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U.S. Politics: Oh Donnie Boy, the Feds are calling...


A Horse Named Stranger

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2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

You're completely wrong. She's center right in European politics - like Angela Merkel - but she is far more leftist in American politics than any Republican for the last 50 years. 

Look, I know you think she's the greatest ever, but she's not liberal. I try not to hold it against anyone who was conservative in their youth--people can change, but she didn't let go of so many conservative beliefs that I don't know how anyone could believe she isn't center/center right. That she was so cozy with Wall Street kind of takes away her "leftist" card. It's time to move on from Hillary. Republicans have been moving to the right for decades, and that is why Hillary exists right there in the center. If not to the right. Anyone who is as hawkish as she gets automatic R next to their name.

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6 hours ago, ants said:

You do know that Hilary Clinton would be center-right?  So when you talk about everyone being slightly centre right being classified as a Nazi, you are either being disingenuous or ignorant.  

It was a point about the over use of the term Nazi to describe anyone with even mildly conservative views. I’m sure Hillary has been called a Nazi at some point too.

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7 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Mitt Romney: The president shapes the public character of the nation. Trump’s character falls short.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-the-president-shapes-the-public-character-of-the-nation-trumps-character-falls-short/2019/01/01/37a3c8c2-0d1a-11e9-8938-5898adc28fa2_story.html?utm_term=.73ae95b5703d

But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency.

 

 

I have a few problems with Romney's article. But, this one in particular:

Quote

To reassume our leadership in world politics, we must repair failings in our politics at home.

In part, that begins with Dr. Franken-Republican taking some responsibility for the monster he created.

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8 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Mitt Romney: The president shapes the public character of the nation. Trump’s character falls short. Also, I think the prospects of him giving me a job at this point are remote.

 

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3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

In part, that begins with Dr. Franken-Republican taking some responsibility for the monster he created.

Hahahahaha!  He'll take responsibility  for 1%.

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https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/rakich-warren-1231.png?w=575

This is from a 538 article, so it looks like Warren is a perfect superposition of the |Hillary> and |Obama> wavefunctions (maybe a bit more Hillary than Obama). Also, I suck at embedding images, so if someone else can do it.....

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9 hours ago, Mexal said:

Romney might say some stuff but I doubt he does anything. I think he takes up Flake's mantel. 

That being said, he should be applauded for speaking out at the very least.

Also, Flake hardened quite a bit in December, though it went mostly unnoticed because of HW Bush dying, then the shutdown, and the holidays. Flake held to his promise to block all judicial nominations (post-Kavanaugh of course) until McConnell brought the Mueller protection bill to a vote; McConnell never did and Flake never backed down. Of course, Flake is gone now and with the expanded 53 majority any one GOP senator has much less power; but all those potential judges will need to be renominated and go through the confirmation process all over again. Which will take time and every fewer day that most of them (since a handful are genuinely nonpartisan) are on the bench is a win.

Of course, with Democrats taking the House tomorrow, the Senate will have nothing to do but confirm judges. I doubt either side would block any actual deals made between Pelosi and Trump.

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14 hours ago, ants said:

Hmm, I'm a big fan of driverless cars.  I believe it should long term be better for the environment than current systems and reduce accidents and all the hurts that come from them.  

These people do seem to be following in the Luddite tradition.  

The entire history of humanity indicates that when something is made easier to consume by technology, it is consumed massively more. If driverless cars reduce the frictions of driving, making it easier for people to utilize single occupancy vehicles, then that means we are looking at a massively increased amount of vehicle miles travelled per person in single occupancy vehicles.

absent regulation restricting the technology to high occupancy vehicles, driverless cars are a disaster for the environment because increased VMT (and the increase in congestion from an increase in VMT) more than offsets any emissions gains from an all electric switch.

Also driverless cars, over the next thirty years will eliminate a net of about 400 million jobs globally, with nothing to ever replace them, massively increasing demands on the paltry safety nets most of which are not designed to support the permanent erasure of ten-twenty percent of their labor pool’s living wage employment, and as both access to single occupancy vehicles (as well as driving jobs) are enormously successful ladders out of poverty, we are also massively increasing inequality by trapping people into poverty with the implementation of this technology.

but hey, we have traded promises of safety for far less than the proposed safety trade driverless cars offer us.

Perhaps a new natural rate of unemployment of 15% and worse inequality is an excellent trade for an empty promise of increased safety?

