USPOL August: Quoth The Donald, "Arzy more."

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > USPOL August: Quoth The Donald, "Arzy more."

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

So the Khan/Trump feud is the main headline for every single news network this morning. I didn't check Fox News though. This is going to dominate another news cycle.

It's all over the German media as well.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 13:41

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 20:41

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

gradenko_2000 posted:

I love The West Wing to death and even watched The Newsroom in its entirety (I'm so so sorry) and this is bang-on.

newsroom owns

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 16:55

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

Lol this graph

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#now

Reminder that people in this thread who don't understand statistics thought Nate Silver had his finger on the scale for Trump and we explained in detail that exactly this would happen and why.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 22:47

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

it's going to level out again too.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2016 23:48

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

TheOneAndOnlyT posted:

Were there ever any major news stories along the lines of "<candidate> is doing really poorly in the polls" in 2008 or 2012? I feel like the polls never got a large enough gap for that to happen.

That seems like the thing that would throw any campaign into a death spiral. Report that the polls are looking really bad for <candidate>, which makes fewer people want to vote for them because nobody likes a loser, which makes the polls worse, which creates more reports about the polls looking really bad for <candidate>, which...

there were plenty of reports about polling in 08, and reports of candidates losing actually tends to shore up support and motivate the base, which is why candidates never, ever say "we got this in the bag", it's always "this is really close you guys" even when they're leading by a lot.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2016 23:56

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Protectionism is an economic tool and like other economic tools it is sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending on the situation. If you think protectionism is always bad you should read up on developing economies, especially the Asian Tigers and the emerging markets in South America.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 00:48

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

A Winner is Jew posted:

Given the way that trade has made nations interdependent on each other I would say that while there can be instances of good protectionism those are far outweighed by all of the bad examples of protectionism.

And yeah, a GMI is the only real long term solution... that or a post scarcity utopia.

In almost all cases of developing nations you need some level of protectionism simply to curtail the influx of hot money. Global investors will always have high enough levels of capital to destabilize the markets of developing nations if they're allowed to invest however they want. The fact that the Asian Tigers and countries like Brazil have become important economic players is in large part due to the fact that they saw that problem and instituted protectionist policies to prevent destabilization. What bad examples of protectionism are you thinking of, specifically?

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 00:59

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

fits my needs posted:

Well I am sure it's worth it for Snowden because now I'm sure he enjoys many Russian "girlfriends" in addition to being a mouthpiece for Putin. Funny how Snowden has no problem with Russia's methods of surveillance.

you mean apart from criticizing those methods of surveillance openly, sure

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 16:11

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Feinne posted:

On one hand Snowden was in a box with respect to his option surrounding the release of that information, on the other hand I can't spare even a drop of respect for him now that he's doing propaganda for Putin.

post the propaganda

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 16:11

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Bushiz posted:

I don't think Snowden is a mouthpiece for the Kremlin but I do think he's a naive idiot who can occasionally be manipulated by the FSB to give some credence to russian propaganda.

post examples

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 16:32

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Bushiz posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1yH554emkY

I mean, I think he's gotten smarter about being duped into this poo poo, but the fact remains that he's gotten duped into this poo poo before.

how is that "giving credence to kremlin propaganda". would you prefer these kinds of questions to simply not be asked ever so that putin does not get a chance to lie his rear end off in public

# ¿ Aug 6, 2016 16:49

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

disjoe posted:

Sometimes windmills are placed near residences and apparently they're REALLY loving LOUD. Like, drive you insane loud.

they are not. i live in germany, where last year roughly the same percentage of our energy came from wind as from nuclear. especially here in the north there are massive wind parks everywhere. a lot of farms have a turbine on their property to cover their energy costs, including farmers i know personally. you can hear some whirring when you're standing underneath the things, but it's a stretch to call them loud. if you can live with the noise from an air conditioning unit (or an older fridge), you can live with a turbine.

# ¿ Aug 8, 2016 16:03

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Is there a thread about the BPD findings? I'm going through the report right now and holy poo poo there's some absolutely awful poo poo in there.

quote:

We found evidence that BPD supervisors have explicitly condoned trespassing arrests that
do not meet constitutional standards, and evidence suggesting that trespassing enforcement is
focused on public housing developments. A shift commander for one of BPD�s districts emailed a
template for describing trespassing arrests to a sergeant and a patrol officer. The template provides
a blueprint for arresting an individual standing on or near a public housing development who cannot
give a �valid reason� for being there�a facially unconstitutional detention. Equally troubling is the
fact that the template contains blanks to be filled in for details of the arrest, including the arrest data
and location and the suspect�s name and address, but does not include a prompt to fill in the race or
gender of the arrestee. Rather, the words �black male� are automatically included in the description
of the arrest. The supervisor�s template thus presumes that individuals arrested for trespassing will
be African American.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 18:13

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

quote:

