U.S. Politics: Kraving for Kavanaugh

[karaddin]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

Yup.  This sums up not only the toxic masculinity problem, but exactly how Russia influenced 2016.  I had a student that last year wanted to write a paper about that, and when we met I told her "there's been a lot of documentation about this, how would your work find ways to actually change that?"  She didn't know, I don't know, and the only people that do have zero interest in stopping it.

More people (and more mainstream) are starting to notice just how in bed with/willing to profit off nazis the big tech companies are. I think it was Seth Rogen (or another Seth, fucked if I know) remarked upon how he'd had an extended conversation with Jack (twitter CEO) about the issue of nazis on the platform and had to conclude the guy just didn't give a fuck. Which is every tech company in a nut shell - nazis drive engagement as customers themselves but also by causing outrage that gets other people reacting and they just sit there profiting off it all. Writing their algorithms to further encourage this shit. It's hard to tell whether they're actively sympathetic to nazis or just amorally profiteering off the whole thing, but at the end of the day it doesn't fucking matter - that's what they're enabling.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Altherion said:

but the obvious and practically inevitable reaction of the Republicans will be to retaliate in kind the next time they have unified control of government. In the long term, this will make the court a sort of auxiliary body appointed by the party currently in power that enforces the will of that party -- especially since once we drop all illusions of it being a non-partisan interpreter of the Constitution, there is really no reason to respect precedent anymore. It would be an interesting state, for a time... but I highly doubt it would last: the court's theoretical power is too great to be wielded this way and it would be curtailed in one way or another.

Yes it is inevit..inevitable..

As to the bolded, that's already what it is.  It's a joke to think differently.  Scale will take on an adverse effect at some point, but I know a lot of lawyers, and not a one complains about the case load being too low.  That's a different point, sure, but symbolically at least the more justices the better.

[Bonnot OG]

Certain posters here are probably a half step away from lighting a cross on fire and sieg heiling at the next nazi march that will be held on August 12th in DC, the exact date of aniversary of their hate rally held in Charlottesville where the killed Heather Heyer and where antifascists protesters save clergy and Cornel West from at the very least being assaulted the night before. 

I have a few friends that live in and around Charlottesville. They are active in antifascist protests and monitor Jason Kesler, the neo nazi scumbag that organized the event and ran away the next day before he could spew his white victim complex bullshit because people starting taking swings at him. He has tried to SWAT one of them, but they were luckily out of the country. He has shown up outside of their house, though has no clue that the leftists he thinks are liberal snowflakes are armed far leftists that carry concealed. He and his white supremacist friends try to harass anti fascists and use police violence against them. They also know you free speech absolutists are utterly clueless and use the free speech bullshit to their advantage to gain power. 

Here is Richard Spencer admitting that. 
 

So spare me the fucking comparisons between the far left and far right. One supports genocide and oppression, the other wants to stop that from happening and has no issue using violence at times to stop these people from recruiting and gaining more followers. Just keep being naive fools and falling for the bullshit and being enablers of these fascist scumbags. The more you keep doing it, the more you are just sympathizers and you should be looked at cautiously.

You also should read up on the paradox of tolerance. 
 

[Bonnot OG]

9 minutes ago, karaddin said:

More people (and more mainstream) are starting to notice just how in bed with/willing to profit off nazis the big tech companies are. I think it was Seth Rogen (or another Seth, fucked if I know) remarked upon how he'd had an extended conversation with Jack (twitter CEO) about the issue of nazis on the platform and had to conclude the guy just didn't give a fuck. Which is every tech company in a nut shell - nazis drive engagement as customers themselves but also by causing outrage that gets other people reacting and they just sit there profiting off it all. Writing their algorithms to further encourage this shit. It's hard to tell whether they're actively sympathetic to nazis or just amorally profiteering off the whole thing, but at the end of the day it doesn't fucking matter - that's what they're enabling.

Jack is very much a white supremacist if he is willing to let them use his platform to spew from and lets them break twitter's rules while banning leftists that post already public info on ICE agents. 

Same with spez of reddit. 

Capitalism breeds fascism, because fascism is just capitalism in decay. 

[karaddin]

That's what I was meaning with my last sentence - it doesn't matter if the support is based in ideological agreement or simply not caring - you're empowering nazis so functionally you are one. Although I very strongly suspect Jack is indeed in ideological agreement with them. Silicon Valley in general has an issue with believing themselves super detached and logical to the point that if they arrive at the same kind of conclusions that brought us eugenics, well that's just the truth as exposed by their machine like logic.

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, karaddin said:

It's hard to tell whether they're actively sympathetic to nazis or just amorally profiteering off the whole thing, but at the end of the day it doesn't fucking matter - that's what they're enabling.

We have Carnegie Hall.  The Rockefeller Center.  They get over their amoral profiteering by philanthropy and having things named after them.

3 minutes ago, Bonnot OG said:

Capitalism breeds fascism, because fascism is just capitalism in decay. 

