. the big government coalition of independent white farmers perpetuated slavery in america.
you have an interesting reading of history.
Wood Guy
Mar 15, 21 1:38 pm
I don't disagree that big government is a problem. That's why political tests always put me as a liberal libertarian. While I don't trust large government, I trust big businesses even less, and trust individuals to do the right thing the least. Pooling our opinions via voting and using government to administer the will of the majority should be effective. Our current system in the US has become less and less effective, with a minority now controlling most decisions.
In mostly unrelated news, do any of you read Dr. Heather Cox Richardson's daily letters? She lives not far from me, and is a brilliant historian and communicator. Today's post was interesting: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-14-2021.
square.
Mar 15, 21 2:10 pm
note the qualifier: "big" government, not "any" government- those are your words. read a little more carefully arch bro.
you two are really trying to argue that the south stood for "big government" (quoting xlax) in the civil war? novel take, for sure.
square.
Mar 15, 21 3:02 pm
no, not what i'm arguing. you claimed "big government" is the cause of slavery, which has partial truth, but fails to acknowledge what the south stood for, which was small independent farming estates which carried out said violence. nuance. big government also ended the system.
more interested in the convenient yet dubious "center" (often imagined as above the fray) that libertarians claim to occupy, which happens to be an easy way to never be "this side" or "that side."
proto
Mar 15, 21 2:45 pm
"I’m not saying “no government” I’m saying minimal government."
A country of 330M spread across climate & time zones & urban/nonurban conditions is a complicated country with diverse perspectives. Our history has demonstrated that people WILL abuse whatever undefined space there is to create personal benefit at the expense of others. The greater good, or community-based good-faith support of the less fortunate, does not happen without organization from the federal government. It just doesn't. The romantic myth of small town caring for your community does not translate to the larger scale of community that dominates our culture currently. To wit, a large segment of society doesn't want "their" taxes to pay for benefits for others.
bowling_ball
Mar 15, 21 4:59 pm
Or even simpler: who pays for infrastructure between two or more communities? Who organizes the process? Who ensures that the citizens are safe and getting fair value? Like WG said, I'm also in favour of smaller government, but who gets to decide what's small, big, or appropriate? There are people with PhDs who don't agree on any of these details.
proto
Mar 15, 21 7:18 pm
Hitting [return] sends the quick reply. You can "edit" your reply to add the other parts of your post to the same post with paragraph breaks & formatting, etc (for a limited time).
Sales tax doesn't decide anything. A person is required...maybe even many people are required depending on the decision's sphere of influence.
bowling_ball
Mar 15, 21 7:29 pm
Yeah x, that doesn't answer anything.
randomised
Mar 16, 21 1:57 am
x-jla , just type your replies in notepad or email program first and copy paste it in. That’s what Rick is doing ;-)
SneakyPete
Mar 22, 21 8:35 pm
Tell me again how guns aren't the problem. TELL ME AGAIN; I FUCKING DARE YOU.
Non Sequitur
Mar 22, 21 8:44 pm
I thought they were the solution.
SneakyPete
Mar 22, 21 9:15 pm
Feel pretty confident without unmuting you that the proper response is "Fuck off."
Non Sequitur
Mar 22, 21 10:22 pm
Very happy that guns for personal protection is not a thing here. very happy. Ditto for real laws with balls that keep murder toys out of the common idiot's hands.
Non Sequitur
Mar 22, 21 10:25 pm
Jla, like always, the issue is not mental health. The problem is the cavalier attitude (or the god's given right to own) you express towards ownership. The problem will not go away until people stop buying and carrying silly murder toys. I don't expect you to understand.
tduds
Mar 22, 21 10:29 pm
Quoting myself from 2014: Guns don't kill people, complex combinations of poverty, chronic bullying, undertreated mental illness, domestic and emotional abuse, hyperbolic political rhetoric, media glorification, and lack of proper gun regulation kill people. With guns.
tduds
Mar 22, 21 10:30 pm
The same people who like to yell that Guns Don't Kill People also like to dodge or in many cases exacerbate the problems they themselves point to every time some mother fucker kills people with a gun. If, in 2021, that's still your idiotic refrain, you can kindly see yourself out.
Non Sequitur
Mar 23, 21 12:05 am
^and there's a big part of the problem.
Non Sequitur
Mar 23, 21 12:26 am
your inane pov Jla. That's the problem... you're one of the crazy motherfucker with guns. No debate here.
sameolddoctor
Mar 23, 21 2:06 am
The problem with this country is that the right wing nuts think guns are the solution. The liberals like to give them a free pass and say that mental health is the problem.
Guess what, there are mental health problems in every country, but the mass murders are only in the US. GUNS ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM YOU BOZOS.
Non Sequitur
Mar 23, 21 10:14 am
Not the issue at hand Jla.
Non Sequitur
Mar 23, 21 10:28 am
Not going to waste time on your sources. Your obsession with silly murder toys is the problem and you, and others with dumb-as-fuck guns are not the problem pov, are major contributors to it. You are partially responsible for the deaths in Colorado.
Non Sequitur
Mar 23, 21 10:47 am
not going to waste time looking at your own terrible short comings, typical these days.
Non Sequitur
Mar 23, 21 11:12 am
wrong, again... so wrong. Keep your murder toys and keep supporting the nonsense. Such silliness is the fucked-up comfort level you idiots have with that 2A that you can't see your own very real problems.
square.
Mar 23, 21 11:16 am
it's looking like march madness in here with all this dunking on xlax
Wood Guy
Mar 23, 21 11:29 am
Jla's link shows a single data source, this ABC article: https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/mass-shootings-in-us-compared-with-other-countries. That article shares a single data source, this website: https://crimeresearch.org/data/. If you click "Op-Eds" on that site, you get a list starting with, "Democrat Hypocrisy" and containing such classics as, "Trudeau’s gun ban won’t make us safer" and, "Punished for tweeting the truth." I think it's safe to assume that their "data" should be considered suspect.
Everyday Architect
Mar 23, 21 12:01 pm
Who's running the archinect March madness pool for dunks on jla? Where can I fill out my bracket!?
Non Sequitur
Mar 23, 21 12:11 pm
The families of the victims thank you Jla for contributing to their pain and suffering.
square.
Mar 23, 21 12:31 pm
agreed. what would help with this is if you stopped posting.
tduds
Mar 23, 21 12:41 pm
I wish debate was possible, but it’s not
That's on you, dumbfuck.
tduds
Mar 23, 21 1:18 pm
Counterpoint: Yup.
tduds
Mar 23, 21 1:20 pm
"I have a family to protect."
Statistically the person most likely to be harmed by a gun you own is a family member. It's an oversimplified statistic that I'll admit clouds the narrative, but then again so does the 'data' you posted so we'll call it even.
tduds
Mar 23, 21 4:30 pm
"Not relevant" might more accurately describe my feelings.
tduds
Mar 23, 21 4:51 pm
I make my thesis once per thread. It's a few posts up. My posts since then are mostly intentionally lazy prodding. Anyway, back to work.
BabbleBeautiful
Mar 24, 21 3:35 am
Regardless of source, I find the study quiet odd and inhumane - and the use of it to justify pro-gun laws even more so. It’s very premise normalizes gun violence. It accepts the fact the US has the highest number of mass shootings in the world and then tries to mitigate it by comparing it against “per capita” as if it has any real relevance to the problem at hand. Here’s the way I look at it and always have - If guns were removed from people’s hands it will reduce unnecessary loss of life. Period. I would sleep much better at night.
BabbleBeautiful
Mar 24, 21 11:09 am
I think what gets me irked about pro-gunners that use this kind of argument is that even if it were statistically proven that less access to guns = fewer mortality
rate they would immediately jump on the 2A argument.
Chad Miller
Mar 24, 21 11:10 am
The thing that I don't understand is how people say they need these firearms for protection yet nearly every gun owner I meet has no training and thinks shooting at a paper target 20' away, once a month will prepare them for defensive combat. It won't
Non Sequitur
Mar 24, 21 11:43 am
Your points are less than moot, JLA. I can't believe there is a place in a apparently developed world, where it is acceptable and celebrated to own murder toys... even under the illusion of your sudden rape scenario. I get it, it's another trolley problem, but instead of picking the best outcome for the largest % (ie. massively reduced gun access bordering on absolute zero and a complete removal of the 2A as a defense for auto ownership "rights"), you choose to set the trolley on fire and toss it into an orphanage.
BabbleBeautiful
Mar 24, 21 12:17 pm
x-jla, look, I've this exact conversation with others with your sentiments and I've come to realize the basic premise of our beliefs on this matter are at odds. We can throw statistics at each other all day long, but your status quo is fear/paranoia and you've accepted the norm that guns need to exist in this society. This is the debate I want to have.
tduds
Mar 24, 21 1:00 pm
It would seem the disagreement is about who is most vulnerable.
tduds
Mar 24, 21 1:13 pm
In Trump's case, most of the 2A nuts showed up to fight *for* tyranny. So, idk there.
Everyday Architect
Mar 24, 21 2:36 pm
Everything looks like a nail if all you have is a hammer.
BabbleBeautiful
Mar 24, 21 6:48 pm
tduds: "It would seem the disagreement is about who is most vulnerable."
What do you mean?
BabbleBeautiful
Mar 24, 21 6:52 pm
x-jla: you are basically saying a gun is the and only answer to all the problems your stating. I find this mindset problematic and simply disagree.
BabbleBeautiful
Mar 24, 21 7:02 pm
I want to be clear. I don't hate guns. As an object and piece of technology/machine I actually find them quite fascinating
. I've gone to shooting ranges and played around with them, albeit got bored quickly. I do believe the majority of gun-carriers, hobbyists, hunters are respectful of the power they hold in their hands. I do believe there is an element of mental issues when someone finds it ok to take another person's life.
BUT, my stance is simply this: If we can reduce the mortality rate by removing guns then I'm all for it. We don't NEED them and I'm not going to shed a single tear for the hobbyists or hunters out there. A human life will always take priority.
BabbleBeautiful
Mar 24, 21 7:28 pm
Well, if we lived in my utopia then the hypothetical assailant wouldn't have a gun. As for a knife, with 34 years of MMA training you should be able to take him/her down with ease.
BabbleBeautiful
Mar 24, 21 9:20 pm
It should be a group effort! The burden shall not only be placed my shoulders.
SneakyPete
Mar 23, 21 12:43 pm
Anyone surprised?
square.
Mar 23, 21 1:02 pm
seems like these arguments hit a peak during the trump years, and have not aged well, at all. not that they were ever really taken seriously... looking at you, rudy.
tduds
Mar 23, 21 1:13 pm
The Far Right Playbook:
Lie loudly, apologize quietly.
tduds
Mar 25, 21 4:33 pm
You have some kind of disorder.
Everyday Architect
Mar 23, 21 4:49 pm
Troll is hungry.
square.
Mar 24, 21 8:49 am
hmm.. not your best.
tduds
Mar 23, 21 9:38 pm
I posted this elsewhere & thought it belonged here. In response to the most recent back & forth but also as a general point of annoyance about certain tactics in this thread:
One thing that really annoys me, that isn't called out enough, is anytime someone points out a huge and obvious problem - like, oh I dunno, gun violence - some rando chimes in demanding specific and well researched policy proposals.
No. I'm not going to do that for you. That's not the conversation I'm having. I'm not going to take the bait that allows you to poke easy holes in the inevitably undercooked ideas I had an hour ago. I'm not going to go on the defensive because you misunderstood my demand. It's not my job to solve the crisis of gun violence. It's not my job to create policy.
It *is* my job to yell at the people whose job *is* to do that. It's my job to hold accountable the people who were elected to craft policy. They put a ton of effort into getting a job whose primary responsibility is to solve problems, or at least try, through policy.
If they want their job so bad, they need to listen to problems and try to solve them. If they are deliberately refusing to do that job, it's my job - it's all of our jobs - to call that out. And, if they ignore us, it's our job to campaign for their challengers.
square.
Mar 24, 21 8:51 am
what annoys me is that your STILL don't understand that people don't enjoy interacting with you on this thread. you're more of a gnat to swat and much less an intellect to banter with.
square.
Mar 24, 21 9:04 am
honestly, if you truly want a substantive conversation (which i'm skeptical of), even if we assume everyone else is completely wrong, and you are completely right, you might want to change your approach to "debate," because there is more than enough evidence that it's not working, and it never has been.
your "audience" is over it- change your approach, or move on.
Non Sequitur
Mar 24, 21 11:44 am
Gun owners like you are bible thumpers. Same thing, just different sacred cows.
tduds
Mar 24, 21 12:39 pm
"when big problems are pointed out, a simplistic, too easy, often incorrect causation is identified, and then a knee jerk policy is demanded"
To me this is indicative of a public education failure, and perhaps a case for more scientists and fewer lawyers in congress.
A warm place to keep all the political rants and debates...
Today I learned what sea lioning is.
http://wondermark.com/1k62/
Moved my response to Orhan over here, didn't want to mess up TC:
"Why are you so afraid of Muslim immigrants in Europe, didn't a couple of them developed a major vaccination for Covid?"
I'm not afraid of muslims, I don't like the islamic extremist shariaist ideology, as it's basically anti-human, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-semitic, anti-freedom, anti-everything-that's-not-radical-islam. I'd like people following such ideologies to go get lost, as I equally don't like people that follow the national socialist ideology. And good for that couple that developed a vaccine for covid, has nothing to do with this discussion though.
"There are extremist Muslims in Muslim countries too, even more so with armies and all.
As to the immigration subject, hey, this is the world’s reality since the 60’s, similar to migration to urban areas. The world's have-not majority will be immigrating, with papers or not, to the places where there's plenty to go around. This won't stop who they are. You need to work with them.
Why are you putting them into an extremist bundle? The Muslim communities are mostly delegated to bad industrial buildings, dissed, and treated like a terrorist bunch. Not that they are coming from places where they haven't built magnificent buildings for their spiritual practice. I got news for you, they aren't going anywhere."
