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Comments
Credibility is a weird word. I didn't believe the movement had decent goals to start with. It hijacked decent goals for something else, a goal I can't really speculate about because I don't think anybody involved tried to really set anything in stone either. Mainly I guess it was justification for patting each other on the back and unfairly maligning every man on the planet (oh Aziz Ansari...).
I mean, women (I'd say men but seriously, the Kevin Spacey thing got weird) should always feel open about coming forward with any abuses of power or just assault in general, but I'm pretty sure most decent people knew that before 2018.
However, pretending that people didn't know this was a big part of the whole deal, on purpose.
Hilariously enough Betsy DeVos undid Joe Biden's Title IX modifications and he then proceeded to complain about it, even as he advocates for what she's proposed in his own circumstances.
In other news I noticed that it's been quiet here the last few days so I decided to just Beyblade it.
This is extremely childish of me, but I've had this on my mind for days on end. You don't actually even have to say anything against it, it's that dumb.
Here goes!
You complain a lot about Ron DeSantis but you're aware that if he weren't your Governor, Andrew Gillum would be, right?
I mean, in all fairness, in this alternate timeline he probably wouldn't have had the time to meet up with "honeyhammock@gmail.com" because of the Coronavirus stuff but, like, still.
Actually, does Coronavirus even happen in this timeline? Who knows...
* more forward-thinking (not just reactive) environmental policy that'd involve better protection of things like my drinking water aquifer and probably vaguely better enforcement of stuff like the coastal construction control line
* a compromise map rather than a gerrymandered map from redistricting
* a more competent -- or at least more open, even if incompetent -- response to the coronavirus pandemic (at the very least, one that's more closely aligned with the recommendations of epidemiology experts than with following in the footsteps of an incompetent president)
* fewer coverups involving nursing homes and other such weirdness
* similar problems with the unemployment system
* a Florida Man sex scandal involving Gov. Gillum drunk off his ass being reported by a male prostitute
I'll take that deal.
Edit: With regards to my not responding to your previous post: I generally don't dabble in the affairs of celebrities. If I'm forced to have something to say in response to them, I can say something, but if I don't feel forced to do so I can just blow it off.
As for the #metoo hashtag, the proper purpose of this social phenomenon is to highlight the problem of sexual misconduct (including but not limited to actual assault) and to improve scrutiny on the issue. Unfortunately, (1) this is a complicated topic and very much not well-suited for tweets (or worse, hashtags), and (2) this often involves a variety of very private information that can't be and ought not to be used as a public battlefield for ideological wanking, in part due to the fact that the public is generally not actually privy to the relevant information anyway. The opinion "look at what a mess the #metoo movement has become!" basically just gets a shrug out of me.
Again, I'm not sure this would happen in the alternate timeline, so at least in that regard I'm glad we got this one instead.
I did actually want to talk about this. There's a lot of stuff that gay men, under the guise of the 'gay community', basically go around whitewashing*1. There's stuff like drugs (I honestly can't remember all the secret codewords for meth there are right now that get passed around on Grindr or whatever).
In the 90s, one of those things was underage guys. I mean, straight guys have that too*2, but for them it's been culturally unacceptable forever (unless you want to be pedantic and ask the Romans or whatever). Unfortunately, much like in a lot of statutory sexual assault stories that only come out when the older lady gets pregnant, U18 boys aren't so smart when it comes to making decisions about their potential sex lives.
So you have this situation where there are genuinely guys out there, in the 90s and before, who took advantage of this a lot.
1* To expand from this, girls at least have (had? I think it's had now) "shaming" to prevent any bad decision making, since there was an external force that could be linked to the internalized guilt of making bad sexual decisions.
Boys don't, at all, and "being a gentleman" is so dead I won't even bother with it. So when it's two boys, there's no mental limiters on the both of you (and your regret is never reinforced by the outside world, at least not in a way that could yield positive results). Of course, if I want to practice what I preach in terms of ideology I should say "people will go after whatever because they're humans and you can't stop that" but also, like, there's no way that's good for you.
I read about how West Hollywood*3 and New York had to tell the organizers of gay "social mixers" to really, really stop it for now because of coronavirus and what most surprised me was that these guys aren't running around looking for a husband, getting real jobs, and not being hyper-promiscuous in general at all times.
I'm honestly not an expert on this stuff, I wish there was somebody who was who wasn't also simultaneously like "Let your sexuality free ie literally sell your humanity to your body's urges." so I could at least get a handle on what the heck is going on.