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5 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

The entire history of humanity indicates that when something is made easier to consume by technology, it is consumed massively more. If driverless cars reduce the frictions of driving, making it easier for people to utilize single occupancy vehicles, then that means we are looking at a massively increased amount of vehicle miles travelled per person in single occupancy vehicles.

absent regulation restricting the technology to high occupancy vehicles, driverless cars are a disaster for the environment because increased VMT offsets any emissions gains from an all electric switch.

Also driverless cars, over the next thirty years will eliminate a net of about 400 million jobs globally, with nothing to ever replace them, massively increasing demands on the paltry safety nets most of which are not designed to support the permanent erasure of ten-twenty percent of their labor pool’s living wage employment, and as both access to single occupancy vehicles (as well as driving jobs) are enormously successful ladders out of poverty, we are also massively increasing inequality by trapping people into poverty.

Not sure I agree with this.  The frictions of driving are not what prevents people from utilizing single occupancy vehicles today, it's cost.  Even if self-driving cars make driving easier, they will still cost as much as, if not more than current cars. 

There might eventually be an uptick in, say, people with disabilities (say, blindness) being able to utilize single occupancy vehicles, but I do not think that will represent enough people to massively impact emissions.  I have doubts that it'd be enough extra people suddenly driving solo that the increase in fuel efficiency by removing the human element wouldn't at least be close to breaking even.   That also assumes that state regulatory agencies are all going to be cool with not going through standard licensing processes.  Even for self-driving vehicles, an override might be necessary in an emergency so someone in the car needs to be able to drive under normal conditions, so you'd still basically have the same pool of potential single-occupancy drivers that we have now.

I'm with you a little bit more on the job-loss thing, but to me that's more of an argument for better social safety nets and job training programs than it is against self-driving cars.    

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11 hours ago, Altherion said:

I do agree with you in that there has been a multiplication of such narratives, but I'm not sure how you would determine which ones of them have more merit than others. [...] there is no divinely provided set of values that qualifies people to consider themselves oppressed.

Economic inequalities are really easy to prove. So much so that they are largely undisputed, save for a few extremists like Peterson. It's all about how to view them. The left views such inequalities as fundamentally unfair and undesirable, generally the product of past arbitrary social hierarchies or divisions, and thus seeks to eliminate them. The right views inequalities as fundamentally natural or even desirable as an incentive for work and progress, and emphasizes individual responsibility over historical or deterministic perspectives.

Both approaches have some merit, at least today. But the reason the right seeks to dismiss historical or deterministic perspectives is because exploitation is difficult to  grasp over a small time period ; some forms of exploitation or oppression become truly obvious when considering several generations over the course of decades or centuries. Hence the right has always been the default position of the rich and the powerful, who can always use individual responsibility to blame the poor and powerless for their own condition. It becomes tricky when they convince others to look at the world through that lens.

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1 hour ago, S John said:

Not sure I agree with this.  The frictions of driving are not what prevents people from utilizing single occupancy vehicles today, it's cost.  Even if self-driving cars make driving easier, they will still cost as much as, if not more than current cars. 

There might eventually be an uptick in, say, people with disabilities (say, blindness) being able to utilize single occupancy vehicles, but I do not think that will represent enough people to massively impact emissions.  I have doubts that it'd be enough extra people suddenly driving solo that the increase in fuel efficiency by removing the human element wouldn't at least be close to breaking even.  

Well the big potential change is driverless VMT.  Right now the vast vast majority of roads are free, even in places where it is expensive to park.  The current model is you park your car and go get your car when you're done.  But what if you could just hop out at the store and have your car circle the block for a few minutes?  That wouldn't cost much (just a few cents of electricity), but it could potentially have huge negative externalities because it's more cars on the road, more congestion, more GHG emissions.  It is essentially using the road to park your car, but it's "ok" (at least in the current laws) because the car is moving. 

It's possible that allowing your vehicle to drive without a passenger in it would be made illegal, with exceptions carved out for "useful" passengerless vehicles like taxis and freight trucks.  But that would require the government to actually do something helpful, something I'm generally skeptical of.  In addition, people will push back on that kind of regulation because car-sharing apps are going to take off once driverless vehicles are a thing.  If you don't have to worry about some idiot crashing your car or ruining your transmission, a LOT more people are going to be willing to send their car out to earn them some extra money. 

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19 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Of course they were different --- Caucasoid migration is never the problem to these precious snowflakes. Dark people on the move is their nightmare.

