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Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Axetrain posted:

Trump looked really good yesterday, He was briefly calm and subdued before again embracing the behavior of a mentally disabled pathological liar. He didn't even drop trou on stage and poo poo all over the place. If that's not presidential material what is huh?
Well are we using the Democratic or Republican rules here, because there's a different set of standards. you might say a sort of, double standard.

Kilroy posted:

But to suggest atheism requires faith, as you have, or to say "agnosticism is the most intellectually honest position" is in fact intellectually dishonest as hell. I can think up any number of far-fetched schemes to get the universe into the state it is in today, including "the universe popped into existence in this state five seconds ago for no reason" and we could all try to measure how full of poo poo that is - but to insist that in the case of a divine creator we must withhold judgement because it could be true, guys, you just don't know, okay? is putting that particular belief above all the other evidence-free confabulations for no reason at all other than historical baggage, which is really unscientific.
personally, I think there's two kinds of atheism, the general sort and the specific "I think the religions in my particular cultural and historical environment are full of poo poo in very specific ways," and the two get strongly connected, but aren't necessarily connected.

There's certainly more than one atheism out there.

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Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Evil Fluffy posted:

Deluded enough to think Trump was doing something other than scamming rubes.
If Trump does one good thing, I hope he at least puts some damage on the reflexive association between "Republican" and "good" that a lot of the rubes seem to have.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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readingatwork posted:

Yes. They should take principled stands and stick by them. I don't see why this is unreasonable to expect.

And yes this can be done without torpedoing your career. For example Bernie Sanders has been giving the same speech for like fifty years.
So what happens if they make a good-faith mistake or significant error? What happens if, say, you think taxes need to come down when they're 60%, but you think they need to go up when they're 35%, at the top brackets? What happens if a new issue arises? What happens if you were crusty about gays in 1971 because you were an idiot in college, but now you've realized you were an idiot and LBGT people are just fine and wonderful?

Are you replaced with a genetic clone of Bernie Sanders?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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readingatwork posted:

You make a speech stating that you're changing your position and then explain why as best you can. A lot of people have actually done just that on the LGBT issue and I respect the hell out of them for it.
Serious question: Why? Because what you were saying is, people shouldn't change their principles, now you're saying that people can change their principles as long as they follow a particular routine. I have a feeling that whatever this routine and system is, it is so constructed that Hillary Clinton JUST HAPPENS to have not met it, even if this creates other logical absurdities.

But seriously, though, how can you trust that they mean it? How do you know they're not just pandering - lying to you?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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A big flaming stink posted:

It's sort of awkward. Yes its pretty lovely that capital has gotten more and more entrenched as time goes by, but I think there is a tendency among leftist sorts to deny that the effects of capitalism can lead to any sort of benefit (I myself have fallen prey to this mindset)

For all of globalization's evils, more people have been lifted out of crushing poverty now than at any other time in history.
They should read their Marx, Marx himself said capitalism was a natural development and greatly preferable to feudalism!

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Given that Citizens United was specifically created in response to plaintiffs who had made a movie personally insulting her, I do not think Hillary Clinton is fond of the decision. She is probably less violently angered by the principle of that decision than many leftists, but at a certain point I feel like judging someone by how incoherently furious they are about a law is not gonna get us a strong bench

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Night10194 posted:

It isn't just that each writer's voice influences the story, it's that each writer is also using the story of Jesus to try to reach out to a different audience, at a different time in history.

I mean, christ, there are two completely different accounts of the Garden *back to back* in Genesis, because the two stories are intended to illustrate different theological truths, and the ancients had no problem with this. Biblical literal ism is a plague.
It is a problem that was spotted by St. God drat Augustine before the fall of the Roman empire:

St. Augustine posted:

Often, a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, … and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, which people see as ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant person is laughed at, but rather that people outside the faith believe that we hold such opinions, and thus our teachings are rejected as ignorant and unlearned. If they find a Christian mistaken in a subject that they know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions as based on our teachings, how are they going to believe these teachings in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think these teachings are filled with fallacies about facts which they have learnt from experience and reason.

