CatBus

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

As has been pointed out to me by conservatives in this forum: America is not a pure democracy. We are a Democratic Republic.

That is a stupid GOP argument in favor of the College.

It’s also factually wrong. Yes, we are a democratic republic, but that is completely unrelated to the existence of the Electoral College. The House of Representatives is pretty much entirely what makes us a democratic republic. Many democratic republics around the world are perfectly functional without anything resembling an electoral college – in fact, the EC makes us less of a democratic republic than they are. The EC is derived from an early attempt at resolving federalism with a basic distrust of democracy, and you can have federalism without it.

yhwx said:

darth_ender said:

yhwx said:

Everybody says ‘Bernie would have won’ or ‘Bernie wouldn’t have won,’ but I won’t really believe either until I see some polling data.

darth_ender said:

I think the DNC as a whole is partially to blame. The very fact that there is a superdelegate system, disproportionally and undemocratically favoring the voice of the elite, allowed Hillary to grab the nomination when the more likable Bernie Sanders might have defeated Trump.

While there is no way to prove that he would have won, I feel he easily could have better united the Democrat Party and that his supporters were far more passionate than Clinton’s. Heck, Jeebus here protest voted against Hillary. I doubt there would have been much of that against Bernie, even among Hillary supporters. I’ve no doubt most would have gone ahead and voted for Bernie as their number two pick.

I think the unification problem had more to do with Bernie’s supports (and to some extent Bernie himself) than Clinton herself.

As documented earlier, Bernie’s supporters notably moved to support Hillary at higher rates and faster than Hillary’s supporters moved to support Obama eight years earlier. While there are always some holdouts in any primary race, the 2016 Democratic Party was notable for its lack of a unification problem, at least when compared to prior years.

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

Warbler said:

The account has his name on it. It is his account.

Sure. And it’s his face on the billboard, and so on. When your name and face are regularly handed off to others to create a message to associate with it, sometimes the best you can do is pull the offending material after-the-fact and presumably identify/deal with the person who created it. If you consider Twitter passwords to be sacrosanct things only to be given to people with the highest vetted clearance, you would be (perhaps properly) horrified by how it works every day in much of the world, where the intern gets handed it on day 1.

If it is the case that any new intern gets handed the password on day 1, I would suggest changing the name of the twitter account. Maybe change it to “Ted Cruz campaign” or “The Office of Ted Cruz” or “Ted Cruz INC” or “The Staff of Ted Cruz”. Something that indicate it is a twitter account belonging to his group(what it is called), and not his own private twitter account.

But, politically, he can’t. Cruz represents about 28 million constituents (which is appalling but true). And yet people who go through the trouble of writing to (or e-mailing, or tweeting, etc) their Senator want to feel like they got a one-on-one exchange with a US Senator, where their opinion was, at least temporarily, given the undivided attention of someone who could actually help. Which is ridiculous even for a decent Senator, let alone the likes of Cruz.

If you get a response back from “the office of Ted Cruz”, or “one of about twenty interns who just started working this month for Ted Cruz” – yes, it’s honest and accurate, but it’s politically counterproductive. It gives the voter the (probably accurate) impression that the Senator most likely will never set eyes on what most people write to them, which doesn’t exactly make you have good feelings about them come re-election time. So they keep up the facade of “oh yes, you’re really communicating with me personally” because it makes them seem like the sort of Senator people want to have.

It’s not just social media. Write a letter, and you’ll get a letter back signed by the Senator (well, with a printed image of the Senator’s signature). The return address will say the office of so-and-so, but the letter itself will look personal. I’m dating myself here, but I wrote a letter to the newly-elected Bernie Sanders when he was in the House, and when he actually wrote back it was like Christmas. OMG! Mr Smith goes to Washington WORKS! Woohoo citizen democracy! But seriously, upon reflection, it was just a form letter.

Showbiz and politics. Not so different after all.

Warbler said:

The account has his name on it. It is his account.

