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[Reelya]

The problem with that Adams gun article is that you can add in the phrase "all else being equal" at strategic points, because he's assuming that any factor that he omitted is equal therefore it's apples and apples. However ... they are not equal.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/the-demographics-and-politics-of-gun-owning-households/

Black and Hispanic households are only 50% as likely as white households to have guns (20% vs 40%). So that's a 50% modifier on any "Democrats use guns to do ... X" argument.

Similarly, 18-29 age range are only 30% likely to have guns vs 40% for 50 y/o +, so a 75% modifier

Rural types are also twice as likely to have a gun as urban types, another 50% modifier

Democrats are 22% likely to have a gun, vs 49% for Republicans.

Liberals are 23% likely to have a gun, vs 41% for Conservatives.

But we do know that race and poverty are correlated. And we know that poverty and crime are correlated. And we know that race and political affiliation are correlated. Therefore, my team (Clinton) is more likely to use guns to shoot innocent people, whereas the other team (Trump) is more likely to use guns for sporting and defense.

... Except all those other things that reduce guns are also correlated with being a Democrat. It's a cherry picked argument that doesn't cite any actual data.

50 American women are shot every month in intimate partner homicides, you can bet your money those are correlated with gun ownership, therefore Republicans are all wife shooting psychos. See how the game is played?

[Strife26]

The problem with that Adams gun article is that you can add in the phrase "all else being equal" at strategic points, because he's assuming that any factor that he omitted is equal therefore it's apples and apples. However ... they are not equal.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/the-demographics-and-politics-of-gun-owning-households/

Black and Hispanic households are only 50% as likely as white households to have guns (20% vs 40%). So that's a 50% modifier on any "Democrats use guns to do ... X" argument.

Similarly, 18-29 age range are only 30% likely to have guns vs 40% for 50 y/o +, so a 75% modifier

Rural types are also twice as likely to have a gun as urban types, another 50% modifier

Democrats are 22% likely to have a gun, vs 49% for Republicans.

Liberals are 23% likely to have a gun, vs 41% for Conservatives.

But we do know that race and poverty are correlated. And we know that poverty and crime are correlated. And we know that race and political affiliation are correlated. Therefore, my team (Clinton) is more likely to use guns to shoot innocent people, whereas the other team (Trump) is more likely to use guns for sporting and defense.

... Except all those other things that reduce guns are also correlated with being a Democrat. It's a cherry picked argument that doesn't cite any actual data.

50 American women are shot every month in intimate partner homicides, you can bet your money those are correlated with gun ownership, therefore Republicans are all wife shooting psychos. See how the game is played?

Nope. I'll bet you a reasonable sum of money that they're correlated with a bunch of other things (like residing in generally democratic urban areas) more than party alignment.

[Frumple]

If we're laying bets, I'll put fifty non-dollars down on the bigger issue with political lean and firearm death being suicide. Mostly because it's the bigger issue with firearm deaths, period. _{also it's a shitty bet, the closet I can find to numbers on it show the per capita rate isn't terribly disparate on the political axis, though it fluctuates pretty wildly between states, now, racial one, well...}

Still. Quick poking around shows stuff like this, which is bloody annoyingly formatted but whatever, or this, which is uselessly outdated but neat anyway. Or this which doesn't focus on political anything but it's a neat visualization anyway. Tentative conclusion I'm seeing is that so far as political lean and firearms killing people, dems do indeed probably "win" in total amount and percent of the national total... and republicans in terms of per-capita deaths. It's an interesting thing, with the casual and lazy extrapolation being that if any of the democrat population strongholds were republican ones, they'd be a lot more likely to have an even better chance of "winning" the comparison. It's not a good one, because a lot of republican strongholds are complete shitholes with known contributory effects to suicide et al rates, but hey, if we're going to casually asspull numbers in regards to an article by a nut that was doing it even worse, I'm going to call it fair game :V

And in other news, apparently the trump administration is having some degree of a go at demoralizing AIDS/HIV advocacy groups that previously advised presidents on the subject. Neat fluff/assassination piece. It's accurate that the ONAP page still has slag all on it. Anyone know if the twit's just put something else in charge of it, or are epidemics just not high on the POTUS list of priorities?

[smjjames]

Pfft, he doesn't seem to have a workable strategy on anything, they're saying the same thing many others in niche areas are saying 'Trump Admin, you have absolutely no coherent strategy, where is it? You never gave us or indicated any!". He hasn't even filled up so many positions which doesn't help things either.

