dasfoo
7mo ago
When you provide evidence, it magically doesn't count, because you have evidence.
Yes, the "deep" modifier of "the deep state" suggests such layered institutional presence that "the deep state" controls what counts as "evidence," making it therefore impossible to prove its existence within deep state-controlled venues.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Yes, and the teacher was totally correct to be defensive given what happened!
Which is why he should've known not to do it. Unless he is a new transplant with no sense of the community, it's either pure stupidity or intentional self-sacrifice.
dasfoo
1yr ago
As an isolated gag, it's funny. Because the teacher I'm sure had 0 actual fear of getting fired for showing his students Michaelengo and was perfectly fine with them showing their parents, and thought that was common knowledge for everyone listening, until he actually was fired.
If the teacher "had 0 actual fear of getting fired" why would the joke ever occur to them? It's the joke of someone who is aware of the hazard, or there is no joke. Now, it may be that a teacher in an urban Portland Oregon school full of good little liberals might make that joke as an outgroup dig, but a teacher at a Florida school where "we don't use pronouns" is surely aware that he is operating in a different environment.
dasfoo
2mo ago
When Obama was elected, Democrats were, understandably on a high, and while I can't point stats my sense of the national mood was that the younger Boomer Liberalism that first assumed power under Clinton considered itself victoroious in the culture war (and it was!) and this was reflected with unusual smugness. A new generation was in charge, and they were "on the right side of history." There were some prominent books and articles that got a lot of talk radio play in the wake of Obama's election, like the uncreatively titled "The Death of Conservatism" by Sam Tanenhaus (2009, The New Republic) and "The Death of Conservatism" by Lee Siegel (2009, The Daily Beast). Even quasi-conservative Andrew Sullivan got into it with a book titled "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back." More self-eulogizing from conservatives in "The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences" edited by Lee Edwards (2011).
As for the ideological composition of the federal workforce, the size doesn't matter as much as who made up the ranks. I asked ChatGPT and it responded with this:
One notable initiative in this regard was the National Performance Review (NPR), also known as the Reinventing Government initiative. Led by Vice President Al Gore, the NPR sought to make government more efficient, customer-focused, and results-oriented. It aimed to eliminate waste, reduce bureaucracy, and improve the delivery of government services.
While the NPR did involve workforce reforms, such as encouraging early retirements and implementing performance-based management systems, the primary goal was not age-based replacement but rather improving the overall effectiveness of the federal workforce. The initiative emphasized the importance of attracting and retaining talented employees, regardless of age, and creating a culture of innovation and accountability within the government.
Additionally, the Clinton Administration supported initiatives to promote diversity and equal opportunity in the federal workforce, including efforts to recruit and retain a diverse range of employees across age groups, backgrounds, and demographics.
Obviously, there is not going to be a stated purpose in these initiatives to replace older workers with young democrats, but there is going to be a natural influx of Democrats in such an environment led by party operatives, especially with diversity initiatives driving part of it.
dasfoo
4mo ago
A world in which men can fuck boys and don’t want to is such a perversion, too. Which is to say not at all. Pederasty and teen sex drive are far from the “focused drive” you’re lionizing.
I think somewhere deep down in the human subconscious M/F sex is understood as the most essentially (pro-)creative act, mirroring in kind other forms of great human achievement. Any other kind of sex (that carries no risk of impregnation) is anti-creative or a nullification of creativity (sort of like the black nothingness in The Neverending Story).
dasfoo
4mo ago
I think you misunderstood me- deaf activists who object to curing deafness are wrong to do so.
Yes, I did. I read it as "government interventions to reduce the number of deaf people..." "...would be wrong to so"
dasfoo
4mo ago
1990s non-religious centrist conservative, part of Jonah Goldberg's "Remnant."
dasfoo
7mo ago
Chamber of Commerce
LOL. I just got back from a local Chamber meeting. I'm not sure what you think it is, but I am sure it doesn't belong in the company you think it does.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Could you elaborate on what specific harm showing an anatomically correct sculpture to sixth graders does to them?
This is a wholly irrelevant question. I know it's what the pro-David side likes to focus on, because it makes their opponents look like aliens to the ingroup, but it fundamentally doesn't matter.
If we can agree that there are two groups who differ on the answer to your question: regardless of the substance of their answers, this is an issue of how a community has decided to navigate through this difference in opinions. Now, it may seem to some like the question is so stupid that the community process no longer matters, but this is a great way to destroy a community. This is the essence of a lot of culture war issues at the moment, a focus on terminal values above the process by which we allow competing values to co-exist peacefully.
dasfoo
1yr ago
I forgot all about the Awan Brothers! I am guessing nothing ever happened with that, even though it had the stank of suspicious incompetence all over it.
dasfoo
1yr ago
They don’t “speculate” in the sense of disclosing uncertainty, they outright state they have the data. The book actually lays out that data.
They speculate that their data reflects a conspiracy of vote fraud. What they never show is a single actual person going to multiple ballot dropoffs. Not just in one night, but ever. Their "4 million minutes" or whatever of video either fails to corroborate their claim or they decided not to show that it does, which is very weird.