I'm not putting anyone in an extremist bundle, there's simply extremist ideologies, that's just a fact. I'm not against migration and totally understand that have-nots will go places to get a better life, I'd do the same! I only don't like it when people try to force their extremist ideologies onto the communities that welcomed them, why should we go backwards? We've got rid of religious backwardness (at least here in Europe, for a while) and now step by step, we're taking steps backwards to keep the so-called peace. Turning the other cheek, again and again and again, while our gay people, our women, our Jews, our non-believers feel less and less safe or able to be themselves. The universal human rights are universal for a reason, why tolerate such intolerant ideologies in our midst?
"Major shifts in migration patterns and demographics are underway, real and robust. These people are not the former slaves that were part of the western "way."
They are more "Future" than you. Get with it, be creative and respectful. Accept and move on to coexistence gear. If you can't, maybe your children can. Otherwise, your societal and individual problems and fears will only keep amplifying.
Instead of burning their mosques, show your humanism and art to them. Give them a chance to like you, laugh with you.
It's very urgent."
But it's not a two-way street when universal human rights are involved. Why coexist with an extremist ideology that's sole purpose is to conquer and subjugate? Would you propose the same when it's about nazis? I hope not.
"I'd stay away from politicians like Wilders, he and others like him want you to go to culture and urban warfare that there are no winners at the end and you have a lot more to lose. Open your eyes. Are kidding me? Isn't there a majority public supporting gay, women, animal, and others' rights already in? Tons of them, you included."
But some cultures are simply more developed than others, some cultures are worth protecting and some are worth to oppose or at least not to tolerate among us, we don't tolerate the head-hunting of Melanesia or canibalism either, so why turn the other cheek when it's about an antisemitic, female-oppressing, anti-democratic ideology such as islam?
"Of course, this scumbag wants their sympathy (pretty much like you, random) and sings to the chorus. But inside, he sees the ultimate warfare wiping out all Muslims from Holland. Are you this spider brain like? I don't think so, but you are scared shitless as you are resorting to demonizing Islam. It's very apparent in your posts."
There's no need to wipe out anyone, they didn't need to wipe out all the Germans to get rid of nazism either, you're overreacting...just the realisation that the islamist ideology at its core is the enemy of western liberal democratic humanistic ideals and accomplishments, and in fact humanity, just needs to sink in.
"*I wrote this with minimal editing and maybe too long. The gist of it is: if anything our humanity will help us the most. Under the circumstances of our times, nationalism is baloney and don’t fall for it. This kind of evangelistic crusade against Islam is racist, dangerous, self-serving, and abusive."
My response is also too long, sorry. But I too am positive that in the end our humanity will prevail, I don't believe in nationalism or religions (they stop people from thinking for themselves) instead I believe in our shared core universal human rights and values, and always will.
I'm only referring to something minor as the universal declaration of human rights...
You are taking an extremist group and summary executing all..Have you been to a Muslim country? Extremist groups in Turkey are swiftly persecuted, yes, even under Erdogan gov.
You are a nice guy but a little brainwashed when it comes to Islam as an Abrahamic religion.
Otherwise, all this is no more than demagogy. Stop wasting my time and your own.
I'm not sure I get what you mean Orhan, why me standing up for universal human rights is demagogy? What's wrong with not wanting female oppression, antisemitism or homophobia?
"One persons belief doesn’t violate another persons human rights. Only actions have the potential to violate human rights. Ironically, policing belief and religion is a violation of human rights."
When a persons belief mandates the violation of other peoples human rights, then we've got a problem, and that's exactly what's happening unfortunately...
Google a little databases etc. educate yourself on human rights and then we might talk. otherwise you are just talking but not walking.
https://www.google.com/search?q=hate+crimes+against+muslims+in+europe&oq=hate+crimes+against+muslims+in+europe&aqs=chrome..69i57.12300j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
It really upsets me when rando starts using the same disingenuous rhetorical tricks x-lax uses. NUANCE MOTHERFUCKER DO YOU SPEAK IT. Fucking sea lion.
There is no islamic country in the world, rich or poor, where non-muslims, women, gays or jews have the same rights, where there is a free press and a properly functioning democracy. And everywhere where there is an increase in followers of islam you see a decline in freedom and universal human rights. How is that for demonising or oppressing. And I'm sorry if this upsets SneakyPete. The ideology is equal if not worse than national socialism (and yes, the Palestinian mufti was good friends with Adolf Hitler with whom they shared the same enemies ("the English, the Jews and the Communists") , does that make all followers equal to nazis? No, of course not...
List of synagogues in Turkey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
List of Churches in Turkey
https://armenianweekly.com/201...
I hope you read a little randomized, because, so far, you are a lot of baloney bla...
"I'm sorry if this upsets SneakyPete"
You fucking liar.
more on women's suffrage in Turkey https://redyellowblue.org/data/tr/wdtr/
lgbt rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Orhan, you know just as well that the only way the islamists were being kept under control was by a sort of military dictatorship in Turkey, it's either military or religious dictatorship in islamic countries, there's nothing inbetween, even Indonesia is going downhill, fast. Makes one wonder, no? Are you claiming that under Erdoğan there is a free press and a functioning democracy?
"Therefore, we shall oppress muslims”. -John Adams"
who said anything about oppressing muslims? you can oppose an ideology without oppressing its followers...
your knowledge of world history is terrible
my knowledge of world history is still less terrible than yours...
.
I wonder what would happen if I moved to KSA because life in Canada became too difficult, and started mouthing-off about local human rights, complained about obstacles in place to join the Saudi society, claimed racism, objected to their harsh Sharia laws...what would happen to me? Would I be treated fairly or would my life be in danger from the radical Saudis?
Or would I have been in complete error for moving there - essentially, being a guest of the Saudi people - then being critical of how they live their lives wanting to change it to something they may not be familiar with or might even find threatening?
Or maybe I should just respect the Saudi way of life such-as-it-is, and not try to change anything?
This analogy, to put it lightly, is dogshit.
What are you talking about, duds? This is the Mad-Libs argument. Perfectly valid.
We should aspire to be more like the Saudis.
What are you trying to get at?
But then you couldn't be an American, could you? Which do you want? To be an American or to be a Saudi?
When jla and I are united against you, you're definitely in the wrong.
The beautiful thing about the American Dream (in theory at least... the thing we should aspire to) is that one can be a Saudi-American and not be forced to compromise on either.
To suggest otherwise is, in my opinion, Un-American.
Who comes first? USA or KSA?
I've seen how this ends.
What if I said, go ahead have your abortion, but don't ask me to pay for it?
I'd say you fundamentally misunderstand the global gag order and the effect it's had on international public health.
"Gag order"??? Why is abortion equated to health, particularly woman's? Woman don't all get sick while pregnant to the degree that they need to abort. Do they?
Way to prove my point.
What if I told you, fine don't wear a mask and maybe die of the virus, but don't ask me to follow you?
You're already free to not wear a mask, it just restricts your ability to enter certain private businesses.
What if you go into a store to buy some food, and some people around you didn't wear masks? O you were in an elevator and someone popped in without a mask? Would you ask them to leave or would you hold your breath and look the other way?
I'd leave.
That's good, you had a choice to leave, and you did. Now, would I be right in saying, "I don't want to pay for your abortion"? Would be my choice, wouldn't it?
See my reply elsewhere about dogshit analogies.
Aps, you can leave Canada for a lesser educated and socially backwards country. Then your taxes can be spent doing less important things. But, your current taxes support a whole bunch of really important health services and there is literally zero useful argument not to include abortion within them. Leave the fucking crucifix in the closet and let society evolve without the arcane chains of the baby jesus.
Oh, so let me take your money, and spend it the way I want it.
"...a lesser educated and socially backwards country...", racist much? By defending your point of view, you resort to bigotry and racism. And Quebec/Canada is not racist? Bill 21? Heard of it?
Who elected you?
Not running, nor want to. Being elected gives you the right to spend my money the way you want to? Well, fuck you! I don't spend your money on shit I want or deem appropriate. So, why are you spending my money on bs? You have been there before; No taxation without representation...?
Just because you're unable/unwilling to understand does not mean it's bullshit. You're never to old to learn something Aps and this is an excellent opportunity for you. Your choice really, and I, like everyone else, don't give a fuck about your opinion on abortion because it's intellectually poor and grossly simplistic.
Google is free, my man.
Here I fixed some things for you.
Tduds... this horse has been beaten to a fine pulp already and no point gloating over the flaming ashes. That's just poor sportsmanship... although pointing out the flaws in the anti-abortion crowd is not really a sport. A sport implies there is some level of difficulty involved.
It's Friday afternoon let me eat my low hanging fruit.
Aps, We live in a connected world, a global village, so to speak, where our actions have real consequences that affect other human beings. You seem like the kind of guy who would tell an immigrant, "If you don't like it, leave." So, I'm going to tell you, "If you don't like it, go live off the grid, without any connection to another human being and try to live your archaic ideal of individualism and 'surviving by your own bootstraps'." But how about instead of being an curmudgeon be empathetic and accepting of your neighbors.
What if I told you that your attempts at clever "gotcha" rhetoric are tired, old, and incorrect talking points that we've all heard regurgitated verbatim for months if not years?
What if such tired, old rhetoric is till true today as it was yesterday? What if some people are inconsiderate, selfish, and arrogant to the point that they forget. Why did your mom tell you all the time to not go into the house with muddy boots? Is it because telling you just once didn't work? Why did you dad take his belt out to whip you when you did something you thought was perfectly ok to do?
Want to emphasize that I said "regurgitated talking points" not "rhetoric." The key difference, and what you're displaying, is a lack of critical thinking and analysis.
What if the thing you thought was perfectly okay do to was, in fact perfectly okay? What if your dad is beating you for the same thing his dad beat him for, without stopping to ask why? What if your dad took his belt out to whip you for being gay? Or bringing home a black woman? What if your dad took his belt out to whip mom because her place is in the kitchen?
My dad, to his infinite credit, taught me never to accept "because I told you so" as a reason. He taught me to interrogate authority, but also to respect it when (and only when) respect is due.
It's not that things true yesterday are not true today, it's that things are not necessarily acceptable today just because they used to be. But I'm getting off topic...
So, it's perfectly acceptable to take my money and spend the way you want? Hmmm....
in the way modern and current society chooses to spend it? yes, yes it is. It's not your money anyways, by that point it's everyone's money.
potential for a buddy cop movie: X-Lax and the Apshole
BabbleBeautiful,
I once had an opportunity to work In Abu Dhabi, UAE. Office was made up of all kinds of nationalities, Canadians, English, Scotts, South African, Indian, Pakistanis....How I ended up there is a whole 'nother story for another day.
One Canadian guy got into trouble - he was caught being drunk while driving -very stupid no matter where you live, particularly in a country where drinking is highly restricted. He was sent to jail for six months, and the office manager had to send someone there twice a day to bring him food. Apparently, they don't feed you in their jails, at least at that time - maybe they do now. After his jail time, he was driven to the airport and sent flying on the next plane.
Why did he get drunk? Dunno, maybe he was an alcoholic, maybe he was lonely, maybe he was depressed, maybe living in a strange place got to him, maybe he missed his family...we will never know.
The office manager called us all in for a meeting. He told us, "Keep in mind guys, you are a guest of this country, and you need to behave like one, you don't go around telling the locals how your laws and lifestyles are in your home country in the hopes their customs will change. In case any one of you gets into similar trouble, I will not help you". None of us got into trouble, needless to say.
Just to let you know, I'm an immigrant to Canada myself. Came here as a child with my mom - dad was already living here. I had to learn English (they tried teaching me French until the teacher realised I couldn't even speak English) , had to adjust - still trying to - to this fucked-up Canadian weather, different lifestyle, lost my friends back in Europe, had to develop new. Mom got seriously ill pretty well right away, and died of Alzheimers shortly thereafter. So, I know very well what it is like to be an immigrant in a foreign country. Life is not easy when you come to a strange place - you either adjust or you don't. I sympathise with every immigrant, but fortunately, doors are always open in case you want to go back where you came from if this country doesn't suit your tastes.
What would you rather be called in a foreign nation in which you have little to no understanding of the cultural norms and nuances that predates you? Specially when you are a transient employee?
Germans have a good word for it, "Gastarbeiter".
The Germans have a good word for everything.
Yeah, sometimes they do. You have to give them credit.
Aren’t there any clouds that need to be yelled at?
"...x-jla
I don’t like the idea that there is some time period where you are a “guest”. Sounds like code word for sub-citizen..."
You may not like it, but that how life is. I must tell you, I was never treated badly by the locals; they were always respectful, considerate, and pleasant towards me, and other "Europeans". Indians and Pakistanis were treated like shiet, though, not only by the locals, but by the English and Scots who ran the office (even though it was a Canadian firm). When you go to a foreign country to work or visit as a tourist, you are their guest. I don't consider that to be demeaning; I think myself lucky and fortunate that they allowed me in. I have no right whatsover to waltz into another country, and demand stuff. It's like you get invited by a friend to visit - you don't go and raid their fridge, do you? Be thankful, and be considerate. Same shiet for any immigrant when they come to a foreign country, be thankful you were let in, and carry on.
Just to give an example of discrimination...Office manager, a Scot, gave me and other Europeans an envelope. Two Indian co-workers sitting next to me, didn't get them. I thought I was being fired. I open the envelope, and it says that I'm being invited to the house party at the managers house, and that I'm not to tell the Indians or Pakistanis. The two Indian guys worked very hard, and were probably more in tune with locals life, including construction as well as their local building technology, yet they were treated like dirt.
"Non Sequitur
in the way modern and current society chooses to spend it? yes, yes it is. It's not your money anyways, by that point it's everyone's money."
Oh yes it's my money. And your is yours. If you want Justin to send yours to his friends in Cuba to promote "women's health", you go right ahead. I don't want to! Never mind that the Cubans have better healthcare than Canadians do, particularly here in Quebec. I rather have mine be spent on homeless bastards who sleep on sidewalks in Montreal, and Toronto.
