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Author Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0  (Read 1421303 times)

Loud Whispers

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9255 on: November 01, 2016, 06:37:57 pm »

Ahaha yes

Also, Sergarr and MSH, I have no idea what the argument even is anymore. I have a suspicion that nobody does.
MSH said Sergarr waifu a shit

smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9256 on: November 01, 2016, 06:42:09 pm »

Note: did not get a confirmation email, which is slightly concerning. Well, hopefully the message did arrive.

I just don't want to get screwed in 2 years.




And yes, I have no clue what the hell those two are arguing about anymore. I checked out at the implications that we live in dystopia already apparently and somehow no one noticed.

Check spambox? and yeah, not sure what the argument is.
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smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9257 on: November 01, 2016, 06:59:46 pm »

Which is why amnesty (or something like it) seems like the easiest and fastest way to unclog the whole mess. The only solution that the Republicans seem to have is some variant of severity of deportation.

Of course though, giving amnesty to the illegal immigrants doesn't solve the core problem.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2016, 07:01:19 pm by smjjames »
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smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9258 on: November 01, 2016, 07:04:47 pm »

Oh, right, sorry. There has been incredibly little, if any discussion in politics how to improve the situation with legal immigration. Everybody (every politician at least) is like 'Solve the illegal immigration first, THEN deal with the legal immigration issues.', but the reason we have a lot of illegal immigrants is due to the problems with the legal proccess. So, you can't deal with one without dealing with the other at the same time.
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Sergarr

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9259 on: November 01, 2016, 07:04:57 pm »

Ahaha yes

Also, Sergarr and MSH, I have no idea what the argument even is anymore. I have a suspicion that nobody does.
Well I have an idea.

He thinks that Hillary is not going to do the things he wants her to do because she'll ignore the intelligent people's pressure and abandon caring about the long-term consequences for the sake of populist/corporatist decisions during her entire rule, because they get her more popularity/power in the short term.

I think that she is going to do at least some of the things he wants her to do, as long as these intelligent people put up smart pressure on her. And by "smart" I mean "not right before the election with chances of Donald Fucking Trump being made the next POTUS, increasing said chances". That's just fucking nuts.


This is the thing though, what's being picked up on is bullshit and often part of a desire to destroy her. That's not the kind of criticism we need. It's "is she or is she not doing what she and the Democrats as a whole promised"? The very lack of that, and the attempts at stupid shit like the emails, itself only straighten everybody who would prefer criticism of Clinton be shut down as Trump supporters.
She's yet to be elected, she cannot be yet "doing what she promised" because she's not in any position to start doing anything! And by the time she will be, there won't be any "Trump supporters" scare going on, because the media will move on from Trump to something else!

You appear to be seriously caught up in the moment. Again, remember. Republicans shut down the government. Almost defaulted the entire world's economy. Was a #1 story for months. No one even mentions it now. It was only three years.

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Yes. She's a pragmatist and does whatever she thinks will do the best for her. If the public seems more important, she'll drop the corporations. If the corporations seem more important, she'll drop the public. This is part of the few hopes there are for the Clinton presidency, that she can be influenced in this way positively instead of destructively.
Okay.

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A lot of Obama's early potential was harmed by "these fucking Dems only voted for him because he's black", trying to truncate a repeat of this would be a good thing.
How?

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I don't believe what Clinton will do is set in stone yet, but yes, sufficient lack of publicly visible concern will lead to her not addressing climate change. She has so much more to gain by dealing with the big dogs that the public outcry or at least convincing evidence of ecological destruction needs to be as extreme as it really is.
It seems to me that even the "big dogs" are moving towards the ecological stuff nowadays, what with solar electricity generation booming exponentially and electrical cars becoming more and more common on the market...

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I was more thinking back to that one post where you mentioned how you tried to learn about the perspective of Western posters and instead accidentally turned yourself against believing Russia was number one. It seemed a bit...overly bright towards the state of the West.
It seems overly bright because you haven't seen how shitty it gets outside of it. Hell, Hillary gets called "the most corrupt" for stuff that would have been seen as "very honest" for a Russian politician. There's certainly quite a bit of culture shock for me here.

