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US politics: Donny, you're out of your element


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1 minute ago, Altherion said:

Not sure what you mean about jobs: every job I've ever had has required me to fill out an I-9 form and provide proof of eligibility for employment. To the best of my knowledge, it is in fact illegal not to discriminate based on immigration status when considering employees.

And you'd be wrong.

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

I suppose what you mean is that the employer isn't allowed to discriminate against permanent residents and other non-citizens legally authorized to work in the US, but, for the most part, these are not the people the rage is directed against.

And that doesn't matter; removable aliens are anyone who isn't a US citizen. And honestly, the rage is directed against pretty much anyone who might not be like them. I've been talking to some of these people, and what they want is to deport actual US citizens who are muslim because they might be dangerous sometime, maybe. They want US citizens gone if their parents are not US citizens. There's just a big ball of racist rage out there.

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

I don't think they'll want to play this one, but we'll see.

This administration would love nothing more than a big terrorist attack or a big riot. Bannon has gone on record as stating he wants that sort of thing, because it helps his cause. Breitbart encouraged behavior like this. Milo has too. 

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13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:
4 minutes ago, supernintendo chalmers said:

you obviously did not read those I-9s very carefully then.

eta: the last three pages of the form

How is this different from what I said? It is illegal to discriminate against anyone with authorization to work in the US, but it is also illegal not to discriminate against anyone whose immigration status does not allow for employment.

15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

This administration would love nothing more than a big terrorist attack or a big riot. Bannon has gone on record as stating he wants that sort of thing, because it helps his cause. Breitbart encouraged behavior like this. Milo has too.

A crisis can be an opportunity, but this generally works better for those in charge when there is no way to link them to its origins. If there is any way to even vaguely trace such a thing back to the administration, I guarantee you the media will make the most of it.

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12 hours ago, Savannah said:

Einheri, previous thread,

"You basically insinuated that all non-western 'certain groups' (I read this as Muslims) of immigrants contribute nothing to society besides taking part in consent classes, and while that is undoubtedly true for some, it’s not true for the majority of them, so you’re stigmatizing a large number of people, and that is never a good thing. (I mean, would you be happy if someone else did that to you?)"

Again, you are acting like the issue is somehow my fault. 
Ffs, I don't even know if it's only muslims who have to attend the consent classes. Probably not. 
I'm not stigmatizing these groups of people, it's the actions of that group that stigmatizes them. While stigmas are not cool, rape and harassment is way way less cool. 
If I was one of  those people I would be mortified and would do everything to change their dehumanizing views of women.  

Look, I agree that there is a serious problem when it comes to attitudes towards women and homosexuals in several of the immigrant communities, and this is something we along with like-minded people within these communities have to confront them on, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to demonize them as a group and make all of them seem worse than they really are, which is what you were doing.

And, yes, you are in fact contributing to the stigma as well if you walk around saying (unironically) that "those people" are all bunch of [insert insult here] just because some of them fit that characterization.

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7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Not quite on the same level, but this might be not unlike the WSJ attempt to take down PewDiePie as a racist and anti-semite, when the full facts show that he's nothing of the sort.

What 'full facts' are these? The facts I'm aware of show that the guy is very definitely guilty of racist and anti-Semitic behaviour. Calling it a 'joke' and pulling the old 'out of context' line don't really constitute exonerating facts. Particularly not when a notable racist website praises you for 'normalising' their views and 'marginalising' their enemies.

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

PewDiePie did get axed by Disney and Youtube Red over it, but his subscriber numbers have skyrocketed, because the WSJ article has been shown up as fake news.

It truly has not. They did not make up anything in that story. Again, 'fake news' is not 'news that I wish hadn't been published' or even 'news that I think is skewed'. It's actually fabricated stories with no basis in fact. This did not and does not qualify. The material they reported on is genuine.

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I have to disagree with you here, mormont. Context always matter, and WSJ clearly took Felix’s words out of its comedic context. Now you may still think that the jokes were bad and that Felix took it too far (and Felix seems to think so himself since he has apologized for it), but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that WSJ include the full context so that people who have no clue about who this guy is can form a proper opinion.

I think this video by Ethan Klein, a  Jewish guy and one of my favorite youtubers, explains it far better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLNSiFrS3n4

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Again, it isn't 'fake news' even if it were taken out of context. That is simply not the meaning of 'fake news'. The facts are as they were reported. The issue is interpreting those facts.

