U.S. Politics: Only Death Can Pay For Growth

[A Horse Named Stranger]

8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

They're literally burning the station down.

Yo, when you get people from one of the happiest places in the world to freak out and burn shit down, you did something wrong. 

Mickey and Goofey, while Donald has finally snapped (no more Ducks to give).

Ok, the Donald has indeed snapped, and taken his insanity to Twitter (where else).

With the country now literally ablaze, we are finally approaching cinematic Nero territory (in contrast to the historic Nero check the old thread).

I must say, I am impressed with Melania's Be Best campaign. It's working like a charm on that overgrown Orange toddler of hers.

[Tywin et al.]

So I wrote this in the exercise and fitness thread a few days ago just before things got weird.

On 5/26/2020 at 11:14 AM, Tywin et al. said:

Okay. It's a T.V. show, and one of the central characters is from  where Ace and I grew up, and it's actually insanely accurate. Nice, overly polite, says thank you way too much, feels bad for even the smallest of slights, goes out of their way to be charitable, is oddly friendly.....but is also extremely passive aggressive, and once you lace them up, what ever sport it is, all the evil just comes out of you and you want to destroy everyone at everything. 

I'm not surprised at all that things are boiling over here. Where we come from, you're taught to be extremely nice, and to break from that is to break from the norm and tradition of Minnesota Nice. And when you do break, you quickly apologize in a strange way. But that's a micro issue. Macro, when everyone breaks, well, what's happening is not shocking to me at all.

[Tywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Mickey and Goofey, while Donald has finally snapped (no more Ducks to give).

Ok, the Donald has indeed snapped, and taken his insanity to Twitter (where else).

With the country now literally ablaze, we are finally approaching cinematic Nero territory (in contrast to the historic Nero check the old thread).

I must say, I am impressed with Melania's Be Best campaign. It's working like a charm on that overgrown Orange toddler of hers.

Hey, people are mad about police violence. But saying the police need to shoot everyone is a great idea......

This fucking coward, who has no family that's ever served in any way. Who knows nothing about sacrifice. 

Fuck him, and all who enable him. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

28 minutes ago, Mexal said:

This is true. And this is the guy who did it...

 

Someone needs to preserve that video now.  It has already been removed from youtube for “violating terms of service”.

That really does look like some agent provocateur BS.

[Fez]

Some really interesting, and disheartening, research on the electoral impacts of African American protests:

The TL;DR is that, looking at 1968, in the wake of MLK's death and the violent protests that followed, Nixon ended up winning in 1968 not by harnessing southern whites (the "Southern Strategy") who were going to vote for him, or George Wallace, anyway; but by flipping white moderates in the mid-Atlantic and midwest. If there had not been any violent protests, regardless of whether the violence was initiated by protestors or police, the most likely outcome would've been Hubert Humphrey winning Delaware, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri, and therefore beating Nixon. The protests caused a shift of between 1.6%-7.9% among white voters from Humphrey to Nixon.

[Maithanet]

But wouldn't the counterargument to that be the 1992 Rodney King riots, which pretty clearly damaged President Bush?  I am not an expert on the period, but my general understanding was that Bush was riding high after the Persian Gulf war, only to have his popularity badly shaken by a combination of a sluggish economy and the riots. 

[DanteGabriel]

11 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

But wouldn't the counterargument to that be the 1992 Rodney King riots, which pretty clearly damaged President Bush?  I am not an expert on the period, but my general understanding was that Bush was riding high after the Persian Gulf war, only to have his popularity badly shaken by a combination of a sluggish economy and the riots. 

Huh, I've never thought of those riots as having an impact on the presidential race. I thought it was mostly the economy and Republicans turning on him after the "no new taxes" thing.

[Maithanet]

Just now, DanteGabriel said:

Huh, I've never thought of those riots as having an impact on the presidential race. I thought it was mostly the economy and Republicans turning on him after the "no new taxes" thing.

I definitely think that the riots contributed to the general feeling of malaise about the direction the country was heading in 1992.   Which, in retrospect is kinda funny, because the 90s were like the last "Great American Decade" as the country enjoyed economic and military dominance after winning the Cold War. 

[Guest]

Just now, DanteGabriel said:

Huh, I've never thought of those riots as having an impact on the presidential race. I thought it was mostly the economy and Republicans turning on him after the "no new taxes" thing.

You 'd me.