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There will always be an argument for "later". I trust the collective body of climatologists. We're in a critical period, and if it is solved one day people will thank us now for having the wisdom to look ahead. More likely, I fear, the desire for the profits of the next quarter will lead us to denying it all the way into the shallow grave of the human race. Not much use for US hegemony then.
Your financial system is set up in a way that makes said "profits of the next quarter" automatically include quite a bit of the future profits, as well, so it's not such a big problem as you think. There's quite a lot of money working on the ecological stuff already, and it seems to be growing more with every year. You seem to be overly pessimistic to me.

It is I who should be overly pessimistic - after all, it's my potential future industry, nuclear power generation, that is going to get literally bankrupted by cheap solar electricity driving prices down below the lower profitability bound within a decade or two! I'm not even fully graduated yet, and I already have to think about a change of field!

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I'm more concerned that there are Republicans talking about denying any and all judicial appointments, SCOTUS or otherwise, while she's president. The impeachment stuff is just blustering until there's something solid, especially with the failed action against Bill.
Well, I was talking any obstruction in general, really. She needs to be very careful, because she is going to be the most unpopular POTUS in recent history, with media hounds sniffing for any trace of the silver bullet during her entire term or two. It would do good for her to first prove that she's not going to be the devil that will instantly break the country upon inauguration - there certainly are a lot of people who believe that, too, and not just among Trump's crowd!
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Starver

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9260 on: November 01, 2016, 07:10:15 pm »

Of course though, giving amnesty to the illegal immigrants doesn't solve the core problem.
For that, you need to create a laser-tunneling 'train' of unobtanium units to deposit and detonate the nuclear charges necessary restart the magnetohydrodynamic mechamism and stop pigeons flying into buildings en mass...

Or write a better script.
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smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9261 on: November 01, 2016, 07:10:59 pm »

This is the thing though, what's being picked up on is bullshit and often part of a desire to destroy her. That's not the kind of criticism we need. It's "is she or is she not doing what she and the Democrats as a whole promised"? The very lack of that, and the attempts at stupid shit like the emails, itself only straighten everybody who would prefer criticism of Clinton be shut down as Trump supporters.
She's yet to be elected, she cannot be yet "doing what she promised" because she's not in any position to start doing anything! And by the time she will be, there won't be any "Trump supporters" scare going on, because the media will move on from Trump to something else!

You appear to be seriously caught up in the moment. Again, remember. Republicans shut down the government. Almost defaulted the entire world's economy. Was a #1 story for months. No one even mentions it now. It was only three years.

Yeah, we even got our lend trade rating (forget the actual name of it) downgraded over it and people were like 'DOOOMMMM!!!!' over it for a few months, but turned out to be hardly a blip to the economy.

Of course though, giving amnesty to the illegal immigrants doesn't solve the core problem.
For that, you need to create a laser-tunneling 'train' of unobtanium units to deposit and detonate the nuclear charges necessary restart the magnetohydrodynamic mechamism and stop pigeons flying into buildings en mass...

Or write a better script.

The politicians are the ones with the script, not me.
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smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9262 on: November 01, 2016, 07:24:55 pm »

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-yes-donald-trump-has-a-path-to-victory/

What? California is not part of Clinton's 'firewall'? I DOTH PROTEST, 55 EC points right there! *shakes fist at 538*

Of course though, Trump has like, effectively zero probability of winning California anyway.

Basic point of the article is that Trumps chances vary with how far apart he is from Clinton in the popular vote.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2016, 07:34:33 pm by smjjames »
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misko27

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9263 on: November 01, 2016, 07:35:56 pm »

Consider acceptance of same-sex relationships. There were centuries, millennia even of societies trying to put a stop to it.
Citation needed. Specifically, I want 1): A definition of "acceptance" (Does it mean tolerated? normal? held in high regard? enshrined in law and tradition? etc). 2): Here you talk about societies trying to put a stop to it. I am assuming that you mean that societies didn't accept homosexual relationships, but please specify.
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And yet, there's plenty of history outside of and before this, like that homosexuality was legal and even somewhat normalized in France for the past two hundred years, not at all starting with Stonwall. The shift occurred because it happened in a place and time that exported the new zeitgeist. Now we're here, and LGBT is one of the bywords for supporting human rights.
It's worth mentioning that "Homosexual" itself is a recent idea. There is a lot a historical precedent for homosexuality as a practice, but much less for homosexual as something you are.

