General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-09 22:00:35

Meanwhile, even Wyoming's governor makes more sense than my state's.

https://www.ktvq.com/news/local-news/wyoming-governor-announces-statewide-mask-order-other-restrictions

lrdgck · 2020-12-09 22:19:20

wyoming ain't florida

for all i know it's just prairie, boring

fourteenwings · 2020-12-10 10:02:45

You're basically taking the chance to flame Social Security specifically

No, I have ideas how things should go and I wish you had separate ideas that could stand on their own that would make me question mine.

everything from the federal food stamps program to local libraries offering computers with internet connections on which people can search for jobs

The former may be part of the "safety net", but I've already said that the government as a limited instrument may be used to provide those services. More importantly, a lot of this (possibly not the majority) is covered by private charities running food banks or similar.

I guess my comment here would be that even with food stamps apparently not everything is covered. That's not just a knock on the government, but I think it points to private individuals and charities being able to do things better if the government doesn't decide to wholesale co-opt their funds.

The latter is a public service because lots of people use library internet, not just for that one specific purpose. Libraries offering public services (like, you know, free books to read) are certainly not part of a safety net and are obviously already funded through the typical routes of government. I'm pretty sure many charities, such as halfway houses, foster homes, job banks*, and unemployment centres (I could go on) also offer similar services. There's also the Doe Fund, which is a combination of a bunch of these services.

In all honesty, I'd rather see those organizations (which can be nicely localized if charities share administration and fundraising resources) gain more prominence that handing money over to the government.

*Seems job banks are a UK and Canadian thing but not American it seems. That's a thing people could certainly get behind.

And it's not like people's track records using their own funds, or private companies' track records, are any better, in terms this general.

People die or go bankrupt, companies fail.

Governments live on with borrowed capital and at most have to say their sorry or pay out lawsuits (that come from taxpayer funds!).

Unless there's a big backer behind it (like there was the EU with Greece), governments almost never fail no matter how inept they become.

Most of all, if you have a million individuals and 10% file for bankruptcy, well that's 100,000 bankruptcies. If a further 10% never recover that's 10,000 people who require serious help.

If government defaults, everybody loses. Even the rich individuals that people complain about never losing, but of course that 10,000 people who needed help now have nobody to foot their bill aside from other private citizens through charity.

Top-down administration doesn't even work for private companies (which are tiny compared to governments), why does it suddenly work for every individual in a country?

There are tradeoffs to both.

One has much, much better tradeoffs than the other.

"but the government could take away all my money in taxes"

All? I mean 20%, or 30%, or 50%. That moves you into a (real) different income bracket than when you started (yet you count as the one you started in for 'tax purposes').

Do you not understand that somebody taking your money away arbitrarily hurts? You work hard for that money and you can't even decide what you're going to do with it.

Look, if somebody wants to blow a majority of their earnings on a speedboat and then be forced into bankruptcy and a tiny apartment in the bad part of town six years later, let them be.

Does that mean the government is some marauding entity hell-bent on taking people's money then flushing it down the drain?

All the evidence I've presented shows that at most the government is incompetent (it really is), not evil.

before Karl Marx was even born.

Why would you respond to "My concerns are not with communism" with "Communists!"

Why would you respond to "Taxes shouldn't be above reasons that can be well justified*" with "Ben Franklin said taxes should exist!"

*Let me repeat; those Medicare taxes are dumb as heck.

Whether you think something smells like socialism is on you.

Well actually what I'm saying here is that you seem to be arguing that the social services aren't working right but that's not a knock on social services framework and it could work if it were magically handled "better".

That's similar to how socialists say socialism has "never been tried" and that it just needs to be magically handled "better".

It's a joke of parallels, nothing more.

the whole idea of insurance is that risk is pooled

Pooled by separate companies in a free market and which all then immediately divest and diversify into investments that vary in degrees of risk.

Moreover, in the case of something simpler like health insurance, companies collectively lobby the medical industry to keep costs manageable and negotiate competitive rates.

The loss of insurance companies as middlemen who not only receive profits from investments and push-pull with the medical industry would mean a government scheme that makes no money (and therefore becomes a harbinger of more debt) outside of lobbying for more out of citizen's pockets and facing a strengthened medical industry that will charge insane rates (and will have giant waves of lobbyists gracing government and lining politicians pockets to prevent any changes).

I've said this many times; one of the first things you learn in financing is that government money is risk free and so it's best to try and wring the most out of it because it'll never default.

If I'm Termalyx and I make several medicines after that brand whilst dealing with insurance companies, there will be times I have to write off my debts to insurance companies and therefore I'll always keep in mind not to go crazy with price-gouging so my main customers remain in business.

If my only customer is the government, who will danged pay anything (probably by borrowing more from the Social Security Trust Fund), I'll go to town instead!

