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turnip kid posted:I saw entire families wearing LGB T-shirts when I made the mistake of visiting Gatlinburg last week. I figure it's cuz every other store there there sells them, but yikes. Hoping it's a pun like they're LGBT-shirts E: lol I see I wasn't the only one
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Mar 21, 2022 15:59
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Willa Rogers posted:The Georgia Dems ran & won based on "elect a Dem Senate & we'll give you $2000, a higher minimum wage, lowered Medicare age and student-debt relief," none of which happened once they were elected. Lie of the year right here, how could you forget that $1400=$2000,
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Mar 21, 2022 16:20
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https://mobile.twitter.com/CNN/status/1505910876796329996 So do we need to trick Jen Psaki into sassing another reporter before we can get the federal government to send people some aid or what
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Mar 21, 2022 17:01
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I have a hard time believing that the most august publication in the country is so incompetent at communication that they wrote a headline making nuclear war sound not-that-bad by accident, but I am open to changing my mind on this E: I am also willing to believe that it was cynically written that way to get clicks
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Mar 22, 2022 18:49
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Every round of sanctions in my life has been introduced with the same two-faced talk "We're only targeting the regime with precision sanctions against officials and oligarchs, of course we're not punishing ordinary people who didn't do anything wrong" *5 seconds later* "I'm pleased to announce we've crippled their economy, the regime can't hope to maintain stability for much longer, we're projecting millions starving within weeks and by god we can push that even higher"
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Mar 22, 2022 23:16
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GreyjoyBastard posted:this one was explicitly not just precision sanctions against oligarchs, so you might want to slow your roll or at least adjust its direction Ha you're right, looking back the administration was open from the very beginning that they're attacking the Russian economy regardless of consequences to the people, I guess all the reassurances from the last thread that Biden would only go after the oligarchs were confabulated by goons. I assumed there had been some official support for that but no, not that I can find. I went back to their earliest statements and they're bragging about imploding the Russian currency And I guess "my entire life" wasn't accurate either even prior to this; the sanctions on Iraq in the 90s were also open and frank about the homicidal intent VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 01:45
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What if we just try global communism, if we don't like it we can always give all the corporations back to the same soulless inbred aristocrats who inherited them now
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Mar 23, 2022 05:27
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Looking back on it the reason for their threadban seems kinda bullshit (criticizing Joe Biden), but maybe that was just the last straw idk, I didn't go through the whole rapsheet. But on the other hand do we really need pro-childbeating opinions in this thread though I mean where's the line. Are there other subforums that have a pro-childbeating contingent and we're unreasonably censoring a rational justifiable position worthy of intelligent debate like whether adults should suplex little girls if they get mad and need an outlet? Maybe I'm a snowflake or whatever but I feel like there isn't much value on reopening debate about subjects that our society has had and fairly well settled like child abuse: good or bad. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 11:38
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Next up in D&D: roundhouse kicking a 3rd grader in the face, how much is too much? Join us for refined erudite debate with that EXTREME edge, because the snowflakes at HR keep threatening my job for debating my reasonable opinions on the matter at work
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Mar 23, 2022 11:46
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Is there some reason you cut off half that sentence and then edited the introductory clause to conceal this and make it seem like a complete thought making the opposite point? Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:
quote:Although Russia imports a relatively small amount of sugar, the gyrations in the value of the ruble mean foreign companies are suddenly unwilling to sign contracts with their Russian counterparts. Are these the debate standards of D&D now
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Mar 23, 2022 14:29
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CommieGIR posted:Is Leon Trotsky the entirety of D&D? No. Well that is why I asked the question, I thought that bad faith debate tactics like editing quotes from sources to change the meaning wasn't up to the standards of this forum. It wasn't sniping at the forum to point out that someone is falling below the standards we have and what is your problem anyway, surely Jimmy Dore tactics of editing quotes is the problem, not pointing it out? If he is not the problem here then it seems my question is a valid one and I do have the wrong idea about what debate and discussion is supposed to be.
