Bottom Liner posted:

These leading gotcha questions should be treated as trolling.

selec posted:

No, because they were at home when we showed up. American conscripts shooting their officers or just dodging the draft were morally just though. Ideally American soldiers would have gone on strike.

CommieGIR posted:

Vitalsigns is arguing that the conflict isn't worth it, but that does not make Russia's actions and possible invasion excusable and okay because we need to avoid harming Russian conscripts.

DeadlyMuffin posted:

This is quite the spicy take.

By this logic, people being colonized should do nothing to resist because, after all, these imperialist soldiers are workers too!

Do you think that Germans invading France in WW1 should have been welcomed? Allowed to take control?

I think you're either trolling, or you haven't actually thought through what you're saying and carried it to its logical conclusion.

You can have empathy for conscripts without declaring that the shouldn't be shot at when they are literally invading.

And the answer to "what about the American troops ??" is a a resounding yes. Do you think the Vietnamese should have avoided shooting the invading American troops because they were conscripts?

If only the Americans had stood in solidarity with the Nazi soldiers who were, after all, conscripts, and just let them invade.

quote:

At the company all hands meeting today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared red eyed and wore glasses, and the Facebook staff were told in advance that he might tear up because he scratched his eye

quote:

Zuckerberg Tells Staff to Focus on Video Products as Meta’s Stock Plunges

Company now facing ‘unprecedented level of competition’
Meta working to retain employees as bonus season approaches

Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg rallied his employees to focus on video products, after they watched the stock lose a quarter of its value.

At a company-wide virtual meeting Thursday, Zuckerberg explained that the historic stock drop was a result of Meta’s weak forecast for revenue in the current quarter, according to a person who attended and was not authorized to speak about it. Zuckerberg echoed his remarks of a day earlier to investors, telling employees that the social networking giant faced an “unprecedented level of competition,” with the rise of TikTok, the short-video platform Facebook doesn’t own.

Zuckerberg appeared red-eyed and wore glasses, the person said. He said he might tear up because he’d scratched his eye -- not because of the topics up for discussion.

Meta is already talking about ways to retain staff amid the stock rout. The social media giant is thinking of offering long weekends, Zuckerberg said, responding to a question on burnout. He also encouraged exhausted employees to use their vacation days. He added that based on his life experience, transitioning to a four-day work week would not be productive.

Employee shares vest on Feb. 15, and manager conversations about bonuses and promotions happen in March -- both of which could be factors in workers’ potential decisions to leave, according to another person familiar with the company’s plans.

VitalSigns posted:

This is a hilarious strawman, but it's interesting that you did take a moment to say American troops ought to be murdered, but also we need to get behind them go to war with Russia, I don't know how you reconcile that.

quote:

Teachers are picking up slack for absent colleagues. They're covering for unfilled positions. And 55% of them say they will leave teaching sooner than they had originally planned, according to a poll of its members by the nation's largest teachers union.

The National Education Association poll, conducted in January, helps quantify the stress being placed on educators right now. It found that the number who say they'll leave the profession sooner has risen significantly since August. Among the NEA poll's other findings:

90% of its members say that feeling burned out is a serious problem.
86% say they have seen more educators leaving the profession or retiring early since the start of the pandemic.
80% report that unfilled job openings have led to more work obligations for those left.
"Last summer, I started traveling across the country," says Becky Pringle, president of the NEA, which has nearly 3 million members, talking about the impetus for the survey. "Without exception, every stop I made, from Kentucky to Oakland, I heard those similar stories of educators who were exhausted, overwhelmed, feeling unloved, disrespected."

The poll found a racial gap in discontent: 62% of Black teachers and 59% of Hispanic teachers say they will leave earlier than planned, compared with 55% overall. But the desire to leave the profession was at similar levels for rookies, midcareer educators and those closer to retirement.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Zuck seems pretty sad about today.



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-03/zuckerberg-tells-staff-to-focus-on-video-as-meta-plunges?sref=vuYGislZ

StratGoatCom posted:

Since no one has brought this up yet:

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/01/1076943883/teachers-quitting-burnout

DeadlyMuffin posted:

You said the invading Russian conscripts shouldn't be killed. Where's the strawman?

