Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

I AM NOT THREATENING YOU

[Reelya]

Hey guys is this the LCS roleplay thread?

I think that's kinda misdirected. e.g. anarchist civil disobedience is actually something that people in this thread could actually do that would affect things. Sure it's a low chance of affecting things in a large way, but the effect would be non-zero.

All our talk about first past the post voting vs IRV voting, or specific policies, or complaining about Trump. All that talk has exactly zero chance of affecting anything.

That's part of why "direct action" type politics exists, and why it's completely relevant to talk about them in an American Politics thread. Direct action is bottom-up politics, it's how people actually cause change. e.g. we could carry out a letter-writing campaign to congressmen (they historically have actually worked). Just talking about how the "powers that be" will or will not do this or that thing we either want them to or don't want them to has no chance whatsoever of affecting the real world.

Effectively, real power comes from the bottom up. The general has power because his colonels listen to him. The colonels have power because lieutenants listen to them, and so on. They don't have power without the lower-downs to carry out their orders. That's why bottom-up change is actually more effective than complaining about what's happening at the top. The top is the center-point of power, but it's not the source of power.

[ChairmanPoo]

Anarchists in Spain got a nice jig running together with libertarian marxists for a while.


Of course then the Republican goverment decided that it's number one priority was to wipe the anarchists out (as opposed to, say, put those efforts instead of getting rid of the Germany-Italy-Portugal backed military junta that was besieging Madrid), so they promptly got pwned.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

RIP Revolutionary Catalonia.

I've heard mixed critiques of that entity, but regardless, it demonstrates that anarchism is not entirely impossible. It was stable, at least for a time. And it did not collapse from its own problems, but rather from a hostile invasion by a stronger state.

[Loud Whispers]

That's a conspiracy theory in the same lieu as the "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Atheist". Voter fraud is nigh non-existent in USA, despite many, many attempts by dishonest politicians of Bush administration to try and find one. Try again.

No, a conspiracy in the same lieu as "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Atheist" is "Trump is a Russian Homosexual Pedophile". Investigations clarify what is true and false, by finding evidence. Likewise when dealing with people who readily conspire in order to win it's worthwhile investigating, especially when their allies are desperate to stop you. Two outcomes result: Trump is humiliated, or corruption is excised. That is a win-win situation

LW: you've described why I am an evolutionary anarchist.
I never said that the revolution would succeed. I was just saying that it would HAPPEN. And I don't think anybody wants America to have another civil war, except the revolutionaries and the reactionaries. Certainly a moderate such as Ispil would rather have the anarchists engage in lively debate than a bloody civil war, no?

It wouldn't be a civil war, it would be a complete curbstomp. You see American anarchists marching around in flat-soled trainers and chinos and you've got to wonder how such people believe they are in shape to fight anyone, it's just suicidal

From the book Blinded By The Right, by David Brock, who was a star journalist for the 'Times back in the day. His autobiography is basically about how corrupt the whole underground right-wing media was (basically self-flaggellation too since he was one of them). I have a physical copy of this book someone gave me, it's not information from the internet.

So you want me to take the unsourced word of the founder of CTR, Clinton's "bull dog?" I can see an obvious conflict of interest present here, given that they're criticizing his boss.

David Brock, one of the most influential operatives in the Democratic Party, never doubted that he would spend the 2016 cycle working to make Hillary Clinton president. The question was how he should do it while staying on the right side of the law.

"I essentially had to make a decision. Do I want to be involved in supervising and handling the research against the Republican candidates?" he told me recently, for a story that runs this week in TIME magazine. "Or do I want to be involved in some combination of defense and offense for Hillary Clinton?"

What a quality lad.

Basically one of the main thing Brock talks about is Richard Mellon Scaife, the oil baron who was a far-right demagogue. That guy set up some right-wing foundations which funneled money into the fledgling conservative press, basically everyone was suckling on Big Brother's teat and the more outlandish the anti-Clinton stories you came up with, the bigger the money-tit they shoved in your mouth. This was from the mid-1980s to the 1990s.
Basically everyone was into it, because the money was coming in. The editors of all the conservative papers were getting kickbacks from these Foundations to write anti-Clinton stories because Scaife wanted to take down Clinton. Sure, eventually they did find real dirt, but they made up hundreds of insane bullshit stories first, because Mr Scaife's "Scaife Foundations" would pay big money if you promised you had a juicy anti-Clinton story to run.

I'll be wary of the devil I know exists before the devil I don't, to quote Sergarr, this is conspiracy theories in sore need of proof. I don't doubt there's a high possibility billionaires are consolidating their media power, their wealth and the bought politicians, however proof is needed to move beyond reasonable suspicion

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

A complete curb stomp that would result in much bloodshed; the dead would not be limited to anarchists. Moderates and liberals do not want to exclude far-leftists from politics, because the curb stomp would stomp THEM, too.

As for voter fraud - it's much less of a problem than gerrymandering.

