Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

Wow, he was running to hit Vegas and Cancun as part of a plea deal? I hope I get that prosecutor and judge if I'm ever charged.

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[unclevlad]

40 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Wow, he was running to hit Vegas and Cancun as part of a plea deal? I hope I get that prosecutor and judge if I'm ever charged.

 

 

Can't do that with the prosecutor, probably, but hey, for the judge, just appoint them.

[archer]

16 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Trump Indicted For Taking Top-Secret Documents To His Mar-A-Lago Social Club

 

According to biblical numerology, seven is the perfect number.

 

Trump was indicted on seven counts in this instance.

 

Therefore by the transitive property of federal crimes, Trump is perfect.

 

< share this with all your MAGA friends >

 

/s

[Lord Liaden]

Perfect criminal? I dunno. He'd have to have been smarter about it.

[Old Man]

He's up to 38 counts now.  That's over five times as perfect!

[death tribble]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

Perfect criminal? I dunno. He'd have to have been smarter about it.

But he's not a smooth criminal......

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, death tribble said:

But he's not a smooth criminal......

 

I dunno, I hear he's got a big new fundraising campaign going...altho it's too early to know how well it's doing.  But if it's anything like his prior ones?

 

Looks pretty smooth to me...............

[death tribble]

unclevlad,

 

It was a Michael Jackson joke. SIGH !

 

And in latest news, Boris Johnson has resigned from Parliament.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-65860705

Many people will be happy about this.

[Lord Liaden]

5 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

I dunno, I hear he's got a big new fundraising campaign going...altho it's too early to know how well it's doing.  But if it's anything like his prior ones?

 

Looks pretty smooth to me...............

 

Yeah, Michael Jackson joke... but only Trump's most gullible brainwashed cultists would fall for his grift at this point. I mean, his lies and scams are so clumsy and transparent.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[BoloOfEarth]

23 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Yeah, Michael Jackson joke... but only Trump's most gullible brainwashed cultists would fall for his grift at this point.

 

So... only about 40% of the electorate, then?

[unclevlad]

They're clumsy and transparent TO YOU.  They're still Gospel Truth to far too many.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/03/14/republicans-increasingly-realize-theres-no-evidence-of-election-fraud-but-most-still-think-2020-election-was-stolen-anyway-poll-finds/?sh=6f6dbf9c28ec

 

Quote

The CNN poll, conducted March 8-12 among 1,045 Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents, found 63% of respondents believe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election, while 37% believe he did.

 

Of that 63%, only 52% say they think there’s “solid evidence” the election was stolen, while 48% say they’re going based on “suspicion only.”

 

So about 1/3 of responding Republicans still believed the election lies.  I can't accept a "most gullible brainwashed cultist" label on a group THIS large.  That's 10s of million of people.  

[Old Man]

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

So about 1/3 of responding Republicans still believed the election lies.  I can't accept a "most gullible brainwashed cultist" label on a group THIS large.  That's 10s of million of people.  

 

Some of them believe the lie.  Others know it's a lie but pretend to believe it because Trump enables their racism and hate.

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

Some of them believe the lie.  Others know it's a lie but pretend to believe it because Trump enables their racism and hate.

 

Perhaps...but stipulating that's true for argument:  does it matter?  They choose to ignore it.  If anything, they're more strongly owned by Trump.  They know what he is, and they don't care;  that's a stronger link than being a gullible brainwashed cultist.  They're knowing, willing accomplices.

[Lord Liaden]

Yes, they may believe or suspect it. But I specified "falling for the grift." Increasingly, Republicans who have already been burned by Trump's hustles are shying away from actually giving him more money, and the indicators I've seen are that those who still would are a significantly smaller number than those who still believe the Big Lie or support his candidacy. They may vote for him, but they don't trust him enough to donate to him.

 

I guess that's another example of the mental pretzeling they go through to justify their stand.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Ranxerox]

Nebraskans Are Really Starved For Entertainment

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Ranxerox said:

Nebraskans Are Really Starved For Entertainment

 

Is that really so different from the 2020 election season, the process of finally certifying the election after the insurrectionists were removed on Jan. 6th, and the subsequent hearings?  More recently, the circus getting a Speaker named?

[Iuz the Evil]

While I certainly do not underestimate the capacity of groups of humans to be stupid and willfully ignorant, I think there is also a plausible explanation that among Trump supporters there isn’t a viable option seen by them at this time. Aside from Desantis (who is in my mind very threatening as he may arguably be more competent in his weaponizing political cruelty as well as his policy decisions, almost all of which I find deeply troubling), who do they turn to as a voice against the group calling them stupid, willfully ignorant and racist? They believe themselves to be the subject of deep cultural disdain, by a group they hold in equal contempt.

