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Oracle posted:Maybe they were aiming to give him a rage-induced heart attack and solve the problem that way, because I would not want to be a vase/tv remote/flatscreen in Mar-A-Lago right now. Given Garland's speech yesterday(?) that basically "Both Sides" political violence, I wonder what Biden going this far to bad actually will mean other than maybe to try to appease a very upset Dem voting base.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 16:32 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 17:07 |
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the_steve posted:Doing anything at all. Could have forgiven student loan debt, enforced an actual lockdown for the pandemic, more stimulus checks.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 16:32 |
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Space Cadet Omoly posted:My main worry with this is that the AI will inevitably get bored with doing things the correct way and start loving with us for fun. Youtube is filled with videos' of people playing sim games who decided "What if I caused problems on purpose for shits and giggles?" and I get the feeling that any AI we create in our image will go down a similar path if given unlimited power. On the other end of it, we’ve also got the example of how horrific a system you can wind up with if you just dispassionately optimize for a number, as demonstrated by the guy who crammed six million sims into a sc3k map. quote:Technically, no one is leaving or coming into the city. Population growth is stagnant. Sims don't need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block. Wherever they go it's like going to the same place. If horrific sim stuff is your bag, the video is worth a watch. https://www.vice.com/en/article/4w4kg3/the-totalitarian-buddhist-who-beat-sim-city/
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 16:33 |
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Motto posted:The virginia takeaway is that they did too much about covid and that biden should put the screws to these dang lazy teachers. There is a lot to learn from that election that Democrats can use to mitigate losses in '22, but we'll see if they picked up on any of it. (Mostly, don't say that parents shouldn't have control over any aspect of their children's lives, no matter how much "sense" it makes when you're saying it.) Still, I mean, I think he would’ve had to done have done great to avoid the nearly-inevitable backlash against the party in the White House, just as Biden and Congress would’ve had to to avoid losing one or both houses in ’22. In 2009 the Democrats lost the VA governors’ seat (previously held by Tim Kaine) by 17 points, a year after Obama had flipped the state. Some people vote with the following flow chart: “Am I happy? No? What party is the president from? Yeah I’m gonna vote for the other one.” CommieGIR posted:Given Garland's speech yesterday(?) that basically "Both Sides" political violence, I wonder what Biden going this far to bad actually will mean other than maybe to try to appease a very upset Dem voting base.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 16:36 |
Mellow Seas posted:It seems like McAuliffe ran a pretty bad campaign (although I didn't follow it closely, really) and didn’t deal with the electorate’s concerns about schools very well. Even if some of them were just irredeemable racists there were a lot of people he could’ve persuaded but didn’t. And the national Dems didn't give him much help. NoVA voter here and McAuliffe's campaign was hilariously and uniquely terrible. His messaging was almost exclusively "gently caress Donald Trump vote for me". Not a single policy to speak of on his mailers or campaign commercials until like the very last week and by then it was too little too late. For some reason he didn't even routinely mention that he held the office before our tout what he did when he was in it. If you didn't already know who he was you were a bit adrift in the sea of his messaging. He ran a very lazy race that seemed to presuppose his victory because of his party affiliation and still nearly won but Youngkin ran on lower taxes and"make communities safe" and various school dogwhistles enough to sway the Trump voters while not going so insanely racist to alienate the so-called moderates (if they can be said to exist)
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 16:58 |
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Mellow Seas posted:
A consequence of this is that "Actively make things worse when you're not in power" is a successful opposition strategy, if you're comfortable with people being distrustful of government and pessimistic about the overall direction of the nation. As well as with hurting people you want to vote for you, of course. Which is why for Republicans that part is an absolute win-win. And also core to why successful Republican strategies can't be reliably imitated by the left.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:01 |
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Good Soldier Svejk posted:NoVA voter here and McAuliffe's campaign was hilariously and uniquely terrible. His messaging was almost exclusively "gently caress Donald Trump vote for me". And it worked so well that Democratic strategists are amping it up for the midterms. quote:Some top Democratic operatives are terrified that their down-ballot candidates are responding too timidly to the threat of former President Donald Trump using this year's midterm elections to launch a return to the White House, and they've formed a new group to raise the alarm.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:03 |
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Willa Rogers posted:And it worked so well that Democratic strategists are amping it up for the midterms. "Oh man, they hate this Trump guy so much they voted for the GOP candidate! We should double down" - Dem strategists
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:09 |
