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Cacti

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Posts posted by Cacti

  1. 4 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    I agree.  What’s matters is that he lied to Congress while under oath.  And if he would lie about inconsequential items what else was he lie about?

    From a moral standpoint, is lying under oath about such "inconsequential items" worse than lying while not under oath? And if not using a moral argument, what is it about the former that is so egregious that it should be used as a disqualifier for SCOTUS? And why shouldn’t such a character flaw or otherwise questionable behavior be a disqualifier for the other branches of government?

  2. 2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

    This. Build the narrative.

    Say "unfit to serve" over and over and over and over. Have every Dem candidate across the nation make it part of their stump speech for this week. Coordinate a message and communicate it like you have some balls.

    I think you’re onto something; repetition is powerful. After all, is there one rational person who doesn’t associate dead hookers with Craig James when they hear CJK5H? That’s the power of a memorable and short acronym.

    BKUTS (Brett Kavanaugh unfit to serve) is good, as is something like BKRAL (Brett Kavanaugh rapes and lies).

    Feel free to use either one.

    • Like 1
  3. 12 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    Over the next 10 years, it’s highly likely we have an economic crash and/or a major war plus all the natural disasters on top of it.  

    The only hope is grassroots mobilization and some kind of enlightenment moment in American civics. 

    What “kind of enlightenment moment in American civics” will help us avoid an economic crash, a major war and natural disasters?

  4. On ‎9‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 9:16 AM, slorch said:

    Google?  There is little doubt they manipulate search results.  IDGAF.  If I don't like it, I can use another search engine/ browser.

     

    On ‎9‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 9:44 AM, Bozo_Casanova said:

    I have seen zero, ZERO credible evidence that there is a ideological bias in favor of the American political left built into the code or that human beings acting on a political bias are intervening to override the code.

     

    If you believe search results are biased, read this article. If you don't believe search results are biased, read this article.  Whatever your belief is you can use this piece to support your position. 

    Google News serves conservatives and liberals similar results, but favors mainstream media

     

    Quote

    We found, as have others, no evidence that major technology companies collude against conservatives or tweak their algorithms to return politically slanted search results.

    ...our research has found that Google News algorithms recommended virtually identical news sources to both liberals and conservatives. That’s an important point to keep in mind when evaluating accusations that Google News is biased.

    There is, however, one aspect of this lack of personalization that may strike conservatives the wrong way: Established mainstream news outlets strongly dominate the results, regardless of what a user is searching for. Of all the Google News recommendations we collected, a full 49 percent – nearly half – were to just five national news organizations: The New York Times, CNN, Politico, The Washington Post and HuffPost. And those five, much like other mainstream news organizations, tend to be seen as center-left.

    However, there is reason to understand – even if not to agree with – claims of bias. First, Google News search results do favor legacy news organizations, ones with a long history. In our study, of the 14 news sites that ranked highly on at least one search, only three were newer “digital-first” news organizations. The rest were legacy newspapers, national TV stations and magazines.

     

  5. 1 hour ago, hornbri said:

    I really thought all of you were trolling with the whole "she is making white supremacy signs" thing. I am beginning to think you all actually believe it now.

    What’s not to believe? I initially thought that the claim of Zina flashing the ‘white power’ gesture was overreaching, but new information has caused me to reconsider.

    According to Oxford’s Dictionary of First Names, Zina is a Russian name…short form of Zinaida.  From that—and unless she specifically denies it under oath—I think it’s perfectly logical to assume that she (like all Trumpkins) is at least a Russian apologist, ergo a white supremacist.  

  6. 5 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

    John McCain planned his own funeral.  Everyone who spoke and everyone who was invited had his approval...He knew what he wanted, and he got it. 

    So you’re saying that McCain vetted each eulogy?  That before his death he was aware and approved of the political undertones of the eulogies? Yeah, maybe so. But I’d rather think that he wasn’t petty enough to personally approve of the political ‘digs’ and I’d rather think that he wouldn’t approve of his wife and Presidents Obama and Bush volunteering to serve as surrogates to deliver one last parting shot at a man they all despised.

    3 hours ago, VRHorn said:

    Well, let me try.

    As a Trump supporter, you don’t get to use terms like decency, decorum, and class. You support a piece of human garbage who has broken just about every established norm of the office.

    Clear enough, buddy?

    Your whole point falls apart if I’m not a Trump supporter. And since I only have 50 posts on Surly it shouldn’t be hard for you to do a little research and back up your claim that I support Trump. Want to give it a shot, or will you admit that your main point can’t be supported and that your entire post should have been limited to “Well, let me try”?

    • Fuck You 2
  7. 55 minutes ago, Nivek said:

    If I shit on your floor at house party and tried to fuck your wife and daughter and offered to share my crack with your son, stole money and pissed in your bed, chances are you would not invite me to the next party.

    And I would think you lacked decency because a long time ago, when you were a baby you shit on the floor, and peed your parents bed.

    Question is, can you see the difference or just bothsides-ism?

    Or in the words of Billy the Esteves, Reap it Murphy, you son of a bitch.

    I need danger snax to decipher these comments.