If American troops invade Ukraine they should be shot too.

DeadlyMuffin posted:

If only the Americans had stood in solidarity with the Nazi soldiers who were, after all, conscripts, and just let them invade.

Discendo Vox posted:

This is a good time to look to states like South Carolina where education privatization efforts have been chugging away for years; that lobby will be looking for ways to take advantage of the situation and make their move.

VitalSigns posted:

I didn't say that, I said we shouldn't go over there and get in a war over it. At some point if someone is trying to kill you you have to shoot back, that doesn't mean every step escalating the situation to that point was wise or moral. Like yeah if you're a Frenchman and a German with a bayonet is charging you seconds away from piercing your heart you have to react in the moment, that doesn't mean all of the years of jingoism and posturing and threats and proxy conflicts in other parts of the world that lead the two countries to that point were a great idea.

It was bad that the US invaded Iraq, that doesn't mean it would have been wise or moral for Russia or China to send a half million of their own troops and kill even more people to deny the US's expansion of influence into Iraq.

quote:

Prosecutors who want to curb mass incarceration hit a roadblock: Tough-on-crime lawmakers

Even when progressive prosecutors win voter support, establishment forces sometimes work to curb their power.

When Deborah Gonzalez campaigned in 2020 to become the first Latina district attorney in Georgia, she wanted to upset the status quo.

“It was a very progressive platform, and I was very vocal about wanting to run to address systemic racism,” she said.

She promised to lock up fewer people and curb low-level drug prosecutions.

But pushback was swift. First, the governor tried to cancel the election. He failed, and she won. Then, conservatives pushed to redraw her two-county district in their favor.

And this year, Republican legislators are backing a bill that could dramatically affect reform-minded prosecutors like Gonzalez across the state. If it passes, the measure would create an appointed oversight committee with the ability to remove state attorneys from office if they won’t prosecute certain crimes — like the small-time drug charges Gonzalez vowed to avoid.

“Prosecutors seeking to reform the system or address racial inequities are being targeted by partisan legislators,” said James Woodall, a public policy associate at the Southern Center for Human Rights. “This bill is an attempt to take away their discretion.”

The fight in Georgia highlights an emerging pattern across the country: Even when progressive prosecutors win voter support, establishment forces sometimes work to curb their power. From Virginia to Missouri to Texas, conservatives have backed bills allowing the state to take over cases local district attorneys choose not to pursue, undermining the ability of elected prosecutors to carry out reforms that led voters to support them in the first place.

Conservatives typically argue that these prosecutors’ less punitive policies are a threat to public safety. In response, progressives like Gonzalez often say that their policies keep people out of jail for small crimes that do not endanger the public, and that some research shows incarceration itself can increase crime.

Experts say it’s a new iteration of an old battle between state and local authority, amplified by the fact that traditionally prosecutors were the establishment forces and now, in some places, they’re not.

When I got arrested on a drug possession charge in late 2010, I didn’t know much about what district attorneys did and probably couldn’t have named a single one besides Jack McCoy from “Law & Order.” I certainly had no clue how much power they had when it came to decisions like which charges to prosecute, and — as importantly — which charges not to.

My first hint was in county jail, where I was thrilled to spot a close friend sitting near me in the visiting room. I knew I was facing prison time and did not expect to see many familiar faces where I was going.

“You were so lucky,” he told me.

It sounded ridiculous — but he knew more about the system than I did because he’d been in and out of jail before. He explained: If I’d been arrested one county over, where prosecutors were more conservative, they probably would’ve stacked on other charges — such as intent to distribute the drugs — and I’d be looking at a decade or more behind bars. Instead, in deep blue Tompkins County, they’d probably stick with just the one charge, and I’d be looking at a fraction of that time.

My friend was right, and in the end I got sentenced to 2.5 years.