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Mar 23, 2022 14:41
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I was highlighting the point that Russia doesn't import much sugar. The OP said that people were starving, there were sanctions on Russia directly causing this sugar shortage, and that this starvation was a direct result of them. None of which were accurate. The article says that Russia imports relatively little sugar, that there are no sanctions on sugar, and that the Russian government says that isn't true. Except that is not what the quote says, it says sanctions are causing the problem (making foreign companies refuse to do business with Russia as is their intent), and the introductory word "although" means that what's coming next isn't the issue. A disruption in a relatively small amount of import can still cause spikes if demand is inelastic (for example gas prices here). But we both know you understood what he sentence said because if you didn't understand it you wouldn't have found it necessary to do Jimmy Dore edits on it
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Mar 23, 2022 14:45
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You also seem to have selectively quoted a lot, ie the part where the Russian government says everything is fine and it's all greedy sugar hoarders causing the problem (is Putin trustworthy now?), and curiously left out analysis contradicting the Russian government likequote:Similar shortages are almost inevitable as Western sanctions and the continuing fighting in Ukraine isolate Russia from the global economy. Inflation in Russia is rising rapidly and a cost-of-living crisis is looming. The article does not appear to be making the point that everything is fine and the sanctions aren't hurting average Russians idk
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Mar 23, 2022 14:50
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Inflation is rising across the entire world and has been for a year. Russia's inflation rate is lower than the U.S. and is not the result of sanctions. https://mobile.twitter.com/POTUS/status/1501261304874549253 It's hard to even chalk this up to poor reading comprehension on your part since you had to edit a quote to make it sound like it supported your position, and I don't see how you can leave out important words like "Although" or literally the main independent clause of a sentence by accident E: you are correct to say that hoarding sugar and empty shelves don't mean anyone is starving yet but it ain't a great sign and the sanctions are responsible, or at least contributing since war is disruptive and some amount would be happening anyway VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 14:59
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:It is not. But yes your nitpick that no one is actually starving due to this, that we know of, yet, is correct but at least according to the article which predicts a "looming standard of living crisis" it's not unreasonable to say it's coming either.
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Mar 23, 2022 15:07
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It's also interesting in that I remember one of the arguments that Biden would extend the moratorium and/or do some forgiveness was that there's no lobby to make people pay federally owned loans because it's the government collecting the interest not the banks. But turns out there is a lobby because you have all these predatory companies lurking around sucking money off the system from servicers to contractors to lenders and whoops can't suck out those sweet profits off the exploitation if the government puts the exploitation on pause Perusing Wikipedia, SoFi's model seems to be locating the lowest risk students and offering them better rates than the government rate to snap up the least risky borrowers, so it makes sense that an interest moratorium would cut into their business since government loans are currently charging 0%
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Mar 23, 2022 15:55
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:
Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach, "Is my bill a good bill?" "It sure is," Doc Daneeka said. "And it would be political suicide for a Democrat to vote against it?" "It sure would be, but first you have to get a floor vote on it, that's the rule. " "Then why won't they schedule a floor vote?" "Because they don't want to! Then they would have to vote for it or it'd be their fault it failed! So sure you can get the votes to pass your bill easy, but first you have to get them to vote on it at all, and they can just put it to the back of the line every year to make sure it never comes up " "So the hard part is making the vote happen. That's all. " "That's all," Doc Daneeka sad. "But it's not hard, forcing the vote is the easiest part of all, any delegate can use a maneuver to force a vote on anything. " "And then they'll vote for it?" Yossarian asked. "And then they won't vote for it." "You mean there's a catch?" "Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied, "Any bill that jumps the line can be voted down for bypassing regular order, regardless of the merits, and it's nobody's fault except the person who brought it up." There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that jumping the legislative calendar was the worst thing in the world and therefore you can vote against a bill without anyone accusing you of not wanting to vote for it. The bill was good and no one could vote against it without blame, unless it actually got voted on and then it's bad and anyone could vote against it without blame. As long as nobody voted on it everyone would vote for it, but if they voted on it they'd vote against it. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. 'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed. Yossarian saw it clearly in all its spinning reasonableness. There was an elliptical precision about its perfect pairs of parts that was graceful and shocking, like good modern art, and at times Yossarian wasn't quite sure he saw it at all, just the way he was never quite sure about good modern art
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Mar 23, 2022 18:31
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You almost have to respect Roberts' trolling on this. Taking the reasonable moderate stance of rigorously enforcing the racial provisions of the VRA exactly half the time: whenever he can gently caress black voters or Democrats I look forward to the erudite op-eds praising his sound middle-of-road judgments like "let's compromise and meet in the middle here: heads I win, tails you lose"
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Mar 23, 2022 19:27