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This is the thing though, what's being picked up on is bullshit and often part of a desire to destroy her. That's not the kind of criticism we need. It's "is she or is she not doing what she and the Democrats as a whole promised"?
What did the Democrats promise?
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A lot of Obama's early potential was harmed by "these fucking Dems only voted for him because he's black", trying to truncate a repeat of this would be a good thing.
It would be, but we are far from the days of Camelot. Far from honeymooning, it seems instead that the President's right to act is circumscribed by the opposition (this has been mostly a Republican phenemenon). An argument was made that a President without a mandate cannot and should not claim to lead. This is true and false: true in that Presidents in general are stronger when they win by greater margins and weaker when they aren't, but false in that it presents an imaginary rule, conforming to no law, whereupon the President is prohibited from their full rights and powers as President for not meeting some arbitrary qualification on top of winning the Presidency.

Republicans have prevented the Presidency from running amok by hamstringing it.
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Also, I don't think I'm a "westaboo" for acknowledging the fact that the West is currently winning in about every economical, political and technological sphere imaginable. I would be really fucking stupid to not do that.
I was more thinking back to that one post where you mentioned how you tried to learn about the perspective of Western posters and instead accidentally turned yourself against believing Russia was number one. It seemed a bit...overly bright towards the state of the West.
The entirety of this exchange pisses me off. Why act as if your argument deserves respect and consideration on its merits when other real human beings don't? While Sergarr was being hyperbolic with his Stalinism, you responded with ad hominem. Even if Sergarr dismisses your entire argument with an insult and a wave of his hand, it's qualitatively different to respond by dismissing him, personally with an insult and a wave of yours. Arguments don't have rights or feelings. People do.

Of course though, giving amnesty to the illegal immigrants doesn't solve the core problem.
Well we have 11 million immigrants in this country, so it's not a trivial problem either.

A solution to the core problem would be a combination of moving the people already here to instituationalize and bring them into the system, while toughening up the borders to keep people who aren't our problem out. This was, of course, the focus of a piece of bipartisan legislation a few years ago, but the blowback from that was big enough that it still exists today.
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9264 on: November 01, 2016, 07:51:07 pm »

Citation needed. Specifically, I want 1): A definition of "acceptance" (Does it mean tolerated? normal? held in high regard? enshrined in law and tradition? etc).
Well, you aren't getting one. Acceptance is both subjective and proportional. Some people think that not lynching homosexuals should be the standard for acceptance. In a place like Saudi Arabia, that might not even be far from the practical reality.
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2): Here you talk about societies trying to put a stop to it. I am assuming that you mean that societies didn't accept homosexual relationships, but please specify.
I cannot specify the whole of human history. Go on wikipedia and look up discrimination against homosexuals if you want all the details. Yes, it's not a universal, and there were varying levels of oppression. Yet we all know very well that seeing same-sex relationships as equal to opposite-sex ones is almost entirely a modern thing.
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It's worth mentioning that "Homosexual" itself is a recent idea. There is a lot a historical precedent for homosexuality as a practice, but much less for homosexual as something you are.
If anything this is a point I should have used myself. The structure of the ideas surrounding why people of the same-sex want to find the tiger in space are strongly influential to how they are treated and what is believed about them. Hence the movement, in America for example, from Sin to Crime to Sickness to Aberration to Weird to Normal. Not that everybody in America is at that last part.
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Republicans have prevented the Presidency from running amok by hamstringing it.
Hence why I talked about a need to get useful criticism and eliminate malignant criticism. As it is, useful criticism is being eliminated in favor of blind support or malignant criticism.
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The entirety of this exchange pisses me off. Why act as if your argument deserves respect and consideration on its merits when other real human beings don't? While Sergarr was being hyperbolic with his Stalinism, you responded with ad hominem. Even if Sergarr dismisses your entire argument with an insult and a wave of his hand, it's qualitatively different to respond by dismissing him, personally with an insult and a wave of yours. Arguments don't have rights or feelings. People do.
There's no argument to be had here, I'm just musing on how I got to that. "Russian westaboo" is about equivalent to "Stalinist dictator" in terms of insult, and you know very well my purpose is pointing out the absurdity of the exchange. Hence the Hail Hydra image. There were, in fact, other and substantial parts of our posts.
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Neonivek