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CommieGIR posted:"Oh man, they hate this Trump guy so much they voted for the GOP candidate! We should double down" - Dem strategists It really does not matter to those people if Democrats win or lose, it makes no difference in terms of their future employment.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:14 |
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Nucleic Acids posted:It really does not matter to those people if Democrats win or lose, it makes no difference in terms of their future employment. It matters to them but on the same level as, say, winning a board game. It's not like anyone important will be affected, after all.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:17 |
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I don't know anything about AI and don't pretend to, but all of the quantum computing and AI experts think that the idea that AI will enslave humanity is pop-science, hurts research, and distracts from the real problems of AI. This is what the head of Robotics Ethics and Quantum Computing at MIT said about it recently: quote:WILL ROBOTS TAKE OVER? THE TRUE PROBLEMS IN AI AND ROBOTICS https://www.iberdrola.com/shapes-en/kate-darling-robotics-artificial-intelligence-problems Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jan 6, 2022 |
# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:22 |
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How badly or how well are the Biden administration's 1/6 speeches going? I don't have time to watch.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:23 |
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Eric Cantonese posted:How badly or how well are the Biden administration's 1/6 speeches going? I don't have time to watch. He was either coughing & bumbling thru the speech, or paving the way for the eradication of the Republican party; depends who you ask.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:25 |
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CommieGIR posted:"Oh man, they hate this Trump guy so much they voted for the GOP candidate! We should double down" - Dem strategists They spent years painting Trump as a completely unique evil so it definitely isn't gonna work when they suddenly say hey actually every GOP candidate is literally the same as Trump.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:25 |
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Oracle posted:The word 'lie' is almost never used among politicians, like ever. Its that whole 'decorum' thing. You can accuse your opponent of misrepresenting the truth, of mendacity, of other synonyms the vast majority of the American people don't know the meaning of, but to outright call something a bald faced lie is pretty drat unheard of. Elected, currently serving politicians in Congress have been accusing Trump of lying in interviews on national news for like the last year and a half. The canonized mass media name for Trump whining about the 2020 election being stolen is "The Big Lie". I guess it might be new for Biden himself to go up there and say it, but it's hardly some kind of tectonic shift in the language dems have been using about Trump. I've been hearing about how we're totally gonna get that rascally Trump aaaaany day now, you just wait, for the past three years. I'll believe that this is something more than hot wind to attempt to distract from Biden's administration failing all of its present policy goals and dropping into the approval crapper when something actually happens. Srice posted:They spent years painting Trump as a completely unique evil so it definitely isn't gonna work when they suddenly say hey actually every GOP candidate is literally the same as Trump. Plus the whole "we did it, we beat Trump, the beast is slain, now finally normalcy and respect can return to our government!" turned out to be a giant mound of bullshit. Kanos fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Jan 6, 2022 |
# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:38 |
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Majorian posted:https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1478793373368602625 This tells me they really do believe it, they believe so hard that millions of people are going from place to place casting a dozen votes each without anyone checking ID that they think they can easily do it themselves and nope turns out it's very very easy to check a database and see one person vote twice. Majorian posted:But more broadly speaking, this seems like the sort of thing that Biden and the Democratic leadership really should be shouting about from the bully pulpit, especially if they want to at least seem like they're interested in paying more than lip service to protecting voter rights. The fact that they haven't made "These fuckers are trying to take away your right to vote, while committing voter fraud themselves!" a central part of the party's messaging bodes ill for November. You would think, but in my experience the take-away from these kinds of stories isn't "Republicans are committing all this voter fraud, we need to vote for Democrats", but "voter fraud is out of control, Republicans are right the system is broken we need voter ID now!" There seems to be this perverse feedback effect where the people who are undermining confidence in the system profit from it because as the public loses confidence in government they gravitate to the anti-government people. Although possibly this is just because the GOP have successfully marketed themselves as the anti-establishment bomb-throwers (despite representing the wealthiest most powerful interests of the status quo), while the Democrats consciously pose as the defenders of the system and successfully crushed or co-opted all establishment critiques on the left. If you've lost confidence in the system where else are you gonna go, to Bernie Sanders, the guy who told you to vote for his good friend Joe Biden? I doubt that trying to become the real anti-voter-fraud party is going to fix this. I mean for one thing, Democrats have a trifecta right now, they could ban Republicans' underhanded tactics any time they please by passing federal legislation, and they don't. So how serious can they come across really, they told us they'd pass voting rights if we voted in 2020, we did, and now they're still dangling it in front of us like a carrot on a stick "well if ya really want it you gotta VOTE for us again"