Sure. And it’s his face on the billboard, and so on. When your name and face are regularly handed off to others to create a message to associate with it, sometimes the best you can do is pull the offending material after-the-fact and presumably identify/deal with the person who created it. If you consider Twitter passwords to be sacrosanct things only to be given to people with the highest vetted clearance, you would be (perhaps properly) horrified by how it works every day in much of the world, where the intern gets handed it on day 1.

Warbler said:

What are you talking about? It it his account, and he was the staffer’s employer. Of course he had control of that.

I don’t know if this is the case here, but in at least a few cases, a political person with staff does not create social media accounts, post anything to them, write speeches or press releases, or read or respond to e-mails. And while they may theoretically have some sort of editorial veto over content associated with their name, it’s logistically impossible for them to review everything. Hell, they don’t even read the legislation they vote on. Trump is fairly unique in that he writes his own covfefe.

SilverWook said:

There’s a bomb scare going on at the Santa Monica pier out here today. And the usual A-holes on twitter are dragging their political sewage into it.

Who knew the quality of American public dialogue would be foreshadowed by YouTube comments?

So last week or so, I heard a BBC news story about Trump’s DACA decision. Although they included the fairly typical pro and con arguments from advocate for either side of the position, what struck me is that the “pro” argument came from a member of an SPLC-designated hate group, but one with a radio-friendly name (Center for Immigration Studies, so bland, so neutral-sounding). Furthermore, they didn’t indicate this for the listener as I think would be appropriate under the circumstances.

I’m sure they got a lot of flack from their listeners about this, and news organizations may have now started vetting their talking heads for white supremacists ties before airing them, or at least including the disclaimer “this person is a member of a known hate group” when they do. Or at least something like “BBC News tried to find someone supporting this policy who was not also a member of a hate group, but failed to find one,” which I think would be the most appropriate action for a news organization.

And now… FOX “News” is runs a hit piece on the SPLC:

https://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/09/08/splc-demands-correction-fox-news

Oh, I usually just time everything to match my English subtitles, which are pre-lengthened from your typical English subtitle. In fact, it’s kinda hard to manage multiple timings in the project, so I’d recommend it.

oojason said:

chyron8472 said:

Personally, I think a football player sitting during the anthem is ineffectual. It’s less effective even than temporarily adding an overlay to your Facebook avatar after a crisis.

If the people who sit want to help the cause for which they protest, they should do so in a way that matters. You can’t show solidarity to the BLM community by sitting unless the camera notices you doing it and the media jumps up and down accordingly. So I think the people who sit should be ignored, because it deflates their method of protest entirely.

It’s similar to how Trump wouldn’t have won the primary had he not been given all the media attention. Just ignore them, and their opinion becomes moot.

A player sitting during the anthem is so ineffectual you think the media should ignore it (instead of jumping up and down accordingly) - so it will deflate their method of protest entirely?

Erm… what?

Well, I’ve been trying to stay out of this one so far, but I think I can translate. I think he’s saying it’s ineffectual in that it doesn’t communicate the message you’re trying to send, not that it doesn’t successfully grab media attention. i.e. the media ruckus becomes about sitting and flags and whatnot, and not about your actual grievances, therefore it’s ineffectual.

I haven’t actually formed an opinion on the concept of media grabbing yet. It does seem to be central to the “Stay Woke” thesis – that unless your reminders that racism and brutality exists are adequately loud and outrageous, your protests will eventually turn into background noise and the media (and therefore the majority) will tune them out, fall back into a slumber, and think everything must be fine now. BLM has embraced this and while they’ve clearly gotten some backlash, the media’s focus on police racism and brutality has definitely been longer and more critical recently than during any recent prior protest movement, and I’d say police racism and brutality is actually much less prevalent today than in the years past when it was barely covered at all. So did BLM succeed with confrontational protest tactics? Or is it the fact that almost every citizen carries around a video camera these days and stuff can’t be explained away as easily as it used to? Or a combination. I really don’t know.