As I've said before, there is totally a place for government healthcare, but that place isn't even near "30% of all healthcare".

fourteenwings · 2020-12-10 15:25:36

In addition, if I'm looking to staff jobs with somebody who is low-income, I doubt the first route I'd go is posting an ad on the internet, even Craigslist. I'd probably spend a few bucks putting up posters in places any potential employees may frequent, or look to a recruitment agency that specializes in that sort of stuff so I don't have to vet them too much (like one that works specifically in connecting people familiar with construction work to new construction projects or whatever).

This goes double for jobs that are mainly manpower or can be taught on the job and don't require overspecific tertiary qualifications or, most likely, no tertiary qualifications at all.

Plus, no matter the quality of your mobile phone, Facebook is accessible on it and it seems people are taking advantage with like 2/3rds of the US on the platform. Posting jobs on there in hopes of a mobile phone hit is probably more helpful than hoping potential employees have access to a library of all things (which, from any angle, is such an odd strategy to go for as an employer).

Personally I'd prefer the staffing agency solution, but Facebook via mobile also remains an option.

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-10 17:11:29

No, I have ideas how things should go and I wish you had separate ideas that could stand on their own that would make me question mine.

Sorry about that; my ideas tend to be "whatever works", which make me a dirty pragmatist who annoys all other ideologies.

In all honesty, I'd rather see those organizations (which can be nicely localized if charities share administration and fundraising resources) gain more prominence that handing money over to the government.

One has much, much better tradeoffs than the other.

The difference between you and me here is that you hold that not-government is better than government, while I don't hold such ideology.

I guess my comment here would be that even with food stamps apparently not everything is covered. That's not just a knock on the government, but I think it points to private individuals and charities being able to do things better if the government doesn't decide to wholesale co-opt their funds.

"¿Por qué no los dos?" Why does one have to be declared "better" than the other? What if they just served different but complementary functions?

People die or go bankrupt, companies fail.

Governments live on with borrowed capital and at most have to say their sorry or pay out lawsuits (that come from taxpayer funds!).

And since you're talking about debts, when people die or go bankrupt or when companies fail do their debts just poof into thin air? No; either you get some other legal mess going on which just happens behind closed doors a lot of the time so people don't see it (but invisible doesn't mean nonexistent) or someone else gets left taking the loss.

If government defaults, everybody loses. Even the rich individuals that people complain about never losing, but of course that 10,000 people who needed help now have nobody to foot their bill aside from other private citizens through charity.

And ironically those "rich individuals that people complain about never losing" would, due to their wealth, stand the best chance of weathering political instability. Meanwhile, under your model, the government would not be footing the bill for those 10,000 in the first place, except perhaps minimally and as a resource of last resort and life would have sucked for them even with a government anyway. If you don't want political instability, it'd be better to not leave them screwed over.

Top-down administration doesn't even work for private companies (which are tiny compared to governments), why does it suddenly work for every individual in a country?

It isn't "top-down administration" when the government is offering resources as options for people. Also, you forget that there are multiple levels of government.

All? I mean 20%, or 30%, or 50%. That moves you into a (real) different income bracket than when you started (yet you count as the one you started in for 'tax purposes').

The federal income tax rates, even for the top tax bracket, haven't been 50% since forever, and on top of that, those are tax brackets, not full tax rates.

In case the explanation is needed (I'm surprised it would be for you), in short, I pay a lower percentage of my income for various chunks of it, and I'd only pay those highest-bracket tax rates for that portion of my income that exceeds a certain threshold -- NOT the entirety of my income.

> "yet you count as the one you started in for 'tax purposes'"
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but based on what you've written, if I didn't count as such, I'd end up in an infinite feedback loop where my income tax can't be calculated because I keep deducting taxes from my income then recalculating your taxes.

Also by implication you've noted that the federal income tax in the US has a more preferable social impact than things like sales taxes, because the latter is more regressive/less progressive (using the tax term here, not the ideological term), and thus ends up hitting poor people harder as they have to pay sales taxes on purchases they can't avoid.

Do you not understand that somebody taking your money away arbitrarily hurts? You work hard for that money and you can't even decide what you're going to do with it.

First, this isn't an argument based on economic efficiency, and second, in the absence of this, I'd have to pay piecemeal for a bunch of social services and they'd then easily go underfunded/unfunded due to the lack of ability of me or any other individual to pay attention to everything that's needed in a society (no, I don't want to add even more advertising), not to mention the bystander effect and decision fatigue, and/or tell everything to go to hell and only pay for my own share of things that I use, which would be horribly inefficient due to transaction costs.

Your statement here implies that in the absence of taxes I would not need to pay the money in other ways (e.g. private security services vs. police) and can thus arbitrarily spend that money.

Look, if somebody wants to blow a majority of their earnings on a speedboat and then be forced into bankruptcy and a tiny apartment in the bad part of town six years later, let them be.

Ironically, there's nothing keeping me from doing so if I have the money.

(No, a pre-tax figure to point to does not equate to "having that money".)

Why would you respond to "My concerns are not with communism" with "Communists!"

