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User ID: 314
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
7d ago
he answer was "she was scared he was too ambitious".
Also too competent. Also too Jewish.
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7d ago
He's a self-admitted mediocre prose artist,
Ironically, I believe this was actually one of the things his editor reined him in on. Something like "You can't write easily digestible prose most of the time and then turn into Hemingway for three paragraphs."
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7d ago
That's something Pete Buttigieg excels at. Obama had the same talent.
I don't think I get that from either of them. Pete's always struck me as a soulless striver lizardman type. Like Beto, he can ape the motions, but he lacks the Trump/Bill Clinton knack for leaving the people he talks to with the impression that he's personally invested in them.
And Obama's utterly unique trait was the way people would project onto him whatever they wanted him to be. Even the man himself seemed bemused by the phenomenon. But even then, the projection wasn't "Obama cares about me personally", it was as a totem for All Good Progressive Things, but especially technocratic expertise elevated to a messianic level.
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8d ago
Eh, in my adulthood I've never had a problem offering a cop the same level of courtesy and respect I'd give a receptionist, and never gotten anything but favors in return. Maybe there's a demographic thing there, but IME the cops's first impression of me is calm and polite and not going to make his day more annoying and that sets a nice tone for things.
I did see the dominance game once in college. And won it. Two of us tagged along with a driver to go pick up a fourth roommate from work. We get pulled over for "throwing something out the window", which was probably cigarette butts, but the cop suspiciously implied it was joints. Now, the two of us who were not driving or working were absolutely high, but the driver was sober (and recently off probation for getting caught with weed) and there was absolutely nothing sketchy in the car.
The cop calls for backup and angrily searches the car. The other smoker and I start arguing with the cops, while the driver quietly hisses at us to shut the fuck up. At one point the cop finds a plastic bag in the trunk and triumphantly rips it out only to reveal golf paraphernalia while the stoners laugh at him in front of his peers. They frisk us, which was hilarious because the guy who was working was 1. the only black guy on the scene, 2. a waiter, so his pockets were filled with hundreds of dollars in small bills, 3. and best of all, carrying some neon-blue double-bladed mall ninja knife.
The look of resigned horror on the recently-off-probation driver's face when the knife came out was spectacular. At that point we took pity on him, and I apologized to the cops for my argumentative beligerence, telling them that I was a strong civil libertarian (and even a member of the campus group), but that didn't mean I had to be a dick about it. They let us go soon thereafter with some vague condescending advice about how many people were necessary to give a guy a lift home from work and a warning about littering. Most of them seemed more amused than anything. I suspect the cop who instigated the whole thing was the "Farva" of his station.
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8d ago
Has there been a large increase in that kind of autism? Do studies even disambiguate anymore?
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8d ago
The discrepancy in DC was so stark it was disconcerting. 100% of service workers were black, while the service-enjoyers were a diverse array of non-black. The only exception was hipster restaurant waitstaff, who were mostly white.
It was like visiting a plantation theme park.
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9d ago
At least one ABC station was shot up by a leftwing, anti-Trumper teacher's union dude. Three bullets into the front lobby, no injuries.
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9d ago
He was "suspended indefinitely", but quickly in talks with ABC to come back. Early rumors suggested ABC expected an apology for going over the line, and Kimmel instead preferring to target the area with Molotovs. But now:
"Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country," Disney said in a Monday, Sept. 22, statement to USA TODAY. "It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive. We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday."
At least, he'll be back in some places. ABC affiliate station owner Sinclair is refuses to air Kimmel, and will run news programming instead.
However, most ABC stations in the U.S. are owned by independent station groups, and Sinclair is the largest owner of ABC stations, with 38 across the country, including WJLA, the ABC affiliate that serves the Washington D.C. metro area.
It was pushback from Sinclair and Nexstar that sparked Disney’s decision to pull the show in the first place, with both station groups telling Disney that they would preempt the show in response to his comments last Monday night about Charlie Kirk’s killer. Sources say that other ABC affiliates had also expressed concerns.
Sinclair previously "...called for Kimmel to issue a direct apology to Kirk's family and to make a personal donation both to the family and Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA.