TV’s Frink said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/08/trump-tortured-spicer-and-priebus-now-they-get-to-tell-investigators-about-trump/?utm_term=.3d812175348b

Now’s your time to do the right thing, guys.

I’m afraid neither of them would know the right thing if it came up and bit them on the ass.

And I’m hoping it does.

Yeah, the Nordic languages in general are pretty much your subtitle timing torture test. That’s why “summarized” subtitles are so popular there, you condense and drop sentences wherever you can. On the other end of the spectrum, I think Project Threepio’s slower subtitles probably cause some head scratching with Chinese subtitles, which I believe can be read much more quickly. One size, or speed, doesn’t really ever fit all – but boy does it reduce overhead.

EDIT: I should also add that while the other Nordic language subtitles in Project Threepio are in the condensed form (straight from the GOUT), the Finnish ones have been redone in a longer, more accurate form, so it was probably the worst possible language to try to match to Revisited’s English subtitle timing.

Florida politics in the era of Trump.

“Why should I resign,” he asked in an exclusive interview from his $2 million beachfront condo. “I did nothing wrong and I was elected. This is just party politics.”

He already sounds like he’s channeling someone familiar. So what’s the story with this witch hunt he’s fending off?

Four months after 28-year-old Rupert Tarsey was elected secretary, party officials have found out the young philanthropist and supporter of President Donald Trump is really Rupert Ditsworth.

And a decade ago, the then-Beverly Hills teenager was charged with attempted murder in Los Angeles after hitting Harvard-Westlake School classmate Elizabeth Barcay over the head at least 40 times, splitting her skull open.

Oh, well then, nothing to see here. Fake news. So unfair.

Jesus Effing Christ.

Warbler said:

What in hell is that?

It’s a documentary someone found in an unlocked time machine.

DuracellEnergizer said:

CatBus said:

The hidden ironic subtext is I actually hate yams.

And you, sir, are worse than Hitler.

Mom?

yhwx said:

FM, STMAO!

Seriously, though. This is stupid.

You may have a point.

Okay, other stuff, Nigel Farage of Brexit fame goes full fascist, neatly tying Putin, Brexit, Trump, white supremacist idiocy, and ongoing efforts to destroy all NATO countries (next stop, Germany) into a single package. They’re not even trying to hide the relationships anymore, which means they don’t think they have anything to fear, which means they may be right.

Speaking of what they may or may not fear, Mueller looks like he’s going after yet another obstruction of justice charge. How many is that now?

darth_ender said:

Bingowings said:

Nobody Can Really Believe You’re. Nasty.

FTFY

It’s okay if you don’t like yams either, but language!

darth_ender said:

CatBus said:

darth_ender said:

TV’s Frink said:

There, Broke That For You

!

IK! NYRMJ!

NCRBY. N.

Nancy can roast buttered yams. Nice.

Nobody can ruin buttered yams. Nobody.

The hidden ironic subtext is I actually hate yams.

darth_ender said:

TV’s Frink said:

There, Broke That For You

!

IK! NYRMJ!

NCRBY. N.

darth_ender said:

CatBus said:

darth_ender said:

Don’t get me started on you’re punctuation of late.

T,BTFY.

Trina, bake those flayed yams?

Trina, butter those flayed yams…

There, broke that for you.

EDIT: Dangit, Frink
!!

darth_ender said:

Don’t get me started on you’re punctuation of late.

T,BTFY.

Warbler said:

CatBus said:

moviefreakedmind said:

I know a lot of passively racist idiots, and they don’t vote Democrat, and they definitely didn’t vote for Obama.

Certainly there were lots of reasons Obama voters may have switched to Trump, but…

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/upshot/the-obama-trump-voters-are-real-heres-what-they-think.html?mcubz=0

Using this and other data, political scientists have argued that racial resentment is the strongest predictor of whether voters flipped from Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump, and the biggest driver of Trump support among these voters.

