U.S. Politics: Speak, Shriek, or Squeak! Whatever Technique You Seek in Critique of the Isogeneic Freak.

[Luzifer's right hand]

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

This would be why my wife is so pessimistic towards those who think the US isn't doomed. Her view is that it's already too late, and that we're well past the point of no return - and a lot of that is due to the judiciary simply being so very on the side of conservative thinking and corporate pockets.

The Kochs buying and financing the various judicial orgs (Americans for Prosperity, federalist, etc) has to be one of the most amazing investments in modern history. 

I think that pessimism is the best approach in such a situation.

I fear that the optimism of people who are not in danger will prevent people who are from getting to safety before it is too late and will do a lot of harm in the long term.

It is better to err on the side of caution when facism is approaching imo. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hey @Ser Scot A Ellison,

Want to revisit our conversation on how rights aren't actually rights? 

Your point is well made.  If the Courts will not enforce or recognize the rights set out I cannot, accurately, claim they have an abstract existence without resorting to pendantry.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

So the jobs report is out, and I've flipped through a few channels and nobody can understand how they're so good. They seem to be misleading because they are counting people with jobs going back to work, but still, expecting a 20% unemployment mark and getting 14% is a giant error, assuming the numbers are actually honest. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Your point is well made.  If the Courts will not enforce or recognize the rights set out I cannot, accurately, claim they have an abstract existence without resorting to pendantry.

It's not really my point. It's been made for a long time. I don't believe in god, but if there is a god logic to me indicates there are many. And they probably don't care about us at all, if they even exist. So to me, the notion of god given rights is kind of silly. The rights we have are dictated to us by the government we live under, and hey, that government can change, quickly, so like I said, they're more like privileges than rights.

 

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So the jobs report is out, and I've flipped through a few channels and nobody can understand how they're so good.

 

[Fez]

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So the jobs report is out, and I've flipped through a few channels and nobody can understand how they're so good. They seem to be misleading because they are counting people with jobs going back to work, but still, expecting a 20% unemployment mark and getting 14% is a giant error, assuming the numbers are actually honest. 

It is a giant error in the expectations. But as people dive more into the report, the picture becomes more clear. It looks like most of the job "gains" are from re-payrolling temporary layoffs; which is almost certainly due to the PP program. Which means that when those loans expire, most of the gains will disappear again as well; unless the lockdowns are over and don't come back. Permanent job losses continued to rise in the report.

So, insofar as this report makes it very likely that Republicans will not support another stimulus package now, this makes it much more likely for a really bad jobs report in a couple months. Unless the virus is done.

[Ormond]

Just now, Fez said:

It is a giant error in the expectations. But as people dive more into the report, the picture becomes more clear. It looks like most of the job "gains" are from re-payrolling temporary layoffs; which is almost certainly due to the PP program. Which means that when those loans expire, most of the gains will disappear again as well; unless the lockdowns are over and don't come back. Permanent job losses continued to rise in the report.

So, insofar as this report makes it very likely that Republicans will not support another stimulus package now, this makes it much more likely for a really bad jobs report in a couple months. Unless the virus is done.

I heard someone say this morning that perhaps workers who were "temporarily furloughed" were also not being counted as "unemployed." I do not know it that's true or was just a random speculation. But I think a lot of organizations who find themselves in a bad financial position but are trying to do as much for their employees as they still can are taking that route. I know that Creighton University in Omaha has "furloughed" many people for a few months, but they are still giving these workers health insurance during their furlough. Is still getting health insurance enough to make one "employed" even if no paycheck is coming in? I don't know.

[Rippounet]

9 hours ago, mcbigski said:

Scott Adams has been going on for years about people watching the same events, but seeing different movies.  Though he uses that a way to explain cognitive dissonance on the left, so it probably wouldn't sound sensible to one on the left.