It'd probably be accurate to say that epidemics and disease control isn't high on Bannon's priorities.

[Reelya]

50 American women are shot every month in intimate partner homicides, you can bet your money those are correlated with gun ownership, therefore Republicans are all wife shooting psychos. See how the game is played?

Nope. I'll bet you a reasonable sum of money that they're correlated with a bunch of other things (like residing in generally democratic urban areas) more than party alignment.

Well actually yes if you assume that party affiliation isn't a determining factor. Republicans are twice as likely to own a gun as Democrats. So anything that's only correlated with gun ownership, and in which party affiliation isn't a controlling variable will in fact be twice as likely in a Republican household.

If you think that it's still more likely in a Democrat household despite them having half the guns then you'd have to come up with factors that double the change of a Democrat husband shooting his wife as opposed to a Republican one, and that's just fanciful, given that you cited a myth:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25477015

rates of intimate partner homicide may be higher in rural locales than urban and suburban locales

[smjjames]

Party affiliation is just a coincidential variable, Republicans are just as likely to kill someone with a gun as a Democrat. Besides, trying to use politics as a variable in the gun violence problem is just going to rile people up. Not neccesarily here, but it doesn't help with the argument over guns because it makes no sense and it just sounds like you'd be trying to hyperpoliticise the issue, at least more than it already is.

Also, the WH is trying to defang, so to speak, the Russia sanctions that are going through Congress. In normal times, we'd probably just shrug and dismiss it as usual political wrangling. But these aren't normal times, and this admin has a REALLY strange behavior of being bizarredly friendly with Russia.

[Reelya]

Queue the huge Trump expansion into Russian and Saudi hotels after he steps down.

[RedKing]

Is it really that strange that an administration riddled with figures with shady Russian connections is super-friendly with Russia?
It's a bit like saying "that pedophile has a bizarre interest in young children".

[smjjames]

Is it really that strange that an administration riddled with figures with shady Russian connections is super-friendly with Russia?
It's a bit like saying "that pedophile has a bizarre interest in young children".

In THOSE terms, no, but in terms of politics and what Russia did, it is bizarre.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I, for one, am in favor of better relations with Russia.  Both due to it is a good thing to have friendlier relations with the nation with the highest amount of active nuclear weapons (allowing for faster disarmament as both would be less worried about the other using them.  Plus, the US and Russia combined have over 90% of the things in existence.), and the fact better connections between the nations means sanctions will become more powerful of a tool for the next president.

[smjjames]

We ALL would love better relations with Russia, but that doesn't work when Putin is actively trying to undermine the US and sees us as the enemy.

[Frumple]

... I'd be in favor of better relations with russia if it weren't for that not-so-small chance of going for them meaning we end up hand in hand with yet another regime cheerfully intent on conquering nearby countries and murdering bits and pieces of neighboring populations. The lologaggle of human rights violations wouldn't be terribly attractive, either, just like it isn't to all the other jackasses intent on that we've yoked ourselves to. Or the connections with an iffy economy entirely too reliant on gas and whatnot and riddled with more corruption than a house half collapsed by wormrot. And hey, the whole regular cyberattacks and whatnot leaves me thinking maybe them as an ally wouldn't be much if at all better than them as a non-ally. Also it shitting on the rest of the european connection and gods know what else wouldn't be much of a bonus.

Like, yes, it has nukes. Basically everything else about it we probably want little or nothing to do with.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

We ALL would love better relations with Russia, but that doesn't work when Putin is actively trying to undermine the US and sees us as the enemy.

How much of that is sourced in us having poor relations and how much is due to other reasons, though?  Not a rhetorical question, to be clear.  NATO is pretty much explicitly to counter Russia, after all.  (Minor question on NATO, by the way.  Heard Estonia is the only one over in Europe to meet the EU debt goals and the requested military spending of NATO recently (know how to track it down, but phone limits me).  What nations are behind on that latter part, out of curiousity?)

... I'd be in favor of better relations with russia if it weren't for that not-so-small chance of going for them meaning we end up hand in hand with yet another regime cheerfully intent on conquering nearby countries and murdering bits and pieces of neighboring populations. The lologaggle of human rights violations wouldn't be terribly attractive, either, just like it isn't to all the other jackasses intent on that we've yoked ourselves to. Or the connections with an iffy economy entirely too reliant on gas and whatnot and riddled with more corruption than a house half collapsed by wormrot. And hey, the whole regular cyberattacks and whatnot leaves me thinking maybe them as an ally wouldn't be much if at all better than them as a non-ally. Also it shitting on the rest of the european connection and gods know what else wouldn't be much of a bonus.

