The following is presented without opinion or ancillary comment.
Neil M. Gorsuch, currently sitting on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, is now the leading contender for the Supreme Court seat vacated by the late Justice Scalia. According to the article, his best-known opinions came from the cases brought by evangelical-owned corporations such as Hobby Lobby when they argued that the ACA would violate their religious beliefs by allowing female employees to have access to the full range of contraceptive procedures via health insurance.
I am never, ever going to pass up the opportunity to remind anyone that this pick was the one that was, quite literally, STOLEN from Barack Obama in a historically unprecedented act of obstruction.
By the way folks, check out the orders just handed down to the USDA. If anything I've UNDERSTATED to this point how bad this is going to be. You are staring at a country on the brink of fascism.
Dakota Access Pipeline is, of course, back on. Since I live in ND, here's what happened: It was originally supposed to go near Bismarck, a 90% white, upper middle-class city. They of course said "not in my backyard, send it to the Indians", which is not only the very definition of institutional racism, but also a direct violation of our treaty with the tribe (what else is new). Of course, when the Native Americans and their allies start protesting, then the white residents of Bismarck think things have gone too far, and that the authorities need to crack down on them. America, in a nutshell. I swear to god, if you place 30% of the population of this country in Germany in the late 30s, they would have been enthusiastic Nazis.
Also Trump was part owner of the dapl pipeline.
In May 2015, according to campaign disclosure reports, Trump owned between $500,000 and $1 million worth of shares of Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s lead developer. He, his family or buddies probably still own shares.
Sean Spicer stating from the White Hoise briefing room that the administration believes 2-3 million people voted illegally. This is bat-shit insane, and casts a cultural aspersion on every person of Latino descent in this country.
@bob_veng if you mean "no, of course people disagree about facts. one person's fact may be another person's falsehood." No, it cannot. As I said facts are by definition provable and known to be true. There is no room to disagree. There is no such thing as "one person's fact".
there is "one person's fact" (notion) because different people percieve different things differently. even colour. of course, then, distance, size etc. the real, absolute property of the object is the fact of the world, not what we have agreed upon. even if we believe we hold a fact because we have proven a hypothesis, our notion may not in fact be factual because our methodolgy may be flawed etc. this doesn't remove the fact, the buiding block of reality from the world.
this is what fact means in common usage which brings forth the sentence "to disagree on facts" (to see the world differently), which is perfectly parsable by the vastvmajority of people and has a functional, constructive, coherent application in speech. it doesn't mean it's the cutting edge in epistemology, but then again, you don't gwt there by bending words either
I never said that I wouldn't move somewhere else if my smoking bothered someone. Often times I ask if my smoking bothers someone before lighting up - I don't even smoke in the house because my partner doesn't smoke. I have no problem with "not being a jerk".
I am meaning it as it relates to discussion. I've had people who, when they find out I smoke, think less of me or act like they're better than me. Or instances where someone feels it's their personal responsibility to "educate people". I already know it's bad for me.
Dakota Access Pipeline is, of course, back on. Since I live in ND, here's what happened: It was originally supposed to go near Bismarck, a 90% white, upper middle-class city. They of course said "not in my backyard, send it to the Indians", which is not only the very definition of institutional racism, but also a direct violation of our treaty with the tribe (what else is new). Of course, when the Native Americans and their allies start protesting, then the white residents of Bismarck think things have gone too far, and that the authorities need to crack down on them. America, in a nutshell. I swear to god, if you place 30% of the population of this country in Germany in the late 30s, they would have been enthusiastic Nazis.
Speaking as a gay man with Jewish ancestry, I can't compare a somewhat ignorant segment of the population with a tendency to "say mean things" and support a retarded brand of populism with a regime that gasses Jewish people and homosexuals. To me that's just a ridiculously idiotic stretch IMHO.
Dakota Access Pipeline is, of course, back on. Since I live in ND, here's what happened: It was originally supposed to go near Bismarck, a 90% white, upper middle-class city. They of course said "not in my backyard, send it to the Indians", which is not only the very definition of institutional racism, but also a direct violation of our treaty with the tribe (what else is new). Of course, when the Native Americans and their allies start protesting, then the white residents of Bismarck think things have gone too far, and that the authorities need to crack down on them. America, in a nutshell. I swear to god, if you place 30% of the population of this country in Germany in the late 30s, they would have been enthusiastic Nazis.