Capitalism deserves scrutiny, but this makes absolutely no sense.  There's no reason to bind people's base desires to carry out fascistic policies to an economic concept.  You think those people and this administration would be less fascist if the economy was more socialist rather than capitalist?  Yeah, that's just stupid, and plays into the whole heuristic that makes people equate socialist policies (which they love prima facie) with the Soviets or China or whatever boogeyman.

[Altherion]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

As to the bolded, that's already what it is.  It's a joke to think differently.  Scale will take on an adverse effect at some point, but I know a lot of lawyers, and not a one complains about the case load being too low.  That's a different point, sure, but symbolically at least the more justices the better.

I don't think so. If that's already what it is, then the Democrats of 2009-2010 (who had as large a Congressional majority as any in the past few decades) would have seized total control, but instead they merely replaced two Justices already ideologically aligned with them with two others of the same alignment. Right now, if there are no vacancies, then the party in power has no say at all in the composition of the court and if there are vacancies, but resulting from the departure of an ally of that party then the best they can do is maintain the status quo. When there's a long period without a vacancy (the last one was from 1994 to 2005), several cycles of political dominance can come and go without any impact on the court.

As a complete aside, I was looking at the wiki for long periods and I noticed that three of the Justices (Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan) were born in New York City and another 2 (Roberts and Alito) are from New York State and New Jersey (respectively). Also, all but one of them have a degree from either Harvard or Yale (Ginsburg attended Harvard Law School, but transferred to Columbia). Kavanaugh would be no different (he went to Yale). That's some impressive diversity there...

[TheKitttenGuard]

Some good news

Check out @BreakingNews’s Tweet:

 

[Darth Richard II]

Papa Johns arupty closed al their locations here not long ago. People showed up to work to a “lol we gone bye” signs. Something about taxes. 

Shitty pizza anyway.

[DMC]

24 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I don't think so. If that's already what it is, then the Democrats of 2009-2010 (who had as large a Congressional majority as any in the past few decades) would have seized total control, but instead they merely replaced two Justices already ideologically aligned with them with two others of the same alignment. Right now, if there are no vacancies, then the party in power has no say at all in the composition of the court and if there are vacancies, but resulting from the departure of an ally of that party then the best they can do is maintain the status quo. When there's a long period without a vacancy (the last one was from 1994 to 2005), several cycles of political dominance can come and go without any impact on the court.

The Dems circa 2009-10 are exactly the problem.  Took Reid til 2013 to realize the reality of the "status quo."  The status quo, btw, is dominate the judiciary by any means necessary.  Abolishing the filibuster is merely a - albeit certainly important - symptom, which is why McConnell didn't hesitate in the slightest.  You're acting as if the GOP won't do this themselves if they thought they could get away with it and hold power.  They would and will.  The bolded is exactly why it needs to be changed, and why it won't be hard to get people on board with the idea.

Also, @chiKanery et al., this is why I find your argument especially ironic.  You complain about the Dems not playing hard ball while simultaneously bemoaning the repercussions of packing the court.  The latter is exactly what hardball looks like.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

*I do miss this Krugmanism.  Is he still using it?  Haven't read him as much lately. 

This is a really annoying way to footnote.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

think it's really mature or Very Serious People*-esque to act like something else is going on.  

Forgot, also, what does this mean?  What else is going on?  I don't get it.

[Bonnot OG]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

We have Carnegie Hall.  The Rockefeller Center.  They get over their amoral profiteering by philanthropy and having things named after them.

Capitalism deserves scrutiny, but this makes absolutely no sense.  There's no reason to bind people's base desires to carry out fascistic policies to an economic concept.  You think those people and this administration would be less fascist if the economy was more socialist rather than capitalist?  Yeah, that's just stupid, and plays into the whole heuristic that makes people equate socialist policies (which they love prima facie) with the Soviets or China or whatever boogeyman.

In a capitalist society where there are very few safety nets and the means to keep yourself alive is by any job possible, and its promotion of greed is good certainly opens the door for some people to throw ethics out the window for money / profit. 

I don't expect a centrist like yourself to grasp that though. Lib gonna lib.

I can''t possibly see how money can corrupt people and allow for fascism to creep in. 

Fascism is where the classes unite instead of fighting for one another. Instead of being being internationalist, they are instead nationalists. It is a system that relies on fear of the unknown and the reactionary nature of the those that lean right of liberal. It is a last ditch attempt by the bourgeoisie to preserve capitalism by creating chaos and conflict with other capitalist nations, which is a distraction from the true cause of crises, capitalism itself.

 

Fascism is used by the bourgeoisie to turn the proletariat against themselves. This, in a sense, is done to try and remove the ideas of revolution from their mind. The distraction keeps them from looking at the true enemy, which is the bourgeoisie. Instead there are told to look at different ethnic groups, religions, genders, etc., or other nations as their enemy.