And, you may want to be a bit more respectful, and considerate of my, and others' beliefs too.
Alright?
The beliefs you’ve expressed are shit beliefs. They don’t deserve respect because they are shit. Feel free to move but your taxes are not yours to do as you want.
I love this page...
relax, it's just a fetish of beta...
I am not dank.lloyd.wright
my thoughts exactly when i saw this post... if i thought like rando, which, thank god i don't, i would ask him to answer for and accept responsibility for the entity of his nation's responsibility for unleashing such suffering on the world.
but luckily, i don't.
Sigh...I never claimed that beta is dankLW, but anywho...I don't ask anyone to answer for your nations unleashing suffering on the world, I only ask why people here do support this kind of unleashing, because they still and actively vote for the ones doing the unleashing. That has nothing to do with historic events we don't have any influence on but instead has to do with actively supporting and condoning such unleashing of suffering by voting for the ones responsible. It's like voting for the nazis because you don't like the communists and overlook the concentration camps and endlösung or voting for the communists because you don't like nazis and overlook the gulags or cultural revolution, as if those are all options.
Comanche...some say it was Apache, but this was Comancheria territory., so who is to know for sure.
Yep. Can't think of a tribe that were not brutal to other tribes at times. Called "survival of the fittest".
nothing more white then using non-white history to justify white actions
Not really Pete. Just pointing out that the Natives were not all angels all the time. The Sioux were particularly brutal to their neighbouring tribes they encountered on their way west and southwest as they migrated from Minnesota. Sometimes these incidents are ignored or whitewashed for the sake of political correctness. People should really be aware of all the good, and all the bad. White people migrating west certainly had their own ways of dealing with the natives, and many were not pretty at all.
Why is this relevant?
Old Chinese proverb, Everything in life is relevant. It's up to you to see the relevancy, grasshopper.
Wow! Both sides!
Read the question again.
here we are, again. again.
Shouldn't you be working instead of wasting valuable company's time surfing the internet?
you made your position redundant by posting that.
but, who's to assume the company i work for (which is what i think you meant) is valuable?
capitalism*
Weird how you read "done more damage to the planet per capita" and decided it meant "killed more people". Weirder that you did this while, elsewhere, harping on about your staunch environmentalism.
I never said those things.
I didn't say anything except point out your curious reading comprehension. It was a critique, not a counterpoint.
Like I said. Reading comprehension.
"Meant to be in response to the post by EA." "Was conflating you twos [sic] posts."
ok, I'll respond in kind then ... I never said those things. I was only pointing out that your curious reading comprehension skipped over the part about capitalism (stated by the OP in the meme's post). It was a critique, not a counterpoint.
is this a wokie?
If anyone needed more evidence that jla is pretty singularly focused on reinforcing his affinity for libertarianism, the dank.lloyd.wright meme and his response is pretty good.
The question the meme raises was about damage to the planet and points to capitalism, and the spread of capitalism, as being incredibly damaging. However, for jla, capitalism = good ... always. So his inability to accept that capitalism might be damaging to the planet made him skip right over that to start talking about violence and body counts (10% of the world population) as the only measure of a nation's damage to the planet.
Ironically, in a twisted way, less people on the planet is arguably better for the planet ... so he misses the mark entirely.
In the world of online troll self owns ... I give this a 2/10.
Cue idiotic attempt to defend himself in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Is lower better for the self-owning scale? Assuming the person doing the rating wants the troll to self-own?
SP, no lower is worse. In this case it wasn't a blatantly obvious that it was a self own (i.e. it took me explaining it). This one came up in my twitter feed over the weekend and is a much better ... 10/10
The scoring is also loosely related to this hierarchy. In the previous example, "Hot Take Harry" ended up deleting the account.
For as much as you stake your identity on being above partisan binaries, you sure love this capitalist/communist one.
Why must there be a binary choice? Most of the world already functions quite nicely somewhere in the middle. I'm happy to argue degrees but to insist on entirely one or the other is just plain silly. And of course, to insist that a degree away from one extreme is entirely the other extreme is just plain dumb.
Here's a binary: jla-x is (smart/dumb). Pick one.
I honestly have trouble deciding if his statements are good faith naivete or bad faith trolling.
I lean toward bad faith trolling more. Perhaps I'd lean more toward good faith naivete if you couple it with inability to admit he's wrong ... but then that isn't really good faith is it?
Anyone who digs themselves into a position as hard as this and refuses to acknowledge any other positions as valid is either so fucking dumb as to be an indication that the human race might not make it after all OR is a troll. And trolls, all of them, can go get hit by a truck.
lol, he just jumped up from around level 2 to level 3 on the pyramid.
This is definitely bad faith at this point. If he can see the part in the original about mercantilism he can also see the part about capitalism (the part he just skipped over) and continues to defend because it reinforces his affinity for right-wing libertarianism (free market = good ... capitalism = good).
Ok dude, you're obviously going to keep doing you, and since I was never really invested nor engaged in this ... I'll leave you to it.
I wAS JUst hErE tO POinT OUt You'RE BiASeD.
xlax, capitalism has no doubt had many positive effects for many people. even david harvey, a marxist, concedes this. but could your small brain, even for once second, consider that capitalism is not a permanent or inevitable condition and system, and that it could, even if it has been, for x amount of years in history, more positive than negative a force, at any given moment in history, cease to be that and flip, being more negative than positive?
doubt it. i'll resort to sneaky's binary and choose the former.
ps- sneaky's binary sounds like a stellar philosophical proposition.
Yep, definitely in level 3 of the pyramid now. You can stop now and this will blow over in a day or so. Or you can double (triple? quadruple? I'm not really keeping track) down and shoot for level 4.
it must be exhausting constantly existing somewhere between a level 3 and 6. who does this to themse... oh, right.
i know that once you've resorted to copying me, which happens often, you've failed, but i'll leave you with this riddle that will likely prove difficult for you:
does someone need to imagine an alternative that doesn't yet exist in order to critique something that already does?
Fully-automated Luxury Space Communism will get us there, obviously.
"Left sucks, right sucks" is not a real useful point of view unless you have a way to get to a different planet ... and have a good hypothesis as to why it will suck less.
*This has been a burn, not a request for more information. You DO NOT need to give me your hypothesis as to why you think libertarianism will solve everything. No one is asking for it.
Luxury Space Communism
Need.
square,
There is already an alternative to capitalism. It's in PRC and DPRK.
You're outta ye r element Donnie.
that's just so basic, it's also boring to try and discuss with someone with the arguments of a 10 yr old.
at least xlax can get out of level 1.
No there's a different pyramid for this ...
Thanks for the hook, the Dutch do lead the way forward! It's called a social democracy, having both capitalism and taxes to fund a welfare state. We actually do tax the rich, anyone making over 68k pays 49.5% taxes for everything above that amount...
"I'd rather make less money than more" ok
If the difference between debt-free education, universal healthcare, childcare, good public transit, unemployment assistance, etc. and, well, not those things means I only take home 10k out of my 20k raise, please take my $10,000.
I see "People are moving out of California" is the new "Communism killed 100 million people"
People are leaving the least affordable places in the country because wages are in a decades long stagnation and the social isolation brought on by a global pandemic has changed the cost-to-benefit of the affordability / density equation. But sure, go off about "the dems"
ALSO
"a new population estimate released Wednesday by the Department of Finance found that 136,000 more people left California than moved here from July 2019 to July 2020. That makes three consecutive years of net migration out of the state. While more residents may have moved away than moved in, the total population of the state still increased by a net of 21,200, up to a total of 39.78 million, by far the largest population of any state in the nation." (https://www.lamag.com/citythin...)
So, a net out-migration of three tenths of one percent and an overall population increase. "Exodus" seems like a slight overstatement.
It's so tiring looking up facts for you.
I wish more Americans understood how their taxes work. People see 49.5% tax rate and think they are paying half their income in taxes (mostly because that's how anti-tax politicians have been framing it). I've literally had to tell family members that getting a raise will not mean you take home less pay even if you break into a higher tax bracket.
"But (fill in name here) said they got a raise and their taxes went up."
"Well, I'm not sure what (fill in name here) is on about, but they're an idiot who doesn't understand how their taxes work."
Anyway, to bring this back to a semblance of "on-topic" people appear to be flocking to the Netherlands. So perhaps they're doing something right. https://www.statista.com/statistics/525434/netherlands-total-immigration-total-emigration-and-migration-balance/
In the end, it took watching a video like this for them to "get it." I had even done the math in front of them and they still didn't believe me. Apparently the Venn diagram of people who don't know how tax brackets work, and people who only trust paid actors on youtube videos, is pretty close to a circle.
I feel sorry for you x-jla, you don't know what you're missing!
jla, I said nothing about you. A little narcissistic to think I was directing my comment to you, no?
Statistics = BS.
Stories jla hears on the morning talk show and regurgitates = the real deal.
You know my stance on sources. Put up or shut up.
x-jla, don't worry too much, you first need to make sure you get to those 67k ;-)
You get what you pay for...
snicker ...
based on taxes on middle-class families. I don't claim to get their methodology but it looks like TX has much higher property taxes.
Maybe they're imagining all that freedom.
If only you'd post a source so we could actually figure out what you mean when you regurgitate stuff. Then we wouldn't have to imagine things.
Like a true capitalist, jla seems to have decided to conflate people and companies here.
Anyway, my stance is that these sorts of tax arguments don't work well comparing individual states as much as it does between nations. There are lots of reasons for this, not least of which is that federal taxing and spending dwarfs even the largest state budgets. Nevermind that people move for all sorts of reasons - not *not* because of taxes but certainly not only because of them. Plus, the increased freedom of movement of money & moneyed interests (read: the wealthy and the businesses they incorporate) means one can "live" or "incorporate" in the most financially or politically friendly state while spending a great deal of their time elsewhere. It's a race to the bottom that has little bearing on overall quality of life and even less bearing on individual benefits for all but the top ~10-15%.
Instead of comparing over-priced under-built California to tax-haven Texas, why not compare the US as a whole to, oh I dunno, The Netherlands? or Germany?
sigh...
"You mean places where people are stuck accepting whatever tax the country demands."
On the contrary most folks seem pretty content with it.
"Simply, you pay for what you get. Taxes in the U.S. have taken on a pejorative association because, well, we are never really quite sure of what we get in return for paying them, other than the world's biggest military."
https://www.marketwatch.com/st...
"Although these countries have high tax rates, only four landed under the 50th benchmark. In fact, four appear in the top ten happiest countries. None of the lower-tax rate countries broke into the top ten, in contrast."
https://www.lawyer-monthly.com...
"A recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Psychological Science suggests that countries with a more progressive tax system are in fact happier than those where tax rates are flatter.
In “The Political Economy of Human Happiness,” one of us (Radcliff) examined individual-level data on 21 countries over three decades and found that people are happier as tax burden increases.
This held even when accounting for other factors known to affect happiness such as income, health, employment status, gender, age, race, education, religion and so on. Similarly, the national or aggregate level of happiness went up or down with the level of taxation (again, controlling for other factors)."
https://theconversation.com/wh...
Now, of course, correlation is not necessarily causation, and surely tax rate / social benefits aren't the *sole* source of satisfaction or happiness. There are also other variables within the economic / taxation system - like "progressiveness" mentioned above, and overall national wealth.
Finally, I've definitely mentioned this before, but I think the main source of dissatisfaction with taxation in the US is that our taxes don't pay for social benefits. We aren't well connected to the goods & services our taxes provide, and the messaging on the things they do provide is frankly abysmal. So we have this pervasive idea throughout the country that taxes are something "the government" takes from us, rather than something "we" pool to provide physical and social infrastructure. Ironically this sentiment seems strongest among the areas that receive the most relative to what they pay.
Simply lowering taxes won't solve this problem anymore than simply raising them will. We need to bridge the disconnect, and we need to redirect national spending to real, tangible, and visible benefits. We have more than enough wealth to do it. It's a PR problem.
Anyway I'm sure you'll respond with something somehow equal parts inane and condescending so I'll shut up after this comment.
Sounds like a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing. Let the companies in with a tax break to get the jobs for the city, and become beholden to the societal and infrastructural issues they bring with all those workers because you can't raise the money through taxes to fix those issues.
Or scare the companies away by telling them they'll have to pay their fair share so the city can deal with the issues they'll inevitably cause, and in the process doom your city to not having any jobs.
Race to the bottom!
NY particularly is a Disney land city
^ this is such a dumb take, and i've only seen it from people who's reality isn't remotely close to the city. there's more to NYC than manhattan.. in fact, there are two boroughs that are each as large as the entire city of chicago, and those nearly 5 million people who would refute your ignorant disney land hypothesis.
Let's talk again in 10-15 years when those cities in AZ, TX and NV are feeling the pain of overdrawn accounts for improvements and social programs. Or, better yet, why not talk more about how the rich should be philanthropic and put money into those programs in order to make those cities better. It's not like we can't look at Seattle as an example of how your preferred system doesn't work. Bezos and Gates could single-handedly take care of any of the issues Seattleites are hoping the city will address ... yet they do just the bare minimum to feel like they can sleep at night.
Dude, did you forget you were the one pushing for altruistic philanthropists to fill in the gap where public funds couldn't? There are receipts ... https://archinect.com/news/article/150240876/facebook-to-invest-150-million-to-build-2-000-affordable-homes-in-bay-area
Also, check your facts when you lump me in with how you phrase "you Democrats want" ... I've never claimed, nor have I ever been, a member of the Democratic Party.
Philanthropy is good, but based on history, not enough to correct the issues capitalism and lower taxes create. Even if all you want is a zero sum game, capitalism fails. If not philanthropy, what is the solution you'd propose to correcting the issues capitalism creates?*
*Again, this is rhetorical. I'm not really asking for you to pontificate.
I don't support a party.
I haven't actually supported any individual politician with anything more than my vote and my voice (and I don't mean voice in the "money is free speech" way). I have voted (and will vote) for, as well as voiced (and will voice) my opinions of both for and against, politicians from various parties.
dunkkk
Local, state, or federal election?