Speaking as a gay man with Jewish ancestry, I can't compare a somewhat ignorant segment of the population with a tendency to "say mean things" and support a retarded brand of populism with a regime that gasses Jewish people and homosexuals. To me that's just a ridiculously idiotic stretch IMHO.
Place them in a different time and country and that is exactly what they would be. Not active participants in atrocities maybe, but without a doubt "good Germans". There are studies that show that about this percentage of the population is prone to gravitate toward authoritarianism. The percentages seem to be between 18-30 in that regard. I mean hell, there was robust suppport of the Nazis in America before Pearl Harbor, including Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh.
No, I don't think so. You can't really say that. I agree with you on a lot of things but I think you're way off base here. To suggest that 30% of the American population would support the genocide of the Jewish people and murder of Polish people and homosexuals is just ridiculous. To compare supporting a pipeline and voting for a populist candidate, with gassing people, is just complete insanity. And to suggest what these people would be if transplanted doesn't help your argument considering that we're all a product of our own social reactions. Considering the exposure of living their, you might be on board with the atrocities. You just can't know these things, and to use them against your political opponents when there are still people suffering in this world as an extension of that regime is just irresponsible. You seem like a smart person. Aren't you better than that?
No, I don't think so. You can't really say that. I agree with you on a lot of things but I think you're way off base here. To suggest that 30% of the American population would support the genocide of the Jewish people and murder of Polish people and homosexuals is just ridiculous. To compare supporting a pipeline and voting for a populist candidate, with gassing people, is just complete insanity. I just don't know what else to tell you.
The question is how much of the German population ever knew about the death camps in the first place, or more importantly, didn't want to know. The German people of Nazi Germany weren't any more predisposed to that sort of evil than the rest of us. It consumed them all the same.
Well that's another matter entirely. I suspect many of them did. But again, you can't really speculate on what a person would be in another possible world. We are all the product of two things: our biology and our conditioning. Had you been exposed to the same social environment and stimulus as a lot of those Germans, you yourself might have been on board with the whole thing. You can't say unequivocally that you're wired to react one way or another. And if you're talking about transplanting these people, these millions and millions of people as they are right now, into Nazi Germany, then certainly they wouldn't be on board with it. Hell, I'm not even sure if most white nationalists would be on board with it to that extreme. Times have changed so much - people's values are different by comparison. Even democrats and socialists of that era would be considered reactionary and backwards by today's standards.
The only way to make your argument work is to suggest that these people are innately bad. That is, as a result of their core essence, they would've necessarily reacted a certain way in a given situation. But if you go down that road, then I'm afraid you yourself are becoming the Nazi.
As I've mentioned before, Nazism did not start with concentration camps. It took the better part of a decade to reach that point. And it started with the demonizing of "the other" and had about the same percentage of hardcore suppport as Trump does now. Hitler never received more than 33% of a legitimate vote. It starts with being ok when something happens to "those people". You can't start the history of Nazism at gas chambers, because it ignores how it got there. The world came to Berlin in '36 for the Olympics. Seeing the signs well in advance of any atrocities is the ONLY way to prevent it. If we wait til the extreme to point out the similarities, it's already far, far too late.
I am never, ever going to pass up the opportunity to remind anyone that this pick was the one that was, quite literally, STOLEN from Barack Obama in a historically unprecedented act of obstruction.
By the way folks, check out the orders just handed down to the USDA. If anything I've UNDERSTATED to this point how bad this is going to be. You are staring at a country on the brink of fascism.
I cannot disagree with the first assessment. My initial assessment after the death of Scalia was to suggest that everyone wait a month (a decent waiting period out of respect), after which Mr. Obama should have nominated someone for the Senate to confirm or deny. Had they denied the first person (which they would have) he should have kept nominating people until either a) they confirmed someone or b) whoever won the election assumed office, at which point filling the seat would be their problem.
I am not seeing any USDA news anywhere right now; even on the official website, usda.gov, the latest press releases are from 18 January. Some new executive order or something?