Yeah, I was just getting ready to post the same thing. I was pretty young at the time (14 during the '92 election), and I definitely remember the LA riots, but I don't remember that being a major issue in the election (although I will concede I didn't pay nearly as much attention to politics back then), but what I do remember was a huge backlash to Bush's tax increases after promising not to raise them, and the soft economy (was there actually a recession in '91-'92 or was it just a comparatively weak economy? I honestly don't remember).

Although I do suppose the King officers' acquittal and subsequent LA riots could have influenced African-Americans to turn out to support Clinton in higher numbers.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

59 minutes ago, Fez said:

Some really interesting, and disheartening, research on the electoral impacts of African American protests:

The TL;DR is that, looking at 1968, in the wake of MLK's death and the violent protests that followed, Nixon ended up winning in 1968 not by harnessing southern whites (the "Southern Strategy") who were going to vote for him, or George Wallace, anyway; but by flipping white moderates in the mid-Atlantic and midwest. If there had not been any violent protests, regardless of whether the violence was initiated by protestors or police, the most likely outcome would've been Hubert Humphrey winning Delaware, Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri, and therefore beating Nixon. The protests caused a shift of between 1.6%-7.9% among white voters from Humphrey to Nixon.

So, protesters bring out reactionary Whites more than they bring out progressive Whites?

[Fragile Bird]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

So, protesters bring out reactionary Whites more than they bring out progressive Whites?

Fear?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, Fragile Bird said:

Fear?

Maybe.  Humanity makes me so sad sometimes.

[Rippounet]

12 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Well that's first past the post in a nutshell right?  Build your coalition ahead of time and come across at election time as the least unappealing.  Granted that doesn't sound terribly inspiring, but it's got a fair amount of practicality built in, if you're somewhat centrist.  (Which statistically, the middle usually is.)

Oh, yes, totally. It's kind of a truism that "moderates" gravitate toward the "least unappealing" candidate.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

10 hours ago, ants said:

 

Simon, 

You complain that you're unfairly targeted, that it's all because you're a Bernie Bro.  Have you considered its because of what you post, and you're trolling?  I've copied a few posts from this discussion below, and highlighted you're own texts.  In red I've highlighted where you say you're going to attack Biden.  In bolded black I've highlighted where you've just described yourself as a troll.  These are hardly the first times you've admitted to such behaviour.

So why are you then surprised, that when you attack Biden again, others would comment and laugh at your trolling?  To then get upset, seemingly deliberately mislabel the response as racist, and then say "woe is me" seems pretty silly.  If you want to post anti-Biden things and troll troll troll, don't complain when people laugh at it, get upset at it, or get angry.  Given, that is the goal of trolling so you would appear to achieve your goals. 

 

Biden sucks tho. Terrible human.

Tell you want, though, Ants. If Biden chooses Warren as his VP, then I'll get out there and Canvas for him. I'll go into the depth of the Chapo subreddits and campaign for him. And when we wins in November, we all can feel better. I think we know how I feel about Biden. But fuck Trump. The guy's a monster.

[Mexal]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Someone needs to preserve that video now.  It has already been removed from youtube for “violating terms of service”.

That really does look like some agent provocateur BS.

Yea, I suspect it won't disappear from social media - people have long memories and that dude was supposedly a St. Paul cop. I know I read some other things from protestors that suggested similar in terms of people embedding into the protestors and starting shit (white dudes that is). It's a mob mentality kind of thing... one person starts, another few encourage and then full on anarchy, especially when the police react they way they did.

[Guest]

Trump is holding a press conference at 2:00 (so actually more like 2:45-3:00) EST.

My heart dropped when I saw he's holding a press conference. Nothing good can possibly come out of it.

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Oh, yes, totally. It's kind of a truism that "moderates" gravitate toward the "least unappealing" candidate.

I was shocked to learn that the null hypothesis that there was no significant difference between the middle and centrist wasn't rejected. That wouldn't have been my first guess.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

He's going to do something stupid and dangerous.  I'd put money on it:

https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/28/couy-griffin-cowboys-for-trump-tweet-dead-democrat-video/5279278002/

[Rorschach - 2]

He will. Of course he will. 

If you have half an hour, I think spending it on this article isn't the worst thing you can do. 

That's a collective you, in case anyone wondered.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Someone needs to preserve that video now.  It has already been removed from youtube for “violating terms of service”.

That really does look like some agent provocateur BS.

I had heard there was speculation about this, but I hadn't seen the video. This is nuts. Trump wants to see blood in the streets.