I appear to have misunderstood your line as a sarcastic rejoinder. If so, my apologies.

Pooled by separate companies in a free market and which all then immediately divest and diversify into investments that vary in degrees of risk.

It's not even a free market when most people get their health insurance through their employer. More like a clamped-onto-the-side market. Not to mention that healthcare costs aren't shopped for the way groceries are. (And we haven't even gotten into the difference in the bargaining ability between an employer and a prospective worker...)

Moreover, in the case of something simpler like health insurance, companies collectively lobby the medical industry to keep costs manageable and negotiate competitive rates.

And a monopsony (or oligopsony) situation would give the buying side better negotiating power.

The loss of insurance companies as middlemen who not only receive profits from investments and push-pull with the medical industry would mean a government scheme that makes no money (and therefore becomes a harbinger of more debt) outside of lobbying for more out of citizen's pockets and facing a strengthened medical industry that will charge insane rates (and will have giant waves of lobbyists gracing government and lining politicians pockets to prevent any changes).

I've said this many times; one of the first things you learn in financing is that government money is risk free and so it's best to try and wring the most out of it because it'll never default.

This assumes that the government makes zero effort to negotiate anything and instead just rolls over. Though I guess you address that by cynically indicating that it'll be a mess because of lobbyists anyway...though for some reason you don't take the same cynicism with private companies. (and lol @ the gratuitous "harbinger of more debt")

Meanwhile, if we don't adopt this sort of cynicism:
"a government scheme that makes no money" and therefore is (1) more able to cut costs and (2) has far more negotiating leverage.

fourteenwings · 2020-12-11 05:28:48

Look, it's quite obvious that I was looking for something you didn't have, and now this is just becoming a nebulous argument. For example, you quoted me 14 times in your post, which means we're possibly discussing that many things at once.

I will address one thing though;

Sorry about that; my ideas tend to be "whatever works",

No, my problem is you don't appear to have any ideas that aren't just opposition made up on the spot (usually cribbed from the typical ideals) to my ideas.

I wanted to see your "whatever works" ideas, with lots of lateral thinking that would make me question my previously held positions, and you've had none to offer this whole time.

Frankly, I get the typical pro-government anti-self-controlled-capital thing from places like CNN, and I quite like looking at Anderson Cooper, so I'll just stick with that from now on.

Though this is really bothering me;

more able to cut costs

You are honestly telling me government can cut costs better than a company and frankly this is a lot to bear. Profit is the ultimate motivator in cutting costs (and this is a double edged sword, I know).

Simply put, you have complained a bunch about Republicans "cutting programs" and they don't even really do that all that well or anywhere near efficiently enough and now you're telling me government will and should "cut costs"?

Most of all, the sheer amount of bureaucracy involved in a government department (especially one meant to cover everybody in the country) should make it obvious why costs will be inflated (possibly severely) rather than cut.

has far more negotiating leverage.

Oh yes, I, the government, will be able to stick out long negotiations with boardroom vipers when I have political pressure from every angle on me on an issue as important as people living or dying.

In private companies, it's vipers vs vipers and they don't even have to pretend they really care about anything rather than good deals and the bottom line. Because of the lateral goals, the customer relations people can care about the living or dying part.

And I've already explained very well why government can't negotiate better than companies so why am I even doing more.

Well, now that I've explained why government healthcare is nowhere near ideal upwards, downwards, sideways, and in 3D, I'm going to stop rising to bait.

fourteenwings · 2020-12-11 05:52:04

Anyways I usually wouldn't post a joke this vulgar but the opportunity was just too perfect:

Context.

She was a Chinese Mata Hari — who allegedly slept with at least two Midwestern mayors while cozying up to a slew of pols across the country in a bid to infiltrate the US political system.

Fetching accused Chinese government spy Fang Fang, a k a Christine Fang, entered the US through California as a college student in 2011 — and spent the next four years wooing everyone from local politicos to US congressmen, said the Web site Axios, citing current and former US intelligence officials.

Among the pols who Fang got close to was California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell,

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-11 08:18:19

Profit is the ultimate motivator in cutting costs (and this is a double edged sword, I know).

And fundamentally, this assumes that costs can still be cut, because once they're cut to the bone, a business that runs precisely at the break-even point will be able to offer things more cheaply than one (operating at the same scale and other conditions) that charges its customers in order to make a profit.

Meanwhile, the process of cutting to the bone can also mean a decrease in the quality of services, unsustainable expansion of the business in order to keep seeking profit, so-called "rent-seeking" activities, and other not-necessarily-scrupulous ways of increasing and/or ensuring profit. Like you said, it is a double-edged swod -- not the idealistically clean "ultimate motivator in cutting costs" that you think it is.

Oh yes, I, the government, will be able to stick out long negotiations with boardroom vipers when I have political pressure from every angle on me on an issue as important as people living or dying.

In private companies, it's vipers vs vipers and they don't even have to pretend they really care about anything rather than good deals and the bottom line.