I was following the DAPL story on the other forum where I am the mod. Bottom line: the current path of the pipeline violates the treaties the United States has with those Nations and thus the treaty should be honored. Also, the company pushing the pipeline and State law enforcement brought in "outside contractors" to help with security, including possibly-untrained personnel who have done things such as releasing dogs onto protesters (I refuse to call them "water protectors" like Democracy Now! does; sometimes they are a little weird).
"Facts" are, themselves, weird things. There are provable facts--for a given volume, a sphere is the three-dimensional shape which has the smallest surface area--and there are unprovable facts--I am eating a shortbread cookie right now (at least, at the time of this writing). The first statement can be proven (and has been, which is why it is a provable fact); the second statement is a fact but none of you can prove it because none of you have evidence--the proverbial "pics or it didn't happen".
The statement "Trump's inauguration was the most watched (or had the highest attendance)" exists in a gray area. Sure, it is possible to prove it but it might be a little difficult without clarifying statements. Do you mean "it had the highest number of people who physically attended the event" or "it had the highest number of people streaming the event live online"? The *real* notion which no one has considered is this: it doesn't matter how many people attended the inauguration or watched it; that number is irrelevant. There could have been exactly 0 attendees and exactly 0 people watching online because the end result would have been the same. In other words, everyone worried about it--Trump included--is worrying over something meaningless, which happens a lot more often than people like to admit.
Incidentally, suggesting that some of your fellow citizens would have been "good Germans" or "enthusiastic Nazis" is a downward-sloping path you *really* don't want to pursue. I would advise walking away from that topic.
A significant proportion of almost any population will favour authoritarian measures which they believe to be in their interests. As inequalities deepen in developed countries this proportion has increased, which is leading to instability, and more prevalent 'tyrannies of the majority'.
My recollection was Obama was told by McConnell that the Senate would not even hold a hearing or at all consider anyone Obama put forward. So he nominated Garland and then McConnell and the senate ignored it. They never rejected him, they never considered him.
Sounds like the Trump administraton created a crisis - by firing everyone and leaving hundreds of government positions unfilled so that they could cry and blame Democrats for not signing a blank check approval for the people they want to install.
Sounds like the Trump administraton created a crisis - by firing everyone and leaving hundreds of government positions unfilled so that they could cry and blame Democrats for not signing a blank check approval for the people they want to install.
This is in fact, exactly what has happened, and is intentional. It's called "starving the beast". Destroy government from within, and then scream "see, government doesn't work". In addition, they have put a freeze on government wages. So when it turns out that there is ACTUALLY work to do, they can then hire a private, politcally connected contractor at 3x the cost.
And of course, here comes the executive order restricting refugees accesss to the United States, including....Iraq. IRAQ. We will reduce your country to rubble, likely kill at least a few of your family members, turn your country into a sectarian hellhole, but don't you DARE think about trying to escape here. After all, every good Christian knows Jesus would have turned his back on refugees. When this country finally destroys itself, the comeuppance will be beyond deserved. We are Rome in it's twillight.
In fact, let me tell you a story. The Lutheran Social Services here in town was about as unimpeachable an organization as you could find locally, until the baseless right-wing campaign against Syrian refugees started. Since that time, I have heard the director on local radio no less than 3 times trying to explain to nearly sociopathic callers that the destitute and hopeless Syrian refugees being brought into the community aren't terrorists who will kill them in their bed at night. None of the mass amount of people who turned on Lutheran Social Services nearly overnight will ever in their lives know a fraction of the misfortune of those caught up in the Syrian civil war. Yet THEY are the ones being put upon because they have to look at Muslims in their community. It makes me sick.
AND......tomorrow Trump will announce his plans for the Border Wall. I mean, would you look at this, it seems he is actually doing what he said in his campaign. I've been told more times than I can count on both this forum and by Trump supporters rationalizing their support of him that we can't take him literally, because that's not what he means. What a load of BS. So when can we start taking him literally?? My guess is never, because that's an argument that Democrats/liberals have been making, so it's dismissed out of hand, even though it's 100% correct. Of course, Mexico will not being paying for the wall. But, don't you know, Trump supporters have ALWAYS known that. They never chanted "Mexico" at the rallies when Trump asked who was going to pay for it. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
Jesus jumped up Christ, what are we talking about here, martial law in one of the major American cities?? Trump is basically just throwing Posse Comitatus out the window.
