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Doctor Reynolds posted:Any exposure is good exposure I suppose but who doesn't already know about this? A fair number of people actually. Most Americans are pretty unfamiliar with their justice system and don't really know that this is a thing. Especially Americans that never experienced the 80's. Even the ones who know that this used to be a thing usually believe that people that were effected by it had their sentences retroactively changed. MegaZeroX fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jul 27, 2015 |
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Jul 27, 2015 16:49
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That song at the end was great.  Usually I don't care for the end performance thing, as I usually don't find them very funny, but this was definitely an exception.
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Aug 3, 2015 15:05
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Apoplexy posted:Statehood might be over-reaching. Why isn't DC a district of one of the states it borders? When Congress decided on their capital, they wanted it to be a place that wasn't a part of any existing state, as they had feared that if the countries interests conflicted with the states, they would face armed protests like they did in Pennsylvania in 1783. Of course, such a thing wouldn't exactly be very relavent today, since armed mutinies aren't exactly commonplace anymore. But bureaucracy is slow, and congress really doesn't want to let go of the control they have on DC. MegaZeroX fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 23:19
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:Wait, what the gently caress? I have no idea what you're talking about, and I (thought I) read those threads quite a bit. That is what he is referring to.
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Aug 10, 2015 14:11
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This has to be one of my favorite episodes yet. This is obviously one he has been wanted to do for a while (with the 7 month correspondence thing) and you can definitely see his passion in this episode. This is the most I've laughed at LWT for quite some time.
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Aug 17, 2015 14:41
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Sorta feel the same, on the one hand I don't want to victim blame, but on the other hand they are the ones stupidly sending their money to these guys in the first place of their own choice. But religious people are often indoctrinated from birth to believe things like this. It wasn't like they chose to made to believe at a young age in biblical inerrancy. And it is an extension of this that causes them to believe that preachers are somehow blessed by God and able to things like this. Its like blaming someone who was on the internet for the first time and told to invest in the Nigerian prince by friends for falling for the Nigerian prince thing. MegaZeroX fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Aug 18, 2015 |
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Aug 18, 2015 14:34
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John Oliver posted:We rushed to develop nuclear weapons to defeat the Nazis, which, fun fact, almost all Americans agreed were bad at the time John Oliver has really been hitting home runs with the humor this season compared to the previous ones. I actually laugh quite frequently now.
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Aug 21, 2017 09:16
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Doctor Reynolds posted:If you were wondering all the reasons why John Oliver's Venezuela episode was terrible, give this a watch: While the segment had some issues, this video isn't exactly unbiased either. It smelled like propaganda, so I decided to to just randomly fact check a random point, and it failed a simple check. The guy makes a point of calling out the 20% approval thing, but that is the actual statistics cited is solid. Pulling one headline he later cited even gives that Maduro was looking to win the election with only 28.6% of the vote. The next two people with the highest percentage of the vote (Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles with 18 percent and 15.4 percent, respectively) were either under house arrest or barred from participating in politics. It is pretty clear in context that the Reuter's article was actually talking about what John Oliver made it out to be. Even reading the articles he pulls the headlines from makes it clear that Maduro has serious issues.
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Jun 8, 2018 01:42
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:No it’s not, but the gross mismanagement, refusal to hear criticism, abolishing the concept of personal property and destroying a way of life that has withstood 2000 years and taxing the harvests by volume instead of actual harvested goods in order to meet the requirements of an arms contract with the Soviet Union certainly are. The Great Leap Forward killed 18 million people at a low end estimate and inspired Polpot’s similar tactics. This. Peng Dehuai famously warned him about the failings of the system, and he ignored him, and eventually arrested him. Not to mention all of the other terrible poo poo Mao did, like the anti-rightist campaign, the cultural revolution, the poo poo did that impeded the women's movement, and so much more. If you defend Mao nowadays, you are either ignorant about what actually happened or extremely radical. Doctor Reynolds posted:Ugh, that segment was terrible. Very orientalist language. Xi is will known for cleaning up corruption, but also he "conveniently" can get rid of his political rivals! You mean... the corrupt ones? Because that's a good thing, John. Getting rid of them. Remember? What you were just talking about? Their are serious problems with it. The party's propaganda would like you to think that it is all it is. However, the following things are true: 1) It is extralegal and extrajudicial. From Wikiepdia: Wikipedia posted:When an official is detained for an investigation, known as Shuanggui, they are essentially placed under house arrest and are isolated from the outside world. The subject often must endure days of grueling interrogation. Data from the first half of 2014 showed that the conviction rate of those who were investigated in that time period to be around 99%. 2) It addresses only the symptoms, not the causes of the problem. The cause of corruption in China is the lack of judiciary power to actually do anything about it. All this campaign would do, if successfully removing the corrupt, is remove the corruption for a few years. 3) Given the above, it is really convenient that many of the affected groups happen to be his political rivals (the Shanghai faction and the Youth League). MegaZeroX fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jun 18, 2018 |
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Jun 18, 2018 19:23
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Greaseman posted:Trying to wrap my mind around someone saying Oliver isn't critical enough of America. The minds of tankies are precious things.