The point was that I don't see how anyone can spend years in these threads and establish that most people here think of American ideals as "outdated."
I kind of struggle to see when this -rather- specific criticism is/was expressed.
The dominant thought in these threads, imho, would be that American ideals are great (ideals generally are), but too often theoretical. In other words, it would seem to me that for most people here (as for leftists throughout the world, frankly), the problem is that America does not live up to its ideals.
Others (like me) might sometimes wonder out loud whether some ideals (natural rights, in my case) weren't questionable from the start.
But the specific idea of them being "outdated" is... curious.

It might seem like a small difference at a glance, and yet one of our perceptions should be far "more correct" than the other. Which means one of us has spent years on this forum reading thousands of messages without really being able to understand what others were saying, that one of us is so far caught in his own version of reality that he only understood what he wanted to understand, and has derived sweeping conclusions that are likely to be completely wrong.

Now of course, the "ideals" you were thinking about may not be the ones I think about. While I think about democracy, equality (especially equality under the law), positive liberty, you may be thinking about self-reliance and negative liberty...
But this would still not solve the initial comprehension problem, only clarify it.

And now that I've typed all this, I'm genuinely curious.
Which one of us is out of touch with reality and tends to see (read) only what he wants to see?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 minutes ago, DMC said:

 

I've always meant to watch that film, but I have a lot to catch up on. Even more so with books. 

17 minutes ago, Fez said:

It is a giant error in the expectations. But as people dive more into the report, the picture becomes more clear. It looks like most of the job "gains" are from re-payrolling temporary layoffs; which is almost certainly due to the PP program. Which means that when those loans expire, most of the gains will disappear again as well; unless the lockdowns are over and don't come back. Permanent job losses continued to rise in the report.

So, insofar as this report makes it very likely that Republicans will not support another stimulus package now, this makes it much more likely for a really bad jobs report in a couple months. Unless the virus is done.

This is not an area in which I am qualified to speak on at all, but that did seem to be what the economists and business types on the box were saying. It sounds like a lot of ways to make everything sound as good as possible, and the PPP is what is propping everything up. 

I mean, I'm still technically employed, but I have worked one week since the beginning of April. But hey, since I only make 40-45k annually (albeit with an ass load of benefits), I'm getting a raise to kick back at home and chill. 

ETA: Mother. Fucking. Dinos! That run difference is getting insane! 

[sologdin]

double.  dammit.

[sologdin]

But it wasn't still the same abolitionists from the 1850s that got Prohibition through.  Is this a more widely held theory or mostly the one proponent?

mcbig--

not sure.  hellfire nation says:  "The fight against liquor may be the greatest reform movement in American history--only abolition came close" (281).  further: "It fired progressive imaginations" (id.)--very much a movement of the left, built on social gospel assumptions. morone therein locates prohibitionist antecedents as far back as the 1820s, emerging through the 1850s, with the "crusade" itself kicking off in the 1870s.  there is probably some overlap in individual activists, at that point--we know that some abolitionists also merged with the suffragettes, for instance (frederick douglas perhaps most famously). lotsa radical energy back then.  by the time it won a constitutional amendment, yeah, likely the torch had been handed off to a new generation.

 

corruption and rot will continue to spread and American democracy will be a shadow of itself by 2024

maitha--

dunno.  doesn't he differ merely by degree rather than in kind? bourgeois liberalism has always been a forum for class struggle and in the US rooted in bad race politics; its condition of possibility was land secured by genocide and infrastructure built by chattel slavery. trump is frankfurt's bullshitter, but he does have a solitary candor in his overt coarseness that other bourgeois paper over with abstractions. he tries, but chafes.  he is illiberal--but bourgeois liberalism always has the risk of transforming into fascist illiberalism, and he can't make the transformation by himself. 

 

Calling the bill an expansion of police power is like referring to the Civil Rights Act as an expansion of police power. 

DMC--

yeah, am having a difficult time seeing much that is new.  proposed 18 USC 250 does not define lynching but merely adds a redundant conspiracy charge insofar as 18 USC 251 already has a conspiracy charge related specifically to civil rights, and we have a general federal conspiracy statute in 18 USC 371. the new section is limited to three subsections in the civil rights chapter.  i think the sole innovation is to increase penalties for conspirators when the actual object of the conspiracy is not achieved.  that's a good thing, but am not seeing a definition of lynching to make it particularly relevant. rand's objection is uncommonly silly; if someone has less than life-threatening injuries, then the penalty will be proportionate.  