I know you're not asking me but I've got 10 minutes to kill. I voted for at least one Republican candidate in every election until 2018, and I've supported some third-party & independent candidates for local positions up to and including 2020.
That doesn't surprise me at all tduds.
I would never.
I voted for Jill Stein in 2012,mostly for reasons of party representation. Ain't no way Obama was losing Massachusetts so I felt content to "throw my vote away." But seeing what Jill has become in the decade since it might be the only vote I truly regret.
I have voted for a Republican presidential candidate (Bush '04) ... when I was young and not really paying attention to politics. I have not yet voted third-party for president, though I was tempted in '16. I have voted third-party a number of times for local elections including most recently in '20. Last time I voted non-Democratic Party for a federal office was in '12, and for a state office in '18.
If your question was whether I had voted for a non-Republican Party candidate prior to '08, I think the answer would be no.
Glad you guys are over here giving Don Quixote more windmills.
I agree, the Dems tacked far too right for my preference after the 2008 crash.
'04 was the first presidential election I could vote in. I was living abroad at the time and my roommate was a guy from TX who I think had some business ties in his family to the Bushes. He was was all in on Bush and I wasn't really paying attention to the election except for what I'd hear from him.
It wasn't until the next year when I had a different roommate that had close ties to Senator Chris Dodd. He (the roommate, not Senator Dodd) started questioning and challenging some of my preconceived notions about party politics and policies in general over the time we spent together. Coincidentally, Senator Dodd was traveling abroad for official business and we were able to meet with him one morning and have breakfast just the three of us. I still regret not taking him up on his offer to tag along with him for that day.
I know. And you have a point, if anything the rightward tack happened after Mondale lost in '84. Clinton was basically Eisenhower (minus the aversion to a military industrial complex).
"tduds
You're outta ye r element Donnie..."
You are probably correct, I shouldn't mix with infantile midgets. Carry on with your imbecilic arguments.
Go fuck yourself, gramps.
you seem stuck on the bottom of that pyramid SP...
You (pot) and kettle can also go fuck yourselves.
Now, now...temper, temper.
Public service announcement: You are on ignore and I am not removing you to see whatever bullshit you posted. I am sure it's well thought out and witty, because obviously everything you say is.
I'm sorry for your loss...
Pete... don't go insulting pots and kettles. They are responsible for my coffee... and thus, my sanity. Sweet sweet black coffee. Wait, why am I jumping into this? oh well, too late. It's belgian tripple time anyways.
Thoughts and prayers...
Trump aides made a late request to Team Biden to extend their parental leave. They said no. Politico
The absolute pleasure this brings me, I'm actually crying, with laughter.
I'm conflicted.
I know. I feel for them, I really do. But at the same time I can't help myself from taking pleasure in their misfortune. Do the Germans have a word to describe empathy and schadenfreude?
Nah. These aren't civil servants, these are political appointments, that means they had zero problems with kids in cages, the insurrection, the racism, the hate...fuck em.
My rationale for why I'm allowing myself the pleasure is that it's not like they're really going to suffer. They might have to dip into their savings while they find a new job, but they were always going to have to find a new job. The difference is they aren't doing it while taking their salary paid from the taxpayers' dime ... the same dime they fought to leave in the taxpayers' pockets anyway. So I hope they can manage without their avocado toast for a month or two.
Team Biden should have taken the high road here...missed opportunity.
what's the high road rando? how would a dutch do it?
Nobody should be in their position ever, if parental leave was a right, BUT they were appointed by politics into a position from where they did absolutely nothing to improve the lives of anybody but themselves.
high road my ass.
^ they are right, should've taken the high road, and forced their children into cages, and sent their parents to gitmo.
Whelp, thumbs downing that hot take. The law that allowed for paid leave was only put into effect a month before they knew they were going to lose their jobs in January. They had plenty of time to figure it out. It was their administration's efforts to drag their feet on the transition that forced the new administration's hands. Let them cry about how they've earned the entitlement a little more.
With that attitude you’re not that different than what you think you’re opposing...
My above comment was supposed to follow after b3ta’s, not meant for you EA...
I don’t know but when I became a parent, my head was not at all about figuring out my parental leave situation, it was pure survival mode in and out of hospital and stuff, hell even the so-called big green head forgot to renew the archinect web domain when becoming a parent...
I think parents should be supported no matter the politics, therefore missed opportunity to bridge a divide and just more fuel for more divisiveness, well done!
I think we all (well, all but two...) would agree that the US should have universal parental leave. But that's not the issue at hand here. It's also not "the parents" who spaced out on figuring out their situation, it was the previous administration (for whom they were essentially lackeys, like EA said, not civil servants) who checked out on doing much of anything. I have mixed feelings on this but I'm leaning towards playing my very tiny violin. These people are well off, well connected, and privileged. They'll be fine.
yes, parents should be supported no matter the politics, ALL parents and not just these opportunistic grifters.
It's a shame the Trump administration didn't push for paid parental leave for all workers and didn't push for private employers to pay their employees for parental leave when they lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Missed opportunity ... could have taken the high road.
“When they go low, we go high”
–Michelle Obama
Matter of opinion, but I think the current administration is already going higher than the previous one. Taking this as the one example to judge them by is petty.
I’m not really judging them, just could imagine this to be a bridge worth building to cross the divide...especially when kids are involved, but I do get all the gloating that’s going on (here), finally some pay back to those mofos. It is difficult not to be like Nelson Mandela Muntz in a situation like this.
"Politics, is never polite, and doesn't have fucks to give." - Me
I'm going to say, the high road has been taken, Melanie's family hasn't been deported, and she hasn't been arrested for immigration fraud.
Petty is par for the course in this thread.
All the vindictiveness, what a way to celebrate a win.
For the record, no one is celebrating this as a win. We're finding pleasure and humor in how the republicans have for years decried entitlements and government handouts and now there are a few who want what they feel entitled to as a literal handout.
Irony is lost on some.
We were already here on the PPP loans SneakyPete. Your first comment over there was basically the same. Apparently people never learn.
With “win” I meant the elections, not the cancellation of parental leave...and of course I see the irony here SP, Biden “grabbing those Trumpers by the [uterus], or is that not what you meant? (I thought you had me on ignore SP, you didn’t even last a day without me)
“ It's a shame the Trump administration didn't push for paid parental leave for all workers and didn't push for private employers to pay their employees for parental leave when they lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Missed opportunity ... could have taken the high road.”
With the Democrats in charge now, there shouldn’t be any reason not to get this done by like, yesterday...
Not sure if SP has you on ignore or not, but he's only responded to things he can see and infer from my posts up to this point. So it's plausible he's not seeing anything you're writing (not that he needs to).
Mitch McConnell and the Senate filibuster is the reason. Try to follow along. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/03/schumer-and-mcconnell-agree-to-organizing-resolution-for-50-50-senate-465444
“ We were already here on the PPP loans SneakyPete. Your first comment over there was basically the same. Apparently people never learn.”
You think I don’t see the irony? Of course I see it but choose to ignore it for the sake of argument.
It's like febreeze for the soul.
Nice switching the ignore on for your screenshot but we all know you’re still reading me.
The radio isn't transmitting, champ.
Worth highlighting that it doesn't appear the Biden admin did this out of any sense of vindictiveness or petty revenge. If anything it seems like a bureaucratic hiccup that the previous admin could have averted, but didn't.
We were having a pretty nuanced conversation, in fact.
If the gov't was allowed to make decisions without being hogtied by the folks in Congress, there might be wiggle room for empathetic bureaucrats to do what they felt was ethical. But since certain factions in the Senate feel like they need to check the size, shape, color, and hirsuteness of everyone's genitals before they even let them into the bathroom much less pee (for the boys on mute: that's a sarcastic way of saying they feel the need to have overt and total control of everything), here we are.
TIL the word "hirsuteness"
I'd have thought "hirsutability"
"Worth highlighting that it doesn't appear the Biden admin did this out of any sense of vindictiveness or petty revenge."
Nope, but the responses to it, at least some here, are vindictive and show petty revenge...at least in my opinion.
"We were having a pretty nuanced conversation, in fact."
Someone started micro dosing again...
We're barely 2 weeks past an insurrectionist regime, so forgive me if I'm not willing to delivery an FTD to racist cuck fetishists.
febreze*
I knew it!
Lasers are fine, but where is he going to get his mutated sea bass? What does you expect him to attach them to, sharks?
Republicans: LIZ CHENEY MUST GO!
Also Republicans: MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE IS OK I GUESS.
Didn’t Mitch McC call Greene’s lies “a cancer” for their party? Doesn’t sound like that’s an approving OK to me...
random, the Senate and the House, are two different entities, and the Minority Leader has little to offer.
True
Not even a contradiction, just full-throated white nationalist authoritarianism.
Anyway I'm taking a great deal of enjoyment from the impending GOP implosion. I hope they eat themselves alive, they deserve every bit of it.
"I hope they eat themselves alive, they deserve every bit of it."
And every bite!
jla, you know that only one of those things is in reality true, right? Just making sure you're still in touch with reality.
Dare I ask you to say which one?
Apparently Republicans only think Liz Cheney must go when they're on the record and they think their constituents will hold them accountable. When they can hide behind secrecy, they're all "She's ok I guess."
Pull that Marjorie lady off her committees ferchrissake. I don’t care if it “sets a precedent “ that means in that in the future the Rs could pull Ds off committees. The second Rs voted for Amy Croupy Barrett hours before the election was proof that they would *never* play fair when they’re in power. The Ds are in power now and they have to fucking use it. Goddam.
Done
Any thoughts re: secret ballot implications comparing vote to oust Liz Cheney from party leadership last night vs. convicting Trump on impeachment?
I think Trump might easily be convicted in a secret ballot.
"Easily" might be too generous for me, especially after Rand Paul's constitutionality motion and subsequent vote last week, but I agree. I also have issues with representatives feeling like they can vote differently if they feel like they have some plausible deniability in how they voted. A part of me wants to die on that hill, but I'm not that fanatic about it in principle.
My pipe dream would be that they have a secret ballot and it turns out to be 100-0 to convict, so they don't have any option of pointing their fingers at anyone else to say they didn't stand up for Trump.
Maybe it would be better for 99-1 so they infighting can happen as they all claim to be the lone vote and avoid getting primaried by a Trumpist.
seems to be some serious, albeit small, momentum building re: student loan debt forgiveness. democrats are finally getting serious about progressive, broadly popular policy. pushing for things like debt forgiveness, raising the minimum wage, stimulus checks, etc. will continue to back republicans further into their qrazy qorner.
if anything, this pandemic and the unprecedented response of the government (in terms of spending, aka the end of austerity) has really exposed the policy-based, moral, and ethical bankruptcy of republicans. that tax cut for the rich, the one major policy accomplishment during trump's presidency, isn't aging well...
Yeah square why didn't the Democrats do any of the things they had literally no power to do? We need to stop focusing on the Republicans, who *had* this power and did nothing, and look at the whole picture here.
Anyway, I hope the legislature isn't immediately hamstrung by obstructionism & gridlock the way it was from 2010-2016 (and in a different way from 2016-2020). The reconciliation process is absurd and annoying, but at least it seems like they're having an honest go at and end-run around the stupid fucking filibuster (more on this below) to implement, as you said "progressive, broadly popular policy."
The only way the Democrats are going to hold on in 2022 is to provide direct, tangible, visible benefits to average Americans, and publicize the hell out of it. Part of that starts with policy, the other part is to quit letting Republican leadership set the tone of conversation. Dem leadership needs to get on offense, something they're historically terrible at but seems to be getting better with the younger generations.
tduds, at some point, you have to realize, even Babe Ruth stopped embarrassing the kids playing t-ball. You're the GOAT, let Timmy keep swinging at pitches no one is throwing, he'll never get a hit no matter how slow the ball moves on the tee.
Ok but my actual name is Tim so this confuses me.
Billy?
Sold!
Good Op-Ed from Ezra Klein today:
"All of this is a choice. Every Senate rule can be changed by a simple majority vote. A simple majority could end or reform the filibuster — as we saw when Democrats ended it for most executive branch nominations and most judicial nominations in 2013, and when Republicans ended it for Supreme Court nominees in 2017. The details quickly get complicated, but a simple majority of senators could vote to loosen some of the limits on budget reconciliation, as Senator Bernie Sanders, the new chair of the Budget Committee, has suggested. The Senate is bound by nothing but its own convictions.
But this is a Senate that, collectively, has no convictions. It does not believe enough in the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold to simply abide by it. It does not believe enough in passing bills by a simple majority to make that the standard. It is the self-styled moderates, like Manchin and Sinema, who freeze the institution in dysfunction, but there is nothing moderate about the modern Senate: It is radical in its inanity, a legislative chamber designed by dadaists."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/opinion/democrats-senate-reconciliation.html?
The filibuster is a hot potato that is barely above room temp at this point. I'm coming around to the idea that the only reason it is still here is so the opposite team can claim the other one did something bad when they finally get rid of it.
Imagine what it would be like if one of the teams simply got ahead on the messaging and said,
"This thing sucks and it's why we can't do our jobs (and it's their fault). We're going to fix it by getting rid of it. We'll be in the lobby signing autographs because you should all be screaming our praises like rock stars. If not right now, you'll see in a year and a half when the tangible benefits of us getting rid of it are more apparent. You're welcome."
McCarthy right now is listing the things Democrats allegedly did just like Greene. But instead of using his own actions to do something different, he's painting the Democrats as the enemy and pledging to use this precedent as a weapon in the future. He could do the right thing and then have the ACTAUL moral high ground, but instead he's playing the pathetic victim.
Typical. Fucking. Politician.
"We should get Americans back to work."
As if you ever do any work at all, you slime.
Jim Jordan is a waste of a bad suit.
By and large, Republicans are great at messaging and campaigning but bad at governing. While Democrats are good at governing and bad at messaging and campaigning.
