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 Let's get this show on the road
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Oct 2, 2014 02:29
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SubponticatePoster posted:Did you mean to say September (which just ended) or is that literally you in the OP? Literally me. God dammit, someone please PM Xylo
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Oct 2, 2014 02:33
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Mister Macys posted:Huh; I thought the US had stricter regulations on whiskey, bourbon, and all that. We do. the stuff made in Lawrenceville complies with all the requirements to be authentic rye whiskey, and the companies either use it as a blend (which is what it was originally made for, blending into the Seagram's was how they used it before it was sold to MGP) or they have the distillery location disclosed in the fine print. If you ever have a spare weekend to do a trip, I recommend the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. I did it about a month ago, every place goes through a spiel explaining this. If you go, you should plan out your drive yourself instead of using the bus service though, its cheaper and better. And thank you for the fix Xylo
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Oct 2, 2014 04:21
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SirKibbles posted:Uh what? That's not what government is supposed to do? Might be what you want it to do. Please define what you think the role of government is, keeping in mind that as a matter of practical fact the government does act as the agency of last resort to issues that are largely no profitable but necessary, and that there are governments other than the american model that your definition would need to encompass Also if you are going to try and say something like "protect your rights" you will need to define where rights come from and why
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Oct 2, 2014 17:38
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FlamingLiberal posted:Unemployment just dipped below 6%, and yet somehow the Dems are probably going to lose this election, because America. We've all gotten poorer in this recovery so that the top of the heap could get richer, what part of that should people be happy about?
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Oct 3, 2014 15:31
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:The part where there was a recovery. From the point of view of most of the population, there wasn't one. I'm aware of the facts here, but "it could have been worse" isn't much of an argument, particularly when the argument is coming from the economists who didn't see the crash coming in the first place. And framing things in terms of recovering from the crash misses out that the economy has been terrible for most people since 1999. Is it really any wonder that voters aren't rewarding the Democrat for the economy's performance? sean10mm posted:I'm confused, does not liking an outcome mean you should vote for the party pushing for it even more than the other one? Absolutely not, but it doesn't mean you should celebrate the party that didn't screw you as badly either. The thing of it is, most of the Dems are convinced that they did enact huge changes that punished the banks and returned to massive growth. And why not? They had to fight like mad to beat the banks and GOP to get reform through, and they and their lobbyists have been howling that it is a death knell to the way banking is done rather than a light tut tut. The standard metrics of "how are things going" are doing well. From their point of view at great cost they did very well, and the feedback they are getting would confirm that. It's when you get out of the 1% bubble that you see things are considerably less rosy.
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Oct 3, 2014 16:32
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ReindeerF posted:That's the political reality, it's just annoying because it's become cyclical. Elect Republicans who pilfer the poo poo out of the public coffers, pass tax breaks and basically destroy the country's finances, then elect Democrats who are Rockefeller Republicans, but who at least see it as their duty to try to balance the checkbook, then 8 years later when the poo poo is barely getting back in order the Republicans start screeching again and the public elects another of their people, who does the same thing. It's been going on since Reagan. I'm not sure how much more the country's (or world's) economy can stand. There was a thing on NPR excerpting Obama's Northwestern speech this morning, and the thing that stuck out to me is that by the standards of the Very Serious People who are of course Neutral Centrist Moderates rather that ideologues pushing their own set of ideas Obama has done fairly well. Stocks are up, deficit is shrinking, health care costs are slowing, unemployment is down, new trade agreements are coming along, high end goods costs are dropping bringing the average market basket prices down, and he's bombing the Middle East. Now if only he would Lead and would Reach Out To Achieve Bipartisan Compromise So We Can Get A Grand Bargain On Entitlements they might be really happy.
