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CatBus

User Group
Members
Join date
18-Aug-2011
Last activity
9-Jul-2025
Posts
5,997

Post History

Post
#1170807
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

Mrebo said:

SilverWook said:

I don’t think anyone is that desperate to win a reality show. Morgan hates Star Wars, so nuts to him anyway. 😛

I thought reality shows are based on shameless desperation.

It would be nice if reality shows were actually based on reality.

Those are known as “documentaries.”

Marlin Perkins allegedly had a foot in both worlds.

Post
#1170450
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Warbler said:

He actually said “Competitive Elections Are Bad for America”?

He didn’t just say it, he wrote a book with that title. He’s pro-gerrymandering, thinks there should be more of it and courts should get out of the way and let the parties go crazy on the maps, drawing themselves into safe districts so that they always win regardless of how the overall vote goes. Because one-person-one-vote is socialism or something. So, he was at the top of Trump’s list to run the US freaking Census, given that he was the worst imaginable candidate for the job.

Post
#1170416
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Good News: Thomas “Competitive Elections Are Bad for America” Brunell is no longer being considered to head the 2020 Census.

The bad news: there are plenty of other nuts on that tree, the 2020 Census is already underfunded and behind schedule, and will feature questions that will skew data by discouraging minority participation.

There are precedents for this. Lebanon essentially stopped doing a census after 1932, as any new even vaguely credible census data would overturn the political order there. Allocations are still done today using that 1932 data.

Post
#1170131
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Warbler said:

Polish collaborated in the holocaust, but how many collaborated in the actual conquering of Poland itself?

A decent percentage of the population of Szczuczyn, for example. Jews were Polish citizens just as much as non-Jewish Poles. So Poles who killed their fellow Polish citizens not at the urging of the Nazis, but because they wanted to achieve the same political aims as the Nazis, very much assisted in the invasion. The Nazis could focus their military energy elsewhere because of the ample assistance provided by some Poles, although it should be noted that the small number of Nazis still present in the town during the massacre actually stepped in to put an end to it, before following the lead of the Poles and murdering the rest of the Jews a few months later.

If a group of Americans went around killing a few hundred thousand independence-minded Americans during the Revolutionary War, it would be safe to say they were helping the British. As with the Poles who killed Polish Jews when the Germans invaded.

Post
#1170046
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Well, the larger point about EU membership is all about how one of the EU’s central principles is the respect for and promotion of human rights. It’s that exact issue that was always cited as such a sticking point preventing Turkish membership (albeit with a healthy dose of racism and Islamophobia, but concern for human rights was also a legitimate grievance). If a country applying for membership was anything like Poland or Hungary today, they’d be rejected out of hand, no doubt about it at all. But now the EU is stuck with them, having accepted them during saner years, and the legitimacy of the EU’s commitment to human rights suffers for it. And both of these countries are rotting fast – this will not be the end of it. This is not an aberration or a one-off “every country passes a stupid law every now and then” moment – this Holocaust law is a continuation of a prolonged multi-year erosion of democracy and human rights in Poland, and shouldn’t have been unexpected at all.

Post
#1170042
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Meanwhile, the EU needs to figure out a way to simply expel Poland with or without Hungary’s support. Whether that’s dissolving the EU and immediately re-forming something identical to the EU but without Poland (and Hungary) or not, Poland is now the sort of country the EU would bend over backwards to avoid having as a member state, and it’s going to get worse as long as the EU fails to deal with it. Yes, the EU charter is designed to make handling this sort of thing difficult (especially when two members are bad actors at the same time). Time to start thinking difficult.

Just how responsible is Poland for the holocaust? I mean they were a conquered country during WWII and were under Nazi control, weren’t they?

For the portion that took place within their borders, the most apt word for their involvement is “complicit”. Virulent anti-Semitism was endemic in Poland without any prompting from the Germans, and apparently it still is.

Post
#1170038
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Meanwhile, the EU needs to figure out a way to simply expel Poland with or without Hungary’s support. Whether that’s dissolving the EU and immediately re-forming something identical to the EU but without Poland (and Hungary) or not, Poland is now the sort of country the EU would bend over backwards to avoid having as a member state, and it’s going to get worse as long as the EU fails to deal with it. Yes, the EU charter is designed to make handling this sort of thing difficult (especially when two members are bad actors at the same time). Time to start thinking difficult.

Post
#1169377
Topic
How did you originally find this site?
Time

dahmage said:

CatBus said:

dahmage said:

CatBus said:

dahmage said:

Then I felt like most of the posters here were jerks. Then I became one.

Indefinite antecedents are the best.

I want to agree with you. But I have to be honest, I don’t understand what you said. 😉. Me no love english class.

Example: “After my dog and my husband had a bad day together, he took it out on me by pooping in my shoes every morning.”

Thanks. My guess was correct. And I did intentionally make my post that way. 😄

Congratulations! You win a pair of shoes!

Post
#1169372
Topic
How did you originally find this site?
Time

dahmage said:

CatBus said:

dahmage said:

Then I felt like most of the posters here were jerks. Then I became one.

Indefinite antecedents are the best.

I want to agree with you. But I have to be honest, I don’t understand what you said. 😉. Me no love english class.

Example: “After my dog and my husband had a bad day together, he took it out on me by pooping in my shoes every morning.”

Post
#1169368
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

dahmage said:

CatBus said:

…aaaaand we’re shutting down again. Congress seems willing to give Trump whatever he wants whenever he wants it, and this week they’re giving him the shutdown he didn’t want last week. Will it be a yoojer shutdown to show who’s got the bigger shutdown button?

Seriously? Damnit.

Yep, the Senate is in recess until 12:01 AM, so assuming some sort of speed-of-light midnight laser vote, that’s a one minute shutdown at the minimum. I’m guessing it’ll drag quite a bit longer, as laser votes have not yet been invented, and even if they were, we would only use them for evil.

Post
#1169202
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Warbler said:

TV’s Frink said:

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/08/583993705/a-white-supremacist-may-be-the-only-republican-running-for-a-seat-in-congress

Arthur Jones is a racist, denies the Holocaust happened, and will likely be the only Republican on the ballot for a Chicago-area congressional seat in November.

The state GOP has denounced Jones and his candidacy, but says it had no way to stop him.

“We’ve tried to do everything we possibly could to prevent this person from getting on the ballot,” Illinois GOP Chairman Tim Schneider said.

please tell me this guy has no chance of winning.

Illinois was one of the states Russia successfully breached, so maybe there’s people who can tell you right now that he’ll win.

Post
#1168809
Topic
Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo
Time

Yep, both parties do it. The only reason Republicans get more flak for it is 1) gerrymandering to favor urban areas over rural areas is much harder, more obvious, and has less electoral payoff than vice-versa, and 2) they’ve run most state governments since the last round of redistricting. Also, after the Voting Rights Act was gutted, politicians have felt freer to gerrymander along racial lines than they had been when the VRA was more restrictive.

I wish I could say Dems wouldn’t, for example, gerrymander Virginia in the opposite direction if they had the chance, but they probably would. You can argue a bit about what constitutes a fair map, but the truth is a computer can whip out a map that’s pretty close to everyone’s idea of fair in a matter of minutes.