Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 29 Dec 2021 @ 2:31am
Re: Re:
"You will note that you remain unapprehended, and have not been required to undergo mandatory reeducation for mentioning those."
After the church commission, yeah. Before that time, um, it really wasn't conducive to your health, financial status, or employment to ask those questions. Because no one wanted to end up on Hoover's or McCarthy's little list.
"There might be something about the US government that resists the authoritarian bent currently afflicting China."
Not so much, no. Do note that the US has steadfastly undermined and eroded any civic protections - through the patriot acts and onwards, as long as anyone within US intelligence wants you nailed, then nailed you will be.
The only real difference here is that China is obsessed with face which makes them trigger on stuff which in the US is seen as normal.
There's a reason presidents had to sign executive orders forbidding certain intelligence agencies to operate against american citizens. Abu Ghraib and gitmo aren't aberrations.
No, what is truly dangerous about China is that in many respects the country as a whole works better than the US does. To 90% of the PRC citizenry life is pretty good and full of opportunity - as long as they remember to kowtow to Beijing in preferably public displays of gratitude. To a disturbingly large amount of americans, otoh, life is a never-ending rat race.
"Perhaps part of it might be that the government of the US is a result of uniting fractious individual states in a compromise..."
A pretty dated observation. Contemporary US seems to have "irreconcilable differences" as the background theme. With about a third of the citizenry currently willing to suffer from bad policies as long as said policies bring the pain to the other two thirds.
No, if you want to nag in China's authoritarianism you need moral high ground and preferably a working example of how things are actually better on your side - the way you could clearly show when the conflict was between the "free west" and the Soviet Union. Neither of those really applies in this context anymore.
And after Trump you really can't point at the Imperial Pooh Bear and claim higher ground.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 29 Dec 2021 @ 12:41am
Re:
"...while our desire to preach sense to China has been subverted into a troll campaign to push for "independence movements" as fringe as the Republic of Texas."
Last I checked the polls some 60%+ of republicans and 40%+ of democrats were in favor of secession. That...is no longer a "fringe". The only reason states aren't drawing up divorce papers is because those in favor of secession are distributed more or less evenly across the country - even the reddest of states is at least 45% liberal, making it damn hard to make the case to just up and leave the union.
"Censorship always has a terrible price, but that price will be paid even when you don't think about it."
China has been paying that price since Qin Shi Huang though. Their millennia old system of imperial bureaucratic dictatorship has been geared around paying that price. They found how to make autocracy work, centering every executive decision around academic elites in civil service.
Censorship only causes great harm when a mode of government is built around humanitarian values such as freedom, democracy, and civil rights. In the west we believe in those values and try our best to make our governments at least attempt to operate by them.
China meanwhile values stability over everything else and takes the pragmatic tack that as long as a significant majority of the population is happy and prosperous the minority is irrelevant. Life is Good in China...if you're Han, that is.
And to keep that majority from becoming upset on behalf of the minority it's just convenient to preserve the national face by memory-holing any embarrassment.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 6:00am
Re: Re: AMAZING that you elide Out of the Basement
He's obviously butthurt over it. I assume that's why he deigned to pitch in and try to defend his title of Dumbest Asshat Ever To Disgrace A Forum With His Presence.
Especially given that what he shat on the poor defenseless text box this time around was a claim that Techdirt supported a raid they'd previously spent an - easily found - article lambasting in the strongest possible terms.
But that's just poor old Baghdad Bob for you. Over ten years wasted on trying to troll people and he still hasn't gone beyond being a bloody toddler screaming embarrassingly obvious false assertions at the adults in the room.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 5:52am
Re: Re: Re: Other Side
"Not if they colluded. They picked the fruit of the poisoned tree."
Koby, Koby, Koby...đ
I mean, we've known for a while now that you have the legal acumen of a concussed hamster, but now you've gone as far as conflating the amendments.
The problem with this ruling is that it grants to a private entity freedom to sanction the free press even when the material to be published isn't defamatory.
That's like redefining, in a court of law, perjury to mean "Anything the witness is going to say henceforth". And with much the same sort of consequences.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 5:24am
Re: Re: Re:
"I live in a villages with no shops, between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which while rural is hardly out in the wilds."
I live in Sweden which consists of, mainly, a whole lot of forest with small communities dotted around the communications lines between the cities. And the northern part skirting the polar circle.
And sure, people do stock supplies just in case - but the idea to plan for an extended power failure just indicates that what is failing isn't the power. But the governance of the nation.
"Cynebald"'s assertion of the one failing to plan for extended blackouts being a moron is just victim blaming. If your power is out due to weather then there is a guilty party to blame over it - and it sure isn't the victim of that power failure.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 5:15am
Re:
"...and now we've got another whole article on why that idea is dumb."
And before that I at least know of two clear-cut cases of copyright law being shoehorned by authoritarians and governments; Turkey's Erdogan and some german intel agency blocking a public information request by trying to claim their secret hush-hush registry was copyrighted.
I've been saying it for years - Copyright is information control. Nothing but a censorship law possible to use by private individuals and governments alike. And as such needs to go away because that kind of control over information held by other people just isn't sanctionable no matter the reason.
In my book there are a few reasons as to why copyright of any kind is utterly unacceptable and the OP exemplifies the top one.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 4:43am
Re: Re:
"Interesting, these â intersectionsâ between globalist billionaires agendas and local cultures, isnât it ."
Nope. Just tiresome old "Got dam, more of the same?"
"Covid-19 v Bill Gates, et al putting patents on social welfare?"
It just is neither interesting nor odd that people in a position of power muck around in any venue they see opportunity. Gates, for instance, pays to charity humongous amounts of money....amounting to, what, half of what he should have paid in taxes if he'd paid the same proportion the middle class american has to? A third? A tenth? Same as every other billionaire he needs to keep a certain shell game going to keep that loophole legal.
And his religious belief in IP Ăźber alles isn't exactly coming from out of nowhere, given that he built his fortune using it. His fervent advocacy of patenting the covid vaccine is right up his alley in that regard.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 3:18am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Puritans are an interesting question. Who financed them? And why?"
None more so than any migration of persecuted sects or ethnicities have been "funded" in order to get the hell out of Dodge. The puritan origin in the UK has been fairly well documented - and suffice to say that if your religious precepts are the legal equivalent of High Treason in the nation you currently reside in then a ticket to the mayflower is something for which you'll happily hock your house, horse and plough.
In the example with the Mayflower the Plymouth Company was willing to bankroll the expedition - in return for a King's ransom of furs, timber, fish and other raw materials to be returned to England. But there is ample reason to assume the company was encouraged by the Crown to strike that deal just to see the back of what amounted to a large bunch of hardcore and rather unpleasant fanatical asshats.