Reckless and presumptuous expounders of Scripture bring about much harm when they are caught in their mischievous false opinions by those not bound by our sacred texts. And even more so when they then try to defend their rash and obviously untrue statements by quoting a shower of words from Scripture and even recite from memory passages which they think will support their case ‘without understanding either what they are saying or what they assert with such assurance.’ (1 Timothy 1:7)
I think the only possible reason this idea has such currency in America is exactly because of the wildfire and profound cultural hegemony which the Christian churches were able to establish under the wise shelter of the 1st Amendment.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Josef bugman posted:

So, how the gently caress are people supposed to deal with the whole "end of work" thing? Like I have a BA and I know that isn't going to be good enough to get me a "fantastic" job anymore. I personally wouldn't mind having to work less and less, but with less money being around for workers, and more being focussed in capital doesn't this just end up with thousands not working "a job" but working different ones in order to keep themselves afloat?

Does this mean that we're just at the mercy of capital forever? gently caress, no wonder people are mad.
The usual scenario here for people feeling pessimistic is "The rich kill everyone with a small elite force of security troopers backed by automatic murder machines and it becomes legal, aided by mass desolation etc. and then get to enjoy being rich in seclusion forever." (My advice in this situation is to become a drone attendant, because once the masses are cowed, you'll be holding all the cards.)

What will probably eventually happen is some kind of grudging expansion of a GMI program of some kind, which will probably prevent an actual rising.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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I expect the first debate will go semi-sanely and in the second one Trump will lose his temper. Alternately, he will just constantly interrupt Hillary, which will piss off white women. GG.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Chuu posted:

It's hard to tell from your post; but the current model is that you won't own an autonomous car. They'll be owned by companies like Uber and Google (and Ford? They want in) and you'll exclusively be using an app like Uber to interact with them.
What if you keep stuff in your car? Or is stuff going to be obsolete too

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Petr posted:

Pivot tomorrow, trump bump narrative starts a week from now, wikileaks bombshell in four weeks, Trump overtakes Clinton in the popular vote in five weeks, ekes out electoral college superiority 8.5 weeks from now, and wins the presidency two days before being convicted of rape and fraud.
Post yo map

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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straight up brolic posted:

There doesn't need to be an ultimate moral lesson to find the irony in the primary choice vs. reality a bit unsettling and frustrating.
Make a joke or something with this poo poo, unless the joke is that tedious handwringing successfully annoys nerds

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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straight up brolic posted:

I literally just posted that. That's +39 in her own party (which is not good). Obama was +45 with the entire electorate
and yet she is +1 in Texas

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Majorian posted:

My feelings exactly. Clinton's probably going to win this thing, and as a former Sanders supporter myself, I think she probably is running a more competent general election campaign than Bernie would have. But dear God, has she inflicted some incredibly unnecessary wounds upon herself. It really feels like she's coasting into November, and that's something that she can't do. Even if she manages to eke out a victory that way, it's going to be a much narrower victory than it should be against Donald freaking Trump, and she's going to have a much smaller majority in the Senate to work with (if any at all). I honestly don't know how somebody as brilliant and qualified as she is could be making so many rookie mistakes.
What would you rather she be doing? If it's "deliver fiery speeches condemning Donald Trump and raise money and hustle for downballot races" my understanding is that this is in fact occurring, but this is not as sexy as "Hillary coughed: is she dying?? Part 4 of our weeklong series."

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Paradoxish posted:

It's diplomatic brownie points at best, which is what I was trying to get at on the last page. A first use of nuclear weapons has no practical strategic value, so if it comes down to a madman with his finger on the button then we're well past the point where policy matters anyway. This is also why it doesn't matter as a deterrent. There's no predictable situation where we'd want to do it, so how can any other state factor it into their decision making process? The only reasonable position is to assume that the US will never use nuclear weapons in an offensive capacity.
I could see an argument that it would make non nuclear but mega-damaging shenanigans seem more attractive.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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The Iron Rose posted:

That was the argument I was making, though I'm pretty sure I lost that one :v:
Your problem is ultimately one of communication and ideology. Ideologically the attitude you espouse is now connected to war crimes and heinous bullshit, whether you like it or not. You will either need to salvage it somehow or express the idea in different terms. (You might note that this de-legitimizing is perhaps the only effective possible check to American power in a lot of outlets.)