 

 It’s the conflict, in my opinion, between urban and rural, by region, that goes back many years. They don’t see another option, and in truth there isn’t one being presented at the moment they would find palatable. The philosophical and political divisions are incredibly deep. Media bubbles are too impermeable. To question the political dogma of one party is heresy. Even “yes, but” on any topic gets you ostracized.

 

I believe it’s a symptom of pretty serious problems in this nation, which although not in general unprecedented are at a fever pitch. Others, may of course differ - I rather hope people do.

[DShomshak]

I've speculated here before about the differing incentive structures between small towns and big cities, that create different worldviews. But the June '23 Scientific American has an article in the "Mind Matters" column about research finding differences in how liberals and conservatives see the world that are even deeper than I thought. It goes beyond morality all the way down to ontology -- what people believe the world fundamentally *is.*

 

Psychologists Jer Clifton and Nick Kerry find the strongest correlate with conservatism is what they call "hierarchical world belief": that existence falls into clear, distinct, and ranked categories. A world of bold, black lines. And these distinctions and rankings are real, and terribly important. Liberals tend to score less in this worldview: categories are blurry; the lines are, metaphorically speaking, dotted or in shades of gray, and the distinctions are more likely to be seen as arbitrary or even silly.

 

As Clifton and Kerry note, you can see why conservatives freak out so much about LGBTQ+ issues. If you see gender differences as innate, fundamental, ironclad and laid down by God before the beginning of the world, suggestions that the categories are just cultural accidents, a spectrum of possibilities, with overlap or movement between them -- well, you might as well be saying that up is sometimes down. Or abortions: If you think human life has a distinct and definite beginning, you see this very much unlike if you think humanness develops gradually with no distinct and definite threshold. And immigration, of course, involves literal lines as well as the all-important distinction between Us and Them.

 

Several of these boundaries, long generally accepted in Western culture, are under assault at once -- politically, culturally, even scientifically. Clifton and Kerry hopefully imagine that recognizing this difference in worldview can help people communicate and persuade past those differences. Author Clifton's example is trying to persuade a conservative to take a more inclusive attitude to transgender issues by pointing out that "a small but consistent portion of babies are born with atypical genitalia and arbitrarily assigned a sex at birth, which suggests the line between male and female is not always perfectly clear." Persoanlly, I think the human tendency to respond to falsifying evidence by doubling down on beliefs makes this as counterproductive as calling the conservative stupid or bigoted. As the senator recently said, "I don't want reality!"

 

Trump tells his followers what they most want to hear: that they are radically separate from other Americans (and potential Americans), superior for that separation, hated by their jealous and evil inferiors, and therefore justified in hating those rivals in return. That's a drug of the mind that few people ever kick -- or could ever want to.

 

It doesn't help, though, that our two-party system plays into the hierarchical worldview. Even if a fair number of Republicans are tired of Trumpian antics and feel the paranoid nihilism of his movement, not many of them likely can bring themselves to vote for a party they see as a hive-mind trying to make their children into transgender Socialists who hate God, the white race, and the flag. Be cause it's not possible to imagine Democrats as a blurry, shifting coalition of diverse interests with all the party discipline of a herd of cats.

 

Anyway, it's an interesting article. I recommend it.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

ADDENDUM: It's important to note that Clifton emphasizes that this emphasis or de-emphasis on ranked categories is itself a *tendency,* not itself an ironclad boundary or category! Even the most conservative person might see some boundaries as unimportant; even the most liberal can see some distinctions as vital and uncrossable. So, perhaps there's some hope in persuading at least some people to abandon Trumpian tribalism and status-paranoia by seeing different boundary lines and categories as the ones that matter.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

[Pattern Ghost]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

Clifton's example is trying to persuade a conservative to take a more inclusive attitude to transgender issues by pointing out that "a small but consistent portion of babies are born with atypical genitalia and arbitrarily assigned a sex at birth, which suggests the line between male and female is not always perfectly clear."

 

I'm pretty sure this would convince nobody. Most conservatives (more talking heads, less so rank and file citizens) I've seen expressing an opinion agree that these intersex conditions occur, and express varying levels of sympathy toward these cases. What they don't like are people born with normal genitalia who say that they're of the opposite gender than goes with their genitalia. They get further confused with the vast spectrum of circumstances that are now being taken in under the transgender umbrella by trans-rights activism.