Naw I'm right.
https://www.justsecurity.org/74504/movie-at-the-ellipse-a-study-in-fascist-propaganda/
Who was watching the impeachment trial today? Anything important that I missed?
You missed the part where the really "Schoen" lawyer defended Trump, saying he couldn't POSSIBLY have incited a large number of people as he was only one guy with a constitutionally protected right to speak, but individual Democratic lawmakers' calls for impeachment (not protected, I guess?) drove them all prematurely into the decision to impeach.
So if 44 senators think this is all unconstitutional, they can just stay home, right? Only 2/3 present need to vote to convict.
I'm ignoring it. Paraphrasing a Eugene Mirman joke, asking Republicans to convict Trump "is like hiring an insincere baby with amnesia to solve a crime that it committed."
So far the only thing I've read about the trial, and it sounds like a total embarrassment for Trump's legal team. It's a shame that will almost definitely make no difference whatsoever: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-impeachment-trial-lawyers-refuse-to-seriously-engage-with-the-constitutional-issues
I've been catching bits and pieces today of the House Managers' case and it's being reiterated to me that they are 1) making the case that this wasn't just against Dems, or even the US in general ... this was against the GOP as well; and 2) they are asking for people to side with them that were entirely complicit in the ramp up to this, not only from election night until Jan 6, but also from much earlier in 2020 (really the last 4+ years), and have largely benefitted from it.
The GOP could save themselves here ... but they won't.
Edit: that may be too generous. The GOP could start to save themselves here ... but they won't.
Meanwhile, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/10/us/politics/republicans-leaving-party.html
^ hence why they need to try to start the "saving themselves" process.
I truly think they've been insulated from electoral accountability - thanks to a combination of our country's inherent anti-majoritarian institutions and their own decades long campaign of disenfranchisement - that they've simply forgotten about it. That or they really are arrogant enough to assume they can just break the process further to extend their immunity (frighteningly, they might be right).
"insulated from electoral accountability" ... I like that. Well, I like the phrasing, not the actual thing itself.
The scary part is they probably think they *are* acting in a way that the(ir) electorate wants. They are more concerned about getting primaried and needing to beat other Republican challengers than they are concerned about beating Democrats in the general elections ... for exactly the reasons you've outlined.
To me, that's just further evidence that the party is nearly, if not already, gone. When someone who has been embedded in the party long enough to make it to this level of government is worried about the party turning on them, enough to prevent them from making the difficult choices, it's pretty much over for the party they once knew. Seeing the antics of the GOP in AZ, and the fact they even had a vote on Liz Cheney is telling.
^I'm waiting to hear how it's the Democrats fault. You're failing us jla. You have one job here. [winking face emoji]
There's the x-both sides-jla we've been waiting for. I see it took you 4 posts to make your point too. Glad to have you back at full strength.
equivocating what happened over the summer and what happened on january 6th shows any lack of critical thinking skills, and is purely a republican talking point.
“You can moan and groan, but he was far more explicit about his calls for peace than some of the BLM and left-wing rioters were this summer when we saw violence sweep across this nation,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said in defending Trump before the House voted 232-197 to impeach the president for inciting an insurrection.
https://apnews.com/article/don...
again, not arguing your "points," just noting the fact that your per usual, your talking points are eerily similar to the most far-right members of congress.
Jesus fucking Christ not this again. *leaves*
I'm watching jla make his arguments in front of the Senate right now.
Tiltin' at windmills again, are we?
the irony is it takes more dogmatism to adhere to the idealized form of belief that both sides are exactly equivalent, all the time.
It gives him the freedom in his brain (I have acknowledged all sides) to spout his bullshit (Dems and progressives are the bad guys) free of cognitive dissonance.
No cult would suffer you.
huh
more than enough evidence that if tRump and the republicans hadn't been in charge, things would have been much, much better.
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
this is the lowest of hanging fruit, and you still can’t grab it.
square it's important to see both sides here. And by both sides I mean we need to only and endlessly talk about the evils of Democrats.
The existence of individual sub-jurisdictions doesn't amount for much when you consider their place within the overall jurisdiction. A state, regardless of the party of their Governor, can only get so far within the confines of the national policy.
"so where is this 40% coming from?" The study is linked in the article. Do your own homework.
Again, the answers you seek are in the article, the study, and other articles about the study that are going around this week.
He seeks no answers.
i think something would have to literally shatter the earth for trump to get convicted. this is an incredible waste of time
The Republicans are wasting all of our time because they refuse to do their jobs. If this was Benghaz instead of the fucking capital, they'd be all over it. But This loss of life requires HEALING and MOVING ON because it was incited by and controlled by their lord and savior Donald Trump.
those who are saying this is a waste of time, because of the republican response, have an acute case of myopia. the democrats are following public opinion on this, and know that it's a winning issue both morally and politically, to frame trump, accurately, as the instigator of this historically embarrassing and destructive episode.
it might have been "a waste of time" trying to convince secessionist senators of anything by the same logic, but history hasn't exactly looked kindly upon them, and thank god for the politicians who did not heed the sort of advice you are giving, allowing our country, albeit much later, to heal and move on.
The impeachment trial is basically theater, but important theater--it's the only official punishment against his actions. Without it, there would be zero reason for Democrats to not storm the Capitol in 2024 if a Republican wins. Precedent matters, or it should.
I know it's already been stated, but Jlax is the dumbest mf I've seen on this site. "...it's a waste of time, because it won't curb trumpism, it will embolden it." I wonder, is there possibly a counterfactual that will disprove this moronicism? I wonder, does it actually exist, that doing nothing, DOING NOTHING, will actual curb trumpist? You fucking seething idiot. Shoot yourself.
Better posthumously convict MLK then, while you're at it.
He's on record encouraging political violence.
...
Wow I'd heard that Trump's legal team was not doing great but this is just embarrassing.
[redacted]
well, that was entirely predictable
WTF is up with McConnell’s bullshit pedantry in avoiding responsibility to convict this impeached president? Too late to convict because he’s out of office?!? Especially when McConnell specifically delayed a senate trial...
Ignoring the name, we have a centrist party currently in power that should have broad appeal. What we need is a Progressive party as powerful as the right wing. There's not a lot of space between Democratic and Republican platforms to squeeze in a whole new party.
No successful party is going to combine right and left, even if they share a distaste for autocratic/authoritarian governance, because the core values are so different--right is self-oriented, left is collective-oriented.
the onus was on the democrats to persuade republicans. they failed, to the surprise of no one. people need to stop electing incompetent officials...this requires education and campaign finance reform... hope we can get it done in the next 50 years. also requires trust and tolerance. right now every move by anyone is assumed to political in motive. not sure how that can be transcended.
The point of the impeachment was never about Democrats persuading Republicans, at least not those in the Senate anyway (maybe some of the more moderate Republican voters). The point was to make it as embarrassing as possible for those Republicans to vote to acquit. The trial was always about the show, they teed up witnesses perfectly ... and then took the L everyone knew they were going to get anyway and went home for Valentine’s Day.
It was like watching the team losing by 21 points in the Super Bowl with 2 minutes to go get a 1st and goal ... then just pack it up and say “well we weren’t going to win anyway so let’s just hit the showers.” Unless you were going to make a spectacle and make them look bad, the impeachment was a waste of time. The impeachment, really any impeachment, was always political and they didn’t even try to score any political points.
"The wise man bowed his head..." you know the rest.
Ranty update on my homeless friend's situation: Still no housing and it is *truly* Kafkaesque. She can't be accepted to the affordable apartments because, even though she has a state ID, the state ID address isn't accurate because she's been bumped to so many temporary housing situations over the last year, and she doesn't have a birth certificate AND social security card to prove her ID, because she's homeless and *big surprise* has lost pieces of paper while living on the street. You can't get a SScard without a birth certificate, and vice versa, unless you come to the office in person, which they won't allow because of COVID, so you have to do it through the mail, which takes 6-8 weeks, but if she can't produce it in 2 weeks she loses her place on the waiting list for the affordable apartment, an apartment that she needs so she has an address so she can update her state ID to be accurate, so that she can get an apartment so that she's not living on the street.
Capitalism is a sickness. The USA is terminal.
Ugh. We are very good at keeping the poor down. Kudos for supporting her.
The system is working as intended.
“The computer says no”
archi-dude there is some truth to that statement, but the bigger truth is that the bureaucracy exists in its current form because in the Reagan years we were taught to think of government as able to be "run like a business" and that "public-private partnerships" are better than "big government" and that government agencies need to make a profit. So when it costs a bunch of money to administer a system, like say the DMV, the government is constantly trying to show how responsible it is by squeezing its budget to make it more "efficient" and "create synergies to maximize leanness" and all that other business bullshit rather than make it run perfectly but be accused of wastefulness. My attitude towards waste is: bring it. If every child in this country is fed and every human housed and every pothole filled (lower priority LOL) and every toxic chemical cleaned up then I don't give a damn how much it costs.
“I don't give a damn how much it costs”
Would be priceless!
Money exists to rationalize and perpetuate the lies that allow the system to continue.
Donna, you're correct of course. Capitalism and Bureaucracy are ouroboros. The idea that solving the problem is contrary to effective governing, is exactly what capitalism wants; break the government, to prove government doesn't work, to create more private sector governance. The point, end result, of Marxism is to solve the problems of the people, so we can get rid of bourgeois asshat, be free, and happy. We work, to pay bills, and debt - ouroboros - not to be happy. Thank capitalism.
Dude, they first and foremost escape poverty and oppression...it’s not like they run away because they have a startup idea they really need to pitch to Silicon Valley, they don’t even know what capitalism is, they just want out...
Bureaucracy/big government can be found in any political or ideological system and its running successfully is not necessarily tied to the politics. Capitalism and bureaucracy can easily go hand in hand...it’s a great way to keep people busy and employed, it’s nice to know that for the incompetent underachievers there’s also a job available, what if they’d all be sacked because the government is run like a fortune500 company...who’s going to feed them and prevent the Revolution from happening in such a dog eat dog world?
"We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism."
I mean let's be realistic: we could spend a billion dollars on federally-employed social workers so that every human had a main contact person to help them navigate the system, then the system wouldn't be keeping people down. Alternatively, if we invested a billion dollars in making all the different agencies communicate completely and transparently so that a human didn't have to run all across town to get any information, the system wouldn't be so hard to navigate and regular people could do it. Instead we have the Texas power gird: vastly underfunded, operating on short-term thinking to survive the next round of budget cuts rather than actually having the security to be able to focus brainpower on solving the problems we face as a society.
It’s actually capitalism that promotes repetition, the more the better, variation is anticapitalist as it is inefficient and expensive and screws up the profit margins, you know for the sake of efficiency and cutting costs...by your own analogy capitalism is a form of insanity(!)
Global warming “a few side effects”? Mass extinction of species “a few side effects”? Global refugee crisis “a few side effects”? Mass deforestation and loss of habitats “a few side effects”? The so-called side effects of capitalism are worse than the presumed benefits when looking at the big picture holistically, no?
Here we go again...capitalism and free-trade vs socialism/marxism...
As I understand it now, ERCOT, is a private non-profit organization and it exists so to rid itself of gov't regulations. In other words, a private organization. Look at where that got them.
-1 for capitalism and privatization.
The issue is and always will be the PEOPLE running the system - whatever that system is.
Oh and speaking of side effects of capitalism...Marxism itself is a side effect of capitalism too ;-)
Good Riddance Limbaugh.
Bringing back memories of being a high school grad framing houses where the boss would tune the jobsite radio to his show every afternoon ... I certainly won't miss him. I do miss working with those guys sometimes though.
In before someone criticizes you for celebrating the death of someone whose entire thing was being hateful and rooting for the demise of rhetorical foes.
In the (almost definitely apocryphal) words of Mark Twain: "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
Please let me know where to send my thoughts and prayers.
There are very few people I would wish dead, but I have to say that the world is a better place with Rush gone.
...
Tduds, for a second there, before I realized you had posted an image, I thought archinect had broken.
"Can't trust google!" *incessantly posts links obviously pulled from google searches*
idk seems like you're finding what you're looking for.
I'm not defending Google. You're *using* Google and I'm just pointing it out.
We're on page 9 of this thread and you still haven't figured out that I'm not making counterpoints, I'm debunking / dunking on / laughing at you. I gave up taking you seriously months ago. Catch up.
sure you are honey.
This,
Is gold.
wise.
tduds, and by that I mean, SEVEN comments, to your three, the ratio alone, but actually not getting anywhere after SEVEN. Is extraordinary.
TEN to 3.
Libertarian? ;-)
Was just kidding
I like the sexy eye-shadow+mascara eyes, Dark Vader helmet and classic brushy moustache on the potato head. Red high heels optional tho, depending on the day’s schedule.
I don't know a single person to the left of center who thinks the potato thing is worthy of discussion. Private company, more inclusion, fewer words. Don't you have something more substantial to worry about?
A friend of mine, politically centrist, had this to say: "My company sells over a quarter million pounds of seed potatoes every year. I've never seen a potato with a cock or a vag, or an apron or a mustache. Even biologically speaking, potato tubers have zero sex or gender. The plants themselves are hermaphroditic (both male and female)."
um... exhibit A below.
Yeah woke culture, that's the real problem in this country.
Mmm hmm
Mmmm hmmm
https://youtu.be/z8lnOA9xgv8
Mmmm hmmm
"It’s undoing all of the progress that we saw from the 60’s -present."
I'm sorry everyone, I gotta take the bait. Please elaborate on all the progress that woke culture is undoing. Seriously. Lay it out 'cause I gotta hear this. Take your time. None of this off-the-cuff hot take crap you're known for that under the slightest scrutiny falls apart. Convince me your statement above is actually true.
hmm...
OooooooOoOoooOoO hmmmm
Ok, so nothing then. Can't say I expected anything more. If I were trying to make your argument I'd start with defining what woke culture is, naming progress that has been made since the 60's, then show definitively how the culture you previously defined is undoing that progress. But that's just me. You're obviously trying Bannon's "flood the zone with shit" approach. It's not convincing anyone.