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Oct 3, 2014 16:56
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Warcabbit posted:The interesting thing is that the recovery is pretty okay in blue states and basically not there in red states. Especially the ones that the Republicans have done their magic in - see Kansas. Even there for most people wages are down and prices are up. There are more jobs, but wages are still low with little to no bargaining power to ask for a raise. Sure CPI may look great, but differentiate that by product category and you start to see where the bite is and why most people are seeing a greater impact than the metric would indicate. Those states are doing better than the GOP states, but, again, "it could be worse" is not a winning political message. Fried Chicken fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 18:59
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Kilty Monroe posted:Sometimes I wonder if right-wing money is helping astroturf the MRA movement in the hopes of burying Hillary in a wave of misogynist backlash, much like how promoting thinly-veiled racism has helped drain Obama's political capital. I can't tell if this is being too paranoid or just giving the competence of the right's strategists too much credit. With that specific goal? I doubt it. Still, those assholes are getting more active and powerful, and since interests align connections are being made. It's shocking how fast they have grown. 8 years ago they didn't exist. 6 years ago they were a few "pick up artist" forums based off a MTV show. 4 years ago they started getting "parental custody reform" bills passed in states (3 so far) that, while made needed changes, also played to the less lovely parts of the MRA agenda. 2 years ago they had Ken Cuccinelli going to their meetings to speak, fundraise, and recruit volunteers. You have to wonder where this will top out
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Oct 6, 2014 15:26
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ReindeerF posted:You can't have been around for the early years of the internet and find it more hostile now, heh. What you're seeing is the result of women standing up and some men not dealing with the new normal very well. That's why it looks worse. Before, there were fewer women, fewer probably stood up and the men who get really pissed off by female involvement and treating them as equals didn't have as much to shriek about. Nah, there is definitely a new angle to it as well. People are identifying themselves by the media consume and thus any criticism of that media is a criticism of them. It is a level of brand identification/ in group-outgroup thinking that didn't pop up until the late 90s. It's not just internet pissants either, look at the way creationism, geocentricism, and antivaxxers spikes in polling when a Democrat is in office. People knee jerk to certain beliefs to say "I am not like them" and criticizing those beliefs, even when they agree with those criticisms when their "side" is in power, is now a criticism of them, rather than of the statement. And it is met with the level of vitriol as a result.
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Oct 6, 2014 15:51
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Shbobdb posted:Counterpoint: Ford vs Chevy vs import. And, of course the granddaddy of them all, sports. People have been identifying themselves via brand since the hippodrome. Capitalism has been accelerating and expanding on that basic principle since the 50s due to major developments in the science of advertising. Couple this with the decline in the role of religion (and the related trend of the commoditization of religion), a more transient, mobile population and the elimination of life-long careers and what we have left to define us is our consumption. True. It still seems like it is worse to me though, like there has been a sharp rise in apocalyptic thinking, where it isn't enough to make your point, or rebut the other person's points or reach some sort of conciliation with them. Instead they must be completely destroyed. And it seems like this really kicked up in the past 20 years between the appearance of Fox News segregating media sources, the millennium giving rise to "end of the world" thinking, 9/11 prompting "clash of cultures" thinking, and the rise of Dominionism in pop media and politics. I don't know, maybe I'm talking out my rear end here, but it really seems like the idea that any disagreement is an attack on your person, and thus any disagreement must be eliminated has really sped up lately.
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Oct 6, 2014 16:38
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In not lovely news, the SCOTUS has refused to hear all 7 appeals on marriage equality rulings, letting the lower court rulings stand. That's 13 states that will have legalized gay marriage in a matter of days
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Oct 6, 2014 17:07
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:The More likely they are buying cover of not having to formally rule on it. I mean, incredibly lovely decisions are coming, but it's more Roberts & Co don't want to take the heat for ruling in favor of marriage equality
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Oct 6, 2014 17:53
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part of my brain is thinking that they're just buying cover for a few really awful decisions next year.
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:Is Tugboat the one who wanted to punch the President after the debates? yep
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Oct 7, 2014 01:53
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ComradeCosmobot posted:Best you could do is something about what he would intend to do if the "disparate impact" rules are overturned by SCOTUS in Inclusive Communities Project v. Texas Dept of Housing this session. This is the kind of in depth policy question I would love to hear him answer. Also, I'd put $100 that he won't give anything more than a soundbyte to it DOOP posted:Ask him if he's actually his twin brother loving with people this is the fun one My Imaginary GF posted:Ask him, as the VP of some academic club, if he would agree with Biden's assessment that ain't it a bitch? this is the question you need to ask. "Do you agree with Vice President Biden's recent assessment about the role and duties of the Vice President, and does that impact your future ambitions?" If you think you can get a real answer from him, as number 1, or about what policies beyond immigration reform he would suggest the Democratic Party enact to deliver to hispanic voters rather than take them for granted. Otherwise go for troll and use number 3
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Oct 7, 2014 05:58
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Kiwi Ghost Chips posted:I'm not sure how interests can "conflict" when directors and officers are explicitly supposed to work in the best interests of the shareholders. Depends on the metric you assign towards being in the best interest of the shareholders. In this case, maximizes share price sounds great, and if you are a financial trader, is. But most stockholders own for multi decade periods, and thus would be hurt by it if it comes at the expense of long term health. Goals aren't the only things that need to match, how you measure them must as well. But trying to make a legal case of it is near impossible
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Oct 7, 2014 18:05