Jesus jumped up Christ, what are we talking about here, martial law in one of the major American cities?? Trump is basically just throwing Posse Comitatus out the window.
Well, Italy did send in the military and cleaned up the Mafia. I guess when one of your own gets shot in the face, raped, robbed, pimped and/or stalked by these parasites you will change your tune. Hope it doesn't come to that though.
Jesus jumped up Christ, what are we talking about here, martial law in one of the major American cities?? Trump is basically just throwing Posse Comitatus out the window.
Well, Italy did send in the military and cleaned up the Mafia. I guess when one of your own gets shot in the face, raped, robbed, pimped and/or stalked by these parasites you will change your tune. Hope it doesn't come to that though.
You do not send in federal troops because of 42 murders in one year in a city of almost 3 million people. And no, I would not support martial law if a family member got murdered.
42 murders? 228 shootings? Time for more guns right? That's always the answer from the gun lobby on the right.
But yeah he can't deploy military to a state. He should try though. We should let him try these things instead of telling him they are illegal, against the constitution, or dumb. No go for it dude. Spend all your energy sending the military to Illinois please stop every thing else. Operation Invade Illinois that would work out super for you.
But clearly he's creating a new story to distract and not have to defend his fake news views about winning the popular vote because he believes that he did when he didn't. Changing the story to distract.
His story of invading Chicago has pushed his conspiracy theory believing to the 3rd story instead of the lead story.
42 murders? 228 shootings? Time for more guns right? That's always the answer from the gun lobby on the right.
But yeah he can't deploy military to a state. He should try though. We should let him try these things instead of telling him they are illegal, against the constitution, or dumb. No go for it dude. Spend all your energy sending the military to Illinois please stop every thing else. Operation Invade Illinois that would work out super for you.
But clearly he's creating a new story to distract and not have to defend his fake news views about winning the popular vote because he believes that he did when he didn't. Changing the story to distract.
His story of invading Chicago has pushed his conspiracy theory believing to the 3rd story instead of the lead story.
You'll notice how the number of illegal votes apparently cast in the election has changed based on Hillary's relative popular vote total. Which means that of the 3 million votes that were apparently illegally cast, ALL of them (again, all THREE MILLION) went to the same candidate. I mean, just how ridiculous does this need to get??
You can make a great argument that liberals are obsessed with Hillary's popular vote total. But we aren't NEARLY as obsessed about it as Trump is. He has made up a totally separate, impossible reality in his mind to explain why he lost the popular vote, and it's hard to tell which is more disturbing: That the President has this kind of psychological drama playing out in his head, or that a good portion of the country believes it as well.
AND......tomorrow Trump will announce his plans for the Border Wall. I mean, would you look at this, it seems he is actually doing what he said in his campaign. I've been told more times than I can count on both this forum and by Trump supporters rationalizing their support of him that we can't take him literally, because that's not what he means. What a load of BS. So when can we start taking him literally?? My guess is never, because that's an argument that Democrats/liberals have been making, so it's dismissed out of hand, even though it's 100% correct. Of course, Mexico will not being paying for the wall. But, don't you know, Trump supporters have ALWAYS known that. They never chanted "Mexico" at the rallies when Trump asked who was going to pay for it. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
Jesus jumped up Christ, what are we talking about here, martial law in one of the major American cities?? Trump is basically just throwing Posse Comitatus out the window.
Oh come on.
It's no big deal.
Here in Canada, we call in the military into our major cities all the time, for insane reasons. They can be used for more than invading other countries you know. They can do more useful things like battling storms.
AND......tomorrow Trump will announce his plans for the Border Wall. I mean, would you look at this, it seems he is actually doing what he said in his campaign. I've been told more times than I can count on both this forum and by Trump supporters rationalizing their support of him that we can't take him literally, because that's not what he means. What a load of BS. So when can we start taking him literally?? My guess is never, because that's an argument that Democrats/liberals have been making, so it's dismissed out of hand, even though it's 100% correct. Of course, Mexico will not being paying for the wall. But, don't you know, Trump supporters have ALWAYS known that. They never chanted "Mexico" at the rallies when Trump asked who was going to pay for it. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
Jesus jumped up Christ, what are we talking about here, martial law in one of the major American cities?? Trump is basically just throwing Posse Comitatus out the window.