2*
3*West Hollywood being where Stormy Daniels was given the key to the city (by the mayor? I can't remember now, probably by the mayor) in front of a prominent drag queen/still gay adult film director's uh... "novelty" store.
Overall, I'm not saying promiscuity is anywhere nearly as bad as taking advantage of U18s, but the mechanisms that allowed the latter are prominent in the former, and I dislike the former on it's own faults.
However, I also love the world and I really don't want the world to stop being the world (I mean, you saw *3 right?), but I'd like it if once in a while somebody pointed out that all this rampant promiscuity and, even worse, "monogamish"-ness(????), is really not something to be celebrated.
(A gigantic thread where neither of us can decide to consistently either direct-reply or quote-reply ensues).
Later, on The 14w Digest dot Com: GMH accuses 14w of spreading false information, 14w TOTALLY SHREDS his argument.
Later, on TotallyNotOnGMH'sSide dot Org; Outrage as people on the tweeter accuse known far-Souther 14w of spreading 'a deeply misogynist narrative'.
This is fun.
(1) make a few offhand comments regarding various topics, with hashtags included as might be relevant
(2) ask developers about making their games DRM-free
(3) respond to elections geeks, often asking for more data
I've occasionally gotten involved in some arguments, but the difficulty of conducting an argument over twitter the way I want -- and twitter's horrible user interface -- usually just makes me walk away.
I've heard of the crazy beefs various webspace celebs like youtubers can get into. I look at them as an outsider and wonder "how the flying frack did this become a thing". It's like a soap opera, except starring people with gaming chairs instead of mamacitas.
I think the important thing to remember about fights is that human beings are predisposed to fighting, the medium is basically irrelevant. Education systems have weaned a lot of us off physical violence, but that doesn't mean we'll ever stop fighting in general.
While it's possible for someone to as heavily politicize everything as he does and also stay on message, and it'd work to such a person's advantage to do so, he himself does not do this.
So, not only are his political messages a mess, but so is his leadership during "serious time" circumstances.
And then there's "on message", which message? And in terms of "leadership"... do you mean in terms of how he communicates, or how he leads/delegates to his team, which, in all respects, has been pretty good? Of course, the public disagreements between him and his experts should be kept behind closed doors, but that's still more in terms of message than actions.
I actually had a funny thought; I remember watching a commercial for dolls from Barbie in the Princess and the Pauper. The commercial went; Anneliese sings of Duty, and Erika sings of Hope. So, I'd say, Trump is Erika, and the various experts are Anneliese. That's not an inconsistency.
I mean, I personally think he falls into a lot of great policy. The state by state federalist policy on lockdowns and reopenings for example, was great, but probably not intended.
But when you go "falls into" and then "a lot" you have to start thinking some of it is actually on purpose.
I mean, I always knew from the start that the whole machine vs Everybody Donald Trump knew was to get to an endpoint rather than based in these people having done things they'd have been arrested for otherwise (but were still wrong). At the time, I thought the means justified the ends because they were looking into Russian collusion.
Even so, I didn't think "the means justifying the ends" included "lying and cheating" and "obvious kneecapping for political reasons". I mostly thought exercising the opposite of prosecutorial prudence was okay, since at the very least it's legal. Now it seems like there's an effort to keep Flynn under investigation just cause otherwise it'd look bad.
I'm not saying this here to be all "Gotcha!" because I mean, I was a Russia Collusion guy for years (in fact I still believed in the whole Russian prostitute dossier thing long after everybody realized it was a fraud
Also, keeping in the theme of clarity, here's a gigantolongpost on the full extent of what doesn't make sense about Tara Reade's allegations by the only journalist both GMH and I can agree isn't a shill.
Unmasking is a routine procedure that happens thousands of times a year, and the current administration and conservative media (like, say, that National Review article you linked) is trying to pretend that it's an unprecedented scandal because they want to use it as Irrefutable Proof™ of a Deep State Conspiracy™.
Also the reason none of the "Russia Collusion Guys" ever corrected their story is because there really wasn't much to correct. It was, in fact, a real thing that resulted in dozens of people being indicted and convicted, but folks act as if the president himself not being charged is equivalent to the president being Completely Exonerated™ and doing Nothing Wrong™, and Irrefutable Proof™ of a Deep State Conspiracy™" (notice a pattern?)
So, uh, it turns out that the transcript of what Reade said irt her underwear is kind of ambiguous but leans on the side of 'they were normal lingerie undergarments' rather than anything as scandalous as is claimed here.