Yes, racial resentment is the strongest predictor of the Obama-Trump vote in this survey data.

We all know racists, but it seems at least in this regard that the ones I know were more representative of racists nationally, in that at least some of them will vote for Democrats, even Black Democrats, when the Republican alternatives aren’t racist enough.

I still don’t get that. I mean even if the Republicans aren’t racist enough for you, surely the Dems aren’t going even less racist, especially the black Dems. If I were racist, I doubt I’d be voting for the Dems or black people. If I couldn’t stomach the Republicans, I would probably write-in Hitler or maybe George Wallace or something like that(again, if I were racist). No way I would vote for the Dems or any black person(again, if I were racist).

The trick is, you’re imagining yourself being a logical racist. Such a beast doesn’t exist. To an overt racist, Democrats aren’t “less racist” than Republicans. They’re both touchy-feely-hippy-dippy-Abraham-Lincoln-kumbaya-ebony-and-ivory-in-harmony wannabes – equally. So you either don’t vote or you move on to a second tier of criteria. However, that has likely changed now. After Trump, I think people will assume, for better or worse, that all Republicans are racist until proven otherwise, and those votes are now gone for the Democrats for the long term.

Racists in general, and even some white supremacists, are not single issue voters. They also have opinions on medical marijuana, the Iraq War, minimum wage, and so on. Democrats can do well on many of these issues. Not all anti-abortion voters vote for Republicans either, because abortion is not the only issue.

moviefreakedmind said:

I don’t even agree that that qualifies as casual racism.

People in the survey were given a multi-point scale (strongly agree/disagree style) on questions like: Does the existence of racism make you angry/not interested/glad? Now I don’t have the raw data in front of me, so I’m not sure how people answered this particular question, but people who are glad about racism are racists. I’d even say people who deny the existence of racism and/or acknowledge its existence but don’t bother to care are racist. IMO the questions in the survey were good enough to measure some degree of racism. Now there’s methodology and honesty and all that too, but apparently someone gave racist enough answers or they wouldn’t have been able to come to any conclusions.

moviefreakedmind said:

Well, the survey information they’re basing that on does not indicate white supremacist views. For example, the fact that they don’t believe in white privilege probably comes from the fact that they’re working-class households in places like the rust belt.

Of course I’m committing the cardinal sin again of using the R word without stating in which sense. I’m using “racist” in the casual “holds racist views” sense, so a much larger group than white supremacists, but smaller than the “unknowingly perpetuates racism” sense. When you said racists voted 99% Republican, I made the assumption you were using it in that sense and I responded in kind.

I believed both of our statements were about these casual racists in general, I just added that it could even extend to a few white supremacists too. If it turned out you were just talking about white supremacists the whole time, mea culpa, that would be a small group, and your 99% number was conservative IMO. In the sense I’m using the word, the survey results seem to back me up. It definitely shows racists, in the broader but not all-encompassing sense of the word, voted for Obama, and then switched to Trump more strongly than any other measured demographic. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find a white supremacist or two in there too – but there’s no evidence on that either way.

moviefreakedmind said:

I know a lot of passively racist idiots, and they don’t vote Democrat, and they definitely didn’t vote for Obama.

Certainly there were lots of reasons Obama voters may have switched to Trump, but…

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/upshot/the-obama-trump-voters-are-real-heres-what-they-think.html?mcubz=0

Using this and other data, political scientists have argued that racial resentment is the strongest predictor of whether voters flipped from Mr. Obama to Mr. Trump, and the biggest driver of Trump support among these voters.

Yes, racial resentment is the strongest predictor of the Obama-Trump vote in this survey data.

We all know racists, but it seems at least in this regard that the ones I know were more representative of racists nationally, in that at least some of them will vote for Democrats, even Black Democrats, when the Republican alternatives aren’t racist enough.

Maybe not talked about it. I made a pee joke, does that count?