CatBus

I barely get it, but it’s still kinda weedy for me too. Basically, what’s the purpose of the state of the union? Does it inform anyone? No, they have other, better channels for that. It’s basically a pomp & circumstance event where people can have the honor of sitting still and having the President talk near them, which is kinda sorta monarchical I suppose. Yeah, okay, but there’s lots of useless traditions.

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

yhwx said:

darth_ender said:

yhwx said:

darth_ender said:

But no, it must be “either you’re racist or you’re fine with a racist.”

If you voted for him, then yes, racism wasn’t a big enough factor for you to stop voting for him. Thus, you’re fine with voting for a racist. Sorry.

That’s like saying, “If you voted for Hillary, than you share her views that half the country is deplorable.”

Sorry, you missed again. Firstly, that was something Clinton said once, while Trump’s racism has been confirmed by every second of his existence.

I am sorry, but Hillary has revealed her arrogance and contempt for conservatives more than once.

True, but nowhere the number of times that Trump has revealed his arrogance and contempt for anyone that disagrees with him(especially liberals and the media).

Remember, I am not actually defending Trump. I almost voted for Hillary. In the end, I voted for McMullin.

I don’t recall him being on the ballot? Was he on the ballot in your state or did you write him in? Just curious.

He made the ballot in a few states, including d_e’s if I remember correctly.

chyron8472 said:

CatBus said:

When Chris Christie is among the most reasonable, principled voices in the room…

I liked Kasich.

I’m from Ohio. He’s Christie without the charisma, which made him look good in that crowd 😉

Warbler said:

I didn’t know that his wife had a half-sister

Yes, Sally Hemings was originally the slave (and daughter via slave rape) of Jefferson’s father-in-law. She was then transferred to Jefferson.

The more you learn about Jefferson/Hemings, the more ick.

The Churchill bit makes a good trivia question. “Which WWII leader’s diary featured long diatribes about Jewish conspiracies?” Very few will guess Churchill, but there it is.

chyron8472 said:

It still baffles me how Trump managed to rise to the top among all the other better Republican candidates.

The field he bested in the primary was a mile wide and an inch deep. While he was clearly the worst of the bunch, the first time he had credible competition was in the general. Mainstream Republicans couldn’t rally around a Romney/McCain candidate simply because there wasn’t anyone present of that caliber. When Chris Christie is among the most reasonable, principled voices in the room…

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

yhwx said:

darth_ender said:

TV’s Frink said:

NeverarGreat said:

darth_ender said:

-Blacks gaining the right to eat in any restaurant they want

Oh, you mean those laws that were limited to the Southern states and were first introduced by the Democrat Party, and even when Republicans later began to support those laws, it was still isolated to the South.

It irks me when people conflate the Democratic party of the late 20th - 21st century and the pre-realignment Democratic party that originally represented rural America and the South. In short, the Democratic party was socially conservative until Roosevelt, and even then it took until the civil rights movement for conservative southern Democrats to abandon the party for the Republican ticket.

Not to mention conflating the old Republican party with the present-day Republican party. The Republican party ended slavery? Yay! That Republican party no longer exists.

Now all Republicans are racists! It’s so simple to put them all in a box instead of using my head a bit! Yay!

The vast majority of Republicans supported a racist for the head of their party. If you do that, you’re either a racist or someone who’s fine with racism. At some point, there’s no difference.

Either/or fallacy. Nice.

Well many Republicans did support Trump, and I think he is a scumbag.

I think he’s a scumbag too, and for that reason, I left the party. But is it really down to exactly those two items? No, the reality of the situation is that many Republicans do not like him, but they felt he at least was better aligned with their views than Hillary on issues that were important to them, abortion being a fine example.

And many people are ignorant and do not believe that Trump really says or does the things he says and does. They believe that the media is actually portraying the president in a negative light simply to make him look bad. We were given a terrible choice in our last presidential election cycle, and some people falsely saw him as the lesser of two evils. When you have an electoral system that only gives two parties a reasonable chance of winning, it makes it difficult to choose someone who really stands for the same things you do.

But no, it must be “either you’re racist or you’re fine with a racist.”

It doesn’t take much tweaking to turn that statement true, however. Either you support him because he’s a racist or you support him because you believe the issues he’ll advance are important enough that his racism is an acceptable risk. Winston Churchill was a raving anti-Semite, Susan B Anthony was racist as shit, Thomas Jefferson owned and raped his wife’s half-sister. But people supported their causes and history still treats these people kindly because we still do.