    • Like 1
  8. 1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

    How dare they honor an American hero who dedicated his life to serving his country while a cowardly lyin' shitgibbon who never served anyone but himself occupies the White House?

    I think you just made my point: It’s entirely possible (even preferable) to honor someone without making snide remarks about another person—even if the remarks are true. But then again I’m one of the olds on this forum, so maybe a politicized eulogy is the new norm.

    10 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

    Leader in the clubhouse for Most Decorumest Post in the Thread.

    I am humbled by this recognition and flattered that my post is chosen from hundreds of comments from scores of scholarly Surly posters. However, if an obviously-not-in-contention post—such as “FUCK TRUMP”—can get a “like”, then is seems to me that being recognized as the leader for the prestigious title of “Most Decorumest Post” should be worth at least one measly pos rep.

  9. From an earlier post quoting Alison Frankel:

    Quote

    Every eulogy at McCain’s funeral has the exact same subtext. Trump isn’t at the ceremony and no one has uttered his name. But man, the messages couldn’t be clearer.

    Trump has made a mockery of various political norms and protocols, as well as having a tendency to disrespect commonly practiced traditions. So I guess turnabout is fair play and civility can be disregarded by all, under any circumstances. It's a shame but I've become so jaded that it doesn't surprise me that it now seems acceptable to use a death as an opportunity to diminish someone (anyone) and to use a eulogy as a vehicle to deliver political shots.

    • Like 1
  10. On ‎8‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 11:47 PM, Aphelion said:

    So tell us how reality is.  What is the nature of reality?  Why is it that way?  What things exist and what things do not?  Do only physical things exist?  How did our world come to be?  Why this world and not some other?  I'm always interested to hear people's thoughts on this subject.

    I don’t have any original thoughts on the nature of reality. What views I do have were formed by combining thoughts (as I understand them) of John Archibald Wheeler and George Berkeley. With that preface, here we go:

    I don’t believe there is reality without conscious observation/perception. Quoting Wheeler, “Nothing is more astonishing about quantum mechanics than its allowing one to consider seriously the view that the universe would be nothing without observership as surely as a motor would be dead without electricity”. In addition—and to paraphrase Wheeler—observer’s consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence…the “world of existences” did not exist “prior” to human subjectivity. So Wheeler’s view (as I understand it) is that the universe, or reality, only comes into existence through human consciousness.

    Berkeley (again, as I understand him) had a similar view concerning the dependence of reality on observation/perception, except that he believed that there was an observer that preceded man and human consciousness.

    So, to repeat myself, I don’t believe there is reality without conscious observation/perception. Unfortunately I’m not able to discuss this or any other metaphysical position in depth. For that, you’ll have to somehow summon certain long-gone, Quackenbush’s posters.  

  11. Measles cases hit record high in Europe

    Quote

     

    "The majority of cases we are seeing are in teenagers and young adults who missed out on their MMR vaccine when they were children.

    More than 41,000 people have been infected in the first six months of 2018, leading to 37 deaths. Last year there were 23,927 cases and the year before 5,273. Experts blame this surge in infections on a drop in the number of people being vaccinated.

     

    Combine fraudulent science with an uncritical press 20 years ago, throw in a dash of stupid---and this is what you get. This is an example of how fake/misleading information can have dire consequences and how hard it is to counter once it is taken as truth by a small, but not insignificant portion of the population. And that's despite the fact that any reasonable person, after doing minimum research, can see that this claim against immunizations has been thoroughly discredited.  (no CR intended)

  12. 22 hours ago, TexArcher said:

    I wish I'd been born a couple hundred years later when all theistic religions have been outgrown and left on the scrap heap of terrible ideas... And that day is coming.  

    A couple of hundred years? It doesn’t appear that your utopia of a theist-free world will materialize within the next one thousand years, if ever.  

    The unaffiliated—defined as atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion—compromised 16.4% of the world 2010 population, but is projected to decline to 13.2 % by 2050. And by 2050 the unaffiliated are projected to grow their number by 99,190,000, while Christians and Muslims are projected to grow their number by 749,740,000 and 1,161,780,000, respectively. So for every 1 non-religious person added by 2050, there will be 19 theists added.  Link

  13. 45 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

    There is enough he said/she said confusion with the wife, but throw in a 2nd women who appears to have been punished differently than the coach and they have a problem.

    The assistant may not have been “punished” at all, not if she got a pay raise along with the transfer. If she did, that information should be easy to obtain.

  14. 13 hours ago, Orca of Peace said:

    ...here is something showing how far right fascist that place has become.  A local hotel has developed a hit list of unwelcome Jews .

    I think the word “fascist” is too strong but let’s go with your definition: an establishment is fascist if they have a list of unwelcome people. By that definition the owner of the Red Hen, Stephanie Wilkinson, is also fascist, because she, too, has a list of people who aren’t welcome at her establishment, e.g., anyone who works for POTUS.

    Before we worry about “far-right fascism” behavior in Israel, maybe we should instead address fascism (by your definition) in the U.S., even if it’s the far-left variety.  

  15. 6 hours ago, ndawg said:

    I believe fivethirtyeight.com predicted that HRC had about a 75% chance of winning. Based on how close the electoral race was, and HRC winning the popular vote, the actual outcome suggests their prediction was accurate.