"Then, that time was the issue of covert v overt colonialism. Corporations as â stand insâ for conquests of various kinds."
Not a good analogy. In the times of the East India Company there really was just that one type of colonialism. Mercantilism occasionally included as an optional extra with the bundle of redcoats.
"So, this â better thanâ notion is quaint, because industry, and capital merely amplify such messages for the people in their era."
It really isn't simply "quaint" when it is the driving impetus everything else just serves to leverage or, as you say, amplify.
â"I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.â
Lyndon B. Johnson, explaining racism.
"Todays Nazi is yesterdays King David."
Just...no. We do have accurate historical records regarding the Nazis. About King David we have what amounts to myth and hearsay. Strictly speaking we have no fscking clue what ideology, if any, he followed. We just know that in the 15th century clergymen heavily vested in politics cobbled together what would come to pass as That Book from whatever they felt looked nice - sourced from every scrap of graffiti or parchment to be found around the galilee.
"Tomorrows bin Laden is a competitor to todays Alana â the founder of the incel movemen5,â and her IC spawn."
Seriously?đ¤¨
No. Just no again. The son of a saudi millionaire who caught religion, got trained by the CIA to fight a guerilla war to toss the USSR out of Afghanistan, and then went on to continue that fight by other means to get the US out of Saudi Arabia...isn't comparable to any keyboard warrior.
Unless "suicidal fanatics using passenger planes as munition" is, in your head, equivalent to a few angry words tossed online.
"Jacobins, lolâŚthe precursors to the Frankfurters."
Much the same way the nazis were a precursor to Mahatma Gandhi, you mean? Because assuming you mean the Frankfurt National Assembly it has very few similarities to the Jacobin movement - which was an ideology in itself which, much like nazism, included all the vestiges of being a pseudo-religious doctrine demanding the subordination of every thought, idea and policy carried out under it's wings.
"And neo-liberal pseudo-âphilosophyâ."
Pfft. All right, first of all, there's nothing "neo" about the ideologies pursied by either the Frankfurt National Assembly or the Jacobins. And I could call both those ideologies many names but "liberal" is contextually a comparison; Compared to "The King Governs, peasant! Off with your head!" a statement that "Citizen Robespierre and his committee will carefully judge you!" might be considered liberal.
But that comparison does not hold up well when old Robespierre, after careful consideration, sending someone to see the National Razor is placed against modern western national policy.
No, the explanation for US evangelism is vague not because it's complex but because everything involved is simple. Thousands of grifters over decades have, at some point or other, found great opportunity in catering to the lowest common denominator - the low hanging fruit - of the spiteful, envious, insecure and jealous.
The same way the GOP today dogwhistling frantically to the neo-nazis and the KKK isn't because of some mysterious south american cabal of survivor nazis laid the groundwork but simply because it's so damn easy to convince humans of the merits of a fairy tale where they personally are the unsung protagonists striving in an epic battle against the forces of evil which invariably ends with them eventually getting raptured and living in peace and prosperity for eternity - while looking down at every person they ever perceived wronged them burning in hell forever.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 2:06am
Re: Re: Re: Shades of Gulag Archipelago
"I find myself so very frequently frustrated with the European perspective on these things because there's so very rarely any acknowledgement of this struggle, so very rarely any expressed sympathy for the victims, and so very often a sense of "you should just be us" - as if it were so easy."
Perhaps, from the european perspective, if I put it like this; You've got a childhood friend in dire straits. He's in a bad shape because his legs don't work. His legs don't work because he's spent some fifty-odd years worth of treating them with leeches and walking on hot coals rather than listen to the increasingly desperate attempts of everyone trying to recommend him an actual physician. At some point you just keep telling him to see a doctor because there's nothing else left to say and you've, by now, become convinced at this point it may be too late to keep him out of the wheelchair.
What you all are going through now? That's something we started telling you was coming about 30-40 years ago. And americans never wanted to hear it. Too much socialism. Too much bleeding-heart liberalism. Too wasteful. Too expensive. Too much power to government. Couldn't be done. The citizenry wouldn't wear it. No one would accept paying that much for other people. Too harmful to industry. Would wreck the economy.
And after decades of hearing "No We Can't" - do any of the things europeans have lived with fully functional examples off for half a century...I can't speak for everyone but I, for one, am damn tired of hearing one US huckster after the other explain how what everyone else does in the world is somehow beyond americans these days.
You people used to be the country of Can Do! Now you're the country of No We Can't!
And it's solely due to spending every year since the 80's doubling down on what you couldn't do to fix god damn anything - while across the pond we were sitting on working solutions for just about all of those problems.
Now things fall apart; The centre can not hold. A state of things the generation before you either encouraged or sat on their hands and let happen. Because I can tell you that up until Reagan you guys were basically in lockstep with us on so very many issues.
Sure we can blame the GOP. But with a historical ~50-60% voter turnout in every election and an utter apathy among progressives to actually muster enough political involvement to give a shit going on for decades some blame must surely be laid among those generations who didn't care enough to put a stop to the decline.
Yeah, "being us"? it's easy. Or rather it was easy for most of your history, and particularly so up until at least the 70's. At which point the GOP went ahead with the bit in their teeth and those who would oppose them were navel-gazing and thinking "Won't impact me so who cares."
So pardon me for saying this, but the fact that contemporary US looks the way it does is because a minority wanted it that way and the majority didn't care enough to put a stop to that.
And every time for the same reason - you didn't trust the doctor or the success example, because magical thinking and political apathy is the US way.
Corrupt US Law Enforcement. Lack of universal Health Care. Lacking basic education for all, with functional illiteracy still a thing. The cult of ignorance. None of these came from a vacuum. They come from a society broken in fundamental ways, which refuses to address and fix any of the problems or underlying causes, and has done so since the 60's and 70's.
So yeah, I don't know what to tell you. At this point european nations have stood as working examples for most of the issues facing you today but you chose not to build any of the fixes because it wouldn't fit your way of doing things. As a result of which the current situation is the consequence of deliberate choice made by the last three generations of americans.
Our old childhood friend is in a bad way today. His legs are shot worse than ever. One eye has gone so nearsighted he can't see beyond his nose. He's got split personality and one of his personas isn't nice at all. He's been hooked on every quackery under the sun, side effects of which made him impulsive, forgetful and bipolar. Every "episode" he has breaks more of his stuff and he hasn't had the energy to clean or maintain his home for so many years the roof is caving in, there's a tarped-over hole in a wall and his garden burned to the ground last summer. The one thing of his which still works is his shotgun and his AR-15 which he tends religiously and occasionally fires blindly out the remaining window.