On it's last leg capitalism will try to turn the working class against itself by creating an enemy for them to fight intead of the working class turning to the real problem, the bourgeoisie, who do not want to perish with the death of capitalism and be overthrown.

[Serious Callers Only]

Pretty much think that Russian money must be being fueled to those nazis upthread.

I also think that the Democrat candidate will simply be assassinated, or the election flipped verifiably to cause even more tension. Putin wants no less than civil war in America and if he has to fabricate a reichstag fire, that's fine and money well spent.

 

Considering how the White Power Party already was engaging on 'dropped registrations' on the last dubious election, it isn't like it's even new, they might even do it by themselves and be screwed by their own fraud being 'betrayed' by the contracted specialists helpfully provided by Putin.

[lokisnow]

5 minutes ago, Serious Callers Only said:

Pretty much think that Russian money must be being fueled to those nazis upthread.

I also think that the Democrat candidate will simply be assassinated, or the election flipped verifiably to cause even more tension. Putin wants no less than civil war in America and if he has to fabricate a reichstag fire, that's fine and money well spent.

Actually i think Putin wants America to abandon nato, pull military material and Troops out of Europe and then march Russians in to reclaim all the former territory of the USSR.

if civil war facilitated that, fine,but if trump will just do it cuz well that’s probably fine too.

Unexpected bonus for putin is that trump and the republicans would 100% side with russia in the prospective world war three that followed, we’d be one of the axis powers!

[Serious Callers Only]

If you want to be boring. But thinking short term and focused on the USA, i imagine that both a republican win and a democrat win have the minor risk of leading to bullet to the brain for Putin, but a Republican win will have a bit less because of both their insane, nazi base loving him, and whatever blackmail wasn't released from the hooks he has on the president and on the RNC from that hack and the hilarious indicative silence of the cowardly congressmen while Trump ruins the country in real time.

Dictators like dictators, and if the GOP is willing to turn dictatorial (which they are), it's worth to make sure they win for even more chaos and 2 more years of insane troll logic president that inflames the nazis and produces racist sexist, homophobic and murderous policy and destabilize the US. And if that happens and civil war doesn't occur, the next (R) 'president' will even be friendly to Russia, if it does, bonus.

[DMC]

11 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

Why don't you like the footnote technique?  

Thought that was clear - because the text is too small!

12 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

The Very Serious People (VSP) represented a few things, but mainly it represented professional centrists who were prominent voices in the media that made their reputations out of saying that the "center" or most enlightened position was halfway between the GOP and the Dems, and since the GOP were insane these VSP's helped them by making them seem equally reasonable.

I suppose in this day and age - and certainly on this board - you could define me as a centrist.  And I don't have any recollection of what you're talking about.  Assume you're talking about political media with the VSPs, right?  Seriously interested - who exactly are you talking about?

9 minutes ago, Bonnot OG said:

In a capitalist society where there are very few safety nets and the means to keep yourself alive is by any job possible, and it' promotion of greed is good certainly opens the door for some people to throw ethics out the window for money / profit. 

I don't expect a centerist like yourself to grasp that though. Lib gonna lib.

I can''t possibly see how money can corrupt people and allow for fascism to creep in. 

Well, guess I invited this..Kid, you don't know what you're talking about.  Autocracy is born out of "socialist" tendencies just as much as capitalism.  The Nazis literally mean National Socialism.  There is a substantive argument to be had between capitalists and socialists in which form of the combination between the two is the optimal economic model. 

But I don't expect someone that's only interested in shock and aggressive rhetoric like yourself to grasp that though.  Attention seekers gonna attention seek.

[Bonnot OG]

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

Thought that was clear - because the text is too small!

I suppose in this day and age - and certainly on this board - you could define me as a centrist.  And I don't have any recollection of what you're talking about.  Assume you're talking about political media with the VSPs, right?  Seriously interested - who exactly are you talking about?

Well, guess I invited this..Kid, you don't know what you're talking about.  Autocracy is born out of "socialist" tendencies just as much as capitalism.  The Nazis literally mean National Socialism.  There is a substantive argument to be had between capitalists and socialists in which form of the combination between the two is the optimal economic model. 

But I don't expect someone that's only interested in shock and aggressive rhetoric like yourself to grasp that though.  Attention seekers gonna attention seek.

You must be confused about Buffalo Wings huh?

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Bonnot OG said:

You must be confused about Buffalo Wings huh?

Never.  Grew up about an hour and a half away from Buffalo.  The city was shit but the wings were delicious.

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

RationalWiki actually has a list if you scroll down this entry.

Thanks for the link.  Browsing over it, the VSPs seems to have pretty diverse views.  Could their views be more diverse?  Sure.  If that's your point I suppose I agree.  Also, like how Krauthammer is on there.  Dude's dead, get on it wiki.

ETA:  They also have David Broder on there.  WTF?  I adore David Broder, always did, which is why I know he died seven years ago.