US Politics: Help Me Vladimir!!! Xi Wants Me to Lose!!!

[IheartIheartTesla]

24 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

See also Steven Pinker.

This is probably getting way off-topic, but I dont mind Pinker as much as the others. At least he comes from the tradition of the sciences and has done scientific work himself. Plus I didnt mind The Blank Slate as much as I thought I would.

[Darth Richard II]

27 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Well, I was also going to post about Musk in the COVID thread, but yeah. I lost the respect I had for him after his leaving his factories open and his promoting of dubious science around the importance (or lack thereof) of the virus. He also linked to those two doctors who were using bad statistics to argue the mortality rate of COVID-19 was lower than stated and financially profiting from it. Someone called it "quantitative BS" where he snows you down with data and charts but its all garbage.

Yeah I lost respect for him a while back but now he’s entered “want to punch in the face” territory:

[Freshwater Spartan]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

This is pretty interesting. I don't know that it's predictive, but it makes me hopeful somewhat.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/5/1/21243143/elizabeth-warren-vice-president-joe-biden-2020-poll

 

I wonder how much of that is a reflection of voter identification?

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

39 minutes ago, DMC said:

That's just a bonus.  The rewarding feeling you get at the end of the semester and students demonstrate they've been successfully indoctrinated.

Someone just admitted to being a thought criminal.

You monster!  

[Liffguard]

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the allegations against Biden, and the broader discussion around lesser-evil voting generally, despite not being American and thus not voting in your elections. Ultimately, the reason I can’t stop thinking about it is why I also strongly urge everyone to vote for whoever has a D next to their name in November, for every office on every ballot (with the sole exception of cases where there’s a realistic chance of someone further left winning); because the results of this election will have serious consequences for me as well, and for all people regardless of nationality.

Because which party holds office in the USA in 2021 will have serious consequences for the long-term habitability of the planet.

Backtracking slightly, I’ve already said before that I find Reade’s allegation credible. I’ve listened to the interview and read as much as I can about what others close to her have reported. There’s no way to know for sure right now, but I personally think she’s telling the truth. Is anybody really shocked that allegations like this came out against a guy frequently nicknamed “creepy Joe” with a well-documented fondness for invading women’s personal space? I’ll admit, I was not a fan of him before, and maybe this is just a confirmation of my biases, but I think the guy is probably a sex offender, and a pretty terrible human being in many other ways.

And if he’s confirmed as the presidential candidate for November, I hope all you American posters go vote for him, because the stakes are genuinely that high.

I know that seems like a tired old song. Every election is always “the most important.” You vote for the lesser evil every time because the alternative is a Republican, but it never seems to make a real difference. Democrats still love dropping bombs on foreigners, deporting immigrants, locking unimaginable numbers of people in cells for the pettiest bullshit, and the usual litany of injustice that I hardly need to go through here.

Even on the issue I’m using to try and convince you, they’re terrible. Democrats are terrible on climate change. Oil production rose under Obama. The Democrats claim to believe the science, but at best pay it lip service. They do not act as if they truly believe that climate change is a real threat.

If this election was taking place forty years ago, I’d be much more willing to listen to arguments for not engaging in the electoral system. I’m at least willing to be persuaded by ideas of disengaging and working to build alternative parties and alternative power structures in the long-term. But today, long-term payoffs will be too late. There’s a ticking clock.

I’ll say it again, the Democrats are terrible on climate change.

But the Republicans are a suicide cult.

The Democrats at least have some capacity to maybe be influenced in a positive direction. There’s a strong progressive bloc within the party, even if the party leadership is still flagging way behind. There are some representatives pushing for the changes actually needed. I’m not optimistic that a Democrat administration would take the changes necessary to stave off the worst of what’s coming. But there’s a ghost of a chance. And even a half-hearted effort isn’t nothing. Every fraction of a degree of temperature rise that can be prevented means a measurable amount of human suffering prevented.

By contrast, the Republicans are more than happy to not just let climate change happen, but to actually accelerate the process, willingly.

I fully understand the antipathy to Biden. I share it. One of the reasons I support criticising him now is because I’m genuinely concerned that running him as the candidate in November means a loss. And I personally won’t hold it against anyone who can’t bring themselves to vote for him for reasons of personal trauma. But if he is the candidate, and you don’t have personal reasons not to, I really think you should vote for him, and every Democrat or viable left-winger that you can.      

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Freshwater Spartan said:

I wonder how much of that is a reflection of voter identification?

 

It's probably some of that, but a lot of it is that Warren is largely popular across the board. She's also well known compared to a lot of the other mentioned people. 

[Liffguard]

23 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

This is probably getting way off-topic, but I dont mind Pinker as much as the others. At least he comes from the tradition of the sciences and has done scientific work himself. Plus I didnt mind The Blank Slate as much as I thought I would.

Fair. For what it's worth I didn't mind Better Angels of Our Nature either. It was Enlightenment Now that really turned me off him.

[GrimTuesday]

43 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

This is probably getting way off-topic, but I dont mind Pinker as much as the others. At least he comes from the tradition of the sciences and has done scientific work himself. Plus I didnt mind The Blank Slate as much as I thought I would.

Do we need to start a thread of remind people that people who they either like or don't hate of their connection to Jeffery Epstein?

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

That's just a bonus.  The rewarding feeling you get at the end of the semester and students demonstrate they've been successfully indoctrinated.