It's, frankly, horrible to watch. And most horrible of all is that none of what he suffers was done to him by outside forces. He's done it all to himself while ignoring every urge to get the help which was available.
At this point...what would you suggest we tell him?
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 1:22am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A bit optimistic.
"Like Antivaxxism, Ivermectin's nothing but grift all the way down."
The True American Way - giving the witch doctor the moolah you'd need to feed your children because some facebook rando told you that was somehow better than relying on people with decades worth of knowing what they're doing...
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 12:43am
Re: Re:
"A government who twists its own diapers at the mention of Winnie the Pooh or Peppa the Pig has no place to claim that it "controls dysfunction"."
The problem is that if you can make thin-skinned authoritarianism work then the guy on the top will want to consider that a "success" - despite the fact that, as can be seen in Chinese history, it sets up a recurring pendulum of ages where the decay sets in as soon as prosperity has been achieved and the country has to metaphorically rise from the ashes every century or so.
Current China is in the ascendant phase. A century or two from now it will once again be in a "century of humiliation", another Sui, Yuan or Qing dynasty, etc. And rise again, learning nothing.
Sure, the west doesn't have successful examples either, but at least those cycles are no longer predicated on the idea that the emperor or politburo possesses divine and untouchable rule.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 28 Dec 2021 @ 12:25am
Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
"You do not get such blatant and open bigotry like that unless those involved feel very safe doing so, so I've no doubt that this is a department-wide issue..."
Concur. Anyone who's ever worked in a corporation with an office culture knows damn well how it seeps into you. There are do's and dont's which stick with you. Those who break with that - hitting on their colleagues, making implications of bigotry, disregarding operational procedures - aren't long for the job and usually quit on their own before they can get fired simply because they don't fit in.
If a cop feels comfortable texting racist shit to their colleagues then that's a guarantee the department as a whole is so fundamentally OK with casual racism it's an intrinsic part of the culture.
Aside from the immediate concerns - like black people shot for shitz'n'giggles by racist cops - this is also the foundation from which systemic racism emerges. Procedures and policies built to cater to the governing class. White middle and upper class in the US and ethnic Han in China, for instance. Because those cops will go on up the career ladder and end up police chiefs, sheriffs, union representatives and politicians. And then give their like-minded peers in their KKK or Proud Boy chapter a hand up.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 27 Dec 2021 @ 8:21am
Re: Re: Re: Dominion
"Unfortunately, the Republicans are disenfranchising voters using the Democrat play book from the 1800's (when their polarities seem to be reversed?)"
That's because the polarities are reversed.
Brief history; Before 1930 or so the Democrats consisted mainly of racists, bigots, old southern money, holdovers from the confederacy and the more inflammatory sects. The republicans in that time were pragmatic, focused on science over religion, and with a brief nod towards humanitarian principles.
But in 1933-1939 Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced his "New Deal"; massive programs of regulating banks, building infrastructure, job sector reform, social programs, the works...including adding affirmative action programs to get minorities - mainly black people - into government jobs and politics.
The racists and bigots, southern money and confederate holdovers took a great deal of offense over this and began leaving the democratic party. The republicans, meanwhile, were splitting over the New Deal as well, with progressive conservatives moving over to the democrats.
For the democrats this was a godsend - a lot of stale, corrupt, and unpleasant assholes just up and left on their own, leaving the democratic party revitalized.
But it didn't work out too well for the GOP. They'd lost most of the people with an idea and a thought to the future to the democrats and were left with nothing but arch-conservatism as a platform and base. Come the 1960's, enter Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater. A pair of racists with the former at least being smart enough never to use the N-word in public. And they came up with the "Southern Strategy". Pick up all the disaffected southerners who left the democrats. Start dogwhistling to the base of racists and bigots that the republican party is for them.
Over this period of time the democrats and the republicans more or less switched political sides completely. So whenever anyone thinks the current republican party looks like the democratic party of the 18th century that is because that's what it really is.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 27 Dec 2021 @ 8:05am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
It's a relatively new thing. Started when the GOP began pushing Goebbels old lĂźgenpresse chant of "Fake News" every time the media revealed something unflattering about them...
...but it didn't take long for liberals to start calling out Fox news with the same pejorative once that outlet decided to go full Trump.
The irony of the term is that in the US above all any form of genuine defamation is an open-shut tort.
Hence why you know a politician hollering "fake news" is lying and trying to win in public opinion what they couldn't win in court of law.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 27 Dec 2021 @ 7:31am
Re:
"As most people here would argue (and which I completely agree), the governments of Florida and Texas certainly aren't standing up for users. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the platforms are."
I'd be very concerned about the future of a company which didn't first and foremost represent itself.
But as That One Guy had it, the interests of a social media platform do align with keeping that platform user-friendly to as many possible customers as possible. And having to meet the lowest common denominator of the crowd does mean to have to cater to the general interests of said crowd.
The same can not be said about lawmakers who ultimately represent the interests of their base. Which in the case of the GOP consists of a minority so repugnant in policy the only reason they retain power is by extensive gerrymandering and disenfranchisement.
In this specific example it's pretty clear that the major social media at least represent the interests of everyone. The lawmakers in Texas and Florida, otoh, represent the minority which wants to feel free to shit on the floor in other people's houses.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 27 Dec 2021 @ 7:19am
Re: Facts?
"Did this person make contact and continue such contact, with known terrorists or their sympathisers? "
Most likely. As have you - and probably me as well - for that matter. Look up "six degrees of separation". Even at three degrees most people start finding stuff like murderers and school shooters. "Oh shit, that guy who just shot ten people went to middle school with my brother's best friend" - stuff like that.
Something which came up under the GWB administration was that the implementation of algorithms trying to determine three degrees of contact visavi actual threats were regularly producing utterly ridiculous results; A monastery of american nuns spent years on no-fly list because they were in contact with a humanitarian aid initiative in the ME - which had members whose relatives were part of hizbollah, hamas, al-quaeda, the taliban...or who had been in contact with representatives of such factions in order to access people in need.
People with the wrong last name got flagged as being "relatives" of wanted terrorists.
That shitshow just didn't end well. The US intelligence community amassed mountainous files on hundreds of thousands of "possible suspects" and ended up putting as many of them as it could under surveillance. A fishing expedition of monumental proportions.
But if you're asking whether the person was actually guilty we can answer in the almost guaranteed negative.
If he was they'd have charged him rather than spend seven bloody years dragging their heels and looking increasingly like bloody morons.