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This is just how it's going to be from now on, they would never overturn the entire VRA because a hands-off approach isn't partisan enough for them, they will just rule arbitrarily and thus effectively twist the VRA into doing the opposite of what it says, into a tool to force court-ordered racism on every state instead of just Republican states. Packed every black voter in your state into some improbable monster district that's all tentacles and curlicues? Gosh golly gee we're not here to read minds, it's impossible to be sure that it wasn't just a big coinkydink! Not doing that? Well you must have avoided it on purpose because you think racism is wrong ergo you thought about race while you were doing it, ergo you are the real racist, back to the drawing board until you come up with something that would make Bull Connor cum
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Mar 23, 2022 19:50
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Not that it wasn't already obvious that they didn't really want to repeal Right To Work when they put it at the back of the line year after year with an "oopsie we didn't get around to it again" and with their Bush-voter governor openly opposing it, but it's hard to square their rush to scream that it was about to pass for real until they were forced to vote against it because Lee Carter's name tainted it by association, with them not even giving it lip service in 2021 after they'd successfully run Carter out of politics. As for why the DSA hates him now, I mean he did expose the state Democratic party as actually opposing positive change instead of playing defense for the establishment like good controlled opposition, which is a slap in the face to everything DSA stands for. Oh well I'm sure the Democrats have a lock on state government and don't need to strengthen unions or give people another issue to come out and defend at election time to thwart a narrow GOP victory or anything, but idk I haven't really kept up with the news
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Mar 23, 2022 20:02
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Huh weird I always figured the two of them shared one soul, well not soul, but whatever you call it when some malevolent energy creature assumes human form. Like whatever the star trek thing was that killed Tasha Yar, it wasn't a soul it was a black oil slick made of the all the discarded evil impulses and negative emotions of some ascended culture
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Mar 23, 2022 20:52
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Interesting that nobody cares about biological factors that give way more than a 12% advantage in some sports like say being tall I guess there's some that do and use things like weight classes, but like nobody insists tall people should be banned from basketball to make it fair for short people
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Mar 23, 2022 21:14
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Sanguinia posted:Truly there is nothing more heroic than destroying your own policy initiative while stabbing all your allies in the back for a publicity stunt. The Libs were quite Owned that day. Kinda hard to make the "getting things done" argument on behalf of the people who blocked it year after year and then voted it down the one time they were unable to kill it quietly
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Mar 23, 2022 21:36
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The Lee Carter RtW thing is a good learning example of how progressives, activists, etc either get coopted or pushed out. Or at least it's one example of a stick used to accomplish this. We don't want your bill to pass but we don't want to vote against it or we might not get reelected, and we control the process so we're just putting it at the back of the line every year to quietly die. If you want to get anything done for your district at all you'll acquiesce and run cover for us. If you refuse or God forbid force us to actually vote it down we'll blame our actions on you and run you out of town for 'grandstanding', good luck getting reelected when we gently caress your district and find a primary challenger who can truthfully say this wouldn't be happening if it weren't for you. And it works, everyone either sells out or gets forced out. Just like with cops, we're never going to let you change the system from inside
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Mar 23, 2022 21:49
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Is asking somebody to do the right thing, which they have promised they want to do, and which they got their job by promising to do, to actually do it "being a dick" though. It's not like he's asking them to shine his shoes for free. It's like "hey give me lucrative position and I'll use it to help people". "Ok you got it will you help these people now?." "Too busy, sorry!" *repeat for literally years* "Ok we need to help these people we're voting now, literally just say 'aye' to help them, aye or nay what's it going to be" "Oh wow how RUDE, no gently caress millions and millions of working families gently caress them gently caress them, just because you tried to make me you're the rear end in a top hat here you know" I feel like nobody here would be dumb enough to buy this in their own day to day interactions with anyone. If someone always has an excuse for not doing something, you would probably suspect they just didn't wanna, especially if it's something that requires no effort from them other than saying 'aye' to allow you to do it, and especially the finally say no and blame it on you for asking in the first place. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 23:27
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Kalit posted:So...... what was the upside of Carter doing this? You say it's to "make their true colors known". But.... how has that [positively] changed anything for VA politics? I'm not very familiar about the local level, so I could be missing something. But all I can see for an outcome is that Carter got destroyed in the governor's primary race and also no longer a state representative. Considering the outcome of him playing along with  was the bill getting killed in committee over and over, seems like positive change wasn't on the table no matter what. Which I guess is the pitch right, we're not going to let you pass these bills, but if you sell out you get to stay in power for life, if you don't you get run out on a rail, if you're smart you'll make the best of it yeah. I can see why so many people take the deal, things are hosed either way, but one way at least you get paid
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Mar 23, 2022 23:45
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RBA Starblade posted:The lesson to learn from Lee Carter is that if you don't play the game right, even if the rules are stupid, you lose. The lesson was that you lose either way, they had no intention of ever passing the bill. The rules were you lose. If you don't play along with the rules you also lose.