You also have the issue where we seem to be both getting greedy and wasteful, which conceals a lot of the positive effects our military presence has on the global situation. For instance you mention how thanks, primarily, to the US Navy, there really is not piracy on a global level at the moment, which has not always historically been the case. People aren't aware of that, they're aware of the however-many aircraft carriers and the stupid-rear end plane which is getting trillions of dollars while the roads and bridges rot, the young people are unemployed and indebted, and there is very little indication that the people supporting the military have any interest in rectifying this. It seems more plausible that the military will be turned on the starving and unemployed when eventually they rise up, and that kind of trumps any abstract benefits about open shipping lanes for the people who are paying the bills on the system.

There is also the question of: OK: so, the nuclear deterrent, the Navy, and a few other things accomplish positive goals for the world. Why are we spending our money on other things? Granted that we would want to maintain our edge; how does the F-35 maintain that edge? This is the rot of empire. Probably you're in no position to do much about it, and none of us are, but that's where this pressure on the left is coming from.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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The grotesque thing to me isn't so much that they're grilling :abuela: it's that it seems like Donald Trump just keeps on getting a pass for all this bullshit. It's like the reductio ad absurdium for "it's OK if you're a Republican." The Republicans could run a literal yellow dog and they'd get treated with deference and respect. But I guess that's what all that liberal media yelling was for, to accomplish this goal.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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DemeaninDemon posted:

Ahahahahahaha how low will his women polls go?
14.88%

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Dr.Zeppelin posted:

Hillary ran ads of terrible Trump soundbytes basically unopposed during the Olympics and Trump cut her lead in half. Why should I be confident at all that people are going to respond positively to a different set of them? Trump has been completely normalized by the media and no one gives a poo poo about anything that he says anymore, and Hillary flooding the airwaves with it might just make annoyed people vote against her out of spite.
Might as well not have an election at all, really.

e: Also man if they nearly walked out of THIS, does that mean Trump might storm off mid debate in another one? I mean I'm sure the NYT will suck his dick for being so brave as to do so.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Sep 8, 2016

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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They might also be realizing that Trump is a slightly less X-rated version of Todd from Achewood.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Moatman posted:

There's even less mention of Putin in the new version!
Does Putin have a cut on the NYT or what? Jesus Christ, how much of this dumb country does Putin own now?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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SpaceDrake posted:

My one takeaway is that I still can't believe just how openly a Russian Fifth Columnist Trump is.

And I mean, there's a part of me that just doesn't understand how this doesn't flog his numbers into the single-digits.

Imagine any candidate before 1991 speaking well of any Russian leader. Even in the 90s, imagine a candidate saying Yeltzin was better than a sitting US president. They wouldn't be alive a week later.

This is the bizzaro election and I just dunno what to make of it anymore.
Trump has figured out that there has been a generation and a half of conditioning to make it so that a Republican could hail Satan and swallow a slurry of aborted infants and would still get 40% of the vote, because they're a Republican. The actual Republicans are pissed off because he might break the scam they worked so hard to build and they expected it to last at least another ten years.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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ImpAtom posted:

It is really, really, really loving absurd that Trump makes campaign-destroying gaffs on a weekly basis and it isn't a thing. Romney's 47% comment was arguably one of the most damaging things to his campaign and Trump said three worse things than that in a single interview.
Sounds like you're liberally biased to me.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

I had sudden flashbacks to a cooking class where some lady got mad at the instructions to "apply liberally" the marinade. She was like a human email forward. And now I'm again grateful that my elderly relatives' Re: Re: FWD: FWD: FWD: work is mostly in the "A conservative did a thing" field and I rarely have to hear about Hillary's coughing being because her human mask was chafing against her scaly lizard people skin.
I remember when I was in grade school and we had stacks of old Readers' Digests around for some reason, and I read one and it had a quote from George HW Bush saying 'I think liberals are more like wishful thinkers' and I thought, 'hee hee, does that mean I should apply sunscreen wishful-thinkerily?'