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:39 |
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VitalSigns posted:I doubt that trying to become the real anti-voter-fraud party is going to fix this. I mean for one thing, Democrats have a trifecta right now, they could ban Republicans' underhanded tactics any time they please by passing federal legislation, and they don't. So how serious can they come across really, they told us they'd pass voting rights if we voted in 2020, we did, and now they're still dangling it in front of us like a carrot on a stick "well if ya really want it you gotta VOTE for us again"
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:42 |
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Eric Cantonese posted:How badly or how well are the Biden administration's 1/6 speeches going? I don't have time to watch. I think the better question is does anyone care? People talking itt about how owned Trump must feel when I'm not certain he even knows Biden gave a speech.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:44 |
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Dubar posted:I think the better question is does anyone care? People talking itt about how owned Trump must feel when I'm not certain he even knows Biden gave a speech. Really? I feel like everyone in this thread just dunks on Biden constantly and talks about how stupid and ineffective Democrats are.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:46 |
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Dubar posted:I think the better question is does anyone care? People talking itt about how owned Trump must feel when I'm not certain he even knows Biden gave a speech. I bet he watched it. I think Donald Trump is very compelled by anything on TV that's about Donald Trump, and is probably pretty tired of it not being "everything". Eric Cantonese posted:Really? I feel like everyone in this thread just dunks on Biden constantly and talks about how stupid and ineffective Democrats are.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:47 |
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Dubar posted:I think the better question is does anyone care? People talking itt about how owned Trump must feel when I'm not certain he even knows Biden gave a speech. It was stronger than his usual speech, but nothing that anybody doesn't already know. Nobody really cares. Trump does know, because he has released two ranting public statements during the speech referencing it.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:48 |
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Oracle posted:The word 'lie' is almost never used among politicians, like ever. Its that whole 'decorum' thing. You can accuse your opponent of misrepresenting the truth, of mendacity, of other synonyms the vast majority of the American people don't know the meaning of, but to outright call something a bald faced lie is pretty drat unheard of. It's still just talk. Let me know when they actually do something. If there are multiple actionable crimes, then why hasn't Trump been charged with anything yet, a whole year later? The Dems completely failed to seize the momentum.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:56 |
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Mellow Seas posted:As you know very well, 49 of them could be as serious as humanly possible and it wouldn't matter. Thinking of "the Democrats" as a monolith is useless, whether you think that means they're all good or all bad. Yes I know that very well, but I don't think it changes anything about the consequences this is going to have for the party. If anything pointing this out just reinforces that the system is fundamentally broken and voting for the pro-system Democrats isn't going to fix anything. If a Senate majority can't pass a law that they all (50+1 of them) say they support, because they're beholden to a rule that says a majority isn't enough, then how is voting for a Democratic majority going to fix anything. It isn't, obviously. I don't think it's a problem you can overcome with messaging. What do you tell people: "Vote for us to control congress so we can protect your right to vote" "You control congress right now and it hasn't protected me" "Yeah but the filibuster we need 60 seats then we can do it" "You can't get 60 seats, you aren't electable in enough states" "We're electable if you vote for us!" "No you aren't but fine, you had 60 seats in 2009 and no voter protections came out of that" "We had too many blue dogs it's their fault" "You have those now!" "Yes that's why you need to vote for more Democrats to cancel out the blue dogs siding with Republicans" "But the Democrat running my state is a blue dog and you backed him in the primary" "Because they're the only ones who can win!" etc VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jan 6, 2022 |
# ? Jan 6, 2022 17:57 |
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Kanos posted:Elected, currently serving politicians in Congress have been accusing Trump of lying in interviews on national news for like the last year and a half. The canonized mass media name for Trump whining about the 2020 election being stolen is "The Big Lie". Yeah; if the Trump-slaying were working, Trump & Biden wouldn't be tied in current approval ratings and as 2024 choices for president.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:06 |
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VitalSigns posted:Yes I know that very well, but I don't think it changes anything about the consequences this is going to have for the party. I do think that whoever the President was right now, they would be massively unpopular. I don't know how to deal with the fact that you can't hold power in America without being unpopular. How do you build anything to last?