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Mar 23, 2022 23:47
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Jaxyon posted:If you're going to be an elected rep, you win the fights you can, and you lose more than you win. The offer was they get everything, we get nothing. And not only must he totally give in and stop making a serious effort to help working people, he had to help the Democrats lie to the people about their intentions and conceal from his constituents that the party opposed the bill. Somebody is being unreasonable here and it's not the side who was expected to not only totally surrender but aid the other side in deceiving the people of Virginia to boot
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Mar 24, 2022 01:36
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One thing I have trouble understanding in serious elevated political discourse, is why the people who want good things are the only ones expected to compromise, but the people who want just plain evil things are automatically assumed to be reasonable and are never expected to compromise. Really that's not accurate, because for the people who want good things to compromise, the people who want bad things would by definition have to be compromising with them, so really the good people are just always expected to 'be reasonable' by surrendering totally. If legislator A wants to put an end to industrial child-mangling factories, and legislator B wants child-mangling expanded everywhere, the issue isn't framed in terms of a compromise ("both sides must be reasonable and agree on some amount of child mangling"), it certainly isn't framed in moral terms ("child mangling is evil and people supporting it must be reasonable and stop"), instead it's always oh come on A why are you being such a dick gosh B just wants to mangle more children, look A you need to get along with people in politics just let him mangle kids already, you catch more flies with honey you know, how dare you criticize child mangling look now B feels bad this toxic behavior has no place in politics, oh my god are you making him vote for it alone you need to help him share the blame and pretend it's not his fault etc etc Why is wanting to gently caress workers on behalf of corporate donors reasonable? Why is wanting to help workers unreasonable? Why is demanding that people who want to help workers help sandbag their own bills instead to protect your political career from embarrassing votes reasonable? Why is demanding that after they sandbag their bills they help you lie about what happened to deceive voters about who their friends are reasonable? Why is refusing to take part in such a corrupt and dishonest scheme unreasonable?
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Mar 24, 2022 02:21
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Yeah I think that was basically the deal he was offered. You have no power to get this bill passed over our opposition, so you play your part and help us pretend we don't oppose it, and in exchange you get to keep your power and take credit for the stuff that we'll allow to pass which is no different from what any other Blue Who Didn't Matter Who would accomplish with your seat. Or we run you out and get someone who will play ball. It wasn't a deal to get some stuff passed rather than nothing, it was a deal to buy in and get on the gravy train. Maybe he thought his only leverage was to threaten them with exposure by forcing the vote, gambling they might vote for it rather than reveal their hand to the voters ahead of an election year, he tried it and it failed. But it's not like selling out would haver brought more benefits to the people, only to him personally so eh not really the same as making some awful compromise to get like Medicare passed or something.
