American Politics Thread V: We're Just Biden Our Time ...

[Cannot think of a name]

They just killed 500k Americans by there negligence, tried to overthrow democracy beacuse they didn't like who won the election in something a sain repulbican called a beer hall push, attacked a cop, drove another to kill them selves, tried to assassinate the VP via hanging, stole government secrets via stealing AOC's laptop and, planted pipe bombs at both there own poltical party hq and the dems hq.

The SS killed millions on purpose in the most brutal way imaginable. The NSDAP succeeded in overthrowing democracy in not only their own country, but nine others. The NSDAP attacked thousands of cops and probably drove thousands of others to kill themselves. The NSDAP eliminated entire movements through purges. The NSDAP did so many worse things than stealing a legislator's laptop that I'm not going to get in to that. The Night of the Long Knives actually succeeded in killing top politicians where the pipe bombs failed.

Your comparisons are ridiculous.

During the rise of the NSDAP: "It's not that bad you guys are crazy...you guys are exaggerating quit being hysterical...you're blowing it out of proportion..." after the NSDAP "Oh my god, we never knew, how could we?"

How far do they have to go before we sound the warning bells? How much build up do we allow? How much are we supposed to let them get away with because the comparison makes you itchy?

[Gravlen]

Gloomy side, they're trying to portray it as something which humanity is completely powerless to prevent, so why even bother?

There's a book by Stanislaw Lem (the guy who wrote Solaris) called Fiasco where humans completely botch first contact when they go to an inhabited solar system. At one point they get the idea to crack the planets moon as a way to let them know that they have power they're not using in the hopes they'll open a dialog instead of attacking (knowing that in a straight conflict they'd level the planet mostly which is not what they want). Anyway, it all goes wrong and they completely shatter the moon.

Its all I can think about since I saw this story first.

You made me remember that there is a story where the moon is actually a dragon egg, which hatches, and I can't remember anything more than that.

Anyway, Louie Gohmert's head looks like it could crack open.

[Punished UMN]

Yeah, the nazis were somewhat competent.

this
is mostly a myth
almost entirely so, in fact

Disagree actually. The Nazis were incompetent in some ways, but they were mainly overambitious because of their ideology. They were competent enough to bring most of Europe to heel, cripple the British Empire, and nearly destroy the Soviet Union, in the span of a few years.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Yeah, the nazis were somewhat competent.

this
is mostly a myth
almost entirely so, in fact

The Nazis were more competent than the modern GOP.

[Kowani]

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) signs probation reform bill

Northam ceremonially signed House Bill 2038, which “limits the amount of active incarceration a court can impose as a result of a revocation hearing for a probation violation.” Under the legislation, probation must be limited to five years from when someone is released from incarceration.

[Cannot think of a name]

There's a book by Stanislaw Lem (the guy who wrote Solaris) called Fiasco where humans completely botch first contact when they go to an inhabited solar system. At one point they get the idea to crack the planets moon as a way to let them know that they have power they're not using in the hopes they'll open a dialog instead of attacking (knowing that in a straight conflict they'd level the planet mostly which is not what they want). Anyway, it all goes wrong and they completely shatter the moon.

Its all I can think about since I saw this story first.

You made me remember that there is a story where the moon is actually a dragon egg, which hatches, and I can't remember anything more than that.

Anyway, Louie Gohmert's head looks like it could crack open.

Isn't that an episode of New Doctor Who? Like, Tennant I want to say?

[Salus Maior]

this
is mostly a myth
almost entirely so, in fact

Disagree actually. The Nazis were incompetent in some ways, but they were mainly overambitious because of their ideology. They were competent enough to bring most of Europe to heel, cripple the British Empire, and nearly destroy the Soviet Union, in the span of a few years.

They did literally conquer all of continental Europe, or had them as satellites, outside of Russia but even then they nearly conquered Moscow.

[Cannot think of a name]

this
is mostly a myth
almost entirely so, in fact

Disagree actually. The Nazis were incompetent in some ways, but they were mainly overambitious because of their ideology. They were competent enough to bring most of Europe to heel, cripple the British Empire, and nearly destroy the Soviet Union, in the span of a few years.

They had an army of tweekers. That helped.

[Kowani]

this
is mostly a myth
almost entirely so, in fact

Disagree actually. The Nazis were incompetent in some ways, but they were mainly overambitious because of their ideology. They were competent enough to bring most of Europe to heel, cripple the British Empire, and nearly destroy the Soviet Union, in the span of a few years.

i mean, sure
but the internal workings of the state were largely dysfunctional-hitler's decision to have tons of redundant departments competing against each other being a key component in that, as well as the omnipresent corruption
i don't disagree that they were militarily competent-but at a core level, the nazi state was unsustainable from the get-go
...though part of that is attributable to the forever war of fascism

this
is mostly a myth
almost entirely so, in fact

The Nazis were more competent than the modern GOP.

well, yes
but that's not exactly hard

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Kowani where are those stats on the GOP?