Your cynical view of the latter ironically justifies government intervention to deter/reduce unscrupulous business practices.

Meanwhile, you're still taking it as an article of faith that by simply relegating things to the role of business the result will be better, and an analogous article of "un-faith" that government is simply incompetent. As well as neglecting the work of small-government ideologues to sabotage whatever programs do get implemented, thereby reducing their effectiveness and feeding said ideologues' own ideology.

Also,

Because of the lateral goals, the customer relations people can care about the living or dying part.

This isn't related to the operations of business or government, but...wow, that's cold.

I wanted to see your "whatever works" ideas, with lots of lateral thinking that would make me question my previously held positions, and you've had none to offer this whole time.

You get a bunch of people working together on one side of an economic transaction and they have far more negotiating power than they would if you forced them to all make decisions as individuals without cooperation. I trust you understand monopoly and monopsony. I can point to collective bargaining, but that's probably not something you're particularly fond of, despite its accomplishments in improving working conditions (inb4 "communism"/"socialism"/"Marxism").

But the reason you don't see it is because it is an ideological conviction of yours that government can't do things better than businesses can. (The irony is that you were the one to previously tar Democrats/liberals/progressives for "orange man bad".)

Frankly, I get the typical pro-government anti-self-controlled-capital thing from places like CNN, and I quite like looking at Anderson Cooper, so I'll just stick with that from now on.

If all you do is to just dump opinions/ideas you disagree with into mental bins of social trends and political ideologies, you're neglecting the practical reasons and realities that spawned them in the first place.

lrdgck · 2020-12-11 08:45:53

So, anyway, how're the chief South African parties on China? Hard or flaccid? Remember to provide relevant photos of dragon ladies and other spy vixens.

fourteenwings · 2020-12-11 12:24:11

This isn't related to the operations of business or government, but...wow, that's cold.

It's actually extremely efficient and good for customers (they have fighters and carers that are separated by a hard line) so no?

this assumes that costs can still be cut

Yes, yes it does. Costs are cut every year by new means of innovation, brilliant lateral thinking, and technology.

justifies government intervention

Government can't play with the big boys so it changes the rules. Cute.

tar Democrats/liberals/progressives for "orange man bad"

Orange man and government aren't anywhere near the same thing and you know better.

If all you do is to just dump opinions/ideas you disagree with into mental bins of social trends

I want to hear good, new, innovative ideas and forms of reasoning that make me question the ones I hold and somehow that's bad?

All I'm saying is you've provided none.

Over the last page or so, I've linked to about a 1,000 things. I've done my research. I've linked to articles that include rhetoric I despise because I thought they were right about the overall point and you accuse me of being some form of close-minded?

All that's happening in my sentence there is I'm using describing the general milleu of ideas, it makes my writing better to describe things in a vibrant way, it's not a 'neatly packaged set of things I'm dismissing'.

I know these things, I've done my research, I still disagree.

how're the chief South African parties on China? Hard or flaccid?

China's game in Africa is like neocolonization* via giant debt traps, not honey traps (case study: Zambia). Our politicians don't even get hot spies. Instead, they have to sell off massive hunks of land to "private" Chinese investment companies that are totally not at all just government fronts.

This doesn't happen much here... or it hasn't happened yet, I'm not sure which one it is.

Though they can get trafficked girls who work at massage places* and I think it's immensely weird that the trafficking goes this way rather than the other.

*I totally had an article about this (politician caught at massage place) but it seems the story's too old to be properly reached via Google.

The ANC is kept pretty happy being included in China and Russia's Model UN project BRICS.

Mainly I don't think the ANC has any intel that would be worth Fang Fanging for.

*My use of the word "colonization" here is morally neutral and entirely fact based lest you confuse me for one of those Enlightened people who uses it to mean "badder than racist".

lrdgck · 2020-12-11 14:30:31

My use of the word "colonization" here is morally neutral and entirely fact based lest you confuse me for one of those Enlightened people who uses it to mean "badder than racist".

All I'm confused about is the meaning of this sentence. So, you tell me it's good or bad? Or do you want me not to think you imply colonization is bad, because that'd make you look like a leftie or what?

Also, looking at the photo, it looks like neither him nor her is all that glad. Like, both of them look like they were aware Fang Fanging someone better is beyond their reach so they're just making out the best of the situation, or something of that kind.

By the way the last time I heard of a hot female spy in the US, it was a Russian. Remember her? Anyways, keep us informed. You know, strictly for research purposes, why else.

fourteenwings · 2020-12-11 15:19:41

Or do you want me not to think you imply colonization is bad, because that'd make you look like a leftie or what?

It's complicated, I guess?

Like if somebody wins a game and you let them (especially when somebody much nicer was available who would have forgiven you wholesale but wasn't offering those sweet sweet bribes) it's hard not to respect that.