In
one incident we reviewed, an officer observed a gathering of people talking, eating, and waiting for
food outside a late-night restaurant after bars had closed. None of the people appeared to be
committing any crimes. But rather than monitoring the group or calling for backup in case of
trouble, the officer decided to attempt to disperse the gathering alone. The officer reported that he
decided to do this because he believed his supervisor would not be happy if he saw the area had not
been cleared. As a result of his decision to clear the corner, the officer ended up in a physical
altercation with a man who refused to leave. Alone and surrounded by an unfriendly crowd, the
officer fired his service weapon at a man he feared was about to kick him. The bullet struck two
people, at least one of whom was not involved in the incident. Despite the officer�s serious tactical
mistakes, reviewing supervisors did not report any errors and concluded that the officer had acted
appropriately

# ¿ Aug 10, 2016 18:33

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

OddObserver posted:

Depends directly on whether we have President Trump or President Clinton.

It doesn't, Estonia is part of NATO under both of them.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2016 00:09

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Regardless of the specifics of this case and your feelings about Gawker, you should be pretty goddamn concerned that a billionaire was able to destroy a news outlet he didn't like simply by having money to throw around.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 17:56

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

theflyingorc posted:

what does thiel's level of wealth have to do with it

I'm as opposed to "crushing people under legal bills" as much as anyone, but he crushed them under tricky law tactics. They were destroyed by the decision, not by the cost of court, right?

no, as far as I know Gawker itself was buried under court costs, while the individual writers were destroyed by the punitive damages awarded. also to put this into perspective, the video that accompanied the story was two minutes of highly-edited footage from the 30 minute sex tape, and less than 10 seconds of those 2 minutes were from the sex parts, the rest was racist ranting. this is well within the usual tests for public interest.

edit: especially given how openly and often hogan bragged about his extramarital affairs. it's also worth noting that stills from the sex tape were published by other journo outfits as well without them being sued.

botany fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Aug 18, 2016

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 18:18

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Crowsbeak posted:

To all defending Gawker I assume your fine with the fappening?

no.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2016 19:15

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Shifty Pony posted:

That was what was so maddening about the Hobby Lobby case. Their belief (hormonal BC works by causing abortions) was factually incorrect in a provable way.

I thought the Hobby Lobby case was essentially about morning after type pills that would prevent an already fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus? Is your objection that abortions are about embryos rather than zygotes? (Honest question, I haven't really thought about this too much so far.)

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 13:35

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Radish posted:

That's not how it works!! The amount of misinformation the religious right has done concerning the morning after pill is so frustrating. The designed effect of the morning after pill is to stop fertilization of the egg just like the regular birth control pill. It's literally an extra large does of regular birth control. The reason it's called the morning after pill is because you need to take it very soon after sex in order for it to be effective. Unlike with popular media, when you have sex the sperm doesn't shoot into the egg immediately it hangs out in the body for some time and eventually fertilizes the egg. The morning after pill stops the egg from dropping and so the sperm doesn't do anything. If the woman is currently ovulation the morning after pill doesn't work. Yes there's a tiny chance it stops a federalized egg from attaching causing "an abortion" if you want to be incredibly, incredibly generous with that term but it's not the effect and the chance of that is small. Many other drugs can also cause this but the religious right doesn't give a poo poo about those because they aren't giving women sex "for free."

Not trying to be rude since I'm sure you are asking this honestly but this frustrates me a huge deal because allowing these religious bigots their Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs results in mistruths being propagated to help their terrible ideals and hurt women.

Listen to old men talk about how birth control should be "an aspirin between the legs" and you'll understand why they give a poo poo about any of this.

I see, thanks! For the record, I was not trying to say that Hobby Lobby was correctly decided, but my main objection up to this point was that Hobby Lobby was never forced to actually demonstrate undue burden, the majority simply assumed that undue burden was present (it wasn't). I hadn't thought about the case from the viewpoint of sincerely held belief vs. biological reality, so your post was really helpful.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2016 13:57

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Yinlock posted:

oh my god shut the gently caress up about names

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 09:48

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

The Shortest Path posted:

All of these names are still less bad than "Le-a" with the pronounced dash.

oh cool now we're repeating racist poo poo that didn't happen. nice. can you loving morons stop talkign about names please it's worse than circumcision chat

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 13:53

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

The Shortest Path posted:

what

the "le-a" poo poo is literally from a re:re:re:fwd: look at how stupid black people are! chain letter from the 80s. it has never happened, it's not real, it's a racist meme about black people. congrats.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 14:14

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

QuoProQuid posted:

Freezing the financial accounts of a former journalist and challenging Gawker's attempts to cover his legal fees seems morally dubious and vindictive.

I'm sure you know this already, but it bears repeating: Thiel structured the Hogan lawsuit specifically in such a way that Gawker's legal insurance would not need to cover the expenses, even though that meant less money for Hogan.

quote:

Mr. Denton is referring to a decision by Mr. Hogan�s legal team to abruptly drop one of the claims � for �negligent infliction of emotional distress� � from its case. That claim had a particularly special meaning: It was the one claim that required Gawker�s insurance company to pay for its defense as well as potential payouts in the case of a settlement. (That provision of Gawker�s insurance policy became public after the insurance company, Nautilus, sued Gawker to try to limit payment for defense.)