I see a pile of conclusions, but a weak thesis and absolutely no supporting evidence. D+ effort, generously.
For my last term paper in college I turned in a paragraph that just said, "If you, the professor, don't know this already ... I can't help you." I obviously got 100% because that's how the world works.
It would seem we've yet again reached the point you inexorably drag every discussion towards, where one of us has to take the time to explain that it's not so much your ideas that are bad, as your piss-poor ability to expand upon or defend them that makes them / you unworthy of a serious response. And, just as inevitably, whether through some sort of emotional defense mechanism or simple trolling, you'll assume as a tacit acknowledgement of victory. Rinse, repeat, fuck you.
Ok maybe what I said above was a little harsh.
Still, C- on that last reply
I'm not asking for what the prominent voices are saying to support whatever they are arguing. I'm asking *you* to support what *you* are arguing.
Your comment, "It’s undoing all of the progress that we saw from the 60’s -present," seems oddly specific yet vague and nondescript and I'd like you to elaborate so I might be able to understand what you're getting at. If you need to quote prominent voices, go ahead. But just like you, I can say woke culture (whatever that means, you still haven't defined it) is progressing us more than anything since the 60s and provide no supporting evidence. I mean that's cool and all, but it gets us nowhere.
BTW, anytime anyone says that something is obvious if you just think about it ... it usually means it isn't obvious and they have no supporting evidence, or they are too lazy to provide supporting evidence.
"But here’s on obvious thing- racism." Good set up to lay out the topic (though it isn't obvious).
"The goal was once to make race a less important, less deterministic factor in ones identity. Content of character, judge individuals, etc. Thats an undeniably true and modern view." Who's goal was this, where was this goal laid out and defined? You'll need to provide some supporting evidence if you want me to believe this is "undeniably true."
"It’s also effective and has over time led to progress. Since the 60’s race relations have gotten way better because of that notion." Perhaps, but I think the argument was also that it wasn't doing enough and there are still plenty of people that aren't progressing and holding us as a society back. See all the people that came out and starting saying the racist stuff out loud once it was seen as acceptable because POTUS was giving them hugs and warm feelings.
"The woke movement rejects this notion, and instead pushes a bs critical race theory intersectionality narrative. They view race as the most important aspect of ones identity. It’s not. This is not only a false narrative, but it literally is the definition of racist." Define "woke movement." Link to a source on "critical race theory intersectionality narrative" that supports your statement that "they view race as the most important ..."
"Listen to Coleman Hughes or read his essays on the subject. He covers this in great depth and clarity." Provide some links to sources you find most illuminating on the subject. Or give some quotes of in context of your argument.
It's really not that hard to make a strong argument.
If you just read and think all of the things I've read and thought in my lifetime, and ignore all the things I have not read or thought, the conclusions I've reached are self evident.
No, actually, I won't tell you what I've read. How dare you.
I'm not arguing anything. I'm just asking you to explain your argument.
I'm also not asking for a term paper (I only brought up the idea of a term paper as I riffed on tduds' letter grade because it was funny). All I'm asking for is a coherent argument. This is the last time I'm asking for it. If you can't present one, I'll just assume you have no idea what you're talking about.
i see we're still doing this, huh?
I'm giving you permission to get into the weeds (not that you need it). But it is *your* argument so *you* need to present it if you want to get into the weeds on it.
I came here to discuss potato head builds.
I never gave you any "umm hmm" or whatever. I just want to hear you lay out a coherent argument.
My argument is that you suck at making a point, and when asked to elaborate, you stubbornly refuse to. I even said this explicitly a few posts ago, and roughly 2-3 times per month since we first began discussing politics several years ago, so I don't know why it's unclear.
NS, if you keep discussing potato head builds, you'll undo all the progress we've made since the 60s. You know, the progress that said potatoes have penises or vaginas.
Please define "woke culture"
If something is not universally defined and accepted, the starting point to define and come to a consensus on it. Not just say it exists and if you don't think so you're not reading and thinking the same way as me. Applies to both Bigfoot and "woke culture."
TIL that the Republican party was responsible for "woke culture" in the 60's ... the 1860's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes
define bigfoot
Thanks, I'm won't get into the definition with you, but thanks for providing it. Now, please explain how what you just defined is "undoing all of the progress that we saw from the 60’s -present." You might first start with defining what that progress is so we are all on the same page, then show how "woke culture" is undoing it.
i can recognize abstractly the there are issues with "woke" culture- but this mr potato head thing is making a mountain out of a mole hill.
are there people who's worlds are so small that they are enraged by the brand removing mr? while mr and mrs still exist as products?
this is not an issue to the majority of americans; sometimes it's important to recognize when you're spending too much time in your internet bubble.
.
"i don't see race" is definitely one of my favorite mlk quotes.
Sorry, been a busy morning and I meant to post this last night. See above build, inspired by this thread's discussions.
just fyi, that's not mlk.
So is it racism, racial relations, and/or racial tension that has seen progress from the 60s until today. You bring up all three in your post but they aren't all the same and you really only make statements that there has been progress with racial relations, and that racial tension has been reduced through overly broad statements. You note that colorblindness "has led us into a better place since the 1960s" but don't address that "a better place" does not equal "the best place" or "a place where racism is solved."
Nor have you really addressed that "woke culture" is undoing, or will undo, "all the progress" that has happened with regard to race since the 60s. All you've done is say that MLK advocated for colorblindness, and that woke culture rejects it (which in itself could be a topic of hot debate without even getting into the undoing progress thing). The whole time apparently assuming that we've actually reached the form of colorblindness that MLK advocated for (or at the very least getting there) and that rejecting it would be detrimental to society. It's a big leap and you haven't really provided supporting arguments in favor of making that leap.
The sheer depth of misunderstanding is kind of impressive.
Yeah that's the common line. Yet there are vanishingly few (not zero, but very few) examples of this happening where the things being said were not deserving of the backlash.
"in the past stupid people believed that race determined one’s characteristics...it caused lots of problems...we now know that race is a trivial factor..."
One might argue that that trivialization of race and other identity characteristics is the reason we are where we are today with regard to race and identity, both good and bad (you seem to only be focusing on the good while ignoring the bad). All of this isn't to say that one's individual characteristics are not important and that only their racial identity or other group identity is important. Rather it's to say that you can't simply negate *any* part of someone as trivial simply because you want to ... whether it's their race, gender, etc. or other characteristic of their individuality not tied to a group identity.
Also, I said I wouldn't get into your definition of woke culture but I kind of need to now as none of this is really related to your definition of "woke culture" unless you assume this "ideological mindset" is part of the "socially progressive creed" you put in your definition as "absolute, utopian, unquestionable, and unreasonable." You haven't defined what "socially progressive creed" is (let alone why it is absolute, utopian, unquestionable, and unreasonable) so all it really does right now is allow you to lump together anything you don't like and categorize it there as unacceptable and therefore a problem with "woke culture." So what is the socially progressive creed that your definition relies on?
There's a sleight of hand here where you're defining things in terms that people who identify with the movement you're talking about would not use or agree with. You're telling people what they think and then telling them that they're wrong. But your interpretations are simplified and quite frequently mis-conflating unrelated things. It would take a lot of time and effort to really dive into this and you'll just dismiss it anyway so I'm gonna go do something else. I really should just ignore this thread permanently.
So I see we aren't going to respond to my valid questions or criticisms then and instead just flood the zone again. Cool.
There is what is, and how we navigate it. What is cannot change. The past is the past. We should not ignore the past, or its effect on the present. We can however empower ourselves and our culture with a mindset that creates a new path, maybe it's woke-ism, maybe it's not. You say woke-ism is not the right tool box to navigate this reality, but you've offered nothing of substance to support that view. It’s completely counterproductive and divisive.
Your last statement is also a very high-level, lack-of-details view for someone that said, "I’d like to get into the weeds" just yesterday. Seems to me that someone started getting into the weeds and couldn't handle it.
Identity politics in general (race being one major parameter) places emphasis on group identity over individual identity.
i'll be honest- there are parts of this i agree with. critical race theory puts primacy on identity through race above everything else. one can't deny race as identity, but overemphasizing it rejects the other conditions (social, economic, political) that also make up identity.
the problem is your cram 30 thoughts into 3 sentences, and when paired together they are incredibly incoherent.
The narrative of victims and oppressors is not a healthy, accurate, or effective way to promote the interracial “brotherhood” that MLK preached, and that we (people growing up pre 2000’s) learned.
this is the next sentence, a rambling, unconnected thought about oppression and exploitation, aka your typical "anti-marxist" bent.
if you stuck to one idea, these might be real conversations. instead you throw whatever latest youtube video you watched in the wall and hope something sticks. there's not debate here. no conversation. just you talking to a wall.
I've learned from the past and realized that trying to argue with you without first establishing what page you're on is pointless because you always seem to be on a different page. So I wanted you to define the page you were on, so we could at least speak the same language from the beginning.
I mean you tried to take a comment about how one party is focusing on covid relief and the other is focusing on potato genitalia so you tried to use that to say that wokeness is undoing all progress in the past 50 years (like it was even close to the same page). I'm sorry, that needs a little explaining if you want anyone to take it seriously. Apparently that's too much of a chore for you.
tduds said it earlier, "My argument is that you suck at making a point, and when asked to elaborate, you stubbornly refuse to." I've given you every chance to make your point, you just stubbornly refuse to do so. You wanted to get in the weeds, I'm down here playing in the dirt while you stubbornly refuse to do so.
At this point all I've been able to gather is 1) you think wokeism is bad. 2) You think it's bad because it rejects colorblindness (citation needed). 3) You think colorblindness is good because it was supported by MLK (citation needed). 4) Colorblindness has been the source of all racial progress in the past 50 years (citation needed). Conclusion: Wokeness is undoing all progress in the past 50 years including, but not limited to, Mr. Potato Head's penis.
Is there any other way to connect the dots you've actually laid out here? I could argue with you on points 2, 3, 4, and your conclusion, but it would be worthless unless you're willing to actually define what page the debate will take place on. I'd provide the page and the context but you'd just dismiss it without offering anything substantial to rebut it except some zone flooding shit.
"Huge chore to bring [me] up to speed" ... please. You're not even close to being at my speed. Come back when you're ready to have a debate.
"He expects me to argue as if he’s unaware of the many arguments that have been made already"
Hey, not all of us spend our entire day digesting Reason, Federalist, and National Review blog posts.
The "dream" of King was to someday build a society in which colorblindness was possible, not to simply decide to be colorblind while still inhabiting our current - quite racist - world. Until we've done the work to undo the cultural & systemic racism built into our world by our ancestors, insisting that we ignore race is to insist that we ignore the pressures and prejudices that have been foisted upon people throughout their entire life *because* of their race. It's callous and it's lazy.
"you are really saying that identity is immutable, because race is immutable." No, we're saying that we still live in a world where your outward appearance affects your lot in life, and in order to be anti-racist you need to acknowledge that experience in your interactions with people of different backgrounds - whether that's people of color, people of different genders, nationalities, orientations, etc.
You speak of "a place of heightened enlightenment and perspective" and our counterpoint is that this is the work that needs to be done to get there. We're certainly not there yet.
Guess I failed (again) at quitting the thread.
I'm going to quote tduds because I let the MLK colorblindness stuff go without comment because I was trying to get to something larger without following jla down the rabbit hole, but it shouldn't be left without comment because it is a completely bad take on Dr. King's work and legacy.
"The 'dream' of King was to someday build a society in which colorblindness was possible, not to simply decide to be colorblind while still inhabiting our current - quite racist - world. Until we've done the work to undo the cultural & systemic racism built into our world by our ancestors, insisting that we ignore race is to insist that we ignore the pressures and prejudices that have been foisted upon people throughout their entire life *because* of their race. It's callous and it's lazy."
That is all. I'm going to enjoy a long weekend without feeling the need to get involved in arguments on the internet.
“ “Diplomacy is back!” President Joe Biden declared at the Munich Security Conference last week. But so is bombing Syria, apparently. Biden has only been president a bit more than a month, but he has already ordered his first bombing campaign. (It took Trump four months to do the same.)” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/26/biden-iran-deal-diplomacy-syria
What are you trying to say with that? "Haha! Your guy did the same thing our guy did, which makes your guy worse!"? Something like that? Everybody knows that Biden is a centrist. I don't know enough about Syria specifically, but speaking personally I don't support what I consider to be global military over reach, and violently meddling in the affairs of others, regardless of who's in the White House.
Deep state? Trojan horse? Establishment? GTFOH with your conspiracy nonsense. Maybe if Trump hadn't so completely and utterly fucked up everything he touched, he'd still be in office. I think I'm putting you on ignore now.
All I’m trying to say bb is po-tah-to puh-tei-tow...same shit different president
By the nature of their job I'd argue all presidents are essentially war criminals. But only Trump was *gleefully* a war criminal. Important distinction, if you ask me.
I think begrudgingly accepting the moral quandary of an inherited broken system (even if one were to want to change it, institutional inertia would mean any substantial change takes years) is morally superior to indulging in and actively worsening the system. Not by a lot, but certainly not equivalent.
Put more simply: I disagree with Biden on policy and individual actions &I'm happy to call him out when his admin disappoints me. I disagreed with Trump on philosophy, character, and direction and I think he nearly brought the system down entirely.
Better isn't necessarily good, but "not good" isn't just as bad. All things exist on a spectrum. It's not inconsistent to recognize improvement while also recognizing room for further improvement.
That's all I gotta say about that.
The style is not what offends me. The content is what offends me. I'm a brash as fuck Bostonian, but I do it to call out assholes, not be one. Trump is an childish asshole who appeals to other childish assholes. It's nothing to do with "delicate sensilibites" and everything to do with people who were quietly shitty people inside and got permission from him to be loud about it. It's quite simple.
"The people who voted for him are not responsible for his bad deeds."
I never said they were. Of course you're not responsible for the actions of people you publicly support, but your continued vocal support of that person is - in light of those actions - reprehensible itself. Again this is simple. Quit making me expand on obvious ethical philosophy.
