General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 374

Oh, here? Fuck, no. When he spoke about the evils of capitalism, Fox News, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and Mitch McConnell immediately jumped in and said "the Pope should stick to religion and leave that to the economists." As if they hadn't been pushing free market Christianity.

And then, when he spoke on climate change, they said "the Pope should stick to religion and leave that to scientists." Which is obviously nonsense since they have completely ignored scientists.


But the right parties in Europe, who are not nearly as moronic as the GOP, might be swayed, which would turn up the heat on the US. If it weren't for current economic woes, I think South America would be well on its way towards being more similar to Costa Rica with regard for being green as well. The United States, India, and China will obviously be the holdouts that need to be brought to heel.

 

Oh for fucks sake

 

So many innocent mistakes...

 

The weakness of the main candidates has never been so apparent than in the play-by-play of Stein's candidacy.

 

Stein just isn't a very good candidate. Really, no candidates this cycle have been very good. Even those that are very intelligent, well-spoken, and experienced like Clinton and Bush have very seriously character flaws.

 

Reading the email FBI report and I can't believe this is the "scandal" people are most mad about.

 

Holy fucking shit. I've gotten pretty good at not letting awful stories like this get to me but this one really brought my mood down right now.

Fuck I'm just pissed off now.

 

It occurs to me that, by doing this, they are increasing the likelihood of violence. That is to say, the grievances of black folks, having been denied expression on multiple levels, will explode in their faces, as we've seen on multiple occasions in recent history. As MLK said:


"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard."

 

Finished the email documents. I see Politics Twitter is already misinterpreting a bunch of stuff in there that has basically already been out there for months. What a giant waste of time this has all been.

Only real things I learned: Congress is exempt from FOIA, which is pretty bullshit. A lot of reporters have never seen anyone refer to a document like "Page four, section two, paragraph d" before, and quite a few reporters are really bad at reading. Flat out misreporting things, which, is depressing.

Oh and if anything E2E encryption for communications and privacy is going to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, thing we need to deal with in the next few years.

 

Yep. And then they'll use said violence to justify their bullshit tactics all along, and their own police bullshit, with a: see, look what is happening! It's also abundantly clear now what charges of a "rigged election" really means. The actual disenfranchisement of citizens ability to vote is not a rigged election. A purportedly rich white bigot not winning an election, is.

 

I'm not sure I understand what this person is saying.

 

My reading is that looking at the race through the last race's lens, shows that Clinton is basically polling in line with Obama in '12 while Trump is polling way below with the "base." So, if that holds, either other Republicans "come home" and vote for Trump, which will give basically a similar outcome as 2012 (Clinton wins), but the down ticket races will stay with Republicans because they came out to vote — so even a 3rd party vote at the top of the ticket would probably still lead to Republican votes at the house. OR they don't come out and vote, which means Hillary probably wins big and the House may go Democratic as well because the lack of R voters hurts those down ticket candidates. At least that's how I read it.

 

I laughed pretty hard at that burn.

 

Introducing a New Series: Trump and the Truth - The New Yorker

In recent weeks, reporters and the fact-checking department at The New Yorker have put their efforts into a series of reported essays about Trump and lying. No one here is suggesting that Trump is the only politician ever to unleash a whopper. In fact, Hillary Clinton has had her bald-faced moments—moments that are too kindly described as “lawyerly.” But, in the scale and in the depth of his lying, Donald Trump is in another category; this effort, which begins with Eyal Press’s essay on Trump and immigration and will continue every week through the election, is by way of keeping track of a record that appears to know no bounds, and certainly no shame.

Trump and the Truth: Immigration and Crime - The New Yorker

On the few occasions when journalists have challenged him directly on his incendiary claims about immigration, Trump has resorted to bullying and denial. “If you look at the statistics of people coming . . . you look at the statistics on rape, on crime, on everything coming in illegally in this country, it’s mind-boggling!” Trump declared during an interview on CNN last year, citing as evidence a 2014 story published by Fusion that investigated the prevalence of sexual assaults against migrant women and girls en route to the United States. When Don Lemon, the CNN host, responded by pointing out that the Fusion story was about migrants who were raped, not hordes of criminals crossing the border, Trump snapped, “Well, somebody’s doing the raping, Don! . . . Who’s doing the raping?” A few days later, Trump was interviewed by the NBC News correspondent Katy Tur, who pointed out to him that the incarceration rate for both documented Mexican immigrants and undocumented immigrants over all was lower than that for native-born Americans. “It’s a wrong statistic,” Trump insisted. “Take a look at all the crime that’s being committed.” When Tur noted that the research “does not match what you’re saying,” Trump replied, “Don’t be naïve. You’re a very naïve person.” (One widely cited 2008 study from the Public Policy Institute of California found that the incarceration rate for foreign-born adults in the state prison system was two hundred and ninety-seven per hundred thousand in the population. For U.S.-born adults, the figure was eight hundred and thirteen per hundred thousand.)

When it comes to the threat that immigrants pose, Trump has championed perceptions over facts. Here, alas, he may be on to something. One of the more striking findings of Robert Sampson’s work has been that the “perceived disorder” of a neighborhood correlated positively with the prevalence of Latino residents, regardless of the actual level of crime. Trump certainly perceives disorder, and, with his false claims and invented statistics, he is contributing to the perception of it, especially among people who have few encounters with actual Hispanic immigrants. A recent study by a Gallup economist found that Trump’s supporters appear to be concentrated in segregated communities, far away from the Mexican border.

For more than a year, Trump has used the spotlight on him to smear and malign tens of millions of people who have made the communities they inhabit safer places for people of all backgrounds to raise children or pursue their dreams. They’ll be gone, he says—he’s building a wall. Americans deserve to be reminded that these ideas aren’t just frightening in their intolerance. If your concern is public safety, they’re backward.

 

Reporters have been stretched really thin in terms of political coverage since journalists are apparently too busy making listicles about what Beyoncé wore in 2008. I got stuck doing "kawaii cooking" for way too long myself. Aside from that, no one's hiring new/more journalists because this generation's workforce has either experience or education and the news industry only looks at candidates with both. The quality of news has been seriously degraded, and I don't think it's fair to blame the reporters when their lack of ability might just be attempted speed reading or even lack of sleep. Anyway, yeah, it's depressing.

 

As a former laid-off journalist, the industry as a whole has been dwindling for the last eight years.

 

This is one of the best Twitter roasts in a minute

 

It remains very strange to me how people were already famous when twitter started and simply didn't understand how the Internet worked yet. Also, repulsive?

 

Lena Dunham is such a polarizing figure, it's kind of hilarious.

 

I dunno, she seems pretty universally loathed.

 

Do people still like Girls?

 

Actually kind of cool

https://www.politicalcompass.org/certificate?pname=Tim&ec=-8.25&soc=-5.49