Several legal experts said that it was particularly unusual for a plaintiff using a lawyer being paid on a contingency basis not only to turn down settlement offers (several sizable settlements were proffered by Gawker) but also to pursue a strategy that prevented an insurance company from being able to contribute to a settlement.

�It�s a very unusual thing to do, because the insurance company would have deeper pockets than Gawker,� said Larry Geneen, a risk management consultant who has long dealt with lawsuits involving insurance companies. �I�ve never had a situation where the plaintiff intentionally took out the claim involving the insurance company.�

edit: source

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 16:49

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

honest question since i'm not a lawyer: is it normal to collect money if the case is still in appeal?

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 17:25

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Pakled posted:

My legal knowledge is lacking, but I've heard comments to the effect that Gawker did a poor job defending itself in court and didn't take the case very seriously until it was too late. Could a more "serious" media outlet with a competent legal team have done better?

as far as i understand gawker isn't dead because of awarded damages, those are still in appeal, gawker is dead because the people running the site have to pay the lawyers themselves due to the way the hogan lawsuit was structured. if they had won, thiel presumably would have appealed and they'd have to pay the same lawyer fees.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 17:36

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

QuoProQuid posted:

Florida law requires that the losing party pay all damages pending appeal.

Gawker was expected to lose in Florida's court system. Hogan and Thiel's legal team filed the case there so that Gawker would be ruined, even if they eventually won in federal court.

Oh for fucks sake. Yeah, definitely working as intended. Thanks for the link btw.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 17:47

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Trabisnikof posted:

You realize the Democratic Party platform doesn't mention a balanced federal budget at all?

What proof do you have that Democrats are "still so fundamentally attached to lovely policies like balancing the federal budget" besides in your mind?

http://2016.presidential-candidates.org/Clinton/?on=federal-budget

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 20:19

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Donkwich posted:

Because revenge porn isn't protected speech?

they're most likely going to win on appeal, the only reason they're bankrupt is because (a) thiel deliberately structured the lawsuit so that their legal insurance wouldn't cover the costs even though hogan is going to get less money out of it and (b) they filed the case in florida where parties are required to post bonds for the full damages amount even though the case is still in appeal. it's a bit of a shitshow regardless of what you think about gawker.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 10:28

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

yeah this thread got real weird

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 19:49

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 22:05

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Nessus posted:

When a hungry bunch shows up for lunch, what are you gonna get?

was this supposed to be set to the ghostbusters theme because thats how i read it

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 22:07

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

that custom title is also pretty hosed up tho imho

USPol whats happening to you

dont make me break out the intervention music (its also the theme from ghostbusters)

# ¿ Aug 22, 2016 22:11

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Koalas March posted:

OK but can we talk about the fact the receipt is from 2015?

lol if you dont keep all your receipts then once every six months you sign all of them in case you want to hit on somebody in a situation hwere you are inherently more powerful than them and they have reason to be afraid of you just lol :coffeepal:

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 14:26

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Pyroxene Stigma posted:

The purpose was terror. Terror by definition doesn't have to be political, it just often is. Aurora was a terrorist attack. If you want to call it anarchic terror, fine.

there is no definition of terror and the common usage is that it's political

# ¿ Aug 23, 2016 18:41

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

What exactly is Hillary going to talk about in her speech about the alt-right?

How they turned the Good Guy Greg meme into an anti-semitic meme?
4Chan's hatred of ethnics?
Anti-Mexican twitter hashtags?

do you realize the alt-right exists outside of the internet you basementlord

# ¿ Aug 25, 2016 19:16

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

good lord theres a lot of people in this thread who have no understanding of european politics

but keep congratulating yourselves

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 01:08

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Revelation 2-13 posted:

racism/discrimination is much, much lower in the US

I'd like to know what you mean by this.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 10:44

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

Revelation 2-13 posted:

There are (again) different ways of measuring it, here is a simple example which I really like, the question is about whether or not you'd want a neighbor of a difference race : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/

Of course, as with all measures of that sort there are several problems, but overall you'll find the same pattern in most of the easily available stuff on discrimination and racism. There is however, quite a spread in Europe, so probably some European countries would compare favorably to the US.

e:overall, what I was trying to say, is that the US fairly consistently scores as one of the countries in the world with highest race/ethnicity tolerance across many different ways of measuring those sorts of things. Which is different from whether the justice system is bad etc.

Yeah that's fine, I mostly wanted to know whether you were talking about individual discrimination or systemic racism.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 11:18

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 20:41

botany: Apr 27, 2013; by Lowtax

ComradeCosmobot posted:

At least one economist believes that that death spiral has already begun.

you can find an economist who thinks the world is ending at any given time for any given topic

# ¿ Aug 26, 2016 16:10

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