Like, yes, it has nukes. Basically everything else about it we probably want little or nothing to do with.

For the first and second sentences, would you kindly give a list of examples so I can look into them myself?
Third sentence, from a few sources I have come across, Russia is trying to modernize their economy and using gas to help as funding (can't track down right now due to on phone).  As for corruption, examples?
Fourth sent.: Why would cyberattacks not lower due to friendlier relations?
Fifth sent.: Europe is kinda a mess for how far things would be damaged, but I can admit it would largely be an across the board thing.

[Frumple]

That first bit, as to the ones behind... honestly? From what I understand and can remember from the last time I checked into that ruddy nonsense, basically none. Those debt goals and that military spending were goals, not mandates or requests, and if I'm not misremembering their deadline was somewhere in the 2020 or beyond range. And that "deadline" was nothing but a, "Hey, if we ain't there yet come that point let's talk, see if we can't hash some things out" sort of deal. Most NATO nations have been working towards them, military spending going up, and so on. One or two may have met some already, but that was never really the agreement to begin with. It (NATO nations not meeting certain spending levels, et al) has came up recently-ish in US political discourse, but most of the spin there has been pretty pure bullshit.

Examples, you can look to ukraine for an easy one, you can look to what's been going down in chechnya re: homosexuals (and russia's treatment of them and any number of other groups, for that matter) that's been going on as russia, despite having significant control over 'em, pointedly ignore it; if you want another ally with similar human rights that's been on the up and up for the murder, you can go poke at saudi arabia and yemen. I'd have to brush up for a second (and it's way too damn late for that) on neighbor murder for russia, if you're not going to count ukraine, but it's not like they haven't indulged to one extent or another in the last few decades. Russia's issues with human rights and geopolitical aggression aren't exactly hard to notice. Probably harder to miss, really. They're maybe not as bad as some ME/Africa/etc. hellholes, but that's not exactly a shining comparison and it damn sure doesn't recommend them as someone we particularly want to buddy up with. We have enough problems with that shit as is without inviting more.

Economy wise they're still pretty much entirely reliant on gas. Maybe they're working away from that, but they're not there by a country mile, and we've latched ourselves to enough oil baron equivalents as is, particularly belligerent ones inclined towards pissing on our more aligned allies' interests and sensibilities. Corruption, bloody hell, if you want more examples than you feel like shaking a stick at, just use google. You'll find all sorts of fun crap. It's not a subtle issue by any stretch of the meaning.

Re: cyberattacks, because russia can be trusted about as far as the country can be thrown on the subject. They've shown zero inclination towards giving a single shit about the extent you are or are not their ally so far as that sort of infiltration et al goes. We know at this point that their reaction to being told straight up to knock that shit the hell off is to keep going -- why in the name of anything would we expect that to stop, regardless of whatever agreements we came to? What matters isn't friendliness, but how much they think they can get away with, and widening the arms isn't exactly going to lessen that.

Seriously, they're a country we've had openly antagonistic relationships for decades and they've shown little interest in substantially cooling that, that are belligerent to our actual allies and basically everyone, have little to no substantial gains to offer us economically that would offset the costs of kneecapping our relationship with some of the largest trading blocks in the world, and on, and on, and on. The sole and single benefit they'd bring to the table is potential strides towards nonprofiliation -- and, hey, we also know exactly how much their current administration's word or assurances are worth on that front, too. So much for that "we don't build bombs, you don't invade" thing. State of russia and its leadership as is, trying to embrace that is how you get in a knife in the kidneys either from knock-on effects or straight malfeasance. They'd have to shape a hell of a lot up and mend a whole passel of burnt bridges around them before working to buddy up would stop being a significant net loss for the US. They don't bring anything to the table for us except pain and stuff we could get elsewhere without nearly the complications.

That might change after putin steps down or dies of old age, or somehow they manage to purge a bucketload of problems from the country, but until then sweet hell we seriously don't want much to do with 'em.

[Descan]

Hah! Russia. Purge.

It's funny because their leadership kills dissidents over and over and over again for decades.