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Jun 20, 2018 03:19
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People do realize that scope of of authoritarian bullshit in China is different than the US, right? The US does some shady poo poo, but not to the same scale and prevalence as seen in China. The US doesn't block all negative opinions about government officials from the internet. The US doesn't ban public display of homosexuality. And the fact of the matter is, the large online curtailing of "undesired" speech was scaled up during Xi's tenure. John Oliver doesn't need to bring up the US in this context, because the US literally doesn't enter into the discussion of problems this massive.
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Jun 22, 2018 04:13
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TXT BOOTY7 2 47474 posted:historical context is whataboutism, apparently First of all, people weren't asking for historical context. People were complaining that: a) Actually, Xi is awesome and the anti-corruption campaign created by a president for life is totally not a dictator consolidating power. Therefore, Oliver's insinuation is clearly example of orientalism b) Actually, Mao was great and the great leap forward was totally awesome, the deaths were the stupid weather's fault. Sure no real historian agrees with this (in or out of China), but I don't want to see any faults in my world view. c) Apparently "Asia" calls everyone uncle, therefore Oliver is an evil hack for mocking it. It can't simply be that a near dictatorial figure was using familial language to promote himself like many authoritarian states have done in the past. d) But WHATABOUT the stuff the US has done in the past century? e) But WHATABOUT the US now? Trump is just as bad as Xi, he would be doing the same thing if he wasn't so incompetent. The first 3 are hilariously naive, and the last 2 are clearly whataboutisms. Sure, the US has done some hosed up poo poo in the past century. It isn't relevant in this case. Oliver ridicules the US regularly. If he brought up the US within this context, he would sound (rightfully) like a hack. And while Trump is a despicable human being, and the republican party's positions hurt millions of people every year and are the cause much pain and suffering, it doesn't begin to compare to the wack awful poo poo that Xi and CPP have been up to in the past decade. If you want to argue, on its own merits, that the US is responsible for how China is today, that is a real stretch. The US hasn't really been much of an influence in China since the CCP took over. The only thing the US government really had influence over since then was: a) Ensuring China didn't take over Taiwan b) Fighting against China in the Korean war. c) Embargoing (and not recognizing) China until the early seventies. d) Miscellaneous sanctions since reopening trade, particularly after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. None of which really shaped the internal politics. Mao would have remained in power regardless of a and b, and Deng would have gotten power afterword because of his mass popularity within the CCP. The best you can do is argue that the US was responsible for the CCP taking over, since the peace conference they held probably weakened Chiang Kai-shek's position. But I don't know if that is the hill you want to die on considering that it is like the least evil foreign policy thing the US has done in the past century. EVIL US IMPERIALIST PEACE CONFERENCES! MegaZeroX fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jun 25, 2018 |
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Jun 23, 2018 19:49
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Alhazred posted:Despite John Oliver's best efforts the last Alaska Blockbusters will close on july 16th. Don't worry, there is still one in Oregon.