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9d ago
I am once again stepping up to remind everyone that political hypocrisy is almost always a symmetrical phenomenon. AntiPopulist focuses the entire post on the right (because of course), but the last week has also seen countless leftwingers get their own pro-canceling, anti-free speech rhetoric thrown right back in their faces.
For example, in 2018 Rosanne Barr tweeted a plausibly racist comment about Valerie Jarrett and Kimmel's own network, ABC, rejected her apology and fired her before turning her show into a vessel for leftist propaganda. Kimmel himself said "I want to say kudos to my bosses at ABC for doing the right thing and canceling Roseanne’s show today. It’s not an easy thing to do when a show is successful, but it’s the right thing."
Kimmel himself was reportedly offered the chance to apologize, and was taken off the air after declaring that he would instead drop yet more incendiary comments about Maga. Bold move for a man whose show is almost certainly not "successful" by standards such as "not losing money". Let's see if that pays off for him.
It's truly a shame. Leftwingers being held to their own standards (or any standards) are the real victims here - just ignore the body that was just laid to rest.
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10d ago
Why would an employer pay any of that if there was no restriction on the H1-B dipping to a different job? From an employer who can afford to pay them more because they didn't just drop a bunch of money and HR hours on bringing them over?
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10d ago
Things can have more than one reason. AIUI, a large part of the appeal of the H1-B from the immigrant perspective is that it's a foot in the door that leads to permanent and eventually chain immigration. That might be more tolerable if we were getting generational talents and specific, genuinely needed skills, but the system seems to be systematically gamed to hell and back.
Can you clarify what this means?
The US isn't just an economic zone. Put it this way, would you be ok with being deported to India if it made numbers on a chart go up? Or do you think you have some sort of right to be here?
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11d ago
Yes, I suppose it is theoretically possible to functionally end the program by just tolerating free immigration by anyone who ostensibly has a job, but I'm not sure why you think the Trump administration would not just tolerate that, but actively spend political capital (such as a scorched earth revolt by it's base) to achieve that end?
Hooray economic zone?
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11d ago
Isn't tying H1-Bs to the employer just a necessary function of the entire concept? The company applies to hire them for a specific position it claims it cannot find Americans for. Ending the corporate bondage is just ending the entire program.
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11d ago
I wrote a whole ass bit about how you're (now deliberately, I assume) conflating red tribe distrust in the traditional news media ecosystem with the actual and official communications from the President and his team
I guess I'm baffled that you earnestly think they aren't deeply, viciously conflated. To my eye, they have been my entire adult life.
Bush 1 had an entire cable news network dedicated to pushing his agenda. Karl Rove was hailed as a mastermind of media manipulation and manufacturing consent for his ability to conflate news media and official government policy. The illusion of independence was just another trick, a distraction so we wouldn't catch the sleight of hand.
And all of that was a pittance compared to what the overwhelming majority of American media did to itself in the orgy of religious fervor that accompanied the election of Barak Obama.
And I guess I'm also baffled as to how you think that was a response to everything I said? Biden's lies about senility, Bush's lies to start a war, and Obama's lies about policy were all coming from the official communications of the president. When a Democrat Senator claims, on the floor of the Senate, to have personally seen proof that then-candidate Romney lied on his taxes, and then latter brushed it off as an acceptable lie because it worked, does that not count as official? When a Democrat congressman claim to have personally seen evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, is that official enough?
So yes, Trump lies, as most politicians do. He's in fine company, and honestly comes across as less vicious about it than many of his peers. Let me know when he kills a million brown people for blood oil. And yes, as a distinct-but-linked matter, most of our media consistently lies about Trump's lies to pretend he's some unprecedented Prince of Lies.
You're not a new account. You didn't just fall out of a coconut tree. Why does this stuff seem novel to you?
And demonstrate the exact same thing yet again in short order. How can Obama lie in 2007 about something that doesn't even exist yet?? That everyone agreed didn't exist yet? Almost literally no candidate ever has fully formed legislation ready to go while on the campaign trail. You're right about Obama lying -- in 2013-ish, and probably he lied (or misrepresented, it's a fine line for some things) about the health care plan during the 2012 election, but that's not what you said (you were very specific about the time frame), and all I did was point that out. No big deal, it happens. We all are wrong sometimes on small stuff. You're allowed to admit it.