I think the problem people on the Left have with Trump is that we thought society moved on a little bit further on racial issues than we really had, so we thought these historical examples didn’t apply to the present. Turns out, not so much.

There are slight differences, though. Trump made racism the centerpiece of his political campaign, and had no other coherent policy positions other than racism, so supporting him to advance a policy position that wasn’t inherently racist was an act of faith, rather than weighing the relative values of concrete ideals.

Also, looking further back, we can largely thank Orrin Hatch for CHIP, and George H. W. Bush for the ADA.

To avoid muddying the waters too much, I’m only considering ideas from conservative Republicans. So Nixon and Clinton are both out, for not clearly being one or the other.

chyron8472 said:

darth_ender said:

conservatism has done a lot of good for the country.

I’m not attacking you for saying this, but from my perspective conservatism has many misguided ideas like using supply-side economics (which historically doesn’t work), or removing regulations that protect businesses from hurting or taking advantage of people (a recent example of which is Net Neutrality).

I am genuinely interested in having examples of how conservatism has helped this country, and as a Democrat I’d like to hear it from someone who isn’t full of Fox News talking points. (Also I’m not saying that liberalism is somehow superior.)

Obamacare. Its conservative pedigree is indisputable: created by the Heritage Foundation, championed by Newt Gingrich, implemented by Mitt Romney. Beyond its credentials, it’s based on solidly conservative ideas – i.e. letting the marketplace meet consumer needs with the absolute bare minimum government regulation required for that to happen.

I was certainly among those on the Left who rolled their ideas at the idea that Obamacare could do anything to slow the increase in healthcare costs, but it’s demonstrated it can do just that. It’s certainly not perfect, but it works surprisingly well given it was partially disemboweled by making Medicaid expansion optional, and now by removing Gingrich’s darling individual mandate (the very one that he claimed would save conservatism). Is it superior to a single payer system? Probably not, but that fact that it works reasonably well even when hamstrung, combined with the fact that it actually got passed into law, cannot be dismissed.

Is it the Last Great Conservative Idea? Possibly. But credit where credit is due: the Heritage Foundation got one right.

darth_ender said:

I have often used the terms interchangeably. I was not trying to tie American Democrats to any Turkish parties. However, I have edited the original post for accuracy.

That’s fine, thanks. That misnomer began as a communications edict from the Republican National Committee, I think in the nineties. It used to be you could identify Republican operatives or heavy partisans by the use of this shibboleth, but it’s been so wildly successful that’s not even necessarily true anymore. The level of discourse is forever lowered.

darth_ender said:

CatBus said:

darth_ender said:

CatBus said:

darth_ender said:

Democrat Party

You can do better.

I’d like to know what you are taking issue with

Calling people by their preferred names is a sign of the most basic level of respect, and bothering to learn their preferred name is part of that. You don’t have to call Republicans “Rethuglicans” to be disrespectful. In Sci-Fi terms, When Doctor Who insists on calling Mickey “Ricky”, it’s a sign of disrespect, even if there’s nothing insulting about the name “Ricky” per se and it could have been an honest mistake the first time.

Forgive my obliviousness to what you’re referring to, but do members of the Democrat Party not prefer to have their party referred to as the Democrat Party?

Again, perhaps the offending context would be clarifying. You’ve removed the rest of the sentence.

JEDIT: Rereading my post, I only say Democrat Party once, and I don’t know how I misused it.

Well, the Democrat Party was a Turkish political party from the early 20th Century. I believe it’s defunct, but if it still has any members, they probably do prefer their party to be referred to as the Democrat Party.

However, I believe you were referring instead to the Democratic Party in the United States. Two letters does make a difference.

darth_ender said:

CatBus said:

darth_ender said:

Democrat Party

You can do better.

I’d like to know what you are taking issue with

Calling people by their preferred names is a sign of the most basic level of respect, and bothering to learn their preferred name is part of that. You don’t have to call Republicans “Rethuglicans” to be disrespectful. In Sci-Fi terms, When Doctor Who insists on calling Mickey “Ricky”, it’s a sign of disrespect, even if there’s nothing insulting about the name “Ricky” per se and it could have been an honest mistake the first time.

darth_ender said:

Democrat Party

You can do better.

towne32 said:

pittrek said:

Hey Harmy, any chance you would (could) restore the very first / opening day or whatever we call it version of Star Wars in 720p? The one which has the differently composited 3 optical shots and closing credits? If it’s actually possible, since the only source is probably the laserdiscs

Could you go into more detail about this? I’m mildly startled that I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. 😃

There were print variations in the '77 release, due to last-minute changes and poor version control. The easiest-to-spot difference is the spacing in the credits around John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra. But there’s a different composite of the red planet in the sky over Yavin 4 (with/without clouds), etc. I’m not sure one is necessarily “first” and the others “second”, just a big mess of very slight differences.

