EverythingIsFine
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User ID: 1043
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
6mo ago
This reads as hilarious to me. I've been reading some reviews and excerpts about the Mitt Romney book that came out recently that seems to be relatively unvarnished. And it's pretty clear based on what's described that a lot of right-wing senators aren't really being very honest about their true feelings. Contrast that with the dealmaking wing of the GOP. I don't understand how compromise became a dirty word for modern right wing Republicans. Suddenly making a deal is a betrayal and childish, which is not only ignorant of how politics with a slim majority literally must work, but is incredibly hypocritical because of the aforementioned pageantry on the far right while the middle literally just wants to get shit done.
I think Matt Gaetz is a performative blowhard, but also might have been totally within his rights to push to oust McCarthy. That's not really the issue. The issue is what came after, where by most accounts Jordan cynically tried to politically kneecap Scalise for his own benefit before the whipping even got started, and earned too much ill will in doing so. It wasn't even very ideological, though it could have been. And now no one has the political stature to be a replacement. This was all so, so predictable.
EverythingIsFine
8mo ago
Moving forward, yes I think it’s great to make some adjustments.
But looking backward, it is grossly insufficient to just point out theoretical or principle based concerns. You need at least some actual evidence. To my knowledge, very little if any evidence suggests that the theoretical vulnerabilities you list actually were abused.
Plus let’s assume maybe not a worst case but a bad case: that a lot of old people had people vote for them because of mail ballots. Of course that’s bad in general terms and in principle. Statistically, talking about the effect, that’s still not much of an issue though because non-coordinated fraud tends to average out, quite frankly, and it’s hard to conceive of reasonable mathematical margins that would plausibly have swung the national vote using that kind of casual fraud alone.
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
Counterpoint: Russia didn't fully unleash its cyberpower against Ukraine because it expected to occupy Ukraine afterward and didn't feel the need to. However, in a hypothetical US-China conflict, China has a high chance of going pretty high-stakes to win (shooting down GPS and other satellites, unleashing their tried-and-tested cyberpower troops who might even be more experienced than US ones, etc). Their primary opponents would be the US Navy (which while relatively battle-tested has also shown signs of rot and corruption) and the Taiwanese military (which is even more dysfunctional and abandoned than China's). I think Western theorists strongly underestimate the threat China poses in such a conflict. They also have a ridiculous supply-line advantage (literally their entire coast right there), so they don't need to project air or naval power very far at all.
EverythingIsFine
10mo ago
I think the FBI basically concluded something very similar to what you and I are both saying, in fact, which is not actually that far apart.
A few key quotes from the actual statement:
Was there deliberate deletion? Seems not (they also reviewed the attorney process and found that basically it was just lazy and not very particular, using mostly header searches, thus not consistent with behavior trying to hide specific stuff)
I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.
Was the rule-breaking willful? No, but "extremely careless".
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information
Should she have known better for certain conversations? Yes. I think your comment is right on the money about this point!!!
There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
But let's take a step back. I am in total agreement that it was monumentally stupid of her. But Hillary used a freaking BlackBerry. She wasn't that tech savvy. She ignored warnings about it being insecure. And as far as I can tell, they just discussed classified topics, with occasional lower level (confidential) copy-pasting going on, they weren't attaching fully marked documents.. I also don't think she really did the majority of her regular work via email either, like most of us do. It's not like 100% of her communications were through email like today they might be.
Was it hacked ever? No direct evidence, but didn't expect any, so hard to say. They use the phrase "possible":
Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.
So does it meet the standard I propose, of "willful"? What about similar cases? The FBI here outlines four key areas that can help decide. THIS is the critical paragraph. Emphasis mine:
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
While Hillary lied to the public a lot about the facts, she didn't lie to investigators about it. Thus no obstruction allegation. This is a key difference when comparing the Trump case, in addition to the "willful" aspect which is applicable to his actions after the Archives directly asked for the classified stuff back. That's why I made a comparison to "criminal negligence", which you seem to think is grounds for prosecution. I think that's a fair opinion to have, but ultimately a bad idea. Like in plane crashes, it's often best to allow immunity in these cases and focus on improving processes to learn from the mistakes and make sure it doesn't happen again. Which would have been the case if Trump had not been so incredibly prideful so as to refuse to return things and attempt to hide them when officially asked told to. She gave bad excuses, but not horrible ones. Avoiding FOIA requests is borderline illegal to illegal but not as severe a violation. Personal convenience was cited (she didn't want to give up her BlackBerry or use several phones).
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now. As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.
The above just lays out explicitly what we already know: A run of the mill employee might be charged, but civilian heads of department and top leaders get a bit more leeway. That's not super great, but also understandable. Also, it's important to ask-- were the people around her careful (i.e. was she an anomaly? No. She wasn't too abnormal. Just an old person who hates change and dislikes personal convenience.
While not the focus of our investigation, we also developed evidence that the security culture of the State Department in general, and with respect to use of unclassified e-mail systems in particular, was generally lacking in the kind of care for classified information found elsewhere in the government.
In summary: None of these reasons apply to Trump. I think it's totally appropriate and also consistent with the past to have him charged, found guilty, and then given a slap on the wrist type of sentence (or have the current President pardon him, only at that stage, similar to what happened with Nixon.)
EverythingIsFine
11mo 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
11mo ago
On the contrary, the statement being vetted by so many people and subject to so much scrutiny implies it’s a very solid and defensible statement…
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 think you might be mixing up your timeline. Trayvon Martin (2012), Eric Garner (2014), Freddie Gray (2015 - Ferguson riots attached), Philando Castile (2015) and other moments like Kaepernick (2015) and the Charleston church shooting (2015) ALL predate Trump. The racial unrest wasn’t invented by progressives. It was already there.
The double impact of the video of George Floyd (2020) and Trump’s own, self inflicted “both sides” response to the Charlottesville protester killings (2017) has far more to do with it than some progressive scheme to make Trump look bad. In particular that 2017 event was tied to Confederate backlash… which even extended to efforts within Southern states to remove Confederate flags. Mississippi removed their own flag in 2020. Even South Carolina stopped displaying it. While there was certainly national pressure to do so, it wasn’t progressive-exclusive.
And speaking in terms of the historiography, it’s also a big mistake to say that the sentiment was new. Many historians have long felt that Reconciliation was a bit too lenient. Since about the 60s I would say, reaching stronger mainstream around the 80s. Many blamed civil rights “taking too long” and Jim Crow type discrimination and political repression “lasting too long” on Reconstruction. Perhaps out of political convenience (easier to blame the past), but again, this wasn’t something new in response to Trump.
EverythingIsFine
6mo ago
I think people are too often conflating morals with fact.
Take "discrimination", in my opinion a superior word to racism alone, though I might accept "vanilla racism" or depending on context its weaker cousin "stereotyping": when someone is treated different because of their race being used as a primary differentiator. We've become so distracted as a society arguing about whether or not it's accurate or occasionally acceptable to make judgements or get caught into debate about if it was really discrimination or some other cause that we forget to say what really needed to be said because the rest is just window dressing: It's morally wrong, all the time, in every society, to treat people worse for some arbitrary reason before you get to know them. Whether it's even possible to do this, or what counts as getting to know them, or any other derivative question is irrelevant. It's morally wrong not from any practical perspective, but rises from basic human dignity and fairness.
The parents in your example, I might initially be tempted to say, are acting logically -- but only to an extent. They are treating school decisions as very short term, zero-sum games which in a sense they are. However, with longer time horizons and a bit of agency, it's harmful to assume it's all just zero-sum and instead should be seeking out more effective solutions. We live in a society, as they say. But this is all beside the point. The real point is that we seem to have inadvertently de-emphasized and cheapened our definition as well as understanding of human rights. The right to be treated equally is one of the absolute fucking basics, and is not worth fucking around with just because we're tempted to get some short term benefits.
EverythingIsFine
6mo ago
This is completely correct. It's not even up for debate, really: You can find the 2021-22 financial statment here and scroll to Page 4. In ONE YEAR, they (Wikimedia) received 160 million dollars in donations and in the SAME YEAR spent literally twice as much money (6.2 million dollars) in just processing those same donations than they did on internet hosting itself (what people assume the money is spent on) -- which was only 2.7 million dollars. Look at those two numbers. 160 vs 3 million. They aren't even in the same ballpark. 15 million dollars they literally just gave away in grants and 88 million dollars in salaries and 18 million on "professional services", which is odd for an organization that primarily (as far as I assume most donors are concerned) simply runs Wikipedia and literally prohibits (most) paid editing...
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
That’s almost entirely it in my opinion. But about your second point:
Partially, phones also make typing i.e. incredibly annoying. You have to avoid autocapitalization and also switch back and forth between qwerty and the numerical/symbolic keyboard. And my iPhone at least doesn’t ever autocorrect it to add the periods.
And also, virtually all abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms have had their own periods gradually dropped over the last decades, especially as they proliferate. What might have been the I.A.E.A. in years past is now just the IAEA (though this would depend on the style guide and how close the acronym is to its own word vs. an actual abbreviation). I think the logical conclusion, for the sake of consistency, is that the same should be done for other similar uses.
And if the original phrase is Latin, a language no one speaks, and therefore (almost) practically meaningless? Even less reason to be pedantic.
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
10mo ago
You specify one specific investigation that the Durham report rightly concludes was founded on bogus grounds. However, this is not the only investigation against Trump and those in his orbit, and is not sufficient by itself to generalize. You're implying that all investigations against Trump follow this form, but that's incorrect. Rather, you should also consider the people in Trump's orbit that were indeed found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of various crimes (or admitted to such), including Flynn (lying), Stone (lying, threatening a witness), Manafort (conspiracy, obstruction), not to mention several financial related crimes (Cohen, Trump Org, Gates, Barrack, etc.)
EverythingIsFine
10mo ago
So here the facts specific to the case matter a lot. Investigations showed that the emails were sorted through and set to be deleted PRIOR to the public blowup and it becoming a campaign issue. The sysadmin in charge of the deletion seemed to have followed through on the deletion as a way to cover their own butt (fearing Clinton's retribution more than others, apparently). Given this information, what can we conclude or assume about intent? The presumption is of course that the private emails were in fact private and not "oh this looks illegal better get rid of it". Because at that time, it was still a FOIA-type, "avoid something embarrassing" concern, not a "let's hide illegal behavior" thing. Clinton wasn't even involved in this process directly.
EverythingIsFine
3mo ago
Is there a particular reason you’re using ((these parentheses))?
EverythingIsFine
4mo ago
This assertion flies in the face of a great deal of reporting about White House deliberations and decisions. The President still has a very high degree of control over the military in terms of which operations are done. It's just that the military is very persuasive about arguing for the status quo. That's not "ceremonial purpose", it's a process that re-occurs with practically every president. A sufficiently determined president can and will make changes. Before you cry "oh but Trump was stymied by the deep state!" the much more likely conclusion is merely that he cared more about the appearance of being a loose cannon than actually doing so.
Also, another huge hold with this assertion: you forget that the president is literally the only one to nominate leaders in the Cabinet, and a whole host of others to boot. It's like claiming that a corporate board that is in charge of hiring the CEO has no control of the company... Like sure, there's a big degree of separation but they certainly DO have a lot of control in a broad sense!
EverythingIsFine
6mo ago
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.
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
8mo ago
A guy with the job to count votes comes under national scrutiny for if he counted them well or not. He's very publicly accused of counting them badly. He is up for reelection, now a known quantity to voters, and they can ditch him for someone who also claims he counted votes badly. He is chosen by a significant margin. The assumption is, therefore, that voters must agree that he actually counted just fine. That's a fair conclusion, given how public the whole process was and the wide news coverage.
In other words, I'm claiming the opposite: if a politician does something very public and very controversial, and then afterwards is reelected, then YES, the people either agree with the controversial thing or think it wasn't that big of a deal.
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).
Not all quote marks are really quotes, even if people in the forum like calling people out with them a lot. I like using them to draw attention to phrases or words that people use (or I am about to use knowingly) with particular baggage or specific connotations. In this case, I'm referring to Rubiales' own word in his Friday speech.
I read the news a lot and could watch things sort of develop. The furor got absolutely worse Friday after the statement. Want at least some evidence? Look at Google Trends and you can see things start to die down on Wednesday/Thursday, and spike Friday and double Saturday when he's actually suspended by FIFA, an action that to me seemed to be rushed out to satisfy public outcry (considering it had only been Thursday they announced a look into it). The search interest clearly indicates that traffic about the topic actually surpasses the original news bump Friday/Saturday. This is true for most all phrases I plug in having to do with the news. The curve can even be more dramatic. I know that Google Trends isn't a perfect examination method but it does reflect a bit how much people care.
This isn't the result of an "SJW mob" out to fire him (to use an actual quote of yours), and coopted by internal enemies. It's real people being upset about Rubiales, for example, alleging that anyone upset about the kiss is actually a (another actual quote from Rubiales) "fake feminist", and an implicit allegation that he blames Hermoso for not supporting him more, and the fact that people are fucking applauding someone who is showing zero contrition and instead going on the attack. Why is he being applauded?? Actually why? This guy just brought an absolutely massive embarrassment on the entire organization singlehandedly, even if it was totally innocent, so how on earth is he somehow a hero? Those things rightfully triggered disgust and though I cannot prove it, I can certainly make a valid claim that his post-kiss behavior is a worse problem than the kiss.
Now, does all that imply that I'd be happy with FIFA or the government or someone else giving him a harsher punishment because of his post-kiss behavior and lack of contrition? That's a harder question to answer. I'm not really sure, to be quite honest. On its face, that does seem to be an unequal application of justice. But practically, it would make sense. That's partly why I brought up the point about how there are apparently lots of other problems and mistreatment that has been swept under the rug that he might deserve to lose his job for.
I don't think you read my comment closely enough. I claimed both of them were due to shortsighted pride but one of them was a lesser, "omission" type deal and the other is a much more brazen "commission" type, which I do think should be treated differently. I think most people agree the intent of the server was to avoid embarrassing FOIA type revelations rather than a deliberate and insecure discussion of top secret stuff.
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