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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SpaceDrake posted:

The thing that gets me, though, is that he's cozying up to a Russian dictator.

Like, most of these older white voters who are supporting him are also people who spent decades being indoctrinated to think of Russia as an implacable enemy, regardless of how true it is (disclaimer: ironically I think it's far more true now than it was during most of the actual Cold War). Trump is flying directly in the face of this, and it doesn't seem to hurt his numbers at all.

I have to wonder what the takeaway from this is. Did the American public, including and perhaps especially Republicans, really not give all that much of a poo poo about the Cold War when it comes down to it? In nearly any other context, that would be a joyous concept to take from all this, but in this case it just means that a significant portion of the population can openly fawn over a foreign dictator. Could anyone else get away with this? Does this say anything about how the public feels about relations with Russia in general?

In any case, somebody in Wisconsin should probably hook the corpse of McCarthy up to a generator - he's probably rotating fast enough in his grave to generate a good jiggawatt or two.
The enemy was always people at home, the foreigners were just there to highlight how the liberals, blacks, and so on were so wicked. Similarly, what Jesus taught doesn't matter, he's just OUR tribal god, versus THEIR moon god.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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The Shortest Path posted:

It gives even more credence to the "Trump was a Hillary sockpuppet the whole time" theory, it's making all the idiot journalists look like total morons for doing this to the race.
I don't even know how society would handle it if Trump said "Yeah, it was a work" in his concession speech. I mean if you want to appeal to his ego... My God, is that how it was done? Is that the trick Bill Clinton played on the world? Has he convinced Donald Trump that if he destroys the Republican Party, history will vindicate him?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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FairGame posted:

I don't see the issue with "having to see a few ads* when I read information," no.

*provided the ads aren't filled with malware, browser-crashing, auto-play video, or the litany of other annoyances that users really shouldn't have to deal with.
Yeah I wouldn't mind if they just had visual ads or the like, but instead it's all that nasty poo poo because they don't give a gently caress. If they could force you to open the other website I'm sure they would.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Boxcar posted:

No - that some of her supporters seem to love embracing a persecution myth on her behalf.

The Attack: Hillary is a cold speaker
Reply that moved one goon to tears: She is a victim of a sexist society and is forced to trailblaze a path in which she vaguely wishes she had it as easy as a man, but can deal.
Reply accused of trolling: If she is such a cold speaker, explain why she is one of the highest paid speakers and has inspired more people than ever to vote for her as their presidential nominee

I think this mentality is why Trump still has whatever little chance he has of winning. Democrats need to say why Hillary is great - not how she is overcoming a sexist society, especially in a field she is already pretty much number one in.
How about this: Hillary is doing well but suffers from some burdens due to her gender and the way it interacts with cultural expectations which has made her course more difficult and in some ways limits her options (for instance, she has to think twice about getting all Passionate in speeches, lest this get parsed as "Yelling Woman"). It may even have some tertiary spinoff advantages - for instance, if Trump does try to bully her at the debates, it will probably rebound on him a way that it would not have, were he addressing Harold Rodham Clinton.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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greatn posted:

Well depends on the dead monkey. Harambe knows what he did
Yeah, he died for our sins, you rear end in a top hat. :harambe:

Harambe is constitutionally ineligible anyway. However, a silverback over 35 could probably run. Whether or not this would be accepted by the courts depends entirely on if the gorilla was a Republican or not.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Jimbozig posted:

That can't be true.