"Ah, yes. I forget you believe in nonsense âdog whistlesâ and things that are said are not what they mean. You find messages where there are none. "
Like that winged odal-shaped podium in that infamous CPAC with the golden Trump statue - from which the GOP talking heads were pounding out a message of blut und boden?
To anyone who's watched those old flicks of Hitler and his stooges making speeches what the GOP does isn't dog-whistling any longer - they've brought out the bullhorns.
"Fake news"? never used before in american politics - it being the strategy of choice of Goebbels whenever confronted with unflattering media. And pushed hard as a strategy in extreme right forums by holocaust deniers and adherents of that old global jewish conspiracy theory.
And Hawley raising his hand in salute to the jan 6 insurrectionists was what?
No, Lostin, there are no excuses for that crowd any longer. The GOP of today hits all of the 14 points by which you recognize dictionary-definition fascists. They've abandoned - completely - the principles of the party of Lincoln.
"How many times must I point out the Ukrainian murder of unarmed Rus people in south east Ukraine. "
You mean that part where armed conflicts are taking place between separatists and the kurainian army? Yeah, russian media is full of hyperbole on how evil the ukrainians are. Meanwhile western news seem rather empty about this ethnic cleansing you keep referring to. Now, I'm none too keen on Hillary but if she supported the Ukraine vs Putin's Russia then that's nothing more than usual US foreign policy - and the same deal which had the US supporting the lesser evil in any venue of foreign politics. Not laudable, but considering that most of the people accusing Hillary also went the distance cheering for GWB - who did far worse - that accusation rings hollow.
"Going to war with Russia over their protection of a population being systemically slaughtered? For one! "
That's not what's happening.
First of all there's no systematic slaughter. There is russian-backed terrorism with all the usual outcomes of a low-intensity conflict waged within urban areas. And Putin's interest in the Ukraine is far older than that, with Russia having strong-armed the place ever since the collapse of the USSR. In Russia's eyes Ukraine is just another russian satellite which needs to go back to the fold.
Secondly, if Russia launches a war of aggression then that's Russia's choice of war and the US must respond - or send a clear message that NATO is finally over. And if that message is sent the very next second China walks into Taiwan, assured the US will stand by in fear of war. On a bigger picture, the US caving in its obligations visavi Ukraine means the US exiting the world stage.
The usual way of dealing with this sort of situation is to simply park US troops in the threatened country and wait for the presumptive aggressor to shit or get off the pot.
"Btw, Trump ended a conflict and created tentative peace with Middle East nations. "
I'm assuming you're writing this while giggling like a maniac...because that's not anywhere near what's happened. What Trump did was selling out, to Russia, bits of the middle east the US has desperately tried to keep Russia out of. Syria and the Kurds, for instance. The kurds especially is perhaps the most repugnant thing Trump has done. People who've put boots on the ground for the US for twenty years, abandoned to the mercies of Erdogan.
"Because Biden stopped construction..."
I'm not really that impressed with Biden so far, but stopping that money hole is probably something you need to be grateful to him for. Of all the things government can waste money on, a wall which doesn't work is probably one of the less desirable options. The question ought to be "Why a wall in the first place?" - because with every easily traversed path already fenced off since 2006 it's utterly useless to build another speedbump in the areas which takes a determined person several days to cross already. As the chinese emperors found out, if the opposition is already willing to climb a mountain, climbing a wall on top of it is just trivial.
"You fail to comprehend the adjusted tariffs and the America first policy. Itâs not literal. Moving manufacturing out of Mexico itself is Mexico paying for it."
You mean the part where the current trend is US manufacturers all moving into Mexico, calling it the "new China"?
No, Lostin, I think before you start dropping alt-right talking points on this forum you need to verify first.
What you don't seem to comprehend is that tariffs, in the modern day and age, don't work. All Trump's tariffs to Mexico accomplished was nothing. Mexican imports simply ceased, and meanwhile the international took note that China slapping unreasonable tariffs on every US interest was well within the newly established precedent.
"Someone who doesnât need corporate money in party running. Someone who wouldnât be bought. "
So rather than the guy bought at least by an american corporation you voted for the guy who got his campaign war chest from Deutsche Bank courtesy of a bank guarantee from the russian state bank. You literally cast your vote on a guy 400 million dollars in the hole to Putin rather than someone bought by wall street?
Well, I guess Putin certainly got his moneys worth, Trump certainly was the best US president they ever had, looking at the amount of ways twenty years worth of trying to keep russia out of certain ME countries just evaporated.
"Because the biggest cost, to me, of having republicans new or old is tolerating Christianity in politics. "
Spoken just like a modern-day Martin NiemĂśller. Let's all just hope it doesn't end the same way.
"But I donât for a second trust the likes of the current president and his masters to not screw me over the very second â Simply because Iâm not one of them. "
Well, no. But here's the thing. The democrats will further their agendas...but they will also at least try to keep the country running.
But if the current GOP wins next election...that will be the very last time you people have an election.
Unlike when Germany went down that road the US isn't going to have anyone coming in to intercede. It'll just close up until, hopefully, at some point you guys have yourself another revolution.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 27 Dec 2021 @ 3:42am
Re:
"...and the voters won't replace the politicians who fail to act."
Or worse, are cheering them on.
Muffled female voice from large pile of blankets; "Cleetus, Ah'm freezin mah knockers off! An liddle Clessie's baby formula is frozen solid!"
Muffled male voice from other big pile of blankets with a MAGA hat perched on top; "It's cold aw'right, but lookit the bright side - dem liberals are gonna be just as cold. So Worth It!"
On the post: Chinese Gov't Inflicts Its Selective Amnesia On Hong Kong, Forcing The Removal Of Tiananmen Square Massacre Monuments
Re: Re:
"You will note that you remain unapprehended, and have not been required to undergo mandatory reeducation for mentioning those."
After the church commission, yeah. Before that time, um, it really wasn't conducive to your health, financial status, or employment to ask those questions. Because no one wanted to end up on Hoover's or McCarthy's little list.
"There might be something about the US government that resists the authoritarian bent currently afflicting China."
Not so much, no. Do note that the US has steadfastly undermined and eroded any civic protections - through the patriot acts and onwards, as long as anyone within US intelligence wants you nailed, then nailed you will be.
The only real difference here is that China is obsessed with face which makes them trigger on stuff which in the US is seen as normal.
There's a reason presidents had to sign executive orders forbidding certain intelligence agencies to operate against american citizens. Abu Ghraib and gitmo aren't aberrations.
No, what is truly dangerous about China is that in many respects the country as a whole works better than the US does. To 90% of the PRC citizenry life is pretty good and full of opportunity - as long as they remember to kowtow to Beijing in preferably public displays of gratitude. To a disturbingly large amount of americans, otoh, life is a never-ending rat race.