[Reelya]

LW: the existing of Richard Mellon Scaife's foundations and who they fund is public knowledge. And we're not talking a few millions. We're talking about a guy who funded around half a billion dollars to create the conservative media movement:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050299.htm

One August day in 1994, while gossiping about politics over lunch on Nantucket, Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh billionaire and patron of conservative causes, made a prediction. "We're going to get Clinton," Joan Bingham, a New York publisher present at the lunch, remembers him saying. "And you'll be much happier," he said to Bingham and another Democrat at the table, "because Al Gore will be president."

Bingham was startled at the time, but in the years since – as Clinton has struggled with an onslaught from political enemies – Scaife's assertion came to seem less and less far-fetched.

Scaife did get involved in numerous anti-Clinton activities. He gave $2.3 million to the American Spectator magazine to dig up dirt on Clinton and supported other conservative groups that harassed the president and his administration. The White House and its allies responded by fingering Scaife as the central figure in "a vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president," as Hillary Rodham Clinton described it. James Carville, Clinton's former campaign aide and rabid defender, called Scaife "the archconservative godfather in [a] heavily funded war against the president."

But people who know him well say that although Scaife is fond of conspiracy theories of many kinds, he is incapable of managing any sort of grand conspiracy himself. And months of reporting produced no evidence of his orchestrating any effort to "get" Clinton beyond his financial support. Indeed, focusing on his role in the crusade against Clinton can obscure the 66-year-old philanthropist's real importance, which is not based on his opposition or support for any individual politicians (though he once gave Richard M. Nixon $1 million). His biggest contribution has been to help fund the creation of the modern conservative movement in America.

By compiling a computerized record of nearly all his contributions over the last four decades, The Washington Post found that Scaife and his family's charitable entities have given at least $340 million to conservative causes and institutions – about $620 million in current dollars, adjusted for inflation. The total of Scaife's giving – to conservatives as well as many other beneficiaries – exceeds $600 million, or $1.4 billion in current dollars, much more than any previous estimate.

Basically, in modern money terms, the guy spent around $600 million of his own money just on funding conservative fringe media and activists. Like I said, he spread that money around, and when millions upon millions of dollars are pouring in for anyone who writes the right words, the pigs had their snouts fully in the trough.

You see, this is the core conceit of the "alt-right" media. It's not "alt" at all, and never was. It was set up by oil billionaires (The Scaifes) by basically heavily bankrolling the whole movement. Then other oil barons picked up on it to (Koch Brothers).
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/koch-2016-spending-goal-114604
The Koch Brothers for example spent $889 million on right-wing media leading up to the 2016 election. That's basically double what the entire RNC spent in 2012. Basically everyone's sucking on that right-wing oil baron money now, just like they did on Big Daddy Scaife's millions in the 80s and 90s.

[Loud Whispers]

A complete curb stomp that would result in much bloodshed; the dead would not be limited to anarchists. Moderates and liberals do not want to exclude far-leftists from politics, because the curb stomp would stomp THEM, too.

If far leftists didn't start the curb stomp, there would be no curb stomp. If they don't exclude them, the curb stomping will include them - seems obvious. Kinda like how if a non-violent protest includes violent dickheads, it's not a non-violent protest anymore, even if the majority were being chill and reasonable.

As for voter fraud - it's much less of a problem than gerrymandering.

There is always a bigger problem, with delegation one can tackle multiple problems at once. For that matter I don't think it would be wise to allow the Republicans to solve gerrymandering when the Democrat party is this weak, it needs to be bipartisan so that the Reds don't just fix gerrymandering by "fixing" it heavily in their favour.

LW: the existing of Richard Mellon Scaife's foundations and who they fund is public knowledge.

Not in Bongland, nor do I think in Burgerland

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050299.htm

One August day in 1994, while gossiping about politics over lunch on Nantucket, Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh billionaire and patron of conservative causes, made a prediction. "We're going to get Clinton," Joan Bingham, a New York publisher present at the lunch, remembers him saying. "And you'll be much happier," he said to Bingham and another Democrat at the table, "because Al Gore will be president."
Bingham was startled at the time, but in the years since – as Clinton has struggled with an onslaught from political enemies – Scaife's assertion came to seem less and less far-fetched.
Scaife did get involved in numerous anti-Clinton activities. He gave $2.3 million to the American Spectator magazine to dig up dirt on Clinton and supported other conservative groups that harassed the president and his administration. The White House and its allies responded by fingering Scaife as the central figure in "a vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president," as Hillary Rodham Clinton described it. James Carville, Clinton's former campaign aide and rabid defender, called Scaife "the archconservative godfather in [a] heavily funded war against the president."
But people who know him well say that although Scaife is fond of conspiracy theories of many kinds, he is incapable of managing any sort of grand conspiracy himself. And months of reporting produced no evidence of his orchestrating any effort to "get" Clinton beyond his financial support. Indeed, focusing on his role in the crusade against Clinton can obscure the 66-year-old philanthropist's real importance, which is not based on his opposition or support for any individual politicians (though he once gave Richard M. Nixon $1 million). His biggest contribution has been to help fund the creation of the modern conservative movement in America.
By compiling a computerized record of nearly all his contributions over the last four decades, The Washington Post found that Scaife and his family's charitable entities have given at least $340 million to conservative causes and institutions – about $620 million in current dollars, adjusted for inflation. The total of Scaife's giving – to conservatives as well as many other beneficiaries – exceeds $600 million, or $1.4 billion in current dollars, much more than any previous estimate.