I'm specifically talking about the Steele dossier, not everything, as I've said here:
---
That's what I said!
I guess I should specify here that unmasking involves American citizens, not foreign agents.
Essentially, I think you're attempting to neuter these things. It happens thousands of times a year, but is still a big deal.
---
I understand that. I also understand that he and Obama had a history, so to Trump (who probably wouldn't have listened anyways) Obama wasn't exactly a neutral party (even if we were to pretend that one isn't a Democrat and the other a Republican and that they were just CEOs).
The part where Flynn was unmasked to the media was probably illegal though.
Dude, NR has Kevin Williamson and Michael Brendan Dougherty, two of the biggest (not insane) Never Trumpers around. This is not about the Deep State, this is about one administration targeting the other, there's no magic conspiracy to people wanting to do what people do (but usually refrain from).
And I'm not saying the unmasking was the be-all, end-all, that's why I mentioned the entrapment, which you didn't justify.
Neither I, nor any decent conservative, least of all the guys at NR, believe in the magical and mysterious land of the Deep State.
You have no idea how deep conservative media goes. NR is basically as center right as things get (well, The American Conservative is both staunchly Christian and very Never Trump, but I don't think these two thinks bode very well in terms of 'center', just felt I had to mention it).
Also, this being dismissive thing (with the trademarks) feels like you don't wish to argue these things or explain them to me and take them at face value as truths instead of issues with many shades of grey.
As I've said before!
Do you honestly think Michael Cohen being indicted for the Stormy Daniels (and... tax evasion?) thing counts as Russian collusion? Or do you mean Massie Block if she were a Greek Dude George Papadopoulos' twelve-day prison stint for "making false statements".
Or, maybe, Roger Stone's more significant 40-month sentence, also on "making false statements" and other fixer nonsense.
Do you honestly think no politician before Donald Trump had fixers who, based on this precedent, deserve to be in jail?
ahem
Nice you see you Blueyed. It's been a while!
Re: the entrapment case, I recall someone on another forum describing it better than I could, so I went and dug it up: Make of it what you will.
Re: the deep state, I won't contest But I'll say that my problem with it is that there are a lot of indecent conservatives in positions of power who are willing to use it as an excuse (mostly "ousting a career official and replacing them with a loyalist yes-man, justifying it after the fact by claiming they were a Never Trumper all along or part of some other nebulous conspiracy", but "trying to make an investigation go away by claiming it was a plot against them" also shows up, like what seems to be happening with Flynn), whether they actually believe it or not, so I might view the idea a bit derisively, and anything that feeds into that narrative comes across as a red flag to me. I apologize if I painted you with that brush as well.
And I think I misread some of the stuff you said about the other topic, but I will say about the Steele dossier, I can't recall ever hearing that it was actually debunked? Like, most of it is still assumed to be accurate intel? I couldn't tell you for sure, though. I don't stay up-to-date on every detail (politics, anxiety, etc).
The document wasn't leaked, the DOJ has just made it public record.
It clearly says (you can ctrl+f):
In all honesty, I think this type of callous language happens in the FBI like, on an hourly basis, but it doesn't look good here.
Wooooah, that's a lot. It's clear that at the very least Biden knew about the effort (since that's been released by Richard Grenell) but it's not clear that this was a "coup". I mean, that would have required organization directly with the Obama administration, but what happened seems to be to the effect of nobody stopped it (even after the agents who interviewed Flynn came to believe he wasn't anything other than he said he was*), rather than direct interference.
*
As I mentioned, he did in fact misstate his call to the Russian ambassador to both Mike Pence and the FBI, but we don't know if it's he forgot or just felt like not mentioning it meant he'd look better (the FBI had a recording of this call hence that "get him fired" thing up there). What he said on the phone call (I'm sure a transcript is available somewhere) is that the Russian government should wait out the transition, which seemed okay advice for somebody who knew what Trump's Russia policy would be, and not significantly terrifying with hindsight.
All I'm saying is that, the FBI is staffed by humans, and they were going with a theory that they were trying to prove. In trying to prove it, a lot of mistakes were made (because, as I said, the means would justify the ends), mistakes nobody wishes to own up to (hence this weird thing in charging Flynn with parallel charges to keep him under investigation).
See, I do think this was about Trump, but I'd guess it was more about being terrified/ginned up about Russian involvement. The facts didn't bode well, but nobody knew that till they looked into it. Feelings definitely ran high, and I'm not one to say "I would never, ever let my feelings and bias get in the way of doing things thoroughly and ethically." because nobody ever does that.