What are you even thinking here? Obama in 2007 had speeches about why he should be president; do you really think nothing said in those can count as a lie because the exact laws and policies haven't been formally written yet? Or because it's not said with some mystical imprimatur of the Official Office of the Presidency? Would you give Trump a pass from when he claimed to have a plan to end the Ukraine War because, to quote you, "Almost literally no candidate ever has fully formed legislation ready to go while on the campaign trail"?
I suppose I might be taking for granted that you're familiar with the history here (because it's a hobby horse I've been riding so long the horse can almost vote) so I'll lay it out in more detail. The beginning here was from interviews with his speechwriters years later.
In 2007, Obama's election team landed him a speech before a large medical association. His speechwriters sat down to plan out what to say, and realized that his healthcare plan was "we don't have a healthcare plan". Not even at the level of "early campaign website fluff". So they said "Fuck it. We'll just go huge. Promise everything to everyone. More access, better care, less cost. We'll make it a great speech, really lean into the technocratic progressivism, really raise his profile, and then we'll have 8-12 years to figure something out because Hillary has this one in the bag. We're just laying groundwork for now."
Then of course they speechified so well he won the nomination and the election, in no small part because Team Obama and Team Obama's Media constantly talked up his great plan. Do you like Leslie Knope? Do you like the West Wing? It's just like that! Obama knows theory better than his theory advisors and practicals better than his practical advisors, and he has a perfect plan, all 3-ring binders and tabs and highlighters, and it's taken everything into account. THIS is technocratic progressivism, delivering Change You Can Believe In.
Here is Politifact in 2008 rating the "you can keep it" rhetoric as "true", because that's what Obama said his plan would do! Literally no effort to, say, evaluate if that was a realistic or likely outcome.
Here's another from 2009, where they walked it back to "half true", but even that article sounds like it was written by someone on his campaign team.
And of course there was no plan, it was rhetoric and a vibe, which is why he ended up just cribbing Mitt Romney's notes and letting the insurance companies write a bunch of it. And so by 2013 it gets elevated to Lie of the Year, because Politifact doesn't need to protect Obama through another election and millions of people are obviously having their plans and doctors changed under them.
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12d ago
I accidentally happened to log onto facebook yesterday. Approximately half the posts I saw that were from real humans I know were being assholes about the murder - and this is after I aggressively unfollowed everyone who posted about politics when I last used the site a few years ago.
I'm not going to submit my aunt or my cousin to that CharliesMurders website, but I wonder how many people had similar experiences.
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12d ago
That portion of the left looks an awful lot like the right-wing militia kooks from the 90's, except without the fed infiltration, self-policing, or actually-existing inciting incidents.
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12d ago
Is that in the same sense that Hitler and Mussolini were just "one of the left's own", because that was the way they leaned in their early, formative years? Essential and vital that you personally eat responsibility for WW2, I guess.
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12d ago
That's exactly my point, and it's a bad trade
No, it's a fine trade because the general trust was utterly non-existent among the red tribe. Again, this complaint is Lucy crying "why won't you let me lie to you forever, Charlie Brown?"
In short, although the perception of Trump's lies is worse than the reality, the reality of Trump's lies are also worse than prior past.
Joe Biden goes utterly senile in office and the nation is run by a shadowy cabal of unnamed, unelected staffers and the real problem is the entitled electorate having the gall to ask questions about it.
George Bush lies us into Iraq (with a critical assist from the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden, aka the man who handpicked the liars for the hearings), resulting in a million dead brown people, torching trillions of dollars from the treasury, destabilizing a large chunk of the world, terroristic blowback, total loss of America's moral standing in the world, sparking resentment and contempt from our allies and leaving us dangerously weak for the future. Totally fine, respectable elder statesman. Don't you know he paints?
Meanwhile, Trump says he has the biggest inauguration ever and he's a threat to democracy, a fascist, literally Hitler.