Oh come on.
It's no big deal.
Here in Canada, we call in the military into our major cities all the time, for insane reasons. They can be used for more than invading other countries you know. They can do more useful things like battling storms.
Policing in America is so heavily militarized already that bringing in the army would simply be a redundancy.
I thought "Feds" means federal police (FBI), not military. Is that wrong? Sending in the federal police if the local police cannot handle something seems like what it's meant for. That's not to say I think this situation calls for it.
BTW, 42 killings in 2017 after 25 days of the year is quite hardcore. Must be a war zone there. Or maybe the president doesn't understand how years work.
I thought "Feds" means federal police (FBI), not military. Is that wrong? Sending in the federal police if the local police cannot handle something seems like what it's meant for. That's not to say I think this situation calls for it.
BTW, 42 killings in 2017 after 25 days of the year is quite hardcore. Must be a war zone there. Or maybe the president doesn't understand how years work.
The idea that Chicago police don't already use massive amounts of force is laughable. They've had their own black sites for years where people have just disappeared for days at a time. These are nearly all gang-related, which means fighting for territory over drug sales, which is the inevitable result of having them be illegal in the first place and prosecute a never-ending war on them that can't be won. Go back to prohibition and you'll see the exact same violence. You make a mind-altering substance illegal, there will be violence to control territory to sell it.
The question is how much of the German population ever knew about the death camps in the first place, or more importantly, didn't want to know. The German people of Nazi Germany weren't any more predisposed to that sort of evil than the rest of us. It consumed them all the same.
Putting aside the other part of that debate, in response to this particular paragraph I wanted to plug an amazing book I read a year or so ago - They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer.
In a nutshell, the author, a Jew, went to live and work in Germany after the war as a research professor. For obvious reasons, he changed his name, and he became friends - genuine friends, he points out repeatedly - with ten Nazis in the small Hessian town he stayed while working at the University of Frankfurt. The book largely covers his observations and interviews with each of them, what they did, what they thought about it. What they thought was happening then, and what they thought a few scant years after the war, after "de-Nazification".
He also has a fair bit of fairly idiosyncratic political discussion that is in any case a half-century outdated, but that is either a minor blemish or interesting wrinkle on the central thesis of the book. It's the most humanised I've ever seen relatively ordinary, yet Nazi (because being a Nazi was ordinary), Germans of the period.
As an added bonus, the Internet Archive has it available for free perusal and download. I won't link directly, but it's easy to find in a search.
Comments
By the way folks, check out the orders just handed down to the USDA. If anything I've UNDERSTATED to this point how bad this is going to be. You are staring at a country on the brink of fascism.
In May 2015, according to campaign disclosure reports, Trump owned between $500,000 and $1 million worth of shares of Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s lead developer. He, his family or buddies probably still own shares.
this is what fact means in common usage which brings forth the sentence "to disagree on facts" (to see the world differently), which is perfectly parsable by the vastvmajority of people and has a functional, constructive, coherent application in speech. it doesn't mean it's the cutting edge in epistemology, but then again, you don't gwt there by bending words either
I am meaning it as it relates to discussion. I've had people who, when they find out I smoke, think less of me or act like they're better than me. Or instances where someone feels it's their personal responsibility to "educate people". I already know it's bad for me.
The only way to make your argument work is to suggest that these people are innately bad. That is, as a result of their core essence, they would've necessarily reacted a certain way in a given situation. But if you go down that road, then I'm afraid you yourself are becoming the Nazi.
I am not seeing any USDA news anywhere right now; even on the official website, usda.gov, the latest press releases are from 18 January. Some new executive order or something?
I was following the DAPL story on the other forum where I am the mod. Bottom line: the current path of the pipeline violates the treaties the United States has with those Nations and thus the treaty should be honored. Also, the company pushing the pipeline and State law enforcement brought in "outside contractors" to help with security, including possibly-untrained personnel who have done things such as releasing dogs onto protesters (I refuse to call them "water protectors" like Democracy Now! does; sometimes they are a little weird).