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Mar 24, 2022 02:38
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some plague rats posted:Yeah, same. What women are accusing Carter of anything? *closes barn door*
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Mar 24, 2022 11:37
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Kalit posted:
It's not that uncommon For the same reason Carter was expected to 'just get along' and stop really trying to repeal Right-To-Work in order to protect the careers of party members who are privately pro-RtW, unions often face a choice between supporting the most pro-labor candidate in primaries and not pissing off party bigwigs whose good side the union needs to stay on to get anything done at all
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Mar 24, 2022 16:52
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Kalit posted:I don’t know what rumors you’re referring to. But it seems likely that Carter pissed a lot of people off during his second term in office. On top of that, VA is no closer to getting rid of their right to work law and they seem to have fewer progressives in office after last year’s elections Seem to have fewer democrats in office overall, including statewide offices, so it doesn't look like the people who ran Carter out of town are doing a great job either, pragmatically speaking of course
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Mar 24, 2022 17:14
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What do stores do now when you buy something for $9.99 and sales tax brings it to $10.7882? What happens when you purchase 1 gallon of gasoline at a list price of $3.499? Do you demand half-pennies and quarter-pennies and milles and microdollar coins? Or do you say eh it's not worth anyone's time to deal with half a penny. There used to be a half-penny coin back when that was a worthwhile amount to track instead of round off
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Mar 24, 2022 17:26
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"But it feels true" -  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 26, 2022 13:52
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DeeplyConcerned posted:you weren't addressing me here but I think it's an interesting question so I'll answer: yes! The Iraq invasion was illegal immoral and completely bullshit just like the Russian invasion of Ukraine is today. Oh my God quote:Five weeks after the uprising was crushed, the U.N. Security Council voted to keep Iraq in an economic chokehold even though the sanctions' original goal, forcing Saddam's army from Kuwait, had been achieved. The United States—with the Security Council in tow—had new demands. Washington wanted Saddam to surrender his chemical and biological weapons, as well as the research and production facilities used to make them. And on May 20, three months after the end of the war, Bush announced that the sanctions would remain in place until Saddam was gone. The second decree erased any motivation the Iraqi leader might have had to comply with the first. And it ended up devastating the Basrawi and practically every other Iraqi who was not in Saddam's ruling clique. oh my god Big ups for not being chauvinist about it and saying if it's done to Iraqis it should be done to Americans, but what the gently caress, how is your reaction to what sanctions do to innocent people "we should do this more" and not "we should not do this". Do you guys ever go outside, do you see kids playing in the neighborhood and look at their faces before you go on the internet and say yeah I wish the world would do this to them to get back at Bush, some of you have kids you tuck them in at night and then you smugly argue on the internet how you'd thank the world for doing this back to them what the gently caress. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Mar 26, 2022 |
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Mar 26, 2022 15:41
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Shakespeare puts ‘the lunatic, the lover, and the poet’ together, as being ‘of imagination all compact’. The problem is to keep the lover and the poet, without the lunatic. I will give an illustration. In 1919 I saw The Trojan Women acted at the Old Vic. There is an unbearably pathetic scene where Astyanax is put to death by the Greeks for fear he should grow up into a second Hector. There was hardly a dry eye in the theatre, and the audience found the cruelty of the Greeks in the play hardly credible. Yet those very people who wept were, at that very moment, practising that very cruelty on a scale which the imagination of Euripides could have never contemplated. They had lately voted (most of them) for a Government which prolonged the blockade of Germany after the armistice, and imposed the blockade of Russia. It was known that these blockades caused the death of immense numbers of children, but it was felt desirable to diminish the population of enemy countries: the children, like Astyanax, might grow up to emulate their fathers. Euripides the poet awakened the lover in the imagination of the audience; but lover and poet were forgotten at the door of the theatre, and the lunatic (in the shape of the homicidal maniac) controlled the political actions of these men and women who thought themselves kind and virtuous. E: VVVV https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/philosophy/on-the-value-of-scepticism-bertrand-russell/ VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Mar 26, 2022 |
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Mar 26, 2022 15:47
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Since when do we judge actions solely by their intentions and not the consequences Was the Iraq War good because according to Bush and Cheney's stated intentions it would save tens of millions of people from nuclear annihilation at the hands of Saddam, and also be quick and relatively bloodless since we'd be greeted as liberators and our boys would be home by Christmastime
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Mar 27, 2022 16:45
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CommieGIR posted:Depends if you are judging it entirely on the made up reasons that Bush and Cheney lied about to justify it. Which, in case it wasn't obvious, it was not good. Ah ah ah but neither of them ever specifically wrote a manifesto saying "yes I am lying about this war because I want to steal oil and drink the blood of Iraq's children" or words to that effect so according to stated-intentions logic, we cannot know for sure what they really thought in their hearts and attempting to infer from their actions that they had intentions they didn't mention is conspiracy theory, we can't be judging the war based on conspiracy theories now can we (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Mar 27, 2022 |
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Mar 27, 2022 17:01
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Main Paineframe posted:There's plenty of people on all parts of the political spectrum who support policies despite their proven ineffectiveness. We're even doing it here, among ourselves with no professional or personal monetary incentive, just political tribalism is enough for us to rationalize away evidence contrary to our beliefs with absurd arguments like: well powerful people say that sanctions work, would they really lie about that!?
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Mar 27, 2022 17:41
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