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:10 |
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Mellow Seas posted:Throw that in with the headwinds a party in their position faces and it looks really bad, and who knows when they'll even have a majority again. Inshallah they never will and the thrashing they've set themselves up for breaks their back. Waste of a party.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:18 |
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Mellow Seas posted:I do think that whoever the President was right now, they would be massively unpopular. I don't know how to deal with the fact that you can't hold power in America without being unpopular. How do you build anything to last? You can. You just have to become President during a huge economic recovery following a huge recession. With the rise of partisanship, you are never going to get the 70+% approval ratings that Reagan, Ike, JFK, FDR, and other Presidents had. You're always going to have a soft cap of 55-59% at the very best. But, it isn't impossible to hold power and be popular (if popular is defined as "consistently several points above 50%"). You build stuff to last by passing things that are managed by an executive agency and funded through a dedicated revenue source, so it is hard to get rid of. Then, once it is there for a while, it becomes harder and harder to remove. Or for social issues, you just push through something and either society is already there or is catching up and it becomes less of a political issue.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:19 |
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Mellow Seas posted:I mean, that's one way to look at it, and certainly how a lot of people are going to look at it. I think they would've gotten more done by now if they hadn't blown three or four Senate races - gotten reconciliation through and made a filibuster carveout for voting rights. But yeah - it's a difficult case to make because they have nominally had a majority and those things haven't happened. Throw that in with the headwinds a party in their position faces and it looks really bad, and who knows when they'll even have a majority again. You can convince me that I might as well VBNMW but it won't matter, I live in a gerrymandered deep blue district in a red state with no senate election this year, my vote will have no effect on the midterms thanks to state Republicans and our aristocratic constitution. Mellow Seas posted:I do think that whoever the President was right now, they would be massively unpopular. I don't know how to deal with the fact that you can't hold power in America without being unpopular. How do you build anything to last? One of the things I said a few times last year was how shocked I was that Trump took the stupidest approach to covid possible which was guaranteed to piss off everyone outside of his base, because his dipshit son-in-law made the brain dead prediction that covid would stay magically confined to New York City and LA and just kill a bunch of Democrats anyway. I still believe Trump could have cruised to reelection if he'd followed Bush's post-9/11 strategy. Take a disaster that was clearly and obviously exacerbated by his own unpreparedness and sloth, and rally the country around it, become a wartime leader, reassure everyone that a strong decisive statesman was in control. Instead he bumbled around, said it would be gone by Easter, asked if we could inject disinfectants into people, you know the rest. Biden had that opportunity too and completely squandered it in the same way. He had sky high approval ratings last year and everyone hoped finally the adults were in charge and we were gonna get serious, and now...this. It's no wonder he's unpopular and I don't think it's inherent to the presidency, I think it's the natural and obvious result of him totally shirking leadership in a crisis and telling everyone that the help is over and it's time to suck it up and get back to work Jack! VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Jan 6, 2022 |
# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:23 |
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:
This can be circumvented by firing everyone or just refusing to replace people who leave, overloading things into collapse and allowimg detractors to go "see? It doesn't work" Bel Shazar posted:Inshallah they never will and the thrashing they've set themselves up for breaks their back. Waste of a party. I'm curious as to why you think a permanent Republican majority is a good outcome Angry_Ed fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jan 6, 2022 |
# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:25 |
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Angry_Ed posted:This can be circumvented by firing everyone or just refusing to replace people who leave, overloading things into collapse and allowimg detractors to go "see? It doesn't work" It's not that easy. Well not always. Every time they try to gently caress with social security or medicare people get so pissed they back down. They've been able to chip away at it a bit, and add some grifts for their industry friends on top of medicare, but those programs have endured.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:29 |
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Angry_Ed posted:This can be circumvented by firing everyone or just refusing to replace people who leave, overloading things into collapse and allowimg detractors to go "see? It doesn't work" This takes decades and by the time you've done significant damage to it it becomes a fixture of America and it's no longer politically feasible to kill it entirely
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:30 |