Something like; I don't welcome the world's future CCP overlords but I truly respect their gameplay, or something. Like, the world is unfair, so you have to play your best, and complaining about things instead and reveling about how unfair it is is really, really sad.

both of them look like they were aware Fang Fanging someone better is beyond their reach so they're just making out the best of the situation

Now I'm confused, like she knows she's not bombshell enough (or male stripper enough*) for senators or something?

There is another twist to this; apparently Mr. Swalwell's dad and some other relatives were still friends with this woman on Facebook until literally this week.

Eric Swalwell (Sr.), the congressman’s father, and Joshua, his brother, had remained friends on Facebook with Christine Fang, also known as Fang Fang, as late as Wednesday, even after the lawmaker said he cut off all ties with the suspected spy after being briefed by the FBI, Fox News reported.

His dad even liked one of her pictures last week, how she has Facebook in China ~~who even knows~~ well she's a spy so of course. I'm guessing that was one of those "You messed up a good thing Eric!" deals where the family was more invested than he was.

*There was a whole thing with ~~Lind~~ "Lady G" a few months ago that seems to have mysteriously died down.

The sordid affair began when a male sex worker and gay p*** star named Sean Harding publicly accused the senator of contracting his services—allegations that effectively outed the man as gay, to the extent one believes them.

This prompted another male sex worker to post an article on the open blogging website Medium detailing an alleged encounter he had with “Lady G.” This article not only named the Republican senator, and outed him as gay, but included humiliating and demeaning intimate details about the elderly senator’s body. The article has since been taken down, but the details it exposed will live forever on the Internet.

lrdgck · 2020-12-11 17:10:57

Now I'm confused, like she knows she's not bombshell enough (or male stripper enough*) for senators or something?

Yes.

Also, that part about dad doing dad joke things only makes the story better.

Concerning male strippers, nah, he's a Democrat after all, isn't he? Generally the more hardline conservative you act, the bigger the chance somebody (including yourself letting your guard down) will sooner or later reveal you as gay, feels like.

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-11 17:32:59

It's actually extremely efficient and good for customers (they have fighters and carers that are separated by a hard line) so no?

The "customer relations people" are the "carers"? What can they do with life or death situations? Pay out insurance benefits possibly in contradiction of company policy? No, they're just stuck answering the phone and needing to sound sympathetic while being yelled at because all they can do is apologize and explain (and to varying extents hide behind, since those are trade secrets lol) company policy that there's nothing else they can do about the costs that are being foisted on customers.

It's almost like you've never experience the customer side of this. My family and I have.

Yes, yes it does. Costs are cut every year by new means of innovation, brilliant lateral thinking, and technology.

I didn't expect you to fall this low but now you're just displaying blind faith in buzzwords.

Government can't play with the big boys so it changes the rules. Cute.

If you want metaphor it up, "government" is supposed to be the adult in the room telling the "big boys" to not make a giant mess of things, like they do every so often when entirely left to their own devices, because they only think of themselves rather than the rest of society.

That's because their incentive structure doesn't include the rest of society. And you know that.

Orange man and government aren't anywhere near the same thing and you know better.

"Orange man" is one person while "government" consists of many, many people, in a huge variety of social institutions, with far more nuance and complexity.

I want to hear good, new, innovative ideas and forms of reasoning that make me question the ones I hold and somehow that's bad?

This statement is not bad in principle, except you've just pre-emptively chosen to dismiss a variety of existing ideas based on your ideological convictions.

*My use of the word "colonization" here is morally neutral and entirely fact based lest you confuse me for one of those Enlightened people who uses it to mean "badder than racist".

The fact that you feel the need to say this shows how skewed your perceptions are.

fourteenwings · 2020-12-12 06:55:20

Generally the more hardline conservative you act, the bigger the chance somebody (including yourself letting your guard down) will sooner or later reveal you as gay, feels like.

Speaking of this, did you hear about this Hungarian guy?

Guests included married anti-LGBT MEP Josef Szajer from Hungary, who allegedly tried to clamber out of a window when cops arrived.

Mr Manzhley said some of the attendees "tried to unzip the pants of the policemen because they thought that the raid was part of the orgy".

Several diplomats were also nicked after taking part in the lockdown-busting sex party yards from the city's central police station.

“They immediately started shouting, ‘ID card! Now!’ But we weren’t even wearing underpants. How the hell could we quickly pull out our ID cards?"

Later in the article;

This year the government said Hungary said would not take part in next year’s Eurovision song contest because it was “too gay”.

I am not sure what it says about me that one of the things I picked up via Eurovision is an interest in Hungarian pop music.

Anyways:

The "customer relations people" are the "carers"?

You're aware that when I speak of boardroom level decision makers who lead massive departments I'm not referring to front-facing customer service reps, right?

except you've just pre-emptively chosen to dismiss a variety of existing ideas based on your ideological convictions.

I'm not pre-emptively doing anything, I just don't want to do any more research. There's concepts like risk pooling, which is a system that is always changing tack and is elastic enough to change every which way depending on current circumstances.