The district attorney whose office prosecuted me in 2011 touted rehabilitation and reform. I never heard her described as a progressive prosecutor at the time; it wasn’t until a few years later that justice reformers started turning their attention to harnessing the power of prosecutors who spoke of reversing mass incarceration, rejecting low-level drug cases, prosecuting police and fighting systemic racism.

Reformers won elections from Boston to Philadelphia to Dallas, but they also drew criticism — especially from law enforcement unions and other prosecutors. In 2019, U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr said prosecutors who “style themselves as ‘social justice’ reformers, who spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook and refusing to enforce the law” are “demoralizing to law enforcement and dangerous to public safety.”

In some jurisdictions, such criticisms have led to recall efforts — most notably against George Gascón in Los Angeles and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. (San Francisco is headed for a vote this year, while L.A.’s failed to pass — though Gascón’s opponents are trying again.) Elsewhere, they’ve led to legal efforts to erode prosecutors’ discretion to not press charges and not seek the harshest penalties.

One of the first high-profile examples of this was in Florida, after Aramis Ayala won the 2016 race for state’s attorney and announced her office would stop seeking death sentences. Republican Gov. Rick Scott transferred several capital cases to another state’s attorney who supported the death penalty. Ayala sued, but in 2017 the Florida Supreme Court sided with Scott.

Two years later, Pennsylvania legislators undercut Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner with a bill allowing the state attorney general to prosecute gun crimes — only in Philadelphia, and only until the end of Krasner’s first term. After the change sparked fervent pushback, the attorney general vowed he wouldn’t use the new law and would support its repeal.

The following year in Indiana, Ryan Mears became Marion County’s top prosecutor and announced that he would stop pursuing low-level marijuana cases. In response, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill allowing the state to take over cases that locally-elected prosecutors like Mears decide not to pursue across the board, like minor drug crimes. That didn’t pass, but it’s up for consideration again this year.

The proposal in Georgia takes a bolder approach, creating a mechanism to oust reform-minded district attorneys altogether. The measure gained steam after the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man who was killed by three white men while jogging. The way prosecutors handled the case — and the fact that it took three months to pursue charges — helped spark bipartisan interest in improving prosecutorial accountability.

But Democrats worried the proposal could become a political weapon. Though the measure would make it easier to hold prosecutors accountable for misconduct or remove them for incompetence, it would also allow the commission — appointed by the Republican governor and legislative leaders — to oust prosecutors who categorically avoid pursuing certain charges.

“The role of the district attorney is to follow the law and prosecute criminals,” Republican state Rep. Houston Gaines told Flagpole, a local magazine, in December. Gonzalez, he added, is not doing that. “That’s something that I believe the state must look at across the board, and I believe we will, and we will do it very soon, because it is putting communities at risk.”

Gaines didn’t respond to a request for comment, and neither did several of the bill’s sponsors.

They have until the beginning of April to pass the measure. And Gonzalez is concerned.

“There had always been this expectation that DAs were going to be tough on crime,” she said. But DAs have also always had discretion to choose what cases to prosecute and how to charge them.

“It’s the same tool,” she said, “and it’s being used by a different set of people with a different set of goals.”

DeadlyMuffin posted:

You said the invading Russian conscripts shouldn't be killed.

VitalSigns posted:

I didn't say that

VitalSigns posted:

Does murdering Russian workers who have never done me any harm make the world more safe

DeadlyMuffin posted:

Are the workers you're talking about the Russian soldiers invading Ukraine?

VitalSigns posted:

Yes.

I don't see why I should be murdering another country's conscripts, just because they speak a different language?

CommieGIR posted:

Which is, unfortunately, also largely part of why Public Education is faltering.

Again, there is no US forces in Ukraine. We are not invading Ukraine. Russia is the one likely doing so. This is not a repeat of Iraq or Afghanistan.

DeadlyMuffin posted:

Yeah, you did. I even asked you to clarify.





If you were being hyperbolic or whatever then fine. But don't say one thing and then turn around and lie about it two pages later.