"Perhaps part of it might be that the government of the US is a result of uniting fractious individual states in a compromise..."
A pretty dated observation. Contemporary US seems to have "irreconcilable differences" as the background theme. With about a third of the citizenry currently willing to suffer from bad policies as long as said policies bring the pain to the other two thirds.
No, if you want to nag in China's authoritarianism you need moral high ground and preferably a working example of how things are actually better on your side - the way you could clearly show when the conflict was between the "free west" and the Soviet Union. Neither of those really applies in this context anymore.
And after Trump you really can't point at the Imperial Pooh Bear and claim higher ground.
On the post: Chinese Gov't Inflicts Its Selective Amnesia On Hong Kong, Forcing The Removal Of Tiananmen Square Massacre Monuments
Re:
"...while our desire to preach sense to China has been subverted into a troll campaign to push for "independence movements" as fringe as the Republic of Texas."
Last I checked the polls some 60%+ of republicans and 40%+ of democrats were in favor of secession. That...is no longer a "fringe". The only reason states aren't drawing up divorce papers is because those in favor of secession are distributed more or less evenly across the country - even the reddest of states is at least 45% liberal, making it damn hard to make the case to just up and leave the union.
"Censorship always has a terrible price, but that price will be paid even when you don't think about it."
China has been paying that price since Qin Shi Huang though. Their millennia old system of imperial bureaucratic dictatorship has been geared around paying that price. They found how to make autocracy work, centering every executive decision around academic elites in civil service.
Censorship only causes great harm when a mode of government is built around humanitarian values such as freedom, democracy, and civil rights. In the west we believe in those values and try our best to make our governments at least attempt to operate by them.
China meanwhile values stability over everything else and takes the pragmatic tack that as long as a significant majority of the population is happy and prosperous the minority is irrelevant. Life is Good in China...if you're Han, that is.
And to keep that majority from becoming upset on behalf of the minority it's just convenient to preserve the national face by memory-holing any embarrassment.
On the post: Confused Judge Grants Project Veritas' Prior Restraint Against The NY Times
Re: Re: AMAZING that you elide Out of the Basement
He's obviously butthurt over it. I assume that's why he deigned to pitch in and try to defend his title of Dumbest Asshat Ever To Disgrace A Forum With His Presence.
Especially given that what he shat on the poor defenseless text box this time around was a claim that Techdirt supported a raid they'd previously spent an - easily found - article lambasting in the strongest possible terms.
But that's just poor old Baghdad Bob for you. Over ten years wasted on trying to troll people and he still hasn't gone beyond being a bloody toddler screaming embarrassingly obvious false assertions at the adults in the room.
On the post: Confused Judge Grants Project Veritas' Prior Restraint Against The NY Times
Re: Re: Re: Other Side
"Not if they colluded. They picked the fruit of the poisoned tree."
Koby, Koby, Koby...đ
I mean, we've known for a while now that you have the legal acumen of a concussed hamster, but now you've gone as far as conflating the amendments.
The problem with this ruling is that it grants to a private entity freedom to sanction the free press even when the material to be published isn't defamatory.
That's like redefining, in a court of law, perjury to mean "Anything the witness is going to say henceforth". And with much the same sort of consequences.
On the post: Texas Regulators Learned Nothing From February's Carnage, Prepare To Repeat The Cycle
Re: Re: Re:
"I live in a villages with no shops, between Edinburgh and Glasgow, which while rural is hardly out in the wilds."
I live in Sweden which consists of, mainly, a whole lot of forest with small communities dotted around the communications lines between the cities. And the northern part skirting the polar circle.
And sure, people do stock supplies just in case - but the idea to plan for an extended power failure just indicates that what is failing isn't the power. But the governance of the nation.
"Cynebald"'s assertion of the one failing to plan for extended blackouts being a moron is just victim blaming. If your power is out due to weather then there is a guilty party to blame over it - and it sure isn't the victim of that power failure.
On the post: Tanzania's Abuse Of US Copyright Law To Silence Critics On Twitter Should Be A Warning For Regulators Looking To Mess With Content Moderation
Re:
"...and now we've got another whole article on why that idea is dumb."
And before that I at least know of two clear-cut cases of copyright law being shoehorned by authoritarians and governments; Turkey's Erdogan and some german intel agency blocking a public information request by trying to claim their secret hush-hush registry was copyrighted.
I've been saying it for years - Copyright is information control. Nothing but a censorship law possible to use by private individuals and governments alike. And as such needs to go away because that kind of control over information held by other people just isn't sanctionable no matter the reason.
In my book there are a few reasons as to why copyright of any kind is utterly unacceptable and the OP exemplifies the top one.
On the post: State Department Report Repeats Talking Points From Group Who Wants To Ban All Porn
Re: Re:
"Interesting, these â intersectionsâ between globalist billionaires agendas and local cultures, isnât it ."
Nope. Just tiresome old "Got dam, more of the same?"
"Covid-19 v Bill Gates, et al putting patents on social welfare?"
It just is neither interesting nor odd that people in a position of power muck around in any venue they see opportunity. Gates, for instance, pays to charity humongous amounts of money....amounting to, what, half of what he should have paid in taxes if he'd paid the same proportion the middle class american has to? A third? A tenth? Same as every other billionaire he needs to keep a certain shell game going to keep that loophole legal.
And his religious belief in IP Ăźber alles isn't exactly coming from out of nowhere, given that he built his fortune using it. His fervent advocacy of patenting the covid vaccine is right up his alley in that regard.
On the post: State Department Report Repeats Talking Points From Group Who Wants To Ban All Porn
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Puritans are an interesting question. Who financed them? And why?"
None more so than any migration of persecuted sects or ethnicities have been "funded" in order to get the hell out of Dodge. The puritan origin in the UK has been fairly well documented - and suffice to say that if your religious precepts are the legal equivalent of High Treason in the nation you currently reside in then a ticket to the mayflower is something for which you'll happily hock your house, horse and plough.
In the example with the Mayflower the Plymouth Company was willing to bankroll the expedition - in return for a King's ransom of furs, timber, fish and other raw materials to be returned to England. But there is ample reason to assume the company was encouraged by the Crown to strike that deal just to see the back of what amounted to a large bunch of hardcore and rather unpleasant fanatical asshats.
"Then, that time was the issue of covert v overt colonialism. Corporations as â stand insâ for conquests of various kinds."
Not a good analogy. In the times of the East India Company there really was just that one type of colonialism. Mercantilism occasionally included as an optional extra with the bundle of redcoats.
"So, this â better thanâ notion is quaint, because industry, and capital merely amplify such messages for the people in their era."