An effective risk pool can cut costs for both you and your customers. Having a team that can perform it effectively can change a whole cost structure or balance sheet.

Anyways every time I do research it seems like you don't actually care so I've just stopped doing it.

The fact that you feel the need to say this shows how skewed your perceptions are.

I'm not the one who revived the term Decolonization and turned it into a rat's nest of insanity and I sincerely never want to be associated with those people, even by accident. I think colonization is complex and an interesting area of human history. Sorry my opinions on the matter make you mad or whatever.

lrdgck · 2020-12-12 11:30:56

Speaking of this, did you hear about this Hungarian guy?

'Zactly what I had in mind. No, John, you are the Cultural Marxism. And then John was a gay civilization of death destroyer of family, as all gays are. (Don't confuse gays with homos, these are fine, stay quiet, don't make a fuss over who they are, and oppose pride parades.)

For a few days the big question was whether ~~out~~ (EDIT: typo; I meant "our") righties were there, but apparently they aren't classy enough for it.

Also, you know how Hungarian media reported on the story? They somehow all forgot to mention which party the guy was from, pretty much. You know how Hungarian media are all in Orban's grasp, right? Nominate a high school buddy as the chairman of a state-owned company, change the law so that the company can enter media business, your buddy's company buys out an opposition-aligned newspaper, organizes a "restructuring", the old crew is fired, new employees somehow all turn out to be pro-Orban, the newspaper is now pro-Orban. That's how you fight Cultural Marxism.

Makes me think: if Deus Ex the original game was made today, your character would team up with George Soros to fight Elon Musk.

fourteenwings · 2020-12-12 12:54:59

For a few days the big question was whether out righties were there, but apparently they aren't classy enough for it.

I actually think this is a really important point! People in general are known for overdoing things, but particularly if things are being suppressed for too long.

I don't think there's anything worse suppressing than the brain's biggest Achilles' heel (sexual stuff) and so when you press the "off" button on the suppression you just don't know when to stop and people invite you to massive chems*x parties you're very much disarmed.

Like, I don't think a lot of these guys are naturally disposed to the crazier stuff, but they can only really hang out with the guys who are (since the rest are looking for sanity and settling down). This isn't a knock against "birds of a feather flock together" but rather more "how did those birds get that way".

Of course, there's a couple of leaders who are genuinely insane (or "open-minded" I guess depending on how you feel about this stuff), but then there are the followers who have very little choice and then start absorbing that type of stuff into their psyche.

So like, if you're an out rightie you've dealt with all your sexual stuff even just to a mildly okay extent, it leaves you less vulnerable to this sort of insanity.

They somehow all forgot to mention which party the guy was from, pretty much.

The great thing about owning the media is altering history in real time.

You know how Hungarian media are all in Orban's grasp, right?

It's a favorite chew-toy of Al Jazeera's The Listening Post (that and Jair Bolsonaro), so I know quite a bit about this story.

That's how you fight Cultural Marxism.

It's extremely inept to fight Cultural Marxism with suppression.

No, John, you are the Cultural Marxism.

I want to go back in time and get caught out reading National Review and/or Feminist Current by someone just so I can be the opposite of this story.

if Deus Ex the original game was made today, your character would team up with George Soros to fight Elon Musk.

I think you mean George Soros would make you public prosecutor so you could carry out insane progressive policies.

I would totally play either scenario if it were a real visual novel or management sim.

To say this colloquially; people think Elon Musk is based but I just think he's confusing.

lrdgck · 2020-12-12 14:02:45

My bad, I meant "our righties". I'll go edit that post now. Sorry for having you construct a multi-paragraph argument on the basis of a typo.

fourteenwings · 2020-12-12 14:54:44

Naw, no worries, I enjoyed writing it.

Yours were totally there, they just knew which windows to jump out of.

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-12 16:02:37

I'm not the one who revived the term Decolonization and turned it into a rat's nest of insanity and I sincerely never want to be associated with those people, even by accident. I think colonization is complex and an interesting area of human history. Sorry my opinions on the matter make you mad or whatever.

Sorry, they actually don't.

Let me try to explain what I mean. There are some people who are super plugged into politics and the political commentary scene and will write about stuff like "reviv[ing] the term Decolonization and turn[ing] it into a rat's nest of insanity", and then there's everyone else who, upon hearing about that, reacts with "...who? what?". The fact that you feel the need to clarify something to distance yourself from that sort of thing shows that you've been stuck in that world, thinking in those terms, for too long.

You're aware that when I speak of boardroom level decision makers who lead massive departments I'm not referring to front-facing customer service reps, right?

That wasn't at all clear from your description ("the customer relations people"), but even if that's the case, (1) they still can't rewrite on the fly their business plans and policies, and (2) your way-too-rosy idea of how businesses work still remains. Short of a mass customer rebellion, the "boardroom level decision makers" who are "carers" exist in the same world as those cutthroat "fighters" and there is no "hard line" separating them. Besides, the ruthlessness with which you imply they do business indicates that, in your world, the "carers" get overruled anyway.