Sorry bro. You guys are just not serious people. Trump's lies are emphatically far from worse than the past, and they're still much less severe than the ones his enemies tell every day.
(IIRC that's a bit of an oversimplification of the Obamacare strategy. The original Politifact lie of the year article probably summed it up best: "Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best." Yep, seems about right. So to be more specific, everyone really knew that the legislative effort would require a lot of changes to pass Congress, so I don't really think it's fair to ding 2007 Obama for the that. 2011 Obama and 2014 Obama, things are different.)
Man, that was like a whole paragraph to admit that everything I said was completely true, but still somehow pretend that you disputed it. Still better than average for a hack outfit like Politifact.
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13d ago
but isn't there a grain of truth here?
No. Trump not wanting to bare his soul to some random journalist does not mean anything except that Kimmel is an unrepentant asshole.
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13d ago
Nonsense, everyone will go "Psychotic Philly fan? Yeah, that tracks." and then stop asking questions. It's the perfect cover.
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13d ago
Left-wing media lies like dogs on an hourly basis, and even when they're technically not lying, it's in the manner or fae or Aes Sedai, where the limited sentence fragments are "true" in a narrow technical sense while the overall structure is still designed entirely to deceive and propagandize.
Would you care to drop an essay for the class about how bizarre it is that you guys tolerate that?
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13d ago
Yup. The fundamental problem with the "Trump is an unprecedented liar" claim is that leftwingers constantly and consistantly lie about the purported lies.
Almost like they don't believe there's any such thing as objective reality, just competing power narratives, and thus no obligation to even try to be accurate.
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13d ago
Still, the Kimmel episode was aired on the 15th, when none of these chat quotes were public (afaik).
There was never any evidence whatsoever that pointed to Robinson being MAGA. It was quite reasonable to insist that rightwingers wait for data before calling the shooter a leftist - are we just declining to hold leftists to any evidentiary standards whatsoever?
Kimmel is straight up lying there to defame millions of people, including the president himself. That sounds like the sort of thing that might cost a network 10 or 11 digits in settlement money.
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13d ago
However, I think the small lies have spread such an atmosphere of distrust that it's creating a low-trust dynamic between the public and the President that is almost unprecedented outside of wartime (when frankly the President is semi-allowed to tell white lies IMO).
Trump lies like your uncle telling fish stories. Understanding this dynamic creates trust by generating low-stakes opportunities to display ingroup loyalty. All the right has to do to gain this benefit is not crash out whenever Trump calls something "the greatest show" because "AKSHUALLY EXPERTS SAY IT WAS ONLY THE FOURTH GREATEST SHOW".
And even more so by presumptively taking most claims of Trump lying as themselves lies. I remember going through a WaPo list of 800 Trump Lies From the Biden Debate, and concluding that most of their examples were insults (FACT CHECK: JOE BIDEN IS NOT A PALESTINIAN), extremely biased nitpicking (I don't think either of them managed to word themselves accurately when they were arguing about the deficit over their comparative terms, but I think Trump was less wrong), or claims that were defensible/true but that Democrats don't like.
And this matters in a context when trust has already been completely destroyed. Remember "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?" That was a blatant, meaningful, painful lie. The self-appointed "fact-checkers" called it absolutely true, then slowly walked it back until after Obama's re-election when they admitted it was the "Lie of the Year".
Shit, "Obama has a healthcare plan" was a straight up lie! He literally just let his speechwriters write a check his policy team couldn't cash because he assumed Hilary was going to be the nominee anyway!
A lot of right-wingers around here like to spread this whole idea of high and low trust societies. Okay, fine. Here is a mini-society, and Trump is almost singlehandedly making it a low-trust relation full of perpetual suspicion and mistrust. Maybe he's "owning the libs", but at what cost?
The cost is entirely to you. Every time a respectable outlet melts down over something that didn't happen (because they default assume that Trump MUST be lying about everything), you guys lose trust and respect and a few more people realize that NYT and WaPo and CNN are on the same level as Glenn Beck at his worst.
This whole post is just Blue Team being mad that they can't lie with impunity and nasty consequences to Red Team anymore.
Heat continues rising until society bursts. The left really, really, really needs to get it's house in order.
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