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Angry_Ed posted:This can be circumvented by firing everyone or just refusing to replace people who leave, overloading things into collapse and allowimg detractors to go "see? It doesn't work" It isn't, and i would love to see that party self destruct as well. Regardless, the Democrats are a waste and deserve nothing but scorn and derision until they vanish into the history books.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:31 |
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Bel Shazar posted:It isn't, and i would love to see that party self destruct as well. Regardless, the Democrats are a waste and deserve nothing but scorn and derision until they vanish into the history books. Both parties kind of are self-destructing since 2015 but it's happening slowly and we'll probably end up keeping the same names and calling it a "realignment". Pelosi's retirement could speed things up, although they'll probably end up selecting a direct protege of hers and missing an opportunity to make a real change. (Any ascendant AOCs want to primary Hakeem Jeffries???) I am willing to give Manchin and Sinema full "credit" for blocking Biden's strategy, but why was there no other strategy? I wasn't a huge fan of Dem leadership before the 117th, but I'm even less so now. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jan 6, 2022 |
# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:33 |
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Bel Shazar posted:It isn't, and i would love to see that party self destruct as well. Regardless, the Democrats are a waste and deserve nothing but scorn and derision until they vanish into the history books. While the Dems are a poo poo party, and are doing poo poo tactics, the solution is probably not "You just gotta hand it to em" by letting the GOP having an electoral majority by encouraging less voting. And given that third parties are not likely to replace any of the major two parties anytime soon without enforcing ranked choice voting across the country, what do you suggest we do in the meantime?
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:33 |
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Oracle posted:The word 'lie' is almost never used among politicians, like ever. Its that whole 'decorum' thing. You can accuse your opponent of misrepresenting the truth, of mendacity, of other synonyms the vast majority of the American people don't know the meaning of, but to outright call something a bald faced lie is pretty drat unheard of. What? It’s not a huge deal for politicians to call each other liars at all. Happens constantly. What convinced you it doesn’t and that it matters? https://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/09/cnn-confirms-rep-wilson-the-congressional-heckler/ https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/ted-cruz-mitch-mcconnell-liar-221955 Don’t hold your breath.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:36 |
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If the Whigs collapse the Democratic-Republicans will rule America as a one-party state until the end of time, you don't want that to happen do you
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:36 |
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Good Soldier Svejk posted:NoVA voter here and McAuliffe's campaign was hilariously and uniquely terrible. His messaging was almost exclusively "gently caress Donald Trump vote for me". It's wild to me that some PAC was started to try and tie 2022 to Trump in 2024 and using Virginia as a warning when I distinctly remember Terry celebrating after Trump was baited into giving a virtual rally in Virginia.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:38 |
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VitalSigns posted:Biden had that opportunity too and completely squandered it in the same way. He had sky high approval ratings last year and everyone hoped finally the adults were in charge and we were gonna get serious, and now...this. It's no wonder he's unpopular and I don't think it's inherent to the presidency, I think it's the natural and obvious result of him totally shirking leadership in a crisis and telling everyone that the help is over and it's time to suck it up and get back to work Jack! One of the most toxic legacies of the liberal consultant class is its continuing reliance on form over substance & PR over actuating. The whole student-loan debacle is a good example, since the WH was saying restoration of payments = covid is over; same with schools opening up. It didn't even originate with the liberal consultant class; Karl Rove was talking about creating his party's own realities two decades ago. But, unlike the Democrats, the Republicans have realized that voters are often inclined to choose authentic boors over inauthentic bores.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:38 |
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CommieGIR posted:While the Dems are a poo poo party, and are doing poo poo tactics, the solution is probably not "You just gotta hand it to em" by letting the GOP having an electoral majority by encouraging less voting. And given that third parties are not likely to replace any of the major two parties anytime soon without enforcing ranked choice voting across the country, what do you suggest we do in the meantime? You will be shocked to learn that the collapse of the 2nd party in a two-party system results in a new second party.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:41 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 17:07 |
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VitalSigns posted:If the Whigs collapse the Democratic-Republicans will rule America as a one-party state until the end of time, you don't want that to happen do you Well, the collapse of the Whigs did lead to a war that killed like 5% of the country, but it also freed like 14% of the country from slavery, so in conclusion the death of major US political parties is a land of contrasts.
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# ? Jan 6, 2022 18:42 |