Mellow Seas posted:

No 18 year old pawn American soldiers are going to be shooting 18 year old pawn Russian soldiers in this conflict

quote:

— In the aftermath of the high-turnout 2020 election, many Republican-controlled state governments have passed legislation that Democrats believe will harm their party’s voter turnout.

— However, voting rules did not appear to have much impact on turnout and had no measurable impact on vote margins at the state level in the 2020 presidential election.

— Both voter turnout and voting decisions in 2020 were driven by the strong preferences held by the large majority of voters between the major party candidates.

The limited impact of voting procedure on 2020 turnout

Former President Trump and his political allies continue to push baseless allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election more than a year after Joe Biden’s inauguration. Largely in response to those allegations, Republican state legislatures around the country have enacted dozens of laws intended to tighten identification requirements, limit access to absentee voting, reduce the time period for early in-person voting, and limit the use of drop boxes for absentee voting. Democrats have responded to these new laws by proposing legislation in Congress to override these laws but have failed to pass new voting rights laws due to unified Republican opposition and the unwillingness of 2 Democratic senators to modify the filibuster rule in that chamber.

An important question raised by both these new laws and Democratic efforts to override them is just how effective such voter suppression laws would be in reducing voter turnout among Democratic-leaning voter groups. In an earlier article in the Crystal Ball, I examined the impact of expanded absentee voting on the 2020 election. I concluded that increased use of absentee voting had only a small impact on turnout and no effect at all on the Democratic margin in the 2020 presidential election. In this article, I expand my focus to look at the effects of other voting procedures that Republicans have targeted, including increased availability of early in-person voting, use of drop boxes for absentee voting, and stricter identification requirements for absentee and in-person.[1]

The results reinforce the findings of my previous research. These voting rules had only minor effects on turnout and no effect at all on the Democratic margin in the presidential election.

The evidence

Turnout of eligible voters increased in every state and the District of Columbia between 2016 and 2020, with an average increase of just over 7 percentage points. The turnout of roughly 2/3rds of eligible voters in 2020 was the highest in any presidential election in over a century. The percentage of voters casting their ballots before Election Day also increased dramatically as many states adopted policies to encourage both early in-person voting and mail or absentee voting in response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. However, there was considerable variability in the policies adopted by the states regarding both early in-person and absentee voting as well as the use of drop boxes and voter ID requirements.

The results in Table 2 show that 2016 turnout was by far the strongest predictor of 2020 turnout. However, after controlling for 2016 turnout, the data show that states that mailed absentee ballots directly to voters had a significantly higher turnout in 2020 than other states. Similarly, states that allowed the use of drop boxes for absentee voting had significantly higher turnout than those that required voters to put their absentee ballots in the mail. Finally, early in-person voting had a small negative impact on turnout but this effect was not statistically significant.

It should be emphasized that although some of these effects on turnout are statistically significant, all of them are quite small — no greater than 2 or 3 percentage points. The most important development regarding turnout in the 2020 election is that it increased everywhere and by a rather substantial amount. Voters were highly motivated to participate in the 2020 election, just as they were in the 2018 midterm election before the pandemic hit the United States and many states changed their voting procedures. Turnout surged in 2020 in all types of states regardless of their partisan inclination and regardless of their voting rules.

The other major question about the effects of voting rules and procedures involves their impact on party performance. Did any of these voting procedures favor one party’s candidate over the other party’s candidate? In order to answer this question, I conducted a second regression analysis, this time with the Democratic vote margin in the 2020 presidential election as the dependent variable and various election rules and procedures as independent variables. I included the 2016 vote margin in each state as a control variable because there has been an extremely high degree of continuity in the outcomes of presidential elections at the state level in recent elections. In fact, the correlation of .993 between the Democratic presidential margin in 2016 and the Democratic presidential margin in 2020 was the strongest for any pair of consecutive elections since at least the end of World War II. Almost 99% of the variation in Joe Biden’s margin in 2020 is explained by Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016.

StratGoatCom posted:

Since no one has brought this up yet:

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/01/1076943883/teachers-quitting-burnout

Angry_Ed posted:

Lol if you think anybody in this thread wants the US to be allies with Saudi Arabia or is satisfied with the US being allies with Saudi Arabia.