It really isn't simply "quaint" when it is the driving impetus everything else just serves to leverage or, as you say, amplify.
"Todays Nazi is yesterdays King David."
Just...no. We do have accurate historical records regarding the Nazis. About King David we have what amounts to myth and hearsay. Strictly speaking we have no fscking clue what ideology, if any, he followed. We just know that in the 15th century clergymen heavily vested in politics cobbled together what would come to pass as That Book from whatever they felt looked nice - sourced from every scrap of graffiti or parchment to be found around the galilee.
"Tomorrows bin Laden is a competitor to todays Alana â the founder of the incel movemen5,â and her IC spawn."
Seriously?đ¤¨
No. Just no again. The son of a saudi millionaire who caught religion, got trained by the CIA to fight a guerilla war to toss the USSR out of Afghanistan, and then went on to continue that fight by other means to get the US out of Saudi Arabia...isn't comparable to any keyboard warrior.
Unless "suicidal fanatics using passenger planes as munition" is, in your head, equivalent to a few angry words tossed online.
"Jacobins, lolâŚthe precursors to the Frankfurters."
Much the same way the nazis were a precursor to Mahatma Gandhi, you mean? Because assuming you mean the Frankfurt National Assembly it has very few similarities to the Jacobin movement - which was an ideology in itself which, much like nazism, included all the vestiges of being a pseudo-religious doctrine demanding the subordination of every thought, idea and policy carried out under it's wings.
"And neo-liberal pseudo-âphilosophyâ."
Pfft. All right, first of all, there's nothing "neo" about the ideologies pursied by either the Frankfurt National Assembly or the Jacobins. And I could call both those ideologies many names but "liberal" is contextually a comparison; Compared to "The King Governs, peasant! Off with your head!" a statement that "Citizen Robespierre and his committee will carefully judge you!" might be considered liberal.
But that comparison does not hold up well when old Robespierre, after careful consideration, sending someone to see the National Razor is placed against modern western national policy.
No, the explanation for US evangelism is vague not because it's complex but because everything involved is simple. Thousands of grifters over decades have, at some point or other, found great opportunity in catering to the lowest common denominator - the low hanging fruit - of the spiteful, envious, insecure and jealous.
The same way the GOP today dogwhistling frantically to the neo-nazis and the KKK isn't because of some mysterious south american cabal of survivor nazis laid the groundwork but simply because it's so damn easy to convince humans of the merits of a fairy tale where they personally are the unsung protagonists striving in an epic battle against the forces of evil which invariably ends with them eventually getting raptured and living in peace and prosperity for eternity - while looking down at every person they ever perceived wronged them burning in hell forever.
On the post: DEA Gives Former Marine Back $86,900 Cops Took From Him During A Nevada Traffic Stop Caught On Body Cam
Re: Re: Re: Shades of Gulag Archipelago
"I find myself so very frequently frustrated with the European perspective on these things because there's so very rarely any acknowledgement of this struggle, so very rarely any expressed sympathy for the victims, and so very often a sense of "you should just be us" - as if it were so easy."
Perhaps, from the european perspective, if I put it like this; You've got a childhood friend in dire straits. He's in a bad shape because his legs don't work. His legs don't work because he's spent some fifty-odd years worth of treating them with leeches and walking on hot coals rather than listen to the increasingly desperate attempts of everyone trying to recommend him an actual physician. At some point you just keep telling him to see a doctor because there's nothing else left to say and you've, by now, become convinced at this point it may be too late to keep him out of the wheelchair.
What you all are going through now? That's something we started telling you was coming about 30-40 years ago. And americans never wanted to hear it. Too much socialism. Too much bleeding-heart liberalism. Too wasteful. Too expensive. Too much power to government. Couldn't be done. The citizenry wouldn't wear it. No one would accept paying that much for other people. Too harmful to industry. Would wreck the economy.
And after decades of hearing "No We Can't" - do any of the things europeans have lived with fully functional examples off for half a century...I can't speak for everyone but I, for one, am damn tired of hearing one US huckster after the other explain how what everyone else does in the world is somehow beyond americans these days.
You people used to be the country of Can Do! Now you're the country of No We Can't!
And it's solely due to spending every year since the 80's doubling down on what you couldn't do to fix god damn anything - while across the pond we were sitting on working solutions for just about all of those problems.
Now things fall apart; The centre can not hold. A state of things the generation before you either encouraged or sat on their hands and let happen. Because I can tell you that up until Reagan you guys were basically in lockstep with us on so very many issues.
Sure we can blame the GOP. But with a historical ~50-60% voter turnout in every election and an utter apathy among progressives to actually muster enough political involvement to give a shit going on for decades some blame must surely be laid among those generations who didn't care enough to put a stop to the decline.
Yeah, "being us"? it's easy. Or rather it was easy for most of your history, and particularly so up until at least the 70's. At which point the GOP went ahead with the bit in their teeth and those who would oppose them were navel-gazing and thinking "Won't impact me so who cares."
So pardon me for saying this, but the fact that contemporary US looks the way it does is because a minority wanted it that way and the majority didn't care enough to put a stop to that.
And every time for the same reason - you didn't trust the doctor or the success example, because magical thinking and political apathy is the US way.
Corrupt US Law Enforcement. Lack of universal Health Care. Lacking basic education for all, with functional illiteracy still a thing. The cult of ignorance. None of these came from a vacuum. They come from a society broken in fundamental ways, which refuses to address and fix any of the problems or underlying causes, and has done so since the 60's and 70's.
So yeah, I don't know what to tell you. At this point european nations have stood as working examples for most of the issues facing you today but you chose not to build any of the fixes because it wouldn't fit your way of doing things. As a result of which the current situation is the consequence of deliberate choice made by the last three generations of americans.
Our old childhood friend is in a bad way today. His legs are shot worse than ever. One eye has gone so nearsighted he can't see beyond his nose. He's got split personality and one of his personas isn't nice at all. He's been hooked on every quackery under the sun, side effects of which made him impulsive, forgetful and bipolar. Every "episode" he has breaks more of his stuff and he hasn't had the energy to clean or maintain his home for so many years the roof is caving in, there's a tarped-over hole in a wall and his garden burned to the ground last summer. The one thing of his which still works is his shotgun and his AR-15 which he tends religiously and occasionally fires blindly out the remaining window.
It's, frankly, horrible to watch. And most horrible of all is that none of what he suffers was done to him by outside forces. He's done it all to himself while ignoring every urge to get the help which was available.
At this point...what would you suggest we tell him?
On the post: 'Anti-5G' Jewelry Found To Be... Radioactive And Dangerous
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A bit optimistic.