I just don't want to do any more research.

Welcome to what I discovered while responding to you months ago.

Edit: Thought of another recent example.

Me: "the Pope said this about coronavirus-related restrictions"
Responses I'd typically expect: "I agree", "I agree, but...", "I disagree", "I disagree, but..."
Your response: "the Pope is a hypocrite; look at this other thing he did!"

lrdgck · 2020-12-12 16:41:14

I think you mean George Soros would make you public prosecutor so you could carry out insane progressive policies.

But anyway, it's kinda sad when you think of it. Like a hundred years ago, the Jews controlled everything, started revolution in Russia and like half of Europe, and now? All the all-encompassing Jewish global plot these days is just one old man doing overtime to keep the conspiracy in one piece.

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-12 16:48:31

Anyway, since it seems fourteenwings and I will end up arguing anyway, I might as well just post whatever, rather than not post stuff because it'd get me into an argument with fourteenwings.

----

So, some of you may have heard that the Trump campaign and its associates and allies have been filing a large series of frivolous lawsuits of various sorts to try to overturn the results of the election -- which, ironically, weren't even that bad for their party, but we saw the same nonsense even when Donald Trump won; he never stopped whining that he didn't win by more.

Their record on actually winning these lawsuits? As of the day before yesterday or so, it was like 1-50, where the "1" that they won was that their campaign's vote count watchers should be able to stand a little closer or something nearly-insignificant with regards to the vote count. The ones actually attempting to toss out the election results in any state, attempting to invalidate massive numbers of mail-in ballots, the ones attempting to compel state governments to appoint slates of Trump electors by administrative fiat, all of those were losses. The comments from judges indicating just how obnoxiously silly such demands would be were particularly telling.

(Amusingly, they also lost some of these efforts due to simply filing poorly-proofread paperwork. Then again, Donald Trump always put bluster before competence.)

The grandest of these post-election lawsuits was lost yesterday, when the Supreme Court of the United States threw out a case filed by the state of Texas trying to overturn election results in several other states. The decision wasn't even particularly close, in case you were curious; the only two (of nine) justices that even thought the case should be heard weren't even justices Trump had lucked into appointing, and even they "would not grant other relief" beyond "the motion to file the bill of complaint".

Based on what I've read, this particular lawsuit demonstrates just how cockamamie their reasoning is. It cited a statistical analysis to "prove" that Biden's victory was improbable...by assuming that the results of the 2016 election were a sample from an infinite population of American voters whose partisan alignment remained static from 2016 to 2020, and then treating the 2020 election as a re-sampling of this infinite and politically-static population and finding that the probability of a Biden win was extremely small. With any basic statistics training, one would recognize that this means the "null hypothesis" -- that the electorate showed the same partisan alignment as it had four years ago -- should be rejected. Instead, the lawsuit assumed the null hypothesis was true in order to argue that the election results were fraudulent.

Of course, Mr. Trump and his hardcore supporters are not accepting this. A whole bunch of states actually officially signed onto this lawsuit, as did a variety of members of Congress and state legislators. Ted Cruz literally offered to argue it. And from what I've heard, there are protests from their supporters today. The Republicans have backed themselves into a corner where they can't do much other than entertain the crazies, not to mention that some of them are the crazies themselves. Wherever this ends up will be interesting, though probably not painless.

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-12 19:29:48

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/11/republicans-withhold-trump-recount-funds-milwaukee-dane-counties/6514385002/

And now Republicans are holding up payment to Dane and Milwaukee counties in Wisconsin for their work doing a recount.

As the article indicates, they should have paid first anyway. But regardless, the work got done, and state legislators have sent a letter objecting to paying for the recounts.

fourteenwings · 2020-12-13 05:40:16

I have a feeling that if I don't respond to GMH, then it'll seem as if I'm either running away from the topic or I'll personally feel like I'm letting information I should address, explain, and contextualize slide.

However, that's the feeling that's gotten me into continuous streams of consciousness that in the end matter very little.

I'm actually having fun in this thread right now so I'll try and do what I haven't before, which is leave this on the table.

All the all-encompassing Jewish global plot these days is just one old man doing overtime to keep the conspiracy in one piece.

Funny thing is George Soros is also stoking progressivism in Israel, and at points he's basically said rising antisemitism all over the world is Israel's fault (this is super old, like 18 years old, but I can't find anything else).

Fun thing I've learned trying to find his exact positions on this is the current Hungary>Israel<Brazil alliance.

This makes sense but is surprising because I've never heard about it before.

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-13 06:34:34

https://www.protocol.com/amp/copyright-provisions-in-spending-bill-2649260098

The House and Senate Judiciary Committees have agreed to include a package of three provisions — the controversial CASE Act, the Trademark Modernization Act and a felony streaming proposal — in the omnibus spending bill, which must pass before a Dec. 11 government shutdown deadline, according to two congressional aides.