The case for PewDiePie's interpretation is pretty weak. 'Out of context' and 'just a joke' are extremely common ways for trolls to wave away criticism of actual racism and anti-Semitism. If you're going to rely on these arguments, you need to make a strong case, and that has not happened here. The 'out of context' argument for the banner in particular is flimsy at best. Nothing about the context justifies or is relevant to the particular choice of offensive message on the banner.

If PewDiePie wants to say 'I fucked up', that's fine. But if you do that, own it. Don't offer up weak excuses and attack people for pointing out your fuckup. If his 'jokes' went too far, then they were racist and anti-Semitic, even if he himself claims not to be a racist or anti-Semite. And don't go around saying that the facts have exonerated him, because they have not.

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1 hour ago, Einheri said:

Look, I agree that there is a serious problem when it comes to attitudes towards women and homosexuals in several of the immigrant communities, and this is something we along with like-minded people within these communities have to confront them on, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to demonize them as a group and make all of them seem worse than they really are, which is what you were doing.

And, yes, you are in fact contributing to the stigma as well if you walk around saying (unironically) that "those people" are all bunch of [insert insult here] just because some of them fit that characterization.

For the third time. 
It's not my fault that consent courses are necessary, it's not my fault that they are directed to certain groups of people and it's certainly not my fault that the need of them in certain groups is stigmatizing to that group. 

After the third time of accusing me of something I did not do, I probably shouldn't respond to your ideas on this issue. 

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56 minutes ago, Savannah said:

For the third time. 
It's not my fault that consent courses are necessary, it's not my fault that they are directed to certain groups of people and it's certainly not my fault that the need of them in certain groups is stigmatizing to that group. 

After the third time of accusing me of something I did not do, I probably shouldn't respond to your ideas on this issue. 

What are you even on about? No one is blaming you for the existence of consent courses.

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I dunno, mormont. Fake news or not… there is something called lying by omission, and the way I see it they showed us some outrageous bits from his videos without including their full context, which would explain to the viewer that it was meant to be comedic in nature, and not encourage anti-Semitism. Not doing so makes Felix look worse than he really is (according to his friends and other youtubers, who have posted videos about this, he is not a bad person who hold such views), and to make matters worse, the WSJ even went as far as to suggest that the apology he had posted about it afterwards was insincere and some sort of secret message to the far right without any real basis for this, so yeah, I’m not all that surprised that he is pissed off at them for this article.

He fucked up (though many comedians and TV shows like South Park go way beyond what he did, I think he recognized that his channel probably wasn’t the best place for that kind of dark humor), and he apologized for it afterwards, and this is something the WSJ could have reported on, but the way they went about it makes this look like nothing more than a hitpiece meant to paint the biggest star of youtube in the worst possible manner. Not cool IMO.

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Think this is a pretty good response to the Pewdiepie issue from someone who's a comedian and, I think, gives Kjellberg some benefit of the doubt while pointing out very reasonable things about his mistake and the dangers of allowing the audience to shape you.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/02/20/pewdiepie-rookie-comedian-quit-whining-and-write-some-damn-jokes

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11 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

NO!!!!!!!!  There's no such thing as consensual pedophelia.  NAMBLA's entire point is that it advocates for child rape.  A child not saying no to sex with an adult is still rape. Do not normalize this.  

 

Absolutely!  I agree word for word.

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12 minutes ago, Ran said:

Think this is a pretty good response to the Pewdiepie issue from someone who's a comedian and, I think, gives Kjellberg some benefit of the doubt while pointing out very reasonable things about his mistake and the dangers of allowing the audience to shape you.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2017/02/20/pewdiepie-rookie-comedian-quit-whining-and-write-some-damn-jokes

"His problem is one of careless privilege, like so many other nihilistic, lulz-driven trolls. Kjellberg doesn’t have to face the social consequences of his actions personally, so he likely sees little harm in doing them"

This hits the nail squarely on the head. It also describes something that is a growing problem around the world, something that has become one of the more insidious side effects of the Internet Era. Trump himself is a giant troll,  and his "irreverent"  speech appeals to sooo many people who feel repressed by what they perceive to be censorship. 

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The Iowa legislature introduces bill to require university faculty applicants to state political party affiliation.  