The main problem with preserving these is quality–AFAIK there are no HD sources for the variants.

There is no variant with a second grappling hook throw or Luke meeting Biggs in the hangar, though 😉 Just little things.

Hey, I get it, and it’s all good. I’d rather be your collateral damage than a lot of other people. And no, I’m not hitting on you.

I was actually trying to be nonpartisan just then, but sometimes when a wacky lefty does an impersonation of a neutral observer, they just come off sounding like a wacky lefty wearing a clip-on tie to their pot brownie rights rally. I fully acknowledge it may have sounded forced.

darth_ender said:

CatBus said:

Elected officials count the votes (the job of the Majority Whip) before they’re cast. Bills are assured passage before they go to the floor. There are only two reasons bills ever fail on the floor like this:

1. The majority whip really screwed up, and somebody’s going to pay
2. This is a vote only for show, so that people can make pre-written speeches to reprint on their campaign materials during the next election, to rally their base

Take a wild guess which one this was.

So weird when politicians do those, you know, political things.

Thank goodness it’s just limited to Republicans or the country would really be in trouble.

Snark acknowledged. Perhaps trying to inject a politically neutral observation into a heated topic wasn’t a good move.

Elected officials count the votes (the job of the Majority Whip) before they’re cast. Bills are assured passage before they go to the floor. There are only two reasons bills ever fail on the floor like this:

1. The majority whip really screwed up, and somebody’s going to pay
2. This is a vote only for show, so that people can make pre-written speeches to reprint on their campaign materials during the next election, to rally their base

Take a wild guess which one this was.

Collipso said:

Yes, I was talking about not having hard subs in English.

Oh yeah, definitely that. But for other languages, there’s a very good case to be made that we should use burnt-in subs in those languages for those language options, to faithfully reproduce the prints of the time (as with the translated crawl and credits). i.e. why should English be the only language with a theatrically accurate version? Which is how it all gets pretty convoluted, pretty fast.

EDIT: I’m absolutely not saying we should do this, just that we should take this into consideration. After all, we’re going to extraordinary lengths to make the definitive theatrical preservation. Why not go big?

Collipso said:

Coming from a non-English speaking country I’m all in for the soft subs. My dad watched Star Wars in Italy in 1977 and later at some point in the 1980’s in Brazil, with my mom, and according to him there were no hard subs.

The Italian prints we’ve seen do have hard subs (in Italian, for both Star Wars and Jedi). They’d have to, because the Italian dub doesn’t translate those lines. I can’t say there weren’t subtitle-free prints anywhere, but there are a lot of prints out there, and all of them we’ve seen have hard subs in either English or another language.

Thanks. Let me know early if you want to go with soft-subs for 3.0. I want to start conversations with our German/French/Italian preservation teams to see which way they want to go regarding “theatrical appearance” subtitles in those languages. I suspect most will not want them as a default option.

PM sent.

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

Trump: No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist.

That pretty much covers it.

The ESB 2.0 credits also need serious reworking, those were a reconstruction and have typos. Do we have a clean 35mm source for this?

This is not the right thread for English audio.

Haven’t those poor mice pooped enough?

MusicallyInspired said:

What is meant by “branching opening crawls?”

towne32 said:

MusicallyInspired said:

I cannot STAND soft subtitles. But it’s your decision obviously on which you want to use. But consider this, TFA has burned-in subtitles not soft subtitles. So it IS something an official Bluray would do, is it not?

I think an official blu-ray may or may not have burnt in subtitles. But they wouldn’t have the gate weave, slight blurring, etc.

TFA’s seem slightly blurry. In fact they resemble the OT burned in subs pretty closely. Font, blur and all.

Yeah, DVD soft subtitles were crap, but Blu-rays can look pretty good if anyone bothers to make them look that way. Not theatrical, but good. Blur is very doable, but gate weave, grain, dirt, and any sort of temporal appearance change would not.