It was a proverbial 'you', obviously.
It's exhausting to keep up with this tendency to introduce a wholly novel concept and/or metaphor with every reply. Good day.
Tduds, you do know what they say about wrestling with pigs, right?
Everything America does in the Middle East can be traced to decisions made right after World War 2. We're managing shit that is 70 years old. If we can stop fucking around, and end the "war" with Iran, we'd actual set a course where 70 years from now, we can have a better situation, and lessen the Saudi bullshit. Political courage is lacking, fuck the Saudis.
no time to raise minimum wage at home but all the time in the world to kill somewhere on the other side of the world, Biden sure shows his cards :-(
no, I was convinced it would pick up again, continue if not intensify...as posted before:
Well here's a simple uncontroversial opinion that certainly won't ruffle any feathers around here:
"I do not mean that modern American Republicans are communists. Rather, I mean that the Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes."
https://www.theatlantic.com/id...
*pulls pin. runs like hell*
If I recall correctly, neo-cons, trace their lineage to Trotsky?
Meh, it's wishful thinking that the current republican party will implode under it's own failures but it won't. We have a two party system and it's going to be nearly impossible for the current republican party to be forced to change itself.
Their formula is hate.
To be fair, I know enough R's that I am confident that they are fueled by more than hate. There is also a lot of fear. In fact I think fear is the engine that drives them, and hate is a result.
Racism, bigotry, sexism, and homophobia are hate.
The anger, like the hate, is a product of exploited fear. They know exactly what they're doing, but they were too arrogant to realize that eventually they'd lose control of the asylum.
I've been characterizing the Republican Party the same way since not long after I left it:
I used "those people" as a catch-all term. There are separate (but often overlapping) constituencies for "those people" being blacks, white liberals, illegal aliens, LGBTQ, perfectly legal Latino permanent residents and citizens, non-Evangelical Christians, "coastal elites", intellectuals, women's' libbers, etc.
Racism and homophobia do play a huge part in this. The current republican party has used it to stir up fear in their base and claim that they are the only ones who can protect them from all the bad things they say non whites and LGTB people are trying to do to 'Murica.
Just to bring it back to the original topic, here's some charts. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22274429/republicans-anti-democracy-13-charts
"All the reasons for the GOP’s turn against democracy — backlash to racial progress, rising partisanship, a powerful right-wing media sphere — remain in force after Trump. The leadership is still afraid of Trump and the anti-democratic MAGA movement he commands.
More fundamentally, they are still committed to a political approach that can’t win in a majoritarian system, requiring the defense of the undemocratic status quo in institutions like the Senate and in state-level electoral rules."
To use the Soviet comparison, the only reason the Party was able to hang on for so long was the lack of competition. The GOP is approaching this level of out-of-touch-ness, and so the natural inclination is to undermine the mechanisms of accountability that would otherwise keep them in check.
If we had a fair democracy, the Republican party would win very few elections, either driving them towards reform or irrelevance, from which a new 2nd major party would eventually emerge. The only reason the Democrat/Republican divide seems remotely competitive is through a combination of a rural advantage enshrined in The Constitution, and good old fashioned disenfranchisement. They're staking their own success on undermining democracy. The "other side", to put it simply, isn't.
https://miro.medium.com/max/2590/1*dUTkjI-1JieCQeS_xvJNyA.png can't i just post an image?
for my dem friends https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*oM8JgvgcpwuF_E1DB4sDfg.png
"Did you read the chart in that article?" There are 13 charts, in fact. Did you read them?
"Majority believes fraud occurred." despite *overwhelming* evidence to the contrary, and in line with a series of lies fed to them by elected Republicans and right wing media.
"Majority believes voting should be easier." Re-read that. A *huge* majority (looks like around 80%) believe voting *should not* be made easier.
"Among Democrats, 97% say there was no widespread fraud in the election"
I feel like its important at this point to distinguish between Republican *voters* and Republican *representatives* (and the same for Democrats).
The charts represent mostly polls of voters, but from those results conjecture a narrative about elected representatives (and their media sycophants). For example, the so-called "Big Lie" about election fraud. The voters believe it because the representatives & the media machine planted it and amplified it. I'm not saying the voters are anti-democracy, I'm saying the reps & pundits are, and their ploy is working.
Nevertheless, the point remains that the Republican Party policy is deeply unpopular, and they only win elections through lies and disenfranchisement. If you think otherwise, feel free to plead your case.
Notice the word "possibility"
Please stop responding to events with hypotheticals.
Please stop responding to events with hypotheticals.
I frequently change my mind in light of new evidence. Do you not?
No.
the Republican Party policy is deeply unpopular, and they only win elections through lies and disenfranchisement. If you think otherwise, feel free to plead your case. Otherwise, go to bed.
No I suggested they're losing because their platform is quite unpopular, and instead of pivoting to a more popular platform they're using what little power they have left to make voting harder. Hell, they literally torched the official platform in 2020 and exist solely to do what Trump wants (look at the National GOP Convention statement, it is exactly this and nothing more). They're also spinning up a propaganda campaign that seems to be working among their most fervent supporters, which is troubling.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/voting-rights-case-gop-lawyer-says-quiet-part-loud-n1259439
I thought it went without saying but I guess I need to say it: The main difference I see between election skeptics on the left and election skeptics on the right is that, on the left these people tend to be far-left, out of the mainstream of Democratic identity (many would balk at being labeled "Democrat" or "Liberal", and largely a "bottom-up" kind of thing. On the right, it's much more "top-down", and completely in line with the mainstream of Republican identity, to the point where it's a primary motivator of their actions within government. Yes, this exists on "both sides" but in wildly different capacities.
You want to talk about 2016? Then look at the two candidates' answers to the debate question "Will you accept the results?"
"... allowed the Dems to bend laws, act outside of certain traditions, etc" Give examples.
I agree but that's not what we're talking about right now.
Lot to unpack there but short answer is *eyeroll*
I've said it before but here we go again: For someone so fervently anti-partisan you frequently and uncritically parrot Fox News narratives. I've got a busy workday ahead so I doubt I'll have time to pick apart the subtleties of the 3 things you just said, but suffice to say each one could be its own longform article. Maybe I can find some articles...
Meanwhile https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/02/capitol-police-qanon-march-4-theory-claims-trump-president/6894882002/
You know what might be nice in a 2-party, binary star, inevitable implosion, death spiral scenario? That the third party that wants to assert itself as the alternative to that scenario, and eventual savior of cosmic implosion, would come up with new content that isn't just regurgitating the major talking points of one of the stars caught in the death spiral as a way to criticize the other star in the death spiral. Cause in that way it sounds less like the third party is trying to save us, and instead is simply trying to replace one of the stars.
Not holding my breath there.
Thanks Biden. My state has now reversed policy to allow teachers to get the vaccine, and I made an appointment for my wife to get her first dose next week.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
She then goes and shows off by finding an appointment for herself on Friday through a different provider. Which was really the plan all along. Book something just to get it on the calendar, then try to find something better if we could and cancel the first appointment.
You mean to tell me, Government, works?
Well, leadership from the federal level in this case worked.
Dr. Seuss! Mr. Potato Head! Why the Culture Wars Have Never Been Dumber
https://newrepublic.com/articl...
"..it’s worth stressing that the entire episode is embarrassing for everyone involved and deeply stupid. It’s emblematic of the state of the culture wars right now, in which bad-faith nonsense is continuously elevated into existential importance."
couldn't have said it better. this stuff is such a stupid distraction from the material concerns of real americans.
Good, smart, simple article. Thanks for sharing.
np- i love new republic, it has thoughtful, sober analysis that like you said is easily digestible. another point i really liked:
Never mind that Mr. Potato Head is gender neutral by design—you can make it look however you want! Never mind that the allegation also wasn’t true—Hasbro was still making Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads, it had just changed the name of the umbrella brand. And never mind that, in the end, it’s a toy potato.
it's just further proof that the right, aimless without their cult-of-personality leader, are now almost entirely a party of grievance. i miss the days of debating conservative economic policy.
Have you noticed that [xlax] treats every instance of leftist lunacy as a [part of a larger trend], and every instance of right lunacy as [an isolated incident]?
see, it's easy to make incredible generic sentences instead of engaging with the specific ideas at hand.
Way to talk past the sale. This can't be an isolated incident of "left lunacy" since it isn't lunacy or leftist at all. It's a manufactured outrage and you're out there guzzling bait.
Yes. Just once I'd like to see him make one, salient response and move on instead of spamming every comment with multiple responses that don't say anything. But maybe that's just me. I guess it's a numbers game for him?
it's a combination of delusions of grandeur, paranoia, and distraction from the most shiny grievance of the day.
No, you are using the article to spew the same multiple points you always make. Have you noticed how every other forum regular puts their thoughts into a single response? That's good forum etiquette.
No, you're just typing a lot of text without saying anything.
Here are the topics at hand:
"Dr. Seuss Enterprises won’t be publishing new versions of six books"
"Hasbro is still making Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads, it just changed the name of the umbrella brand."
Please, please explain how in the hell these two events are remotely "left lunacy."
Dr Seuss is not getting cancelled.
To reiterate: "Dr. Seuss Enterprises won’t be publishing new versions of six books"
SIX. BOOKS. Less than 10% of his published work, and among the *least* popular. More than that, the Seuss estate itself elected to stop publishing these books. No one made anyone do anything. No one cancelled anyone. It's a manufactured outrage. Take the L, man.
the article that he claims he "read"
clearly went right over his head.
his attempt at debate completely stunk
on which all of archinect was able to dunk
"Be less white" or "be less of an asshole?" If being less of an asshole makes a company more money, seems like a win/win to me. Manufactured rage from wackos who think potatoes have genders aside.
Just my casual observance, but it seems the neurosis is not from the left but more the odd fascination on the right to bring it to everyone's attention all the time. In the case of Hasbro or the Dr. S Foundation, each of these enterprises simply asked themselves 'how can we do better, how can we be more inclusive?' Many of Dr. Seuss' books touch on environmental awareness, listening to the minority, raising up the weak, and in general, being a decent person (or creature). The Foundation doesn't have to be defensive about racism because they know that the author never intended to hurt with his words. They're simply acknowledging that some of their catalogue is outdated and needs retired. Why does the right have this weird obsession with pointing out the natural progression and evolution of the world getting slightly better each day at a time? Oh yeah, because they see it as a slight against them. 'Your win, is my loss--poor me.'
If the majority thought it was a good idea for you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?
Nah, but if the minority claimed they had won the poll suggesting he jump, he'd bitch and moan about being prevented from doing so and then whine about how his taxes were being wasted on the facility at which he was being treated at no further cost.
xlax- the majority of the country does not give a shit about mr potato head. they care about raising the minimum wage, unemployment benefits, federal stimulus checks, and health care- all of which enjoy upwards 70% support nationwide.
the irony is that you are the one who is out of touch obsessing about the decisions of private company's toys and children's books.
This is the free market at work.
80% of people believe a thing that this isn't an example of. Cool. cool.
lol you're all over the map, man. I'm bored, see you in a day or two when you make some other unrelated issue into a crusade about the only thing you're able to talk about.
...
x-jla - you're an idiot
You're an idiot.
The books where pulled because they where the lowest selling of all of the Seuss catalog - almost zero sales. During market research with a focus group of teachers in the US the six books in question where identified as ones that they didn't use. The teachers also mentioned that there where questionable racial characterchers illustrations in the books as well. Even the late Dr. Seuss said that the six books in question where disappointments and because of his racial drawings in it they should never be sold again.
The company owning Seuss' work decided to pull the six books because they weren't selling, no body was using them. AND they had racial characterchers from early on in Seuss' career as a cartoonist.
No on 'canceled' the books.
jla, this game is old. I'm not interested in playing anymore. If anyone wants to have actual discussions, I'm all for it. Your style of "debate" is a complete waste of time.
we were making progress when people ignored him and talked to each other instead. unfortunately, his verbal vomiting is like a car wreck and hard to ignore sometimes, especially by a select few.... while the occasional collective dunking is helpful, trying to engage him point for point is completely useless if others hope to raise the level of discourse beyond toy potatoes and imaginary conservative greivances.
I'm all for trying to revive this thread again by ignoring or disregarding these rants, to the best of my ability.
Honestly attempting to counter the right's pretend outrage lends it a legitimacy on which they can further their platform, yes. Quit falling for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spo1jK4CCEU
I dunno man you seem like the angriest one around here by a long shot.
IM NOT SHOUTING YOURE SHOUTING
dunkkk.
vs what xlax thinks dunking is.
Also the one most "religiously" dedicated to a cause.
^lol
^^lolol
I knew it--he thinks the one with the most comments wins!
Halfwit Calvinball world champ right here.
“I retire champion”
Undisputed!
please, retire. preferably somewhere off the grid.
Oh man. I just felt a deep pang of sadness over the loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I miss him.
ugh, for real. every time i see him in a movie it's heartbreaking.
Say what you will about Hillary, she knows how to hire good social media managers.
Barr killed Epstein, duh.
maybe it was a virus...
I've been trying to figure out a good Epstein-Barr Virus joke for well over a year. The setup is so obvious, yet any clever construction has so far eluded me.
what
ahhhh I get it.
Friday brain.
CAN WE PLEASE STOP CALLING THEM MODERATE DEMOCRATS?
It suggests, in very real language, that the other Democrats are:
excessive, extreme, inordinate, radical
irrational, unreasonable, unreasoning
extremist, fanatic (or fanatical), rabid
unbridled, unchecked, uncontrolled, unrestrained
This is unhelpful to our discourse and has become normalized. I'm also starting to hear mainstream media call it the "Democrat Party."
For fuck's sake, as much as certain rabid, mouth-breathing members might suggest, the media spends WAY more time giving a shit about offending and cow-towing to the GOP than they ever have the Democrats.
Call them what they are: sane Republicans.