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The legislation proposes that a “person shall not be hired as a professor or instructor member of the faculty at such an institution if the person’s political party affiliation on the date of hire would cause the percentage of faculty belonging to one political party to exceed by ten percent the percentage of faculty belonging to the other political party.”

The Secretary of State’s office would be directed to provide voter registration lists to the colleges so that new job applicants’ party affiliation could be checked before the hiring process gets underway. Graciously, Chelgren allows for people registered as No Party to slip through the process without facing the litmus test.

The obvious impact and purpose of this bill would be to ban Democrats from getting hired anymore at Iowa colleges. If you took a survey right now, it’s highly likely that Iowa professors are registered as Democrats at a much higher rate than Republican. So any new hires would be strictly limited to Republican or No Party voters.

So I guess Republicans are ok with Affirmative Action when it's about their own interests. 

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This sort of belongs here.  Posting in case it applies to anyone here who might be interested.

Tufts University is offering a 5-day course to train expert witnesses for court cases on redistricting and gerrymandering. 

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A 5-day summer school will be offered at Tufts University from August 7-11, 2017, with the principal purpose of training mathematicians to be expert witnesses for court cases on redistricting and gerrymandering.

Topics covered in the summer school will include:

  • the legal history of the Voting Rights Act and its subsequent renewals, extensions, and clarifications;
  • an explanation of “traditional districting principles,” especially compactness;
  • a course in metric geometry and mathematical ideas for perimeter-free compactness;
  • basic rudiments of GIS and the technical side of how shapefiles work;
  • training on being an expert witness;
  • ideas for incorporating voting and civil rights into mathematics teaching.

Out of the five days of the program, the first three days will be open to the public and made available online. For the last two days, we will offer three more specialized parallel tracks, focusing on (a) expert witnessing, (b) teaching, and (c) GIS. Partial funding for participants’ expenses will be available. 

Applications for the tracks are now open and will be accepted from February 15 – March 15, with responses by March 25.

 

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1 hour ago, Einheri said:

I dunno, mormont. Fake news or not… there is something called lying by omission, and the way I see it they showed us some outrageous bits from his videos without including their full context, which would explain to the viewer that it was meant to be comedic in nature, and not encourage anti-Semitism.

Again, the context doesn't really do that at all, so far as I can see. In particular, the context provides no information at all about why, specifically, an anti-Semitic message was chosen.

As for 'comedic nature', that would usually suggest something funny was happening.

1 hour ago, Einheri said:

Not doing so makes Felix look worse than he really is (according to his friends and other youtubers, who have posted videos about this, he is not a bad person who hold such views), and to make matters worse, the WSJ even went as far as to suggest that the apology he had posted about it afterwards was insincere and some sort of secret message to the far right without any real basis for this, so yeah, I’m not all that surprised that he is pissed off at them for this article.

That 'apology' was insincere. As I said, a sincere apology takes ownership of the mistake, rather than being a platform to attack others.

However, this isn't really a US Politics subject, other than the comparison to Milo. So I'll just say that I think that comparison is probably unfair but not completely without foundation.

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So, the choice of McMaster hasn't really been covered. It says a lot about the general incompetence of the administration's previous picks that I felt a great deal of relief reading about this guy. He really seems quite sane and capable of reflection on topics like misuse of power. Of course, that might get him fired in a Flynn second.

Questions for those in the know:

  1. Is there more to his story that would suggest why Trump would choose an anti-authoritarian general with a penchant for actually reading books?
  2. A lot of the worry re: the Trump administration has to do with their obvious intention of doing a power grab at some point, and a lot of that has to do with the pretext of national security. I don't know about the exact tasks and limitations of the NatSec advisor, but does a sane person in that role give any hope for a less megalomanical approach to abusing national security to increase the administration's authority?
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Not sure on 1 but from everything I've read, it's a good pick and a guy you'd want leading your NSC. So kudos to Trump for that.

As for 2, Trump is still the decision maker and he has other organizations that he can utilize to do what he wants to do including Congress and DHS. Can McMaster stop that? I doubt it. He can make his opinion known, he can compile all the evidence but ultimately it's up to Trump on what he wants to do and with Congress implicitly signing off on everything he does, he could still consolidate more power, especially in the face of National Security. 

Either way, McMaster seems like a solid pick and one that will add balance to those discussions when Bannon/Miller weigh in and given Flynn was his prior choice, we should all count our lucky stars someone (IC, DOJ, WH) leaked Flynn lying to the press.

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