If that was true, couldn't you just sell at the end of every Thursday and then buy late every Friday?
That's so stupid you may have legitimately made a discovery

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Brony Car posted:

Reverend Ike, Secretary of the Treasury
Richard Pryor, Secretary of Education
Stevie Wonder, Secretary of Fine Arts
And Miss Aretha Franklin, the First Lady
Can Hillary's strength in Chocolate City extend into the vanilla suburbs?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Yinlock posted:

I do love how this turns the Republicans' whole "PC Police!!" crusade against them, "political correctness" was actually their plausible deniability but whoops Trump smashed everything and now they don't really have a specific defense when Hillary calls them out on it.

Like anything they try to disprove the racism accusation will only dig the hole deeper because they're really, really racist and there's so much evidence.
At this point I am starting to wonder just why, exactly, the Republicans keep trying to nail Bill Clinton with this Epstein poo poo, given that pretty much every other thing they throw on Democrats is done by them.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Majorian posted:

Attack your enemy's strengths, pin your shortcomings to them. That was the Rove playbook, and it's one of the few things that he actually got right.
This suggests, at this point, that the Republican Party founded ISIS, was born in a foreign nation, hates America and seeks to sow racial discord.

Yeah, except for #2 that sounds right

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Trabisnikof posted:

And this is why the "Bush is dumb" meme prevented the "Kerry is a pussy" meme from working! :v:
I'm pretty sure the actual key to Republican success has been horsewhipping the media on "bias" to the point where they are reflexively deferential to Republicans. I mean, that has been true for my entire life but it has really popped now that Trump is the Republican they are deferring to.

OneThousandMonkeys posted:

I do get sick of the media narrative that Clinton has been biding her time and doing nothing in order to let Trump crucify himself. The "here is what the alt-right is" speech would be considered nuts in any other election.
And the Republicans buried it! By not responding to it, so the press couldn't make a "balanced" story.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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The Republicans' problem here is that they can't alienate the racists too hard because while I think the actual hard-core for-real racists are maybe a quarter, or a third of their electorate, without them they are toast. The larger cloud of people with shithead opinions who are probably not actually ready to Hail Hydra and join the Trumpstaffel are probably already somewhat uncomfortable with how high the water temperature's gotten.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Epic High Five posted:

Also, CNN went beyond idiotic and into Fox News territory the second that Trump started quarreling with Megyn Kelly and Fox News. They saw it was a gambit to go harder right in a less GOPe way to wedge off some of FNC's voter base and for awhile they were correct. Their ratings have been slipping tho so it looks like the novelty of a mistress has worn off for the FNC base

I mean they're paying Corey half a million a year to weigh in on politics when he's still advising the Trump campaign and is legally barred from disclosing any information about the campaign or even saying anything mean about Trump at all
Is Ted Turner trying to make CNN the WCW to Fox's WWF?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Radish posted:

If Trump tweeted that the 911 victims were worthless losers that deserved to die the Republican platform would be digging up the bodies to pee on them by the afternoon. There's literally nothing he can do to alienate his base and the leadership will go along with it.
I don't think anyone's questioned there's 25, 30, 35% of the country who will support him if he heils Hitler and eats a nun, the question is the remaining margin of folks. I have seen the Republican base ablate substantially in my lifetime. Even if he squeaks out a win through Satan's direct intervention, Trump has done ten years of this in one and a half.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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smg77 posted:

I'm kind of worried this is going to be the case. As much as I've warmed up to T-Kaine he's just too nice to go after Pence in any meaningful way. Our only hope is that he ignores the debate questions and tells dad jokes and plays harmonica the whole time.
Maybe we'll get the Demon Kaine

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Yinlock posted:

What happens when we become the ones who are like "I don't care what someone says on the astral mind-link, the hologrammaphone tells me everything I need to know"
We won't be saying it to anyone because we were too poor to afford to start families due to Republican policies. We also would not be able to afford hologramaphones.

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Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

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Geoff Peterson posted:

I'm curious as to what the press reaction will be once this does happen.

(well, white press reaction. The last 24ish hours have shown that the white journalists are much more prone to equivocation)
Do they think Trump will somehow not purge them if they suck his dick now?

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