I didn't know that there was a book, too. I doubt that it proves anything more than the movie did, beyond possibly doubling their profits on their uncorroborated speculation.
dasfoo
1yr ago
That paragraph completes a collection of 3 paragraphs all follow the form "Republicans do , but Democrats aren't any better". That is to say, I'm pretty close to certain OP is saying "Roe v Wade, anyone" as a dig at Democrats
It read to me like the first hint of a tipping point, but it was vague.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Look, I'll propose something much simpler: DePape ringed the bell, someone (maybe even mister Pelosi) answered the door, and DePape said something that was misinterpreted, resulting in the person letting him in, thinking that he was expected.
Sure, but if it happened in the way you speculate, it's what would be reported. However, I doubt anyone can simply walk up and ring the Pelolsi's doorbell (in the middle of the night). Unless the Pelosi's themselves don't take seriously all of her public hand-wringing about right-wing violence, they surely have active measures in place to protect themselves from it, right?
dasfoo
4mo ago
I trust you have quotes, at least, from teachers who claim they encourage children to explore transness for the sake of it not going extinct?
No. It was a hypothetical starting with "What if..."
Don't you think that the liberal fetishization of minorities as ideals who are somehow superior to the normies is a real phenomenon?
dasfoo
9mo ago
Well, maybe location matters. I'm in Oregon, part of the "left coast," to be sure. And the 1980s -- when I was in high school -- and through the 1990s there was a massive influx of Californians looking to escape the results of hard-left politics while recreating them somewhere else. I imagine the American South was quite different.
dasfoo
11mo ago
The Republicans never even held the Federal House in the 1980's. While Reagan himself was immensely popular, his downballot effects were muted, especially after 1984.
Conservative/Liberal lines were not as correlated with GOP/Dem lines during the Reagan era, although that was around when the re-sorting began. It seemed to take root finally in the late 1990s, as pro-life Democrats became rarer and rarer, Old South Dems were dying, and the liberal Northeastern Republicans were retiring or switching parties.
dasfoo
1yr ago
How do you do toilet training with your kids if genitals mean sex and a taboo with regards to children?
Presumably one would not employ a real or photographed demo penis during toilet training. I think keeping the kid's focus on their own penis is good enough. Thankfully, in the Elmo book/video that was popular when my kids were learning how to become civilized, Elmo was not hanging dong.
Besides, how does the statue with a penis become okay at 10 but not at 6 years old? They are still very much kids right?
If we can agree that older kids are better at contextualization than younger kids, I think that answers your question. Anyway, these questions are irrelevant.
dasfoo
1yr ago
but it's not the kind of progress that would satisfy anyone rioting in Seattle in 2000.
Not a metric I would put any stock into.
Another issue I take with the moralists is that there is seemingly no plausible metric that would satisfy them. There's a lot of talk about being "on the right side of history" but very little interest in the long arc of history. Progress is never enough nor fast enough, the work is never done. Once you let their nose inside any tent they will ruin it with relentless reform until it no longer resembles what they once were trying to protect.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Also, and slightly tangentially, I think the idea that working class men don't give a shit about anything to do with social issues or foreign affairs and just want to drink beer and watch football is a little outdated (or rather has never really been accurate).
Even if not true generally, it does tend to be true while they are watching football.
dasfoo
1yr ago
If his team had cooperated—and I still don’t understand why they didn’t
It supports my prior that Trump is a reflection of the same mix of corruption/ignorance/incompetence as other politicians of his standing, but is far far worse at (or has no interest in) playing the game. He has no veneer of respectability that acts as a buffer for others. He exposes himself, even if the others are just the same underneath.
dasfoo
1yr ago
It demonstrated that although Asians had higher rates of poverty in NYC, compared to even African Americans, their crime rate remained the lowest of the various ethnicities studied.
What's the argument for why Asians are such an outlier?
Is it possible that low-income Asians tend to live in insular mostly low-income Asian communities and that whatever crime does occur inside the insular ethnic community gets handled within that community and isn't reported to the data collectors?
dasfoo
1yr ago
Can you briefly expand upon why? I only vaguely know who he is. I've seen him in TV a few times as a talking head but that's it.
If you want the self-serving Hollywood version of Dershowitz, there's a pretty good movie of one of his books, Reversal of Fortune, in which Dershowitz (played very well by Ron Silver) defends Claus Von Bulow (Jeremy Irons, who won an Oscar for it), an aristocrat charged with attempted murder.
dasfoo
1yr ago
Conclusion B: Therefore, we must be all-inclusive with respect to immutable characteristics in friendship and dating.
Isn't the whole idea of the new gender paradigm that gender is mutable? Are they feigning that gender is immutable in order to smuggle in the notion that one shouldn't discriminate against those for whom gender is mutable?
dasfoo
1yr ago
Apparently, the book intended to "name names" and then was recalled under threat of lawsuits: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/25/1131077739/heres-what-changed-in-dinesh-dsouzas-2-000-mules-book-after-it-was-recalled
Now, D'Souza and Regnery have officially released the 2,000 Mules book, and changed that section.
D'Souza had previously described left-wing nonprofits as "doing vote trafficking."
The newly-released book tones down that phrase to "potentially storing ballots."
And the names of specific nonprofits that D'Souza accused of election fraud have all been removed.
And that he is imprecise and careless about what he says, especially when he's regurgitating things he has only vaguely committed to memory, so he leaves a lot of room for others to figure out what he meant.
More options
Context Copy link