(Note: the US federal government has passed a stopgap funding bill in the meantime.)

The linked article explains the dangers of the first two:

"Passing the CASE Act without reforms will unleash a host of lawsuits against innocent internet users and restrict their ability to defend themselves against trolls," said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden in a statement to protocol. Wyden previously tried to negotiate with Senators John Kennedy and Dick Durbin to figure out a different path forward on the CASE Act. "It is tremendously disappointing that powerful lobbying groups may be close to attaching this flawed legislation to a must-pass spending bill without commonsense changes to protect Americans from predatory copyright trolls."

The Trademark Modernization Act, meanwhile, would crack down on the increase in fraudulent trademark filings from foreign countries including China. It would give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office more flexibility to crack down on illegitimate trademark claims — while also creating a new opportunity for so-called "trademark trolls" who make money off of registering trademarks without intending to use them. That legislation hasn't passed the House or the Senate.

Meanwhile, a more recent Kotaku article goes into more detail about that third one:

https://kotaku.com/proposed-u-s-law-could-slap-twitch-streamers-with-felo-1845846012

According to Politico offshoot Protocol, the felony streaming proposal is the work of Republican senator Thom Tillis, who has backed similar proposals previously. It is more or less exactly what it sounds like: A proposal to turn unauthorized commercial streaming of copyrighted material—progressive policy publication The American Prospect specifically points to examples like “an album on YouTube, a video clip on Twitch, or a song in an Instagram story”—into a felony offense with a possible prison sentence. Currently, such violations, no matter how severe, are considered misdemeanors rather than felonies, because the law regards streaming as a public performance. With Twitch currently in the crosshairs of the music industry, such a change would turn up the heat on streamers and Twitch even higher—perhaps to an untenable degree. Other platforms, like YouTube, would almost certainly suffer as well.

For what it's worth, Thom Tillis won a very close re-election fight last month in North Carolina.

As the articles have mentioned, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other groups are opposing these three measures.

lrdgck · 2020-12-13 22:28:48

Have I said it before? No? Then I'm saying it.

I'm reading through a book on the American Civil War (fun fact: over here we call it the Secession War; I'm told it's a French name that stuck or something), on top of having read a book on American ethnography some time ago. And you know, the South is just so Polish. Same overconfidence, tendency to perceive themselves as always in the right, freedom understood as the right to bully others, belligerent sabre-rattling... Damn, I feel kind of sad right now.

(Judging by what that other book has to say, it might be because the proverbial first violin of both societies was traditionally played by the same demographic: old blood nobility. So these faults might be the faults of the social class holding the reins.)

fourteenwings · 2020-12-15 15:08:42

lrdgck · 2020-12-15 15:17:11

Do you remember Joe Biden joking about that Russian spy woman?

(I mean, right now you'll probably spin it into a claim Biden is a Russian puppet, but back then it was generally considered pretty funny.)

fourteenwings · 2020-12-15 15:22:23

It is pretty funny.

Biden is a Russian puppet

i dun geddit

If Joe Biden had become a Russian asset over Grade A Russian Spy Material, I would understand.

glennmagusharvey · 2020-12-16 18:45:39

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-ss-prem-covid-deaths-florida-election-20201216-f4kgezjf4rf75ppumt4omxfsxy-story.html

This is apparently paywalled to at least some extent, so here's some excerpts:

At issue is the state’s handling of the lag between the date someone dies and the date Florida reports that death in the public count. With minor exceptions, Florida quit including long-backlogged deaths in its daily counts on Oct. 24, 10 days before the Nov. 3 election, and resumed consistently including them on Nov. 17, two weeks after the election.

The result: The daily death numbers publicized as Floridians turned out for early voting and Election Day were significantly lower than they otherwise would have been.

The state’s reluctance to address questions about its COVID data is not unusual. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, DeSantis and his administration have engaged in a pattern of secrecy and spin, understating the spread of the pandemic in its earliest days and ordering public health staffers not to make public statements about COVID-19 as the election neared, a Sun Sentinel investigation found.

Analysts who track Florida’s numbers say they’re perplexed by the state’s pause in reporting months-old deaths. They said they, too, had asked the state for clarity but received no response.

The impact of that change was huge. Consider: In the month that preceded the change, from Sept. 23 to Oct. 20, the state included in its daily tallies 1,128 deaths that occurred at least a month earlier -- accounting for 44% of the deaths announced during that time. But in the week before the election, the health department included just one such death in its daily tallies.

Had Florida finally tackled its backlog? It had not: On Nov. 17, two weeks after the election, Florida’s daily death counts again began to consistently include deaths that had occurred more than a month before, and a large number of deaths that had occurred more than two months before, according to Salemi’s analysis.

At least on paper, there was a new policy adding additional review step to death counts reported. However, the Florida Department of Health "did not respond to multiple requests for comment."

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