Everything that could be verified, I think, was based on documentation already available. This was mixed in with scandalous information to make it seem more believable.
I guess my "narrative" in terms of politics, especially when it boils down to what is essentially office politics like this, is that "Literally everybody is covering their backsides at all times, end of".
Ah, I see. Well, it's a shame, since it'd be nice to see more of you around here. Plus, this surely counts as CBT.
Anyhow, the line between "is it political kneecapping" and "is it genuine national security interest" unsurprisingly becomes very blurred when there's an actual (or incoming) elected official who's well-known to be tied (very much so) to business relations with a foreign government that has a record of at least questionable motives regarding the country.
They may or may not, but right now, Donald Trump is the problem.
And if others were shady, he's shadier. He's pretty much built his whole reputation on being able to do various shady things to be able to turn negotiations into zero-sum games and look good winning at them while hiding his losses. (He's not a normal "business" person in the sense of seeking to create win-win situations and a stable business environment.)
Honestly, a big problem with the criticisms of the investigations surrounding Mr. Trump is that they're all about "but the people who are supposed to be the good guys are actually doing shady things!" and it's like it's completely missing the bigger picture of what's going on.
You posted an Arcdigital article she wrote about gender differences a few months ago!
Also I hope you recognize that my usage of the term "shill" is sarcasm and not me genuinely calling someone a shill.
Which is why I said:
So, without trying to bring us into alignment to the letter, I think we agree.
Probably something a friend showed me that I read and thought was interesting/meaningful/intriguing/thought-provoking; I don't read this stuff often to differentiate the authors by name.
Be careful not to twist yourself into something like this.
(I am really confused by all of this. There's ample time before the DNC convention to get literally anybody else.)
(Not that I believe or don't believe he did what he's accused of, but still.)
A candidate is package of traits, good, bad, and ugly all together, and I'd vote for a candidate whose is likely to succeed at enacting policies that I think are better. And I'm pretty sure most people understand this (in spite of "voters are stupid" memes). Like, I'm pretty sure most of the people who voted for Mr. Trump don't think he's a saint either.
Ms. Reade's recent allegations, even if true, are almost certainly not going to change my choice for POTUS in the general election; even if those allegations are true, at the present time I would have no moral qualms about voting for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump.
also for some reason this music feels appropriate though it's only coincidential that I'm listening to it while writing this lol
And doing so would constitute a "backroom deal" that would overturn the will of voters, even if the voters weren't happy with the choice(s) they had/made. There exists a transaction cost to that tactic, which is something the article you linked to points out (though not in detail). It also says this:
Not exactly the same as my stance, but my stance is basically like "voting Biden into office fixes the big picture, which will give us the chance to then fix the small details", those small details including but not limited to improving laws and customary practices regarding sexual assault.
I think this happened to literally everyone with an opinion.
Re:Music; I'm listening to Aoi Eir's AUBE and so of course I just got to Niji no Oto which is not appropriate at all!!
That's true, and given what you just said, I'm starting to think that it genuinely might not be worth it.
Yeah, anyways, I understand your position better now, I guess.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article242773056.html
TL;DR version: the first five paragraphs of the first article
etc.
Also, ironically, DeSantis cites White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx's praise of Florida's data, which included praise for the website:
https://www.wfla.com/community/health/coronavirus/florida-unemployment/whos-been-waiting-desantis-says-floridians-waiting-on-unemployment-likely-filled-out-application-wrong/
Someone I know, who filled out the form correctly, is in the boat of the many, many people who have yet to receive the money. He filled up the form, sent it in by mail because the website was horribly broken, and now he got a response with a temporary PIN and case number, and now has to fill up yet another form, and also input his resume in through the state's own specially formatted resume input mechanism (and if you've ever applied to the a job board that forces users to upload their resume or pieces thereof in a specific format, you probably know how much of a pain this is), and other red tape.
The DeSantis administration seems concerned about reopening the economy as soon as possible, or at least exhibiting the narrative that we can move on already:
If it were more competent, then it'd be in a hurry to put this money into the pockets of the citizens of Florida who'd actually be able to spend this money to jumpstart the economy by paying even for their basic needs like food and rent.
Actually though; I don't think this'll show up anytime soon in real life. In fact, this may just be the new normal level of American deficit.
I didn't want to spam you yesterday, but here's more: