EverythingIsFine
No bio...
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
I looked at a non random but still what seemed to be adequate sampling of the actual court cases within a month or two or the election and in pretty much every case, saw nothing at all to indicate extensive fraud. This includes not just the allegations but also looking into the actual comments and rulings by judges in some of these cases. I did see a lot of fraud claims simultaneously disproved. Based on that sampling I concluded that the process seemed to be working just fine. Obviously it’s been a while and I feel little need to revisit that, especially given that every specific brought up in this site so far over the past few months when it’s come up has turned out to be hogwash. Classic example: this supposed target gift card scam. I can’t find anything at all about it on Google. Zero. And the fact that you still declined to provide a source is absolutely screaming at me.
Also, precedent beats speculation. We do have a great precedent for a disputed election! Bush vs Gore. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. I know people have mixed feelings about the results, but the very fact that a legitimate grievance went through the full process, strongly implies that the same will happen again to future legitimate cases. And that was escalated from a state, Florida, that was horrifically unprepared for a recount and had poor procedures in place. So not only have we a demonstrated court escalation even when local government process is poor, we have a lot of other states that took lessons and tightened things up in terms of more and better written and followed procedures and many other improvements.
Meanwhile a lot of the 2020 lawsuits had trouble finding lawyers to pursue them, much less expert witnesses who declined to participate in droves once they saw the “evidence”.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
So I have a class starting up tomorrow that's required for my major, he's the only teacher for it, and he has a frankly horrendous ratemyprofessors rating. 2/5 off of 45 reviews, so sample size sure not massive, but even the positive 4 and 5 star reviews come with caveats and fully half of the reviews are a 1/5. He's got some sort of crazy setup where he doesn't use either Canvas or my university's home-grown LMS system (for posting assignments, grades, everything) but rather a custom Moodle setup that's very difficult to navigate, and the syllabus is not only confusing in its requirements but apparently he's also having us literally do 70% of the grading for him (madatory peer grading that... seems to be worth MORE points than actually doing the assignment itself! What??). There are all sorts of other signs that he's a little scattered and/or lazy, like extremely long pre-class videos, the classroom is located in the top floor of the um, athletic building (mostly it's a pool and a indoor courts and dance studios), the fact he posted winter's class setup by mistake and left it for most of the day, and still buried in the syllabus there's a whole series of tech setup steps for the code-related portion of the class and comments suggesting it should be done before the first class even starts -- yet the only email he's sent out, other than one that again linked to the WRONG CLASS, was one saying it would be nice to fill out our "profiles" on the page. All the comments are about how he's basically a non-existent teacher and going to class is almost worthless.
Anyways those are in some ways not relevant details. Mostly, it's just the quantity of awful ratings that's a bit shocking, at least for my teaching-focused university. My question: Do you think it's acceptable to ask the professor directly, whether in class or privately, why he has such a dreadful rating and if he plans to do anything differently? I know ratings != reality, but surely there's some merit to a sample size like that even if it's self-selected. And I'm honestly very tempted to, though maybe I should give it a few classes as a benefit of the doubt kind of thing.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
I will confess I just looked at the primary reddit threads and not the motte side, though they might be interesting and perhaps then I should, so I haven't examined it super in depth yet. But I'm actually more than happy to provide a definition, and I don't think it's actually all that difficult.
My own definition of a creep is someone who deliberately places themselves in situations to get, or verbally fishes for, excessive amounts or types of personal information from women, often largely unsolicited or abruptly sexual in nature. I think that captures pretty well what women mean by a creep. Some women might add an addendum that excessive leering might also qualify. Now, I'll concede that physical attractiveness of the male in question of course warps these standards a bit. We all know that happens (e.g. the HR meme). But it doesn't influence the definition itself, just the cutoff point of what constitutes "excessive" or maybe less often, "unsolicited". The definition I think is fine.
While no harm was demonstrated, he (at least to her view, obviously she didn't receive nor seek out the full story) did affirmatively demonstrate an a) unsolicited b) excessive and c) abruptly sexual interaction. The implication is that he views many otherwise innocent/normal interactions with women in a "I want to score", sex-seeking way. Someone interested primarily in not the personalities of women, but their sexual willingness to the exclusion of other things. That's a predator kind of mindset. Now, it's not actually his mindset (due to a wildly off base understanding of FWBs and a general unfamiliarity with female friendship generally) but you can forgive her for jumping to that conclusion, I think. And there actually are elements there that support the conclusion a bit! She makes a correlation-causation kind of judgement error in shunning him and spreading it around. More pessimistically (and more speculatively), it probably hurt her ego the implication that she's either really easy or she's only good for sex but not good enough for a relationship, so putting him in a "creep" bucket allows the problem to be him, not her.
Dictionary.com uses a bit more broad and uncharitable definition: "an obnoxious, disturbingly eccentric, deviant, or painfully introverted person". I don't like this definition at all because it combines and conflates a lot of behaviors and personalities together without much actual meaning. Maybe similar to what you're criticizing. I think it's grossly unfair to call someone a creep just for being a "painful introvert". What women are actually interested in, for sharing purposes, is to try to count "red flags" and due the absence of good data, often resort to less good measures including stereotypes in an attempt to keep themselves and those around them safe. It's understandable, but often imperfect and of course a bit vulnerable to gossips with bad intentions. The other element in being a "creep" is the "obnoxious" angle, which is the only thing I couldn't find a good way to include but should be, and perhaps also the part that leads to a more slippery slope and overbroad definition and use of the word.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
Well, if I'm honest part of my judgement is based on simply my experience of watching firsthand the Spanish-language videos, and my personal judgement of who to believe, but also there are two videos of different angles (which I saw but now can't find clean zoomed out links of because googling for original videos is a fucking horrible experience) that don't seem to support any real conversation between them. But it's also possible they had the conversation he claimed but she thought it would be a cheek kiss or a head kiss or something so it's not like any reasonable person is going to expect grabbing your whole head and planting a full on kiss on the lips in that situation?
I don't know how it comes across in my clumsy translation but all of his apologies were basically linked grammatically with some other excuse or with a connotation of "I have to" rather than "I want to". It's kind of the apology equivalent of being passive-aggressive.
So you think she didn't think it was a big deal except he said she said yes and that made it a big deal, because she was ok with the non consensual kiss but not ok with him claiming it was consensual, so after days of silence she released a statement denouncing the nonconsensual kiss?
That's pretty much right. She was fine being like, a little mistreated for the sake of not distracting from an awesome victory and celebrations. But when it morphed into a huge and deliberate misrepresentation, and him being so belligerent about it all, she felt she had to say something. My reading of her comments focuses on how she thinks it's more about him lacking respect for others than the actual vulnerability or any harm from the act itself. That Rubiales has created a "manipulative culture". And she realized that staying silent, rather than being a noble act, is in fact sending a message of impunity for bad actors to other women who might find themselves in similar situations. That's perfectly in keeping with for example the Wednesday release with the union, where she seems more interested in improving overall player conditions and a general sense of justice and being respected than an extraction of a specific punishment.
Because if there were true respect between the players and Rubiales, a kiss like that would be unthinkable.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
I might agree with the job analogy but you're missing a major piece about abusive relationships. They tend to emotionally damage both people and their inner reasoning to a degree that leads to future dysfunction. As opposed to the other examples, it leaves a lasting decreased ability to succeed in relationships in the future. If you start a business, but fail, you usually learn a lot and are less likely to make those same mistakes again for your second business. If you take a bad job, it might motivate you to get better ones. If you approach a girl poorly, you learn what doesn't work. If you suck at golf, you will probably get better when trying again.
But if the girl you are dating literally stabs you, not only do you have some medical recovery going on, but studies as well as practical psychological research and experience show that the patterns of harmful mental thought that have resulted from the relationship are very damaging to future relationships. It's easy to get stuck in bad modes of thought. Research suggests that victims of abuse frequently find themselves in abusive situations again in the future at dramatically higher raters than can be attributed just to environment alone. They literally become worse at picking good, emotionally healthy partners and relationships (especially without therapy).
EverythingIsFine
10mo ago
First of all, Clinton seemed genuinely surprised that classified info was found on the server. After all, investigations showed that nothing was clearly marked as such. There was no moment where she was told by the government officially, "hey, shut this down" and then she said no. Intent was all about FOIA and disclosure avoidance (not appropriation of government secrets), which is bad and sorta illegal but nothing super new in government and she was punished appropriately (politically, by the public - hell she lost an election in part because of it).
Contrast Trump. He clearly has explicitly labeled classified stuff. He knows it's classified. The government very officially says "give it back" and he says "no". That's as plain as the nose on your face.
EverythingIsFine
11mo ago
That’s a good way to phrase it. It’s maybe 40% I’m lazy and 60% I think finding a good match for a sock pair I like is a very tiny but nice part of the morning
EverythingIsFine
5mo ago
Trump was quite literally ten minutes away from potentially starting a war larger than Iraq and I’m not even joking. I’m referring to Trump (this info is from him directly) deciding to rescind his already-given order to strike the Iranian military directly and killing about 150 in response to downing a drone of ours. He says he changed his mind at that last minute because it (obviously) wasn’t proportionate. But to me, the fact it was considered at all and initially approved by Trump is a textbook example of going way too close to the edge.
I do appreciate the response actually, even if it does happen to the the last. I do like to reassess my beliefs on occasion, though I've yet to see any reasoning or evidence forcing a reassessment, to be honest.
I guess from a bit more of a meta view, it feels a bit to me that maybe this comes down to a bit of a, for lack of a better word, epistemological disagreement? Sure, I'm not spending hours and hours scouring primary sources, but there are journalists who literally get paid to do so and report their findings. I know media trust is always a little sensitive, but my general sense is that enough journalists actually care and/or do their jobs that if there was real meat in these allegations we'd at least get a "recent findings in GA raise questions" article or two from at least one reputable publication. Wouldn't an actual election scandal be helpful for viewership numbers that journalists chase to the exclusion of all else, according to some? And I feel like I'm also capable of putting stories through a moderately decent sniff test. Many articles for example immediately after the election included examples of claims and then what the official response was. In most if not all cases, my assessment was that the official responses fully addressed each concern with high-quality information without suspicious gaps or non-answers.
So in that context, repeating a litany of detailed questions about e.g. Oregon election procedures that require far more effort to respond to than to type, feels like it's unclear if those are real questions, rhetorical ones, or simply aspersions about my subject matter expertise or lack thereof. Right? That's how it felt to me at least. And frankly, it's a little insulting that you are claiming that I somehow "have little knowledge about" these things when you yourself have done near zero legwork to back yourself up.
I mean, do you propose some other method of finding the truth? How did you arrive at your conclusion that the election was seriously questionable? That's an honest question.
In some sense maybe you are right about the Target Gift Card Fraud being ultimately unimportant, but I think the phrasing and quality of evidence can still serve as a basis for getting a sense of scale. That's why I brought up the example of hearsay about a neighbor being VERY different in its implications than a directly observed canvasser offering bribes -- they both can be described fairly as "someone was handing out gift cards for checking unsealed ballots". Yes of course I would read the source if linked. Yes, I made a good faith effort to find it. I was actually quite frustrated I could not, which led me to the completely defensible and logical conclusion that it must not exist other than you misremembering something!!! I focused on the report because I frankly hate video as a format and would rather do almost anything else other than watch court recordings (text is far superior for finding relevant portions of a longer topic efficiently).
I'm of course much more interested in an allegation like one much upthread where you claim "We're not talking about millions of votes needing to swap, but appx. 40,000 in any of 5 different states, any of which would change the outcome if a single one did something as simple as requiring canvassing hundreds of thousands of votes which had no signed chain of custody receipts (and no election officials have yet been charged despite this being a crime in multiple states like AZ)."
Let's look together! Maybe this could inform in terms of how, today, I might look into an allegation. Googling for chain of custody problems, there seems to be a very worrying Georgia Star article claiming there are a lot of custody receipts missing, potentially a lot of votes. Maybe that's it? But wait, no, looks like there's also an article that seems pretty well researched with plenty of specifics that looks credible. They located all but 8 of ~1500 of the custody receipts, and with one county person saying she was alone and another saying she was too busy. But only 78,000 drop box ballots were submitted, so even assuming maximum fraud for the missing cases, I don't think that implies all that many ballots. Hundreds maybe? Bad, possibly deserving investigation (which the article implies but doesn't outright state is ongoing), but not election-tipping (the margin was what, 12k?). I don't default to assuming fraud of course, given its historical rarity etc etc. which I've mentioned, but on balance this doesn't seem to be something that makes me doubt the whole election. I don't see any reason to doubt the quality of the reporting nor the response from the elections department, do you?
Okay okay, looks like you mentioned AZ originally, maybe you weren't referring to GA, so lets keep looking and wait! Look here! A hit from some random message board linking the same original aggregator thegatewaypundit (which has overt calls to action at the bottom of their articles, not a great sign of an unbiased source) that led me to the Georgia Star article before. Maybe this is a lead? 740,000 votes worth with missing documentation? Tracing, tracing... Oh. Original source appears to be a "resolution to reclaim Arizona's electors" from some MAGA guy running for office whose Twitter... oh he's reposting a 9/11 conspiracy theory, stuff about the rapture, US government child abduction, all within the last two days or so. Credibility down the toilet and I'm not going to scroll that far back in his history, which is filled with basically the classic Twitter reposting of any and all theories about fraud, so I think I'm okay dismissing him as a serial reposter/hearsay guy.
Hmm, that also doesn't seem like what you might be referring to. Let's keep looking. I also come across a nice report again with a seeming good quality that seems a partial response to I guess it's Kari Lake's claim and lawsuit about 300,000 worth of missing chain of custody documents? I sort of dislike "fact checks" despite their usefulness and know they can have unfair assessments, especially in their "ratings" which don't always match the long-form responses but this one has what, on its face, appears to be a good summary of the case results:
The county filed a motion to dismiss the suit on Dec. 15, claiming Lake misunderstood the forms required in its chain of custody process. The county also said Lake’s claim “regarding chain of custody is based on an incomplete understanding of election administration and baseless speculation about what could happen at the County’s contractor, Runbeck Election Services – not on any allegations of what actually happened.”
On Dec. 19, Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson ruled Lake’s lawsuit could go to trial on two out of 10 initial counts — including the claim about the ballot chain of custody and a claim that some ballot printers malfunctioned because of an “intentional action” by an election official on Election Day, causing Lake to lose.
A witness for Lake, Heather Honey, an investigator and supply chain auditor, testified at trial that county election officials had not provided her with the delivery receipt forms that would show the county followed chain of custody procedures for ballots placed in drop boxes on Election Day. But during cross-examination by the county’s attorney, Honey testified that the forms did exist and that she had seen them in photos — they just weren’t physically provided through a public records request. Honey also testified that she was told that employees of Runbeck Election Services, an election software company headquartered in Phoenix, submitted about 50 ballots for family and friends into the ballot stream improperly. Honey later said she couldn’t identify those 50 ballots.
On Dec. 24, Thompson dismissed the last two counts of Lake’s suit, saying that Lake failed to provide evidence that officials intentionally took steps that changed the election outcome. The judge said, “Every single witness before the Court disclaimed any personal knowledge of such misconduct. The Court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence.”
Hmm. We see not only no evidence of wrongdoing, but also the process working (trial granted for strongest counts) as well as the one possibly questionable action affecting... 50 ballots. I think this is probably the claim you were referring to, and decide to stop my search.
If you see a flaw in my investigation technique, I'm all ears. But you can only go through this same source-seeking process so many times, obtain a totally reasonable and believable answer from a good source or sources before you start to assume a pattern. Yes, assumptions bad, but I mean, that's multiple times now across the last few days that you've had plenty of chances to bring up evidence and have not produced anything but either disproven or questionable or small-scale stuff. And, not a single actual link. Only a sort of vague 'hey go dig this way'. So the question really needs to be asked:
If this isn't how a normal interested citizen investigates, then how should they??? What are your actual expectations? Please help me out here. I cannot see what's so wrong about this kind of moderate depth dive that discovers little and decides to resurface.
The question of, well does that make it okay for the system to persecute or come down hard on people with doubts (or more) about the results? To an extent I actually agree with you. I think your original comment made some good points. For example, the disbarment attempt seems a bit much. However at the same time I do think I have the faith that the proceeding will end up being fair. It's also a bit of an interesting question exploring "how bogus does a bogus case have to be" to deserve to lose a law license? Rules prohibit, I forget the exact phrase, but roughly "knowingly arguing something blatantly unconstitutional or being grossly negligent in not knowing how blatantly illegal what you're arguing is" and say it is deserving of punishment "up to and including" revocation of the license. There might be a smaller punishment. There might be the other angle about duty to client vs. duty to fact/good faith that comes up. But painting it as the only reason more lawyers didn't join up is patently unfair, and mixes up cause and effect. Lawyers were already dropping off cases like flies even before their integrity came into question, quite a contrast to 2000 where lawyers flooded into Florida in short order. And I truly do think that it was a case of, they agree to take a look at the evidence and decide that the chances of victory are extremely low. At least that's my impression. My certainty on that particular isn't incredibly high I will concede.
All this to say, bringing it back, that near as I can figure, you just start with a baseline, strong distrust of all things justice system and government and media at once, while I do not? And that might truly be an irreconcilable difference. We all, epistemically, at some point decide to place our trust in some people or organizations more than others, on some sort of basis (whether passed on from another person of trust, personal experience, personal logical reasoning, etc). Perhaps that might be a more productive, other thread kind of question to explore.
Dude. LMGTFY link... I can't find anything. I'm like 5 pages in. I LITERALLY CANNOT find the claim, and suspect you can't either, or else you would have given me a link. Instead you perform a CLASSIC gish-gallop, throwing out a ton of detailed questions and zero actual answers nor any actual claims. I decide to call you out on one specific piece of bullshit and you dodge the question.
You know what I DO see? Articles like this that cite some of these affidavits. They are poor quality. Misunderstandings of proper procedures, claims that poll workers were grumpy with observers, even one that talks about how he just can't believe so many military members voted Biden. Seriously? What else do I see? Oh yes, an example of a judge who looked at evidence directly in Michigan and called it "generalized speculation" and "simply not credible". You have a great article here that also mentions some of these allegations. And this is only one example of many. For example:
One of the affidavits filed by a Republican challenger at TCF, who heard from other challengers that vehicles with out-of-state license plates delivered tens of thousands of ballots to TCF at 4:30 a.m., claimed that every one of these ballots were cast for president-elect Joe Biden. Kenny wrote that the affidavit was "rife with speculation and sinister motives." The state's deadline for returning absentee ballots is 8 p.m. on Election Day and all ballots were verified as having been cast by eligible voters before they were delivered to TCF, Thomas explained in his affidavit.
This is not only NOT evidence ("I heard someone else say...") but this claim is literally impossible and has been proven false. These are the kinds of allegations we are talking about. There were dozens of lawsuits and rather than instantly suspect some sort of conspiracy among both GOP and DNC nominated judges alike, doesn't it sound much more likely that there's just nothing there? I strongly suspect that this likely nonexistent Target gift card buying falls under this category: "I was talking with my neighbor and HE said that someone offered him a gift card to vote" is very different than "I had a man knock on my door and offer me a gift card for my ballot, which I reported to the police and there is a paper trail proving it". Organized door canvassing is very obvious and that kind of vote-buying is very blatant. I find it extremely unlikely that such an effort occurred on any sort of scale undetected beyond a single affidavit.
You accuse "commenters like me" of moving goalposts or playing a motte-and-bailey game, but I could just as easily (and supported by evidence galore) say that the theories of how fraud happened are far worse offenders. What exact fraud occurred? Was it coordinated? Was it widespread? Please answer clearly. Bonus points for having the same opinion back in 2020, unchanged.
You want a specific claim? I claim, and practically everything seems to back this up, that 1) no deliberate county or larger scale coordinated efforts exist to fraudulently manipulate either vote totals or ballots, 2) that any fraud that did occur was both sporadic and unfocused in nature, and 3) occurred in roughly comparable scales to decades long precedent for electoral fraud, perhaps with a very modest allowance for Covid complications independent of the actual people on the ballot. I think that captures at least the gist of it. Notice the scale component. It matters. It's not just some motte-and-bailey, it's literally the criteria for determining how much we should care both as individuals, societies, and government bodies about fraud!! I of course support prosecuting individuals if it has any material deterrent effect, and increasing election funding and transparency, but otherwise why bother fighting a problem that doesn't really matter?
I do love that you provided a lone example, the Gableman report. I assume it's this one?. The one that recommends decertification of the results, which is both meaningless grandstanding from a practical standpoint and agreed by virtually everyone to be specifically illegal and unconstitutional? That aside, of course there are some good suggestions and some bad ones too that I do hope the legislature discusses, but most of them are process-oriented. In terms of content the report appears to focus on some Zuckerberg money that was sent to some counties to improve their election processes and help with extra covid costs. Which... well you might feel that it was bad, but the so-called statistical reasoning that appeared elsewhere in the thread about its supposed impact on vote turnout looks highly suspect to me. And more importantly a Bush-nominated judge explicitly allowed the money, which was upheld on appeal. So basically the process was followed just fine. Yes, I do read primary sources where practical and needed, thank you very much. And it's also... not even a fraud allegation, no vote counts nor ballots were changed. I can't emphasize this enough.
It's helpful here to separate the whole "voter disenfranchisement" (or "voter suppression" or whatever term is in vogue) debate on some level from the "fraud" one, as they are in many ways different cans of worms, and we've been talking about fraud. I think the former is beyond our scope... but notably, it is an absolutely massive paradigm shift to move AWAY from fraud/vote-buying/hacking/etc. and into the realm of, for lack of a better phrase, regular but high-stakes political maneuvering that's part of the normal lower-d democratic process (for better or worse). They are two different worlds.
I say that but I just can't help myself but to mention: Gableman's report also contains hilarious statements such as the following, where he - and I kid you not - forgot to include a citation, instead leaving in a "(CITE)" placeholder instead, like I did way back in high school once:
Turnout, otherwise known as “getting out the vote,” (GOTV) has before 2020 been an exclusively partisan phrase (CITE) used by partisan campaigns...
And, I assume, the reason no citation could be found easily is that the statement is... well, literally and objectively wrong. The phrase is old and has been used in both partisan and nonpartisan contexts. Just one example here from 1976 (of many possible) I plucked out of a google search that explicitly refers to "nonpartisan get-out-the-vote activities". It's the cumulative impact of things just like that which make the whole effort seem amateurish and further reduces my trust in the source.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
The timeline is important because there's little evidence that Rubiales is actually a "victim" of anything, nor is actually in danger of losing his job, until he decides that angry confrontation is the way to go. It's only after that moment that he actually faces real attempts to remove him. Before that, it's all speculation, online noise, and "we'll look into it". Stuff we've all heard before and often leads to not much at all. It's only after his speech on Friday (which could have had more detail but I chose to skip) that we start seeing petitions getting passed around, that FIFA gets serious, that the Spanish government starts announcing inquiries, that other Spanish players start making comments or talking about boycotts.
The true story is not in the media recycling the same content and punishing a man for a minor infraction, but in the behind the scenes pressure campaigns and PR attempts that seem to sidestep the actual human relationships involved. Note that Monday morning during the flight, Rubiales is already focused on saving his job rather than making real apologies, and he hasn't even been subject to a full media cycle yet! It's been like 6 hours.
Him deciding to fight was not protecting "real victims of assault". It was not an innocent man trying to keep his job from an online mob. It was an in-your-face political stump speech about how great, infallible, and perfect he was. It's the self-important, self-dealing soccer establishment applauding themselves for a job well done while making zero attempt to help the actual players who actually won the damn trophy.
EverythingIsFine
10mo ago
He said Trump was wrong. He also said and I quote from earlier in the article, “almost anyone else in the country would have returned the documents if asked”.
Sure the word unprecedented doesn’t specifically appear. But in terms of Trump scandals, from media hype to legitimate offenses, it’s clear Barr is saying that this particular scandal is far worse than any other that he witnessed. That’s along the same lines (no cross party comparison is directly made however).
EverythingIsFine
10mo ago
To provide a further excellent piece of evidence, let’s ask Bill Barr, former Attorney General FOR TRUMP, who has decried other efforts as “witch hunts”.
In differentiating this investigation from others that examined Trump’s conduct, Barr said he had defended Trump in the past — including in response to Alvin Bragg’s recent indictment in New York — but this case is different.
“This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous,” Barr said.
“Yes, he’s been a victim in the past. Yes, his adversaries have obsessively pursued him with phony claims. I have been at his side defending against them when he is a victim. But this is much different. He is not a victim here. He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets the country has.”
I think that’s pretty telling that Barr also claims Trump is doing unprecedented and serious things. This is not some partisan hack. It is someone republicans trusted to run the entire Justice department. And he agrees with the charges!
EverythingIsFine
11mo ago
I have 95% dissimilar socks, but don’t mix and match. I also have maybe 30 pairs by now? Don’t know if that’s relevant or not.
EverythingIsFine
1yr ago
I think if you’re making an “ad absurdium” argument the onus is on you the poster to clearly communicate that with at least one phrase.
Single phrase responses that read like rhetorical smack downs is precisely the kind of thing this site tries to avoid… like literally the whole point of the rules in my perception is to avoid one-liners submerging real content and thought out arguments.
The fact that most people consider your comment racist is an orthogonal issue and not, IMO, ban-related, though the mods can speak for themselves.
EverythingIsFine
6mo ago
Sure, it tells you something "extra", but it's something both immoral and, while perhaps it might in a very localized way be a net benefit in terms of information gain, it's long-term super unhealthy and harmful. I mean, if we're leaving the immoral part to the side and talking about pure utility, making a habit of utilizing those residual values (even assuming they are reliable) is problematic both for you and for society both in the medium to long term. Why? I don't think I need to explain the societal part, as societally accepted racism even when used as a background process rather than a primary process is a significant evil and limits overall prosperity and tends to hinder interpersonal and economic interactions in disproportionate ways - but personally there's harm too. Racism has such a virulent and problematic history that I don't think we can rely on ourselves to "limit" racism to merely residual value only. It's a pipe dream. Our brains simply don't work that way.
EverythingIsFine
6mo ago
I actually think the numbers do matter. If Israel kills, directly or indirectly, 50,000 Gazans it is way different than 5,000. People start to know people individually affected. International reaction is different. Refugee pressures increase proportionally. Unrest spreads and worsens in the West Bank. Iran starts to feel more tempted to get involved directly. Hezbollah, who for now seems to be totally disinterested in getting pulled into another massive war and getting Beirut leveled again, starts to feel pressure to actually do something.
Scope isn’t the only thing that matters and is often fallible (i.e. doesn’t solely determine responses or determine them absolutely). But it sure as hell does matter all the same.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
So... are they planning on ignoring for example all the taxes and rules about stocks? Because those rules, sadly, are complicated and hard to get rid of for a reason, only half of which is the rich like it that way (the other half is an unfortunate truth that some of the rules actually make sense to have).
EverythingIsFine
10mo ago
I think you’re being pedantic and uncharitable. It is unprecedented for Trump himself to be in the wrong, per Barr. But that’s a hang up that you’re focusing on while missing the point, which is that Hillary or anyone else is an irrelevant distraction. The substance is: the fact that Barr calls this lawsuit out as different than past (alleged) “phony claims” is pretty telling. We should therefore be paying close attention to the indictment and resist the urge to write it off as yet another exercise in partisan hackery/deep state persecution. Because here we have an ardent Trump defender and an unquestionably experienced legal leader admitting Trump is in the wrong. Isn’t that enough to take it seriously? It should be viewed more or less on par with Jan 6th, or more seriously, because the wagons that you’d expect to circle aren’t actually circling.
EverythingIsFine
11mo ago
I was recently torched and told it is a red flag to not sort and match your socks when you do laundry. I have a drawer full of the unmatched pairs and I just find a match the morning of. Is this actually a red flag or bad? Is it actually that uncommon?
EverythingIsFine
3mo ago
This only works in a world where contracts and lawyers don’t exist. Like, it’s often illegal to “buy another producers products and resell them yourself” in at least three ways.
EverythingIsFine
6mo ago
I am curious and confused why you have lumped “white people” in with Confederate history. Surely most white people in America were not Southern rebels, and there’s more to that culture than Robert E Lee? I realize that as a Southerner yourself it feels a bit more personal but… again, I really feel the Confederate issue doesn’t generalize. And part of it is just that Southern primary education more or less lies to its own people about this part of history. Not only do many texts outright lie about the causes of the Civil War, the South may have claimed that slavery would die out, but their actual actions reveal an active attempt at spreading it. A lot of these “reasonable complaints” just boil down to economic issues, made worse because the South didn’t want to take steps to rebalance their economy away from slavery. And they certainly didn’t want to treat Black people like the humans they are. That’s not something you can just glaze over.
EverythingIsFine
6mo ago
I don't really think that's a fair characterization. You mentioned for example distracting the base with empty immigration promises. But wait. Who killed the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration reform bill that passed the Senate and died in the House on Boehner's watch? A serious bipartisan effort that passed 68-32? A real, not-vaporware bill that both gave a path to citizenship alongside border security improvements and expanded employer verification? Yes, short sighted right wing House members under Boehner's weak speakership. Sound familiar? Meanwhile, I don't see a strong correlation between centrists and war hawks. Some prominent Iran hawks for example include a wide range of Democrats and Republicans both and of various polarities. You have Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton and McCain historically on the GOP side, to name a few. Hardly close allies.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
Oil and gas only matter if a war is fought on the years scale, not the weeks or months scale. This is virtually guaranteed not to be the case. Any Taiwanese conflict is going to be a months-long affair at best. And if it's longer, there are larger macroeconomic considerations more important than oil. I think you dramatically overestimate how much oil a country goes through mid-conflict. No one is going to boycott selling China oil in peacetime, either. In short, this entire line of reasoning is irrelevant and severing the so-called Russia-China military alliance (which mostly only exists on paper, it's not like the Russian fleet would ever, under any circumstances, fight alongside China against the US, which is the only thing of real value Russia even has in that theater.).
This. This comment right here.
People on the Motte make a lot of fun, often correctly, of the newest crop of social historians and academics and a lot of the crap they produce. But this comment demonstrates in my eyes quite convincingly that they have something of value buried there.
It’s a classic example of “othering”. American is literally by definition not something you can split up. It refers to nationality, not any sort of subgroup. It refers to a broad group political construct of humans. And deliberately sectioning it off for no good reason only plays into the hands of bad actors. And historically, it’s downright ignorant. America does have a large history of immigration that is literally inseparable from its current makeup.
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