"Like Antivaxxism, Ivermectin's nothing but grift all the way down."
The True American Way - giving the witch doctor the moolah you'd need to feed your children because some facebook rando told you that was somehow better than relying on people with decades worth of knowing what they're doing...
On the post: Details Leak On Apple's Secret $275 Billion Deal With The Chinese Government
Re: Re:
"A government who twists its own diapers at the mention of Winnie the Pooh or Peppa the Pig has no place to claim that it "controls dysfunction"."
The problem is that if you can make thin-skinned authoritarianism work then the guy on the top will want to consider that a "success" - despite the fact that, as can be seen in Chinese history, it sets up a recurring pendulum of ages where the decay sets in as soon as prosperity has been achieved and the country has to metaphorically rise from the ashes every century or so.
Current China is in the ascendant phase. A century or two from now it will once again be in a "century of humiliation", another Sui, Yuan or Qing dynasty, etc. And rise again, learning nothing.
Sure, the west doesn't have successful examples either, but at least those cycles are no longer predicated on the idea that the emperor or politburo possesses divine and untouchable rule.
On the post: California Police Officers' Bigoted Text Messages Have Just Undone Dozens Of Felony Cases
Re: 'Here's some scapegoats now please don't look closer'
"You do not get such blatant and open bigotry like that unless those involved feel very safe doing so, so I've no doubt that this is a department-wide issue..."
Concur. Anyone who's ever worked in a corporation with an office culture knows damn well how it seeps into you. There are do's and dont's which stick with you. Those who break with that - hitting on their colleagues, making implications of bigotry, disregarding operational procedures - aren't long for the job and usually quit on their own before they can get fired simply because they don't fit in.
If a cop feels comfortable texting racist shit to their colleagues then that's a guarantee the department as a whole is so fundamentally OK with casual racism it's an intrinsic part of the culture.
Aside from the immediate concerns - like black people shot for shitz'n'giggles by racist cops - this is also the foundation from which systemic racism emerges. Procedures and policies built to cater to the governing class. White middle and upper class in the US and ethnic Han in China, for instance. Because those cops will go on up the career ladder and end up police chiefs, sheriffs, union representatives and politicians. And then give their like-minded peers in their KKK or Proud Boy chapter a hand up.
On the post: Delaware Court Says Dominion Voting Systems Can Continue Suing Fox News For $1.6 Billion In Defamation
Re: Re: Re: Dominion
"Unfortunately, the Republicans are disenfranchising voters using the Democrat play book from the 1800's (when their polarities seem to be reversed?)"
That's because the polarities are reversed.
Brief history; Before 1930 or so the Democrats consisted mainly of racists, bigots, old southern money, holdovers from the confederacy and the more inflammatory sects. The republicans in that time were pragmatic, focused on science over religion, and with a brief nod towards humanitarian principles.
But in 1933-1939 Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced his "New Deal"; massive programs of regulating banks, building infrastructure, job sector reform, social programs, the works...including adding affirmative action programs to get minorities - mainly black people - into government jobs and politics.
The racists and bigots, southern money and confederate holdovers took a great deal of offense over this and began leaving the democratic party. The republicans, meanwhile, were splitting over the New Deal as well, with progressive conservatives moving over to the democrats.
For the democrats this was a godsend - a lot of stale, corrupt, and unpleasant assholes just up and left on their own, leaving the democratic party revitalized.
But it didn't work out too well for the GOP. They'd lost most of the people with an idea and a thought to the future to the democrats and were left with nothing but arch-conservatism as a platform and base. Come the 1960's, enter Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater. A pair of racists with the former at least being smart enough never to use the N-word in public. And they came up with the "Southern Strategy". Pick up all the disaffected southerners who left the democrats. Start dogwhistling to the base of racists and bigots that the republican party is for them.
Over this period of time the democrats and the republicans more or less switched political sides completely. So whenever anyone thinks the current republican party looks like the democratic party of the 18th century that is because that's what it really is.
On the post: Delaware Court Says Dominion Voting Systems Can Continue Suing Fox News For $1.6 Billion In Defamation
Re: Re: Re: Re:
It's a relatively new thing. Started when the GOP began pushing Goebbels old lĂźgenpresse chant of "Fake News" every time the media revealed something unflattering about them...
...but it didn't take long for liberals to start calling out Fox news with the same pejorative once that outlet decided to go full Trump.
The irony of the term is that in the US above all any form of genuine defamation is an open-shut tort.
Hence why you know a politician hollering "fake news" is lying and trying to win in public opinion what they couldn't win in court of law.
On the post: No, The Arguments Against Florida's & Texas' Content Moderation Bills Would Not Block All Internet Regulations
Re:
"As most people here would argue (and which I completely agree), the governments of Florida and Texas certainly aren't standing up for users. But this doesn't necessarily mean that the platforms are."
I'd be very concerned about the future of a company which didn't first and foremost represent itself.
But as That One Guy had it, the interests of a social media platform do align with keeping that platform user-friendly to as many possible customers as possible. And having to meet the lowest common denominator of the crowd does mean to have to cater to the general interests of said crowd.
The same can not be said about lawmakers who ultimately represent the interests of their base. Which in the case of the GOP consists of a minority so repugnant in policy the only reason they retain power is by extensive gerrymandering and disenfranchisement.
In this specific example it's pretty clear that the major social media at least represent the interests of everyone. The lawmakers in Texas and Florida, otoh, represent the minority which wants to feel free to shit on the floor in other people's houses.
On the post: Tenth Circuit Appeals Court Says Fourth And Sixth Amendment Rights Are Meaningless When National Security Is On The Line
Re: Facts?
"Did this person make contact and continue such contact, with known terrorists or their sympathisers? "
Most likely. As have you - and probably me as well - for that matter. Look up "six degrees of separation". Even at three degrees most people start finding stuff like murderers and school shooters. "Oh shit, that guy who just shot ten people went to middle school with my brother's best friend" - stuff like that.
Something which came up under the GWB administration was that the implementation of algorithms trying to determine three degrees of contact visavi actual threats were regularly producing utterly ridiculous results; A monastery of american nuns spent years on no-fly list because they were in contact with a humanitarian aid initiative in the ME - which had members whose relatives were part of hizbollah, hamas, al-quaeda, the taliban...or who had been in contact with representatives of such factions in order to access people in need.
People with the wrong last name got flagged as being "relatives" of wanted terrorists.
That shitshow just didn't end well. The US intelligence community amassed mountainous files on hundreds of thousands of "possible suspects" and ended up putting as many of them as it could under surveillance. A fishing expedition of monumental proportions.