You could call it projection, since the most prominent examples of migrants overwhelming and destroying native cultures have almost entirely been white people colonizing everyone else. And their terror at being outnumbered is informed by the fear that they might be treated the way white colonists have treated the cultures they conquered and subjugated.

Reading the last few pages has felt like what I imagine hitting yourself in the face with a frying pan feels like, but at least this was nice to see. I’ve felt for a long time that this is what drives conservative politics here in the U.S. White conservatives are terrified that their sins of the past will come back to haunt them, and it also makes them unable to discuss them honestly. They genuinely feel that they have to keep their boots down on minorities otherwise they’ll rise up and seek retribution. Once you accept this sad reality, you can start to understand the motivations for their awful behavior.

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I guess embedding images is not allowed, but the image I linked to shows that Obama, Warren and Clinton are pretty close by on an economic/social axis, they are on the same line socially, politically Obama is higher than Warren who is higher than Clinton in terms of less govt intervention (which I admit I found a little surprising). Sanders, on the other hand appears to be the same as Clinton in terms of govt intervention but is way to the left of all thee on social issues. In terms of perception (even among her base) Warren appears to be more liberal than she actually is.

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54 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I guess embedding images is not allowed, but the image I linked to shows that Obama, Warren and Clinton are pretty close by on an economic/social axis, they are on the same line socially, politically Obama is higher than Warren who is higher than Clinton in terms of less govt intervention (which I admit I found a little surprising).

Yeah I have no idea what OnTheIssues' methodology is, but that Hillary-Warren-Obama placement left-to-right on the economic axis immediately calls into question its face validity (not to mention that all three are essentially identical on the social dimension, which is..curious).  

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I only took a quick peek since I have work to do, but it appears to be a 20 topic 'questionnaire' on which they give points based on what the positions are (gun control, abortion etc...)

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Elizabeth_Warren_SenateMatch.htm

Foreign entanglements for instance are a social issue, so a non-interventionist may be able to seem more left leaning on it.

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8 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I only took a quick peek since I have work to do, but it appears to be a 20 topic 'questionnaire' on which they give points based on what the positions are (gun control, abortion etc...)

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Elizabeth_Warren_SenateMatch.htm

Foreign entanglements for instance are a social issue, so a non-interventionist may be able to seem more left leaning on it.

Yeah guess I shouldn't have said "no idea" - it just does not appear they employ any type of IRT modeling and it's not clear if they do any inter-coder reliability checks.  I'd also like to know if they have any set standards for the coding (e.g. range of responses that will yield a certain score on a certain item) and who exactly are making these coding decisions, but I don't care enough to dig in to that.

Anyway, if foreign entanglements is operationalized as a "social" issue, then Hillary should grade significantly further right than Warren or Obama.

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2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

The entire history of humanity indicates that when something is made easier to consume by technology, it is consumed massively more.

Demand for transport is pretty inelastic. People go where they need to go by whatever means is available to them; cheaper and easier cars won't result in people driving back and forth for no reason. You'd get some increase, but not that much.

2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Also driverless cars, over the next thirty years will eliminate a net of about 400 million jobs globally, with nothing to ever replace them, massively increasing demands on the paltry safety nets most of which are not designed to support the permanent erasure of ten-twenty percent of their labor pool’s living wage employment

It will probably be a disaster on that front, yeah, because humanity is really really stupid. But in a sane world, we could switch to a 30 hour working week, providing a whole lot of additional vacancies for ex-drivers in all other industries, while everything gets cheaper to the extent paying drivers used to be part of the cost. The minimum wage would need to be increased to ensure everyone can get by on just 30 hours work.

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

The current model is you park your car and go get your car when you're done.  But what if you could just hop out at the store and have your car circle the block for a few minutes?  That wouldn't cost much (just a few cents of electricity), but it could potentially have huge negative externalities because it's more cars on the road, more congestion, more GHG emissions.

Why even have your own car? Taxis with no driver to pay would be vastly cheaper and more efficient than privately owned cars, and would suit most people for day-to-day use. No need to worry about parking (including no need for a garage at home) or maintenance. And extended hire would be affordable when you wanted to use the car for storage during your trip, in a way human-driven taxis certainly aren't. There'd be room for a lot more variety in design, too - currently everyone owns a general purpose car that's suitable for all the trips they make, but if we had a massive fleet of self-driving taxis, it could include a lot of single-seaters and two-seaters along with vehicles more like our current cars, and minibuses for bigger groups, trucks when you've got a lot of stuff to move...

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