It's a whole better feeling to see via their questions and their responses to you and the other students demonstrating their minds and experience have been expanded and they learned a whole lot about things in the past impact the present, culturally, politically and and spiritually.

Than means reading books and thinking, of course.

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

1 hour ago, Liffguard said:

Fair. For what it's worth I didn't mind Better Angels of Our Nature either. It was Enlightenment Now that really turned me off him.

His writing style guide is pretty good, but I haven't read a ton of his stuff (I do think I read Better Angels). I don't think he is a pedophile racist sexist monster (I guess he hung out with Epstein too?), but I do think he is super deluded about us living in truly good times, and we just don't understand how bad it used to be.

In fact, Pinker is a big advocate of not using prescriptivist language to continually hurt students of color and second language learners in U.S. schools. I don't remember if it was him (I think it was sociolinguists like Labov or Wolfram that I first encountered), but those sociolinguistic studies dating back to the 60s about the complexity of African American Vernacular English being complex and fully conforming to all the patterns of a separate language (as opposed to being slang or even a dialect of English) really changed how I approached language instruction. Pinker has some good instructional videos on verb conjugation in AAVE, so I do think he attempts to do good work.

[Fury Resurrected]

Our local weather guy just got fired for sharing a negative article by a rabbi about the shutdown protestors in Minnesota. Strange fucking times

[DMC]

26 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It's a whole better feeling to see via their questions and their responses to you and the other students demonstrating their minds and experience have been expanded and they learned a whole lot about things in the past impact the present, culturally, politically and and spiritually.

Than means reading books and thinking, of course.

Ya know what I've found to be useful when teaching?  A sense of humor.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

7 hours ago, sologdin said:

any DC attorneys who can opine upon the criminal complaint?  

as i see it, the applicable statutes in the current code were revised in 1994, so the 1981 DC criminal code applies, as archived.

§ 22-4101(8)(C) therein defines sexual act as 'the penetration, however slight, of the anus or vulva by a hand or finger or by any object, with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.

This seems to describe fairly the central allegation against biden.  there are four felony degrees for sexual abuse, all of which require a 'sexual act' as defined, and one misdemeanor offense.  under these rules, it looks like the allegations are on the knife's edge between the fourth degree felony and the misdemeanor--but we really need someone who does DC criminal law to explain how the cases shake out.

that said, the real problem is in 1981's § 23-113, the statute of limitation:

the criminal complaint is likely toast, then--even though the revised statute of limitation makes felony sex offenses imprescriptible--any argument here that the revised statute of limitation has retroactive effect in DC criminal law? 

I suspect that a corollary tort claim in civil court and an ethics violation complaint would also be untimely at this point? If so, that means there's no chance to get biden or reade under oath.

If a change to a criminal SoL is retroactive, how is that not a violation of the Ex Post Facto clause?

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

a know what I've found to be useful when teaching?  A sense of humor.

Of course a sense of humor -- and a whole lotta other stuff. 

BTW, sense of humor? You have one? Who knew?

[Martell Spy]

We Need to Rewrite the Constitution to Stop Voter Suppression
We’ve reshaped society before to make America more equitable. We can do it again.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/05/new-reconstruction-constitution-democracy.html

Quote

First, democracy requires structural reforms that dismantle the persisting patterns of racial hierarchy and unequal political power—and reforms that are built to withstand the backlash that inevitably follow. Passing democracy reform bills in Congress (like H.R. 1) and in the states is a start. But just as Reconstruction created the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, so too should we today push for a constitutional right-to-vote amendment that constitutionalizes protections against voter suppression and rigged elections, and finally corrects a systematically unequal political system that disproportionately prioritizes white voters through the Electoral College and an unequal Senate.

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Emerson polling shows that 51 % of Sanders supporters may vote third party or not at all. This is far worse than I thought.

http://emersonpolling.com/category/polls/

[DMC]

21 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Emerson polling shows that 51 % of Sanders supporters may vote third party or not at all. This is far worse than I thought.

http://emersonpolling.com/category/polls/

Yes a link to a poll that has Biden up on Trump by six points, the same margin as last month, is absolutely terrifying.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

27 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yes a link to a poll that has Biden up on Trump by six points, the same margin as last month, is absolutely terrifying.

Biden up by 6 points? Okay...

[DMC]

21 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Biden up by 6 points? Okay...

Okay?  That's what the poll says, so...

[karaddin]

10 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

I meant to come back to this earlier, and @Simon Steele and @The Great Unwashed deserve more substantive replies from me than emojis since I was first to grab a pitchfork in both their cases. You're right. I should have jumped on the article more than on Simon or on TGU personally. I'll try to do better. I won't question your good faith any more. I'll still rip the shit out of stupid articles though.

Thanks, I was going to post asking you to reconsider this yesterday but felt the conversation had moved on.

While I actually agree with Kalbear on the need for us all to do due diligence in the articles we share, I also haven't trained that reflex in myself and can very easily see myself falling into the same oversight under the same circumstances as Simon was in. That particular example didn't strike me as evidence of bad faith.

On the polls front I'm going to have a hard time having any confidence in any positive news they suggest, the last minute swing was the only time things fell in Trump's favour in 2016 and I'm not going to get burned by trusting that won't happen again. Especially when the media haven't fixed any of the ways they contributed to that.