 

If the Courts will not enforce or recognize the rights set out I cannot, accurately, claim they have an abstract existence without resorting to pendantry.

scot--

i don't get this attitude.  the rights plainly exist, even if the remedies are lacking (such as with 4th amendment violations) or the courts interpret the rights poorly (as with the ERISA). both disjuncts are superior to a situation wherein the rights do not exist.

[Guest]

Well, I think I figured out what my investment strategy will be: hold and then convert to safe investments before either the June or July jobs report comes out.

The market is just irrational to the point of batshit insanity right now. Even the smallest bit of good news is met with a wildly outsized positive reaction, and news like today's job report is taken at face value without considering the tiniest bit of context.

Senate Republicans had just started to warm up to the idea that unemployment benefits need to be extended in some form, but I'm concerned this jobs report will cause that tentative support to collapse, and that there won't be support for demand side stimulus in the new bill by July 31 when the plus-up benefits run out.

If that happens, I almost think that there may not be enough time left to negotiate and pass a new bill due to the election, which would be disastrous.

[Fez]

Mayor Bowser trolling Trump.

Also, supposedly the Mayor is invoking third amendment claims to try to get at least some of the national guard from other states out of DC. Specifically the ones currently staying in DC hotels. How about that for a plot twist?

No one expects the third amendment!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

What are the odds, that at the very least part of the National Guard are staying in Trump's hotel, getting paid for by tax payer money.

[DMC]

45 minutes ago, sologdin said:

rand's objection is uncommonly silly; if someone has less than life-threatening injuries, then the penalty will be proportionate.  

He's just trying to delay the bill because....I don't know, such obstructionism has devolved to something like muscle memory among the Paul family.  Especially when it comes to opposing any advancement in federal civil rights.

[Fragile Bird]

I was busy this morning and missed Trump's press conference, not that I would have watched it anyway.

But did you hear what that appalling excuse for a president said?

Quote

Trump spoke nearly an hour and only briefly mentioned Floyd, the black man who died after a police officer pinned his neck down last week in Minneapolis. The president otherwise touted an economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis that has disproportionately affected black Americans.

“Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” Trump said. “This is a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody.”

A great day for a dead man! Looking down on Donald and supporting him!

https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-trump-unemployment-jobs-report-george-floyd-20200605-molui5vyyvfdpn5mjefumokl5y-story.html

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I was busy this morning and missed Trump's press conference, not that I would have watched it anyway.

But did you hear what that appalling excuse for a president said?

A great day for a dead man! Looking down on Donald and supporting him!

Jesus fucking wept.

Will you sponsor me in my application for Canadian citizenship? I won't bother anyone and I'm fairly well housebroken for an American.

[Maithanet]

Marist (an A+ pollster on 538) came out with a poll from June 2-3, and it's about what you'd expect, Biden +7 in the head to head. 

But one thing I noticed looking over the poll is that Trump's numbers are bad, but still not as bad as they were at the height of the shutdown (Jan 2019) or the failed Obamacare repeal (Oct 2017).  However, Trump's strongly disapprove numbers are THE WORST they have ever been.  Fully 47% of the country strongly disapproves of Trump.  That's not a good number. 

[Week]

So ... MS-13 has apparently stopped their reign of terror and rebranded themselves as Antifa? Or do we have MS-13 fear mongering to come still?

[Fragile Bird]

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

Jesus fucking wept.

Will you sponsor me in my application for Canadian citizenship? I won't bother anyone and I'm fairly well housebroken for an American.

Awwwww, wait until November. If Biden doesn't get elected, sure, why not. But I suspect you won't qualify, not a family member, not a refugee. (I need to check the rules) Who knows, maybe we'll change the rules by then. I thought we should have changed them in 2016, to welcome more American applicants.