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9265 on: November 01, 2016, 07:58:07 pm »

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It's worth mentioning that "Homosexual" itself is a recent idea. There is a lot a historical precedent for homosexuality as a practice, but much less for homosexual as something you are

Ahhh! This myth! How I love it and how it implies that Rome and Greece were accepting of homosexuality because people had gay sex. Ohh how nothing could be further from the truth. Sure they had what we would consider gay sex, but if you were actually gay... bad things (though to admit Rome/Greece has... over a thousand years of history so what do I know?)

Yeah sorry "Homosexual" is an idea that goes back to the BCs :P (The separation of gay sex and being gay... is something you can argue as being more recent. Though often with reinforcements of "no homo!" if you read the literature)

And we haven't even got into Egypt yet! But that is far FAAAAAR more complicated and, frankly, icky (Ancient Egypt can be really immature)
« Last Edit: November 01, 2016, 08:06:18 pm by Neonivek »
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smjjames

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9266 on: November 01, 2016, 08:56:22 pm »

Really? Didn't know the Egyptians were into that. Though I think there was one temple which had it's festival as a basically 'let loose like Dionysus' thing. I've heard about that. Well, not so much a festival as a ritual/ceremony kind of thing.

Greece and Rome (to a bit lesser extent) are better known for the sex stuff.

Anyway, another senator says Clinton should be impeached because of the emails.

Only problem is, I thought a president could only be impeached for crimes committed while in office (like Bill Clinton's perjury, which seems really minor to impeach over). Like if a candidate did a crime (lets assume something minor like DUI, but murder also works for this example) before they ran, and when they became president, Congress can't indict them for the previous crime no matter what.

The senator also goes and does the 'I'm not a lawyer, but....' fallacy.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2016, 08:59:57 pm by smjjames »
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Neonivek

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9267 on: November 01, 2016, 09:00:31 pm »

Frankly I don't even think this could have Impeached Hillary Clinton even if she was in office.

Heck if she WAS in office he wouldn't even be saying that. It is just another transparent attempt to influence the election.
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alway

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9268 on: November 01, 2016, 09:00:59 pm »

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Republicans have prevented the Presidency from running amok by hamstringing it.
Hence why I talked about a need to get useful criticism and eliminate malignant criticism. As it is, useful criticism is being eliminated in favor of blind support or malignant criticism.
Is it useful though? Last I checked, Clinton had to be president first before complaining about the Clinton presidency was relevant to liberals in a post-primary world. Currently, 538 puts Trump's odds at over 30%, and rising at a rate that will make Trump the president of the United States if the polling trend continues.

Meanwhile, I look to the right and see "Trump's gonna save the country" and "Clinton's awful." I look to the left and see "Trump's awful." and "Clinton's awful." Makes it pretty clear to me who I should vote for, if I'm on the fence over who to vote for.

This is precisely what is at the root of the Republican strategy to drive down democratic votes by convincing liberals that both candidates are the same. That we should not vote. That we should vote third party. Valid criticisms from the left do not magically annihilate ridiculously off base criticisms from the right; they only amplify them.

And it isn't useful criticism specifically because it provides no solutions. If you have solutions to the things you're complaining about, go right ahead, but if not, you're doing nothing but self-serving complaining to show everybody how much more liberal you are while validating every right winger's beliefs that Clinton is a corrupt crook up to no good.
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Neonivek

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Re: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American (\{mainiac})
« Reply #9269 on: November 01, 2016, 09:03:24 pm »

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Meanwhile, I look to the right and see "Trump's gonna save the country" and "Clinton's awful." I look to the left and see "Trump's awful." and "Clinton's awful." Makes it pretty clear to me who I should vote for, if I'm on the fence over who to vote for

Maybe you should like... actually look up their platforms.

Something that very few Right Wingers actually do it seems O_o... Either that or they think he won't go through with SOME of his proposals.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2016, 09:05:19 pm by Neonivek »
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