I'm also with you on "Democrat Party" - like nails on a chalkboard every time I hear someone say it.
well, that is the purpose: to demonize the other
That said...I don't necessarily agree with SP that "moderate democrat" is problematic. No one has exclusive right to to the majority view & describing moderates as distinct from progressives isn't divisive as much as descriptive. The label isn't a smear from the GOP but a self-described one.
It's the same issue I have with pro-life and pro-choice. They are cynically chosen self-labels which intentionally cast the people who disagree as bad, not just people with different opinions. The opposite of moderate (excessive, etc) is not what the rest of the democrats are, the opposite of pro-choice (anti-choice) is not what the opposition is, same with pro-life (anti-life?).
I see what you mean, but, at some point, we can only use the language that we have. Perhaps the exclusionary aspect is more in the eye of the beholder/ear of the listener? But my perception may be jaded by my predilections...
I'd counter that we have lots of language, and it's not much effort to carefully choose the pieces of it we employ.
People often claim I'm overly concerned with the meaning of words, but I figure that makes them anti-semantic.
X-jla, please edit your comment and list in alphabetical order please.
yes, there are some people who can be described with certain adjectives, and others who can be described using entirely different adjectives!!
My father once knew a man
i like lamp
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/03...
The Stimulus Bill Is a Step Toward Aggressively Fighting Poverty
BuT bOtH sIdEs.
it isn't perfect, but even jacobin can recognize that it's the most significant bill in terms of fighting poverty in decades. at this point it's clear who each party represents, both in words and actions.
Curious when they will raise minimum wage, hope they can keep the momentum going...
Byyyyeeeeee....
But did you realise other people have feelings?
Jla, you need more mdma. Or maybe some psilocybin.
I haven't tried LSD but from what I've heard, shrooms may give you more of the "we're all connected" feeling that right-libertarians seem to be missing.
"government mandated community or good will" is not the goal of the left, at least not for most of us. It's about not leaving the less fortunate behind while the selfish and greedy bask in their riches. I'm left/libertarian; I get the desire to keep government involvement out of things. But the right--authoritarian and libertarian alike--are entirely focused on themselves and their own needs without understanding or feeling responsibility to the rest of the world. Maybe if you try some shrooms you'll get it.
So you want to severely restrict government but want to implement UBI. Well I see no contradiction there.
Labels can be useful. Or more specifically, categorizing viewpoints. But if you really believe in UBI as a solution for addressing poverty and oppression, I agree with you.
I don't see how we can address the climate crisis and other environmental concerns without government help; people in general are far too selfish and self-oriented to do it on their own. The few of us who try are still not doing enough, and are regularly ridiculed for trying.
While spontaneous order may be possible in some cases, entropy is far more common.
I share many of your utopian ideas above. Say we absolve government--every individual is free to do as they wish, around the world. Some realize that if they pool resources they can live easier, more productive lives.
But there is in-fighting because humans are jealous creatures. Small groups start to form, leaders emerge, whether by personality or force.
Small groups join forces to become larger groups, to hoard resources and share labor. The groups are too large for each individual to have a say--they can either choose to take their changes and leave the group, or stay and benefit from sharing of labor and resources. The smaller groups send their leaders as representatives to make decisions. Voila, government.
Although I would love to live in a world of equality and freedom, I can't see any system surviving without some form of government.
i think jla needs to look into a guided ayahuasca trip.
Every culture and society on the planet has some form of government, and has for thousands and thousands of years. It's the only realistic way to get anything done beyond one's own personal subsistence. This entire argument is ridiculous. We can argue about the right strategy - reform, clean slate, whatever - but no society can exist (nevermind thrive) without government.. without it, you're left with individuals living as islands to themselves.
Jla, if the long game means a post-apocalyptic timeframe where the earth's climate and biodiversity are nearly destroyed and humankind has mostly killed each other off, then I agree--libertarianism/anarchism may well be the rule. Hopefully that's after my time on earth but at the current pace I'm not sure it will be.
On a related note, has anyone read my buddy Dan's sister's latest book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54814834-under-a-white-sky? She's a good researcher, thinker and writer. Previously wrote this uplifting book: https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/elizabeth-kolbert.
why are we still talking about libertarians as if they are an influential force in politics in this country?
we all know what happened with the bears in new hampshire (spoiler, the bears did very well):
Libertarian vs. Bear
https://newrepublic.com/articl...
Have you read Guns, Germs and Steel? It's well researched and has a different conclusion.
yes. the big government coalition of independent white farmers perpetuated slavery in america.
you have an interesting reading of history.
I don't disagree that big government is a problem. That's why political tests always put me as a liberal libertarian. While I don't trust large government, I trust big businesses even less, and trust individuals to do the right thing the least. Pooling our opinions via voting and using government to administer the will of the majority should be effective. Our current system in the US has become less and less effective, with a minority now controlling most decisions.
In mostly unrelated news, do any of you read Dr. Heather Cox Richardson's daily letters? She lives not far from me, and is a brilliant historian and communicator. Today's post was interesting: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-14-2021.
note the qualifier: "big" government, not "any" government- those are your words. read a little more carefully arch bro.
you two are really trying to argue that the south stood for "big government" (quoting xlax) in the civil war? novel take, for sure.
no, not what i'm arguing. you claimed "big government" is the cause of slavery, which has partial truth, but fails to acknowledge what the south stood for, which was small independent farming estates which carried out said violence. nuance. big government also ended the system.
more interested in the convenient yet dubious "center" (often imagined as above the fray) that libertarians claim to occupy, which happens to be an easy way to never be "this side" or "that side."
"I’m not saying “no government” I’m saying minimal government."
A country of 330M spread across climate & time zones & urban/nonurban conditions is a complicated country with diverse perspectives. Our history has demonstrated that people WILL abuse whatever undefined space there is to create personal benefit at the expense of others. The greater good, or community-based good-faith support of the less fortunate, does not happen without organization from the federal government. It just doesn't. The romantic myth of small town caring for your community does not translate to the larger scale of community that dominates our culture currently. To wit, a large segment of society doesn't want "their" taxes to pay for benefits for others.
Or even simpler: who pays for infrastructure between two or more communities? Who organizes the process? Who ensures that the citizens are safe and getting fair value? Like WG said, I'm also in favour of smaller government, but who gets to decide what's small, big, or appropriate? There are people with PhDs who don't agree on any of these details.
Hitting [return] sends the quick reply. You can "edit" your reply to add the other parts of your post to the same post with paragraph breaks & formatting, etc (for a limited time).
Sales tax doesn't decide anything. A person is required...maybe even many people are required depending on the decision's sphere of influence.
Yeah x, that doesn't answer anything.
x-jla , just type your replies in notepad or email program first and copy paste it in. That’s what Rick is doing ;-)
Tell me again how guns aren't the problem. TELL ME AGAIN; I FUCKING DARE YOU.
I thought they were the solution.
Feel pretty confident without unmuting you that the proper response is "Fuck off."
Very happy that guns for personal protection is not a thing here. very happy. Ditto for real laws with balls that keep murder toys out of the common idiot's hands.
Jla, like always, the issue is not mental health. The problem is the cavalier attitude (or the god's given right to own) you express towards ownership. The problem will not go away until people stop buying and carrying silly murder toys. I don't expect you to understand.
Quoting myself from 2014: Guns don't kill people, complex combinations of poverty, chronic bullying, undertreated mental illness, domestic and emotional abuse, hyperbolic political rhetoric, media glorification, and lack of proper gun regulation kill people. With guns.
The same people who like to yell that Guns Don't Kill People also like to dodge or in many cases exacerbate the problems they themselves point to every time some mother fucker kills people with a gun. If, in 2021, that's still your idiotic refrain, you can kindly see yourself out.
^and there's a big part of the problem.
your inane pov Jla. That's the problem... you're one of the crazy motherfucker with guns. No debate here.
The problem with this country is that the right wing nuts think guns are the solution. The liberals like to give them a free pass and say that mental health is the problem.
Guess what, there are mental health problems in every country, but the mass murders are only in the US. GUNS ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM YOU BOZOS.
Not the issue at hand Jla.
Not going to waste time on your sources. Your obsession with silly murder toys is the problem and you, and others with dumb-as-fuck guns are not the problem pov, are major contributors to it. You are partially responsible for the deaths in Colorado.
not going to waste time looking at your own terrible short comings, typical these days.
wrong, again... so wrong. Keep your murder toys and keep supporting the nonsense. Such silliness is the fucked-up comfort level you idiots have with that 2A that you can't see your own very real problems.
it's looking like march madness in here with all this dunking on xlax
Jla's link shows a single data source, this ABC article: https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/mass-shootings-in-us-compared-with-other-countries. That article shares a single data source, this website: https://crimeresearch.org/data/. If you click "Op-Eds" on that site, you get a list starting with, "Democrat Hypocrisy" and containing such classics as, "Trudeau’s gun ban won’t make us safer" and, "Punished for tweeting the truth." I think it's safe to assume that their "data" should be considered suspect.
Who's running the archinect March madness pool for dunks on jla? Where can I fill out my bracket!?
The families of the victims thank you Jla for contributing to their pain and suffering.
agreed. what would help with this is if you stopped posting.
I wish debate was possible, but it’s not
That's on you, dumbfuck.
Counterpoint: Yup.
"I have a family to protect."
Statistically the person most likely to be harmed by a gun you own is a family member. It's an oversimplified statistic that I'll admit clouds the narrative, but then again so does the 'data' you posted so we'll call it even.
"Not relevant" might more accurately describe my feelings.
I make my thesis once per thread. It's a few posts up. My posts since then are mostly intentionally lazy prodding. Anyway, back to work.
Regardless of source, I find the study quiet odd and inhumane - and the use of it to justify pro-gun laws even more so. It’s very premise normalizes gun violence. It accepts the fact the US has the highest number of mass shootings in the world and then tries to mitigate it by comparing it against “per capita” as if it has any real relevance to the problem at hand. Here’s the way I look at it and always have - If guns were removed from people’s hands it will reduce unnecessary loss of life. Period. I would sleep much better at night.
I think what gets me irked about pro-gunners that use this kind of argument is that even if it were statistically proven that less access to guns = fewer mortality
rate they would immediately jump on the 2A argument.
The thing that I don't understand is how people say they need these firearms for protection yet nearly every gun owner I meet has no training and thinks shooting at a paper target 20' away, once a month will prepare them for defensive combat. It won't
Your points are less than moot, JLA. I can't believe there is a place in a apparently developed world, where it is acceptable and celebrated to own murder toys... even under the illusion of your sudden rape scenario. I get it, it's another trolley problem, but instead of picking the best outcome for the largest % (ie. massively reduced gun access bordering on absolute zero and a complete removal of the 2A as a defense for auto ownership "rights"), you choose to set the trolley on fire and toss it into an orphanage.
x-jla, look, I've this exact conversation with others with your sentiments and I've come to realize the basic premise of our beliefs on this matter are at odds. We can throw statistics at each other all day long, but your status quo is fear/paranoia and you've accepted the norm that guns need to exist in this society. This is the debate I want to have.
It would seem the disagreement is about who is most vulnerable.
In Trump's case, most of the 2A nuts showed up to fight *for* tyranny. So, idk there.
Everything looks like a nail if all you have is a hammer.
tduds: "It would seem the disagreement is about who is most vulnerable."
What do you mean?
x-jla: you are basically saying a gun is the and only answer to all the problems your stating. I find this mindset problematic and simply disagree.
I want to be clear. I don't hate guns. As an object and piece of technology/machine I actually find them quite fascinating . I've gone to shooting ranges and played around with them, albeit got bored quickly. I do believe the majority of gun-carriers, hobbyists, hunters are respectful of the power they hold in their hands. I do believe there is an element of mental issues when someone finds it ok to take another person's life.
BUT, my stance is simply this: If we can reduce the mortality rate by removing guns then I'm all for it. We don't NEED them and I'm not going to shed a single tear for the hobbyists or hunters out there. A human life will always take priority.
Well, if we lived in my utopia then the hypothetical assailant wouldn't have a gun. As for a knife, with 34 years of MMA training you should be able to take him/her down with ease.
It should be a group effort! The burden shall not only be placed my shoulders.
Anyone surprised?
seems like these arguments hit a peak during the trump years, and have not aged well, at all. not that they were ever really taken seriously... looking at you, rudy.
The Far Right Playbook: Lie loudly, apologize quietly.
You have some kind of disorder.
Troll is hungry.
hmm.. not your best.
I posted this elsewhere & thought it belonged here. In response to the most recent back & forth but also as a general point of annoyance about certain tactics in this thread:
One thing that really annoys me, that isn't called out enough, is anytime someone points out a huge and obvious problem - like, oh I dunno, gun violence - some rando chimes in demanding specific and well researched policy proposals.
No. I'm not going to do that for you. That's not the conversation I'm having. I'm not going to take the bait that allows you to poke easy holes in the inevitably undercooked ideas I had an hour ago. I'm not going to go on the defensive because you misunderstood my demand. It's not my job to solve the crisis of gun violence. It's not my job to create policy.
It *is* my job to yell at the people whose job *is* to do that. It's my job to hold accountable the people who were elected to craft policy. They put a ton of effort into getting a job whose primary responsibility is to solve problems, or at least try, through policy.
If they want their job so bad, they need to listen to problems and try to solve them. If they are deliberately refusing to do that job, it's my job - it's all of our jobs - to call that out. And, if they ignore us, it's our job to campaign for their challengers.
what annoys me is that your STILL don't understand that people don't enjoy interacting with you on this thread. you're more of a gnat to swat and much less an intellect to banter with.
honestly, if you truly want a substantive conversation (which i'm skeptical of), even if we assume everyone else is completely wrong, and you are completely right, you might want to change your approach to "debate," because there is more than enough evidence that it's not working, and it never has been.
your "audience" is over it- change your approach, or move on.
Gun owners like you are bible thumpers. Same thing, just different sacred cows.
"when big problems are pointed out, a simplistic, too easy, often incorrect causation is identified, and then a knee jerk policy is demanded"
To me this is indicative of a public education failure, and perhaps a case for more scientists and fewer lawyers in congress.