"Facts" are, themselves, weird things. There are provable facts--for a given volume, a sphere is the three-dimensional shape which has the smallest surface area--and there are unprovable facts--I am eating a shortbread cookie right now (at least, at the time of this writing). The first statement can be proven (and has been, which is why it is a provable fact); the second statement is a fact but none of you can prove it because none of you have evidence--the proverbial "pics or it didn't happen".
The statement "Trump's inauguration was the most watched (or had the highest attendance)" exists in a gray area. Sure, it is possible to prove it but it might be a little difficult without clarifying statements. Do you mean "it had the highest number of people who physically attended the event" or "it had the highest number of people streaming the event live online"? The *real* notion which no one has considered is this: it doesn't matter how many people attended the inauguration or watched it; that number is irrelevant. There could have been exactly 0 attendees and exactly 0 people watching online because the end result would have been the same. In other words, everyone worried about it--Trump included--is worrying over something meaningless, which happens a lot more often than people like to admit.
Incidentally, suggesting that some of your fellow citizens would have been "good Germans" or "enthusiastic Nazis" is a downward-sloping path you *really* don't want to pursue. I would advise walking away from that topic.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/24/usda-science-researchers-ordered-to-stop-publishing-news-releases-other-documents/
In fact, let me tell you a story. The Lutheran Social Services here in town was about as unimpeachable an organization as you could find locally, until the baseless right-wing campaign against Syrian refugees started. Since that time, I have heard the director on local radio no less than 3 times trying to explain to nearly sociopathic callers that the destitute and hopeless Syrian refugees being brought into the community aren't terrorists who will kill them in their bed at night. None of the mass amount of people who turned on Lutheran Social Services nearly overnight will ever in their lives know a fraction of the misfortune of those caught up in the Syrian civil war. Yet THEY are the ones being put upon because they have to look at Muslims in their community. It makes me sick.
for reference
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4148498/Spicer-waged-Twitter-feud-against-Dippin-Dots.html
AND:
Jesus jumped up Christ, what are we talking about here, martial law in one of the major American cities?? Trump is basically just throwing Posse Comitatus out the window.
But yeah he can't deploy military to a state. He should try though. We should let him try these things instead of telling him they are illegal, against the constitution, or dumb. No go for it dude. Spend all your energy sending the military to Illinois please stop every thing else. Operation Invade Illinois that would work out super for you.
But clearly he's creating a new story to distract and not have to defend his fake news views about winning the popular vote because he believes that he did when he didn't. Changing the story to distract.
His story of invading Chicago has pushed his conspiracy theory believing to the 3rd story instead of the lead story.
You can make a great argument that liberals are obsessed with Hillary's popular vote total. But we aren't NEARLY as obsessed about it as Trump is. He has made up a totally separate, impossible reality in his mind to explain why he lost the popular vote, and it's hard to tell which is more disturbing: That the President has this kind of psychological drama playing out in his head, or that a good portion of the country believes it as well.
It's no big deal.
Here in Canada, we call in the military into our major cities all the time, for insane reasons. They can be used for more than invading other countries you know. They can do more useful things like battling storms.
BTW, 42 killings in 2017 after 25 days of the year is quite hardcore. Must be a war zone there. Or maybe the president doesn't understand how years work.
In a nutshell, the author, a Jew, went to live and work in Germany after the war as a research professor. For obvious reasons, he changed his name, and he became friends - genuine friends, he points out repeatedly - with ten Nazis in the small Hessian town he stayed while working at the University of Frankfurt. The book largely covers his observations and interviews with each of them, what they did, what they thought about it. What they thought was happening then, and what they thought a few scant years after the war, after "de-Nazification".
He also has a fair bit of fairly idiosyncratic political discussion that is in any case a half-century outdated, but that is either a minor blemish or interesting wrinkle on the central thesis of the book. It's the most humanised I've ever seen relatively ordinary, yet Nazi (because being a Nazi was ordinary), Germans of the period.
As an added bonus, the Internet Archive has it available for free perusal and download. I won't link directly, but it's easy to find in a search.