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Jul 13, 2018 17:37
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drat, when did this thread turn into the loving Chapo thread filled with edgy socialist memes? I mean it wasn't too long ago that we had someone defend Mao and link to some tankie propoganda about Venezuela, but I didn't expect to have such a large scale resurgence. A brief rundown on a couple of issues I have with what people have said recently 1) Political terminology: Socialists love to construct their own terms that differ from their normal usage in order to make their ideology appear to be the only valid one. To Bust Rodd (and anyone not aware): to socialists, anything that isn't fascism or socialism is liberalism. So a socialist will tell you that liberals support fascists, and that liberals were the voting base for Trump. While they aren't wrong with how they apply their definition, their definitions are also really arbitrary and delicately constructed to radicalize social democrats or more left neoliberals. They can present a really braindead trichotomy of fascism vs liberalism vs socialism, then say that because Trump is technically a liberal by their definition, liberalism = fascism, and thus socialism is the only way forward. Fascists have the same tactics, as they have the entire "cultural marxist" label to tie socialists, social democrats, and generally anything remotely left of center into a neat little package (while simultaneously being a dog whistle for antisemitism). Any radical idelogy (some other examples: anarcho-capitalists, religious fundamentalists, etc) fundamentally need to do this to radicalize people. 2) The entire "capitalism always turns into fascism" thing: This entire meme is really dumb. What actually happens is that harsh conditions generate radical movements. And when the states themselves are weak, these radical movements take over. This is the one actual constant that has been true over history. If you look at peasant uprisings during preindustrial times, the rise of fascism in the early 20th century, the rise of socialism in the early 20th century, the rise of both fascist and socialist movements in Africa immediately after decolonization, and the rise of nationalism that ended the Soviet Union, all of these things can be explained by those two factors. MegaZeroX fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Nov 25, 2018 |
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Nov 25, 2018 23:45
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Phi230 posted:The centrism defender has logged on. How long with the both sides rhetoric continue? Considering that I'm a US progressive, or internationally speaking a social democrat, who watches the big people on leftytube (Contrapoints, Shaun, Hbomberguy, etc), getting called a centrist is hilarious. Phi230 posted:Note how there is no support for any of your claims, you're just huffing ze pure ideology Your posts also didn't have substantive claims. The only thing you cited was an article from The Nation, which literally only cited a single 538 article which itself only cited primary exit polls. And even then, Trump's base was only a few percentage points away skewed richer than Berine's base. And in comparison to his republican competitors, he was definitely the one bringing the most working class support. Phi230 posted:The country and world have radical problems, and need radical solutions. Nobody buys your attempts to tie the left to nazis. LOL. Apparently pointing out that pointing out that all radicals tend to paint the world in a binary in order to radicalize others means that I'm secretly trying to tie the left to nazis!  420 Gank Mid posted:What economic mode of production has created all these harsh conditions exactly? Wow, what a genius analysis. Certainly there were no other factors other than capitalism that could have lead to some issues. Nope, certainly not any wars, or imperial legacy, or over a decade of economic stagnation under a socialist government, nosiree. You have found the one single factor that magically fixes everything, good job! Phi230 posted:First of all he claims that "socialists create their own language" that's somehow meant explicitly to radicalize people but is otherwise meaningless. The terms the left uses comes from actual academia, just as much as liberal terms do. If by that logic socialist theory is "baseless made up poo poo" then liberal/neoliberal theory is similarly baseless and made up. Its a claim made out of zealous anti-leftism that makes no sense. He also claims that political ideas using language to convince people to hold those ideas is somehow unique to radicals? He's making poo poo up to make the left seem illegitimate. Please, show me all of this academic evidence of this. My brief search on Google scholar has given me nothing on the rise of fascism in regards to capitalism. And I have yet to see academics use the term "liberal" to mean "someone that supports liberal democracy as a government type." If you can actually provide evidence otherwise, that would be fantastic as well. MegaZeroX fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Nov 26, 2018 |
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Nov 26, 2018 04:54
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Bust Rodd posted:Ok so what’s the word for someone who leans left of center and doesn’t like the current system and does want radical change for his friends of different skin colors and cultures? If that’s not liberal (because I don’t live in the suburbs and don’t have a gently caress You Got Mine attitude) then what am I? I swear this thread is using different definitions than anywhere else and I’ve been having this discussion pretty much daily for like 4 years. To the people in this thread, if you aren't a socialist, then you are a centrist. Yes, it merges center left, centrist, and center right into one pointless label, and is really diverged from any political reality, but it is one of they key tools to radicalize the center left.
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Nov 28, 2018 16:17
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oohhboy posted:The mentality and purpose of the government budget doesn't translate into household budgeting but it doesn't mean you don't have to balance the books. Insolvent=no government. There are economies like Japan that have so much debt it has stagnated. My understanding is that the Japanese economy stagnated for a combination of reasons, and the debt not being one of them. AFAIK, this is the gist of what happened with Japan
Of course, this is just my surface level knowledge. I'm no expert, and could be wrong with any of these points.
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Dec 3, 2018 06:50
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Duzzy Funlop posted:To be fair, your account of the situation is more on point than the one of that other poster, but at the end of the day, you're still two guys arguing monetary policy in a fake news comedy show thread We got to do something in this thead for the next two months. Here, have a kitten 
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Dec 3, 2018 07:44
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