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FlamingLiberal posted:Large companies are just not investing in anything post 2008, and it's really dumb because long-term it will bite them in the rear end. Even more so because when interest rates are lower than inflation you are getting free money.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:05
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:This is the same reason things like chess tournaments are segregated, right? Noncompetitive competitions are unsurprisingly not interesting, so it makes perfect sense to split off groups if one is significantly better. You are very optimistic about human nature if you think that is why it was done
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Oct 7, 2014 18:12
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Samurai Sanders posted:Why would women be inherently better or worse at chess (or shooting)? Well with regard to chess it's because in 1851 women had more time to practice since they were barred from things like working, owning property, voting, walking unescorted, etc etc etc. When you sit around playing chess all day while entertaining visitors you get good at it. Like anything else, practice matters. These days on average male chess players tend to significantly outperform female chess players. But then women are significantly underrepresented in the upper echelons of competitive chess. When they split the competition chess became a male thing instead of an upper class thing, so women stopped playing and those that did played against a smaller and thus weaker pool of opponents. Fast forward to the 1980s when reintegration started and Judit Polgar becoming grandmaster and they are just now starting to get back up there because you are only as hard as you train and they have only been training at that level recently. I studied a lot about chess in grade school
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Oct 7, 2014 18:22
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Samurai Sanders posted:Unrelated to anything but how did the word "check" come to mean slamming your body into someone? When I check my students' papers for errors I sometimes want to slam my body into them, but I have to remember that it's a completely different meaning...or is it? Check also means to halt, and slamming into someone means you are halting their progress AreWeDrunkYet posted:How do you figure that's optimism? quote:Again, I don't know the backstory here, but the poster seems to be implying that women were broadly doing better than men in mixed competitions, so they split the two off and made a men's competition a separate thing so they could win something and not feel bad about themselves for losing. This is pretty much the history of segregated chess tournaments, they started off as all mixed, but women weren't doing as well so they carved out a division so they could compete among themselves.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:36
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McAlister posted:Furthermore, in intellectual sports having tough opponents is helpful to increase your own performance. Its hard to improve personally if you never jack up the difficulty level. Segregating by gender always harms one gender or the other by cutting that one off from useful opponents in the other.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:50
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Well, consider me educated. I was under the assumption that parallel chess competitions were created for women so they would have something to win (and by extension encourage participation for women), not that they were actively excluded from open competition. When were women allowed back into open play? In 1965 they changed the rules to allow them to title women by special decision, Nona Gaprindashvili was awarded the title grandmaster in 1978. In 1970 proposals to phase in integrated competitive play were passed, by the 1980s tournaments were mixed. Judit Polgar became the first woman grandmaster through tournament play in 1991. She was 15 at the time This about tips out my knowledge, any more than this and I'll need to start cribbing from Wikipedia
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Oct 7, 2014 19:06
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Rhesus Pieces posted:
if it weren't for the winters, it would be on my list of places to move.
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Oct 8, 2014 03:36
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Jerry Manderbilt posted:For me it's questions like "what kind of jobs do they have" yeah, but that's the question everywhere. And generally, the answer is "poo poo"
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Oct 8, 2014 03:47
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Joementum posted:I put on my Carhartt hoodie and Sox cap... I keep turning this over in my head and the more I think about it the stupider it becomes.
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Oct 8, 2014 15:56
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Evil Fluffy posted:
First Law series absolutely owns and you should totally read it
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Oct 9, 2014 06:32
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Sooo... Bush was Luthar, Cheney was Bayaz? Well if that's the case, then Obama would be Logan, and West would be Holder? And then Hillary would be Black Daw, and the King would be Reagan. No Glotka parallel though. There is only one Glotka Man, for a series that's really riffing on the general set up of Lord of the Rings, it kinda works here Barak "the Bloody Drones" Obama. But yeah, if anyone like fantasy or watching Game of Thrones they should read this series. In minor local news, there is a bit of a tiff over a gun aficionado. Seems the fellow so liked his guns he commissioned a local artist to make a decoration for his front yard, a stone plinth bearing the text of the 5th amendment so as to celebrate and proclaim his right to keep and bear arms. So now it's the gun guy ranting about perfidious liberals, the artist waving the work order that says 5th amendment, and the home owners association saying he can't have it even if it had the right words on it.  (The sensible option in ordering it would have been to write out the exact words you want instead of saying "go look up what it says on this section and carve it in", but a professional who would specify that on the work order probably wouldn't work on the cheap from Craigslist either)
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Oct 9, 2014 15:55
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Shifty Pony posted:Wait I must be missing something here. Does the plinth literally say "5th Amendment" on it instead of the text of the Amendment? It has the text of the 5th on it apparently. The artist wasn't dumb or lazy, he made a nice little decoration proclaiming the right against self incrimination. It was the buyer who screwed up his amendments, and is now arguing that he told the artist he wanted 2nd and the artist put down the 5th to try and make him look dumb/like a crook.
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Oct 9, 2014 16:12
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Joementum posted:I don't think we should continue on this topic without making sure that everyone sees the incredibly stupid thing Eric Schmidt said during that panel event with Rand. Here it is: “Gamify the lessons. … As jobs get automated away, the only thing we can do is have smarter people.” And I was just reading today about how there is a huge glut of post docs in math and hard sciences who are graduating and can't find jobs.