Angry_Ed posted:

Lol if you think anybody in this thread wants the US to be allies with Saudi Arabia or is satisfied with the US being allies with Saudi Arabia.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

One of my hotter geopolitical takes is that if we really must pick a favorite regional actor there, it should be Iran. My excessively spicy take is that Iran is a bit socialist if you squint, and prior to Rojava represented maybe the most viable path towards socialism in the region.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

One of my hotter geopolitical takes is that if we really must pick a favorite regional actor there, it should be Iran. My excessively spicy take is that Iran is a bit socialist if you squint, and prior to Rojava represented maybe the most viable path towards socialism in the region.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

One of my hotter geopolitical takes is that if we really must pick a favorite regional actor there, it should be Iran. My excessively spicy take is that Iran is a bit socialist if you squint, and prior to Rojava represented maybe the most viable path towards socialism in the region.

GreyjoyBastard posted:

One of my hotter geopolitical takes is that if we really must pick a favorite regional actor there, it should be Iran. My excessively spicy take is that Iran is a bit socialist if you squint, and prior to Rojava represented maybe the most viable path towards socialism in the region.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

CommieGIR posted:

Yeah honestly severing the Israeli/UAE relationship would go a long way to fixing some of our geopolitical issues.

But that'll never happen.

VitalSigns posted:

I still don't understand why we're in an alliance with Israel anyway. Saudi I understand: a lot of oil, a lot of money, we get to use them as a proxy against other actors in the region and put military bases there etc.

I don't understand what we get out of an alliance with Israel aside from a market for our bombs that we can use to funnel taxpayer money to Raytheon, and we could do that with anyone. I guess there is cold war history involved, where the Arab countries in the immediate post-colonial stage leaned toward the Soviet Union to oppose British and French attempts to hang on to their influence, and therefore supporting Israel was a way of dealing setbacks to the Arabs and reducing Soviet influence, but we have way more useful allies now so is it just inertia?

VitalSigns posted:

I still don't understand why we're in an alliance with Israel anyway. Saudi I understand: a lot of oil, a lot of money, we get to use them as a proxy against other actors in the region and put military bases there etc.

I don't understand what we get out of an alliance with Israel aside from a market for our bombs that we can use to funnel taxpayer money to Raytheon, and we could do that with anyone. I guess there is cold war history involved, where the Arab countries in the immediate post-colonial stage leaned toward the Soviet Union to oppose British and French attempts to hang on to their influence, and therefore supporting Israel was a way of dealing setbacks to the Arabs and reducing Soviet influence, but we have way more useful allies now so is it just inertia?

VitalSigns posted:

I still don't understand why we're in an alliance with Israel anyway. Saudi I understand: a lot of oil, a lot of money, we get to use them as a proxy against other actors in the region and put military bases there etc.

I don't understand what we get out of an alliance with Israel aside from a market for our bombs that we can use to funnel taxpayer money to Raytheon, and we could do that with anyone. I guess there is cold war history involved, where the Arab countries in the immediate post-colonial stage leaned toward the Soviet Union to oppose British and French attempts to hang on to their influence, and therefore supporting Israel was a way of dealing setbacks to the Arabs and reducing Soviet influence, but we have way more useful allies now so is it just inertia?

Neurolimal posted:

It looks like we might have done the hot kind of war crimes instead of the cold kind of war crimes.
https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/1489344752260681733?s=20&t=zZ8KawdoRHO_HhnP5w5BLQ

quote:

At the beginning of the year, Israel’s foreign minister Yair Lapid reflected on the diplomatic challenges for 2022.

“We think that in the coming year, there will be debate that is unprecedented in its venom and in its radioactivity around the words ‘Israel as an apartheid state’,” he told Israeli journalists. “In 2022, it will be a tangible threat.”

Lapid pointed to two United Nations investigations he said were likely to conclude that Israel’s governance of occupied Palestinian territory amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law.

Several Israeli and international human rights organisations have reached exactly that view, including Amnesty International with the release of a report this week, Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: a Cruel System of Domination and a Crime Against Humanity.