    Now, I do recall that some news outlet predicted HRC had a 98% chance of winning. That was some bullshit.

    I know I’m going to regret asking but maybe I’ll learn something about probability. If a 98% chance of winning was “bullshit” but a 75% chance was "accurate" (not bullshit), then at what % between the two did the transition occur?

  16. 1 hour ago, Message Board User said:

    This whole "AOC is the new face of the Democratic Party" narrative is a complete fabrication and intended to create another boogeyman where one doesn't exist.

    If the narrative is false then DNC chair, Tom Perez, is primarily responsible for creating the “bogeyman.” It was he who said AOC was “the future of our party.”  That’s not quite the same as saying "AOC is the new face of the Democratic Party" but it’s close enough to be conflated.

  17. 53 minutes ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

    Iran and Venezuela’s economies are crumbling under hyperinflation and mismanagement by 2 awful governments.... 

     

    Things Are So Bad In Iran That Afghan Migrants Are Going Home

     

    Quote

     

    More than 400,000 undocumented Afghan migrants left Iran for Afghanistan so far in 2018…

    "It's better here than in Iran," says Sediqullah. "Even if I earn 300 afghanis ($4) [per day], it's still more than I would make in Iran. I don't think many Afghans will stay in Iran. Many will come back to Afghanistan."

     

     

  18. My ideal government would involve, at least to some degree, sortition. This method of selecting political leaders would probably be more applicable on a local or state level, but here is one example where is could work on a national scale: From the article Let’s Toss for It by Sigmund Knag.

    Quote

    First, create a pool of qualified candidates by having each state nominate candidates from among its own judges. Second, fill the actual Supreme Court vacancy by a blind draw from that pool.

    He supports that suggestion with several logical reasons but I’ll only list one (my favorite): “the justices, no longer the creatures of the federal government, would have less inclination to expand the power of the central government.”

    Anyway, at first glance choosing politicians or judges by ‘lot-drawing’ may seem far-fetched and unworkable---and it may be on a national scale. But there’s no reason that a modified version of sortition wouldn’t work at the local or state level; after all, it seems to work well enough to use in our court system. That is, the way we select prospective jurors.

  19. 1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    It’s hilarious Ocasio-Cortez was a bartender in the Bronx a year ago and today she’s a clear and present danger to the neo-fascist capitalists.

    First and foremost she's a danger to the Democratic Party. As I mentioned earlier, the Republicans would love to be able to portray her and her socialist agenda as the face and agenda of the Democratic Party.  It matters little that she isn't the presidential candidate; association alone can be a powerful tool---just ask Democrats about the Willie Horton effect.

  20. 3 hours ago, FondrenRoad said:

    But she's already a hypocrite before she has even won the general election. 

    Maybe you're right.

    According to this article she criticized Crowley, saying: 

    Quote

    “Not all Democrats are the same,” she said in her May campaign video, adding — her voice rising with emotion — that a Democrat who “doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air cannot possibly represent us.”

    But evidently her parents decided that "our schools" weren't good enough for her. From the same article:

    Quote

    As a child, she was sent to school in Yorktown in Westchester County because of the dearth of quality schools in the Bronx.

    Also,

    Quote

    She attacked Mr. Crowley for taking corporate money, for not living in the district and for looking increasingly unlike the constituents of the Bronx and Queens he was elected to represent

    How is it possible to ignore her not-so-subtle reference to Crowley’s skin color? Race is certainly a factor in some races but most politicians would be castigated for referencing an opponents skin color.

     

    • Haha 1
  21. 53 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    I hope the Republicans vilify her as much as possible because she actually rocks.

    Vilify a socialist who supports a Muslim gubernatorial candidate?  The Republicans would like nothing better than to portray her as the face of the Democratic Party, with Maxine thrown in as a bonus.

  22. 1 hour ago, SpiralOut said:

     The Dems have developed no platform or real plan.  Their only play is "Fuck Trump!"  Which I guess might work, but will more likely just result in this next election having even lower voter turnout than the last one.

    The Democrats may not have a platform but they do have a resolution, thanks to DNC member Christine Pelosi.

    Democratic National Committee (DNC) will no longer accept campaign contributions sponsored by fossil fuel companies.

    Quote

    "Fossil fuel corporations are drowning our democracy in a tidal wave of dark oily money; they have deceived the public about the impacts of climate change, fought the growth of clean renewable energy, and corrupted our political system," the resolution reads.

    So it was the fossil fuel corporations who corrupted our political system? Shame on them for forcing our politicians to take their money. And who thought of using the phrase “dark oily money”? If they were trying to sound like Trump on Twitter---they succeeded.

  23. 45 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

    As goes the Shag, so goes the nation?

    I'm obviously talking about this group of people who would be the only ones reading my post.

    The vast majority of Surly posters on the politics forum won’t be around long enough to banish Trump. They’ll either have a heart attack, stroke or nervous breakdown before then, or, at the very least won’t be physically able to cast a ballot because their prolific posting has caused a severe case of carpel tunnel syndrome.  

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