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Oct 10, 2014 04:16
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Aliquid posted:there's a big thread on it already because it didn't really have anything to do with US politics the disappearance of the leader of a nuclear armed state whose collapse could completely gently caress up some of our biggest trading partners is a pretty important thing for US politics.
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Oct 10, 2014 05:40
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Remember that drunken brawl the Palin clan was in? The police reports are out Almost a very weak heartbeat away from nuclear weapons
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Oct 10, 2014 14:39
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JT Jag posted:The more cases I see him try, the more I think that John Roberts is, politically, extremely shrewd and calculating, that he's fully aware of the power he wields as Chief Justice, and that he uses it primarily in an attempt to force the Republican Party to stay relevant going into the future. He knows precisely which wedge issues are losing their utility to the party, and he's willing to break with popular party dogma to rule against them it means the Republicans are forced to modernize. I'm with you about halfway in this, my disagreement being "force the Republican Party to stay relevant". What he has done is forced them to avoid populism. Citizen's United destroyed any chance of change with the GOP. Obama destroyed them in small donations in 2008, it's where his funding edge came from. The GOP had nothing like that machine in operation, and was years behind. To make individual donations a force you need lots of individuals, which strips power from the elite. CU blew that out of the water. His rulings since on a number of issues have further reigned in the possibility of mass action having an impact through stripping voting rights and rulings against protestors and organizing tactics. He has kept the GOP from needing to adjust its agenda to meet the wants and needs of most of the electorate, and kept it firmly where it was under Bush.
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Oct 10, 2014 14:49
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Shbobdb posted:And thank god we dodged that bullet. No kidding. Imagine if we had privatized it before the crash. It's like the Dems retaking congress in 2006 and reinstating FDIC fees - a little thing that otherwise would have been devestating
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Oct 11, 2014 20:23
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computer parts posted:I'm guessing something to do with the fact that a large part of the Houston economy is based on oil refinement so when that is no longer A Thing then Houston will have to deal with a massively reduced tax base. Houston has annexation laws to combat white flight, that's where it's (size) growth has come from. You want to pack up and trundle halfway to Galveston because you are terrified of people being darker than the average Swede? Well now you are still in Houston rear end in a top hat.
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Oct 11, 2014 23:22
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Samurai Sanders posted:Those methods to keep whites inside the city seem pretty extreme. Do economic carrots like lower property taxes or whatever not work? Nope. If "hey this is in my personal and economic interests" overruled "those drat *slur-for-nonwhites-of-choice*" we would be a very different country. At a minimum the idea that universal health care is a cover for reparations wouldn't have any traction.
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Oct 12, 2014 09:17
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Jealous Cow posted:Has this actually happened recently? It is organized to happen on election day/ we will see how it shakes out
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Oct 12, 2014 22:10
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Found the exact number needed to prevent a recount on her personal laptop that she took home with her. Yep, not a fraudulent election at all.
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Oct 13, 2014 15:03
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Reminder that it was found out that Thad McCotter (R-MI 11) was found to have used extensive voter fraud to get into office from 2006 on and all that happened was he quietly stepped down in July of 2012 and was erased from the national discourse, despite previously being touted as a presidential candidate
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Oct 13, 2014 16:10
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ComradeCosmobot posted:While we're talking about things that are clearly not voter fraud, NPR is running a story this morning about a study by a USC polysci professor which found that Republican lawmakers in favor of voter ID were 40 points less likely to respond to a constituent e-mail signed with a Hispanic name. But it's not about race because it's never about race
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Oct 13, 2014 16:11
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 12:08 |
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It is important to remember that according to the legal reasoning you do not actually have a right to vote. A right to vote isn't spelled out in the constitution, instead merely a list of criteria that cannot be used to deny you the vote. If they used criteria not on that list they should be in the clear, and arguing disparate impact to violate that criteria is on its last legs and should be gone by this time next year in a 5-4 decision. It is this same legal reasoning that Art 1 sect 8, the general welfare clause, means that congress can only collect taxes to fund the military, but cannot do so for a bill on the grounds of general welfare. This is why anything they pass can be challenged and has to jump through a bunch of hoops to be constitutional rather than just pointing out "universal health care serves the general welfare of the citizenry" It is amazing home all these people obsessed with "what the founders intended"  manage to twist any hint of lack of explicit clarity to mean their agenda is right, rather than just using the reasonable person standard. And while there are issues where the reasonable person standard would fall (mainly in the realm of minority rights, because the reasonable person standard effectively means the opinion of the majority) it only really gets invoked in those instances and not when it would apply to the general populationBasically it's capture of the government process by an elite group to serve their own ends and beat down "the mob" in a nutshell
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Oct 13, 2014 19:51
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