Israel is also facing an international criminal court investigation into actions in the occupied territories, such as the confiscation of Palestinian land to build Jewish settlements, that Amnesty International and others have said breach international laws against apartheid.

But Israel is also concerned that the breaking of the longstanding taboo in the US on comparing its rule over the Palestinians to white South Africa’s racist repression of its black population is evidence of a slower-moving – but potentially more dangerous –threat: the fracturing of once rock-solid backing for Israel within its most important ally.

The Israeli foreign ministry’s director general, Alon Ushpiz, placed protecting longstanding bipartisan support for the Jewish state in the US at the top of a list of Israel’s diplomatic priorities this year as opinion polls show eroding support among Democrats, in part driven by changing narratives about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For years, polls showed that Democrats sympathised with the Israelis at twice the rate of support for the Palestinians. But since the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, backing for the Jewish state has fallen and support is now about evenly divided.

That change is accentuated among younger Americans, with adults under 35 far less well-disposed towards Israel than older generations.

A separate survey last June found that half of Democrats want Washington to shift policy toward more support for the Palestinians.

Support for Israeli government policies is even falling within the US Jewish community, with a poll last year finding that 25% of American Jews agreed that “Israel is an apartheid state”.

There is little evidence that Washington’s backing for Israel, including the largest amount of (mostly military) US aid given to any country, is in any immediate danger. But pro-Israel groups are increasingly concerned at the diminishing effectiveness of their attempts to portray the Jewish state as yearning for peace but confronted by Palestinian terrorism.

That claim has increasingly been challenged by what Americans can now see on social media, particularly video of Israeli attacks and maltreatment of Palestinians. Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza – which killed about 1,500 Palestinian civilians and more than 600 fighters, and destroyed schools and homes, while Hamas rocket attacks killed six civilians in Israel and 67 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting – helped solidify the view of an all-powerful state unleashing destruction against a largely defenceless population.

The rise of Black Lives Matter has fuelled the drive to frame the Palestinian cause as a civil rights issue of resistance to Israeli domination.

“People can see for themselves what’s happening in a way they didn’t before,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, the former director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division who worked on the group’s report, A Threshold Crossed, Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.

“It’s made it harder, particularly in the United States, for the emotional defenders of Israel, who’ve had this mythology about Israel and the kibbutz and sowing the land and this sort of fantasy of what Israel’s like, confronted with the reality of what they see in front of their faces.”

Israel’s attempts to push back against the shifting narrative have been undermined by its own actions, including the passing of the “nation state” law in 2018 which enshrined Jewish supremacy over the country’s Arab citizens. Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, and members of his cabinet have a long history of opposition to a Palestinian state.

Israel can still count on solid support at the top of the American power structure. But Democratic sympathies were not strengthened by Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was openly hostile to President Barack Obama while publicly aligning with the Republican leadership in Congress.

His embrace of President Donald Trump’s “peace plan” two years ago further alienated some Democrats who denounced it as a smokescreen for Israeli annexation in the West Bank that would create Palestinian enclaves reminiscent of “Bantustan”, black homelands in South Africa.

Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer who has spent decades exposing Israel’s land grab and settlement policy in occupied East Jerusalem, recently travelled to Washington to gauge Israel policy.

“The sands are shifting in the United States, in the Congress, in public opinion, and in the American Jewish community, and the apartheid discourse is part of it. There is a centre but that centre is not going to hold,” he said.

“Increasing numbers of people abroad are beginning to see Israel as an apartheid state and a pariah state, and Israelis are increasingly fearing that.”

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The American remake of Squid Games is a lot less creative.

https://twitter.com/artnet/status/1488945096192143368

Neurolimal posted:

It looks like we might have done the hot kind of war crimes instead of the cold kind of war crimes.
https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/1489344752260681733?s=20&t=zZ8KawdoRHO_HhnP5w5BLQ

nine-gear crow posted:

brb, gonna go rent a flatbed and steal a cube

nine-gear crow posted:

brb, gonna go rent a flatbed and steal a cube