Basically, in modern money, the guy spend around $1.4 billion of his own money to fund anti-Clinton media and campaigns.

Haha, it's like a mirror Soros
That's fucking neat. Explains Fox news pretty simple don't it. I'm still not discounting WT on the claims of Clinton's campaign manager having not found any connections, especially in lieu of :

The White House and its allies responded by fingering Scaife as the central figure in "a vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president," as Hillary Rodham Clinton described it. James Carville, Clinton's former campaign aide and rabid defender, called Scaife "the archconservative godfather in [a] heavily funded war against the president."
But people who know him well say that although Scaife is fond of conspiracy theories of many kinds, he is incapable of managing any sort of grand conspiracy himself. And months of reporting produced no evidence of his orchestrating any effort to "get" Clinton beyond his financial support.

Cos there's no evidence for this grand conspiracy Ayy lmao you can even find Soros and Scaife getting into funding wars

[Reelya]

But people who know him well say that although Scaife is fond of conspiracy theories of many kinds, he is incapable of managing any sort of grand conspiracy himself. And months of reporting produced no evidence of his orchestrating any effort to "get" Clinton beyond his financial support.

those "months of reporting" were months in 1994. The next paragraph is listing all the stuff that was dug up between 1994-2016 (the fact that he poured 300 million dollars into anti-clinton groups). Also "those who know him well" means his friends. So his friends swear he's cool. No shit.

[Sergarr]

That's a conspiracy theory in the same lieu as the "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Atheist". Voter fraud is nigh non-existent in USA, despite many, many attempts by dishonest politicians of Bush administration to try and find one. Try again.

No, a conspiracy in the same lieu as "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Atheist" is "Trump is a Russian Homosexual Pedophile". Investigations clarify what is true and false, by finding evidence. Likewise when dealing with people who readily conspire in order to win it's worthwhile investigating, especially when their allies are desperate to stop you. Two outcomes result: Trump is humiliated, or corruption is excised. That is a win-win situation

Orrrr Trump and his cronies could just outright forge the evidence - or, as they call it now, "present alternative facts" - and use it as a pretext towards removing voting rights from the "undesirables", i.e. people who don't vote Republican. Voter suppression and gerrymandering are already widely used by Republicans to achieve such amazing feats as winning a supermajority of seats with a minority of votes, and there's no other realistic way for them to retain long-term control over the country due to demographics.

There's zero case for voter fraud existing on any meaningful scale in USA, especially on the side of Hillary. It's like, she apparently could leverage millions of illegals to vote for her without anyone catching it in the process, yet she couldn't be bothered to put them in the critical battleground states, to actually win her the EVs and the election? This simply doesn't make sense. This is what makes it a silly conspiracy theory, like "9/11 was an inside job", or "Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Atheist".

[Reelya]

Yeah, and the "illegals voting" conspiracy theory's core piece of evidence is an online survey where respondents who did it twice (they did a follow-up survey with specific respondents from an earlier one) only clicked the same citizenship box about 60% of the time (saying they were a citizen in 2010 but not in 2012: about 40% of the time).

Basically the survey was opt-in (self selection bias) and the error margins seem to be greater than the claimed size of the effect. Basically if you have two boxes "are you a citizen" and "did you vote" and people click the wrong boxes some percentage of the time, then that's going to automatically inflate your "non-citizens who voted" metric, because you're selectively ignoring all other possible errors / combinations and reporting just that metric.

So in other words, there was no validation that these were real people or that any of them were or were not citizens, they seemed to flip flop and contradict themselves. I mean for an online survey we might only have their word for it that they're even in America. Perhaps a fair number of people were filling it in for lulz, who knows?

[Sergarr]

Apparently, the majority of Senate Democrats approve of nearly all Trump's picks for his cabinet. Cool! No, wait, not "cool", what's the opposite of "cool"?

[martinuzz]

Apparently, the majority of Senate Democrats approve of nearly all Trump's picks for his cabinet. Cool! No, wait, not "cool", what's the opposite of "cool"?

Uncool Sam

[smjjames]

Re the earlier discussion: Guys, the Washington Post is the good one, the Washington Times is the gossip/tabloid paper. Flip them for New York.

[martinuzz]

Holy shit Trump's ban on people from certain nationalities (Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Jemen, Somalia) from entering the US is not just some paper and signature. The minute it was signed, action has been taken.
People who were already on inbound flights to the US from those nationalities have been arrested and detained on arrival, much to the surprise and shock of family and friends coming to pick them up at the airport.
Many others are stranded at various international airports outside the US, with flight companies refusing to let them board. Among them are not just refugees, but also many people who have a work permit in the US, but can no longer get in. The new law does not exempt green card holders. If you went outside of the US for holidays, tough luck, you won't get back in.
Technology companies like Facebook and Google have expressed concern. The Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is sueing the US government. Many refugee organistations are considering lawsuit as well.

EDIT: not sure if the work permit holders can't enter the US because flight companies refuse them to board, or if they're really included in Trump's decree.