 

IMO, a better way to use the atypical genitalia argument is this: There have been many cases where a person was born with ambiguous genitalia, and a doctor made the call to assign a sex to the infant based on what the surgeon felt they could best "correct" the genitalia to, regardless of chromosome. This caused a problem later in life as these children often didn't feel  "right" in their bodies. A genetic male assigned female at birth, and raised as a female, for example, would eventually figure out something was up, and be caused great emotional trauma as a result. News pieces and news magazine shows were devoted to this topic as far back as, say, the 80s, and the debate continues to this day. (I remember them coming up at least in the early 80s time frame on shows like 60 Minutes.) So, get the person to agree that this is a messed up situation. Shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully, they will sympathize with stories of a boy being surgically altered and raised as a girl (or vice versa) and this causing problems.

 

Then say that this must mean we have an innate sense of our gender. Once agreement is reached, flip the script. Talk about a boy who's born and raised as a boy but has a strong innate feeling that he's a girl. This causes great emotional distress. What's the solution? Well, you can't fix the thing that tells a person what their sex is, since nobody knows what it is. So, you take steps to make them comfortable in their body, and to treat them as the gender that's appropriate. That might include purely social things, or hormone replacement therapy or various surgeries up to gender confirmation surgery.

 

Probably also wouldn't work, but you never know.

 

Good luck on convincing them that any of the other categories of people that fall under the trans umbrella are acceptable, though. Baby steps, I guess.

 

 

 

*As far as I know. I label this thing as "gender" based on some older thinking of one's gender being in your head and your sex being in your chromosomes. When those two don't align, it causes issues. Still seems to hold up, such as in the case of intersex/atypical genitalia children above, though it's a pretty simple model that doesn't address many other areas of gender identity.

[Cygnia]

*facepalms*

*headdesks*

 

Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Going To Get Rid Of The Block Feature, Enabling Greater Harassment

[unclevlad]

Well, Cygnia, look at it this way.

It's another step towards everyone bailing from Twitter, leading to its ultimate demise, replacement, or fire sale to someone with a clue.  As long as Musk is at the helm, it's clear that Twitter is in total freefall.

[Cygnia]

2 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Well, Cygnia, look at it this way.

It's another step towards everyone bailing from Twitter, leading to its ultimate demise, replacement, or fire sale to someone with a clue.  As long as Musk is at the helm, it's clear that Twitter is in total freefall.

Tesla looks like it's following suit....

 

17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot

 

Quote

SAN FRANCISCO — The school bus was displaying its stop sign and flashing red warning lights, a police report said, when Tillman Mitchell, 17, stepped off one afternoon in March. Then a Tesla Model Y approached on North Carolina Highway 561.

The car — allegedly in Autopilot mode — never slowed down.

 

It struck Mitchell at 45 mph. The teenager was thrown into the windshield, flew into the air and landed face down in the road, according to his great-aunt, Dorothy Lynch. Mitchell’s father heard the crash and rushed from his porch to find his son lying in the middle of the road.

“If it had been a smaller child,” Lynch said, “the child would be dead.”

 

 

The crash in North Carolina’s Halifax County, where a futuristic technology came barreling down a rural highway with devastating consequences, was one of 736 U.S. crashes since 2019 involving Teslas in Autopilot mode — far more than previously reported, according to a Washington Post analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. The number of such crashes has surged over the past four years, the data shows, reflecting the hazards associated with increasingly widespread use of Tesla’s futuristic driver-assistance technology as well as the growing presence of the cars on the nation’s roadways.

The number of deaths and serious injuries associated with Autopilot also has grown significantly, the data shows. When authorities first released a partial accounting of accidents involving Autopilot in June 2022, they counted only three deaths definitively linked to the technology. The most recent data includes at least 17 fatal incidents, 11 of them since last May, and five serious injuries.

 

[unclevlad]

The whole notion of autopilot has been inherently dangerous from day 1.  Trying to model the complexities of a real-world situation is, IMO, implicitly impossible, and even in situations where one would expect the software to cope...obviously, the code has to be absolutely ROCK SOLID, as well as highly responsive and adaptive.  Responsive and adaptive means acquiring and processing data frequently, and quickly.  The more processing that has to be done...the more chance something will slip.  Or that the code will have a hiccup.

 

I'm not necessarily against the idea;  the issue is that the 'experts' think their code is better than it is.  That's not a Musk problem per se, it's pretty much endemic among any class of 'experts.'  "We've tested everything we can think of, this code is good!"  Fine...but what did you NOT think of?

[Ternaugh]

It's interesting to note that the LVCC Loop, which utilizes Teslas in a tunnel system below the area around the Las Vegas Convention Center still uses a driver in each car. Autonomous driving of a Tesla isn't something that's foolproof in a single lane, one-way tunnel with traffic limited only to about 70 vehicles.