But if you're asking whether the person was actually guilty we can answer in the almost guaranteed negative.
If he was they'd have charged him rather than spend seven bloody years dragging their heels and looking increasingly like bloody morons.
On the post: Tenth Circuit Appeals Court Says Fourth And Sixth Amendment Rights Are Meaningless When National Security Is On The Line
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Constitution
"Ah, yes. I forget you believe in nonsense âdog whistlesâ and things that are said are not what they mean. You find messages where there are none. "
Like that winged odal-shaped podium in that infamous CPAC with the golden Trump statue - from which the GOP talking heads were pounding out a message of blut und boden?
To anyone who's watched those old flicks of Hitler and his stooges making speeches what the GOP does isn't dog-whistling any longer - they've brought out the bullhorns.
"Fake news"? never used before in american politics - it being the strategy of choice of Goebbels whenever confronted with unflattering media. And pushed hard as a strategy in extreme right forums by holocaust deniers and adherents of that old global jewish conspiracy theory.
And Hawley raising his hand in salute to the jan 6 insurrectionists was what?
No, Lostin, there are no excuses for that crowd any longer. The GOP of today hits all of the 14 points by which you recognize dictionary-definition fascists. They've abandoned - completely - the principles of the party of Lincoln.
"How many times must I point out the Ukrainian murder of unarmed Rus people in south east Ukraine. "
You mean that part where armed conflicts are taking place between separatists and the kurainian army? Yeah, russian media is full of hyperbole on how evil the ukrainians are. Meanwhile western news seem rather empty about this ethnic cleansing you keep referring to. Now, I'm none too keen on Hillary but if she supported the Ukraine vs Putin's Russia then that's nothing more than usual US foreign policy - and the same deal which had the US supporting the lesser evil in any venue of foreign politics. Not laudable, but considering that most of the people accusing Hillary also went the distance cheering for GWB - who did far worse - that accusation rings hollow.
"Going to war with Russia over their protection of a population being systemically slaughtered? For one! "
That's not what's happening.
First of all there's no systematic slaughter. There is russian-backed terrorism with all the usual outcomes of a low-intensity conflict waged within urban areas. And Putin's interest in the Ukraine is far older than that, with Russia having strong-armed the place ever since the collapse of the USSR. In Russia's eyes Ukraine is just another russian satellite which needs to go back to the fold.
Secondly, if Russia launches a war of aggression then that's Russia's choice of war and the US must respond - or send a clear message that NATO is finally over. And if that message is sent the very next second China walks into Taiwan, assured the US will stand by in fear of war. On a bigger picture, the US caving in its obligations visavi Ukraine means the US exiting the world stage.
The usual way of dealing with this sort of situation is to simply park US troops in the threatened country and wait for the presumptive aggressor to shit or get off the pot.
"Btw, Trump ended a conflict and created tentative peace with Middle East nations. "
I'm assuming you're writing this while giggling like a maniac...because that's not anywhere near what's happened. What Trump did was selling out, to Russia, bits of the middle east the US has desperately tried to keep Russia out of. Syria and the Kurds, for instance. The kurds especially is perhaps the most repugnant thing Trump has done. People who've put boots on the ground for the US for twenty years, abandoned to the mercies of Erdogan.
"Because Biden stopped construction..."
I'm not really that impressed with Biden so far, but stopping that money hole is probably something you need to be grateful to him for. Of all the things government can waste money on, a wall which doesn't work is probably one of the less desirable options. The question ought to be "Why a wall in the first place?" - because with every easily traversed path already fenced off since 2006 it's utterly useless to build another speedbump in the areas which takes a determined person several days to cross already. As the chinese emperors found out, if the opposition is already willing to climb a mountain, climbing a wall on top of it is just trivial.
"You fail to comprehend the adjusted tariffs and the America first policy. Itâs not literal. Moving manufacturing out of Mexico itself is Mexico paying for it."
You mean the part where the current trend is US manufacturers all moving into Mexico, calling it the "new China"?
No, Lostin, I think before you start dropping alt-right talking points on this forum you need to verify first.
What you don't seem to comprehend is that tariffs, in the modern day and age, don't work. All Trump's tariffs to Mexico accomplished was nothing. Mexican imports simply ceased, and meanwhile the international took note that China slapping unreasonable tariffs on every US interest was well within the newly established precedent.
"Someone who doesnât need corporate money in party running. Someone who wouldnât be bought. "
So rather than the guy bought at least by an american corporation you voted for the guy who got his campaign war chest from Deutsche Bank courtesy of a bank guarantee from the russian state bank. You literally cast your vote on a guy 400 million dollars in the hole to Putin rather than someone bought by wall street?
Well, I guess Putin certainly got his moneys worth, Trump certainly was the best US president they ever had, looking at the amount of ways twenty years worth of trying to keep russia out of certain ME countries just evaporated.
"Because the biggest cost, to me, of having republicans new or old is tolerating Christianity in politics. "
Spoken just like a modern-day Martin NiemĂśller. Let's all just hope it doesn't end the same way.
"But I donât for a second trust the likes of the current president and his masters to not screw me over the very second â Simply because Iâm not one of them. "
Well, no. But here's the thing. The democrats will further their agendas...but they will also at least try to keep the country running.
But if the current GOP wins next election...that will be the very last time you people have an election.
Unlike when Germany went down that road the US isn't going to have anyone coming in to intercede. It'll just close up until, hopefully, at some point you guys have yourself another revolution.
On the post: Malibu Media Ordered To Pay Wrongfully Accused 'Pirate' Even More Money After Failing To Abide By Court's Decision
Re: Re: Her future is bright!
"I mean, she's already had plenty of experience whoring herself out for a different audience."
She's a producer, not the actress.
So what she has experience in is just hiring prostitutes and filming them.
Not, mind, that this isn't also an extensive career-builder in US politics.
On the post: Malibu Media Ordered To Pay Wrongfully Accused 'Pirate' Even More Money After Failing To Abide By Court's Decision
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"And we are talking about the kind of salt grain that you don't want to hit your car."
The grain of salt necessary to give anyone associated with Malibu benefit of doubt will cause another yucatan event if it falls from the sky.
On the post: Texas Regulators Learned Nothing From February's Carnage, Prepare To Repeat The Cycle
Re:
"...and the voters won't replace the politicians who fail to act."
Or worse, are cheering them on.
Muffled female voice from large pile of blankets; "Cleetus, Ah'm freezin mah knockers off! An liddle Clessie's baby formula is frozen solid!"
Muffled male voice from other big pile of blankets with a MAGA hat perched on top; "It's cold aw'right, but lookit the bright side - dem liberals are gonna be just as cold. So Worth It!"
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