[Kowani]

Kowani where are those stats on the GOP?

found it!
so first, the straight numbers

This paper offers several empirical contributions relevant to theory building in the measurement of racial prejudice. First, we document both widespread resentment and explicit prejudice among Whites. Approximately 59% of white respondents in our national survey sample were classified as prejudiced and about 52% were resentful (correlation 0.26), and although Republicans were 40 percentage points more likely to be resentful than Democrats, they were only 18 percentage points more likely to be explicitly prejudiced.

the mechanisms run like so:

Subjects were asked to rate “Whites”, “Blacks”, “Hispanics” and “Asians” using a sliding 7-point scale for each of four traits: trustworthiness, violence, work-ethic, and intelligence (see Fig. S3). We take the Black-White difference for each trait scored so that values above zero indicate a belief in group-level Black inferiority (e.g., Blacks are lazier than whites) and create a binary Explicit Prejudice Indicator (EPI) that classifies “prejudiced whites” as those who score higher than zero when the Black-White differences on all traits are averaged. For example, if a subject ranked “Blacks” as more violent than “Whites” but indicates the two races are indistinguishable on other traits, then this person is coded as endorsing the group-level inferiority of Blacks. [...] The measure of racial resentment we use is identical to the 4-item battery of questions asked on various waves of the ANES survey since 1986. Respondents were asked to agree strongly, somewhat, neither agree nor disagree, disagree somewhat, or strongly with four statements:
1. Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way
up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.
2. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for
Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.
3. Over the past few years, Blacks have gotten less than they deserve.
4. It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if Blacks would only try harder
they could be just as well off as whites.
We construct the Racial Resentment Index with the canonical transformation used in prior empirical studies (e.g. Tesler 2012). Responses to each of the questions are coded from 0 to 1 by .25 increments (0.5 a neutral midpoint) then summed and divided by 4 (the number of questions) to make a scale with range [0,1]

(See Wallsten et al, 2017 if you're unconvinced of the value of RR as a measure of prejudice (hint: it doesn't measure conservatism)

there's a lot of stuff in here about interpersonal discrimination, but that's not too relevant to what we're talking about here, so i'll skip that
anyway:

We also find that a majority of white Americans are willing to state their explicit prejudice in the anonymous survey context by endorsing the group-level inferiority of Blacks relative to whites. As an indicator of racial prejudice, this direct measure is also significantly less partisan than resentment. In Study 2, for example, Republicans were 40 percentage points more likely to be resentful than Democrats (72 vs. 33%), but only 18 percentage points more likely to be explicitly prejudiced (69 vs. 51%). Although one interpretation of the partisan difference in resentment is that the Democratic identity has a palliative effect on racial animus (Engelhardt 2019), this indirect measure grossly underestimates levels of racial prejudice among white Democrats. We find that, despite substantial differences in racial resentment, white Republicans are no more likely to discriminate against Black individuals than white Democrats.

there's a lot more technical stuff in the annexes if you're curious, but this was the most relevant portion

[Salus Maior]

Disagree actually. The Nazis were incompetent in some ways, but they were mainly overambitious because of their ideology. They were competent enough to bring most of Europe to heel, cripple the British Empire, and nearly destroy the Soviet Union, in the span of a few years.

They had an army of tweekers. That helped.

IIRC, they didn't keep using those pills after they conquered France due to, uh, certain other issues developing from their use.

[Kowani]

Hoover Dam reservoir plunges to record low amid extreme drought

As the Western U.S. is experiencing an intensifying drought, the reservoir created by the Hoover Dam has hit a historically low level.

Lake Mead was formed in the 1930s by the damming of the Colorado River at the Nevada-Arizona border and is the nation’s largest reservoir by volume. The reservoir plays a key role in providing water to 25 million people in the Western U.S., including major cities such as Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas.

Reuters reports Lake Mead hit a record-low around 11 p.m. local time Wednesday, as the surface of the reservoir fell to 1,071.56 feet above sea level. The previous lowest level had been 1,071.61 feet on July 1, 2016.

The outlet reports that Lake Mead’s water level has plunged 140 feet since the year 2000.

The low water levels could prompt the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to declare Lake Mead’s most extreme shortage condition for the first time in history, which would dramatically restrict water supply for several states. A shortage declaration would be made if water projections this summer show the lake level below 1,075 at the beginning of 2022, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“We expect it to keep declining until November,” U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Patti Aaron told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Most of the Western half of the U.S. is experiencing drought, with large parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico in extreme and exceptional drought categories, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

[Duvniask]

Disagree actually. The Nazis were incompetent in some ways, but they were mainly overambitious because of their ideology. They were competent enough to bring most of Europe to heel, cripple the British Empire, and nearly destroy the Soviet Union, in the span of a few years.

They did literally conquer all of continental Europe, or had them as satellites, outside of Russia but even then they nearly conquered Moscow.

Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal would like a word. Finland couldn't really be called a satellite either, only really a collaborator sharing mutual goals against the Soviet Union.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Kowani where are those stats on the GOP?

found it!
so first, the straight numbers

This paper offers several empirical contributions relevant to theory building in the measurement of racial prejudice. First, we document both widespread resentment and explicit prejudice among Whites. Approximately 59% of white respondents in our national survey sample were classified as prejudiced and about 52% were resentful (correlation 0.26), and although Republicans were 40 percentage points more likely to be resentful than Democrats, they were only 18 percentage points more likely to be explicitly prejudiced.

the mechanisms run like so:

Subjects were asked to rate “Whites”, “Blacks”, “Hispanics” and “Asians” using a sliding 7-point scale for each of four traits: trustworthiness, violence, work-ethic, and intelligence (see Fig. S3). We take the Black-White difference for each trait scored so that values above zero indicate a belief in group-level Black inferiority (e.g., Blacks are lazier than whites) and create a binary Explicit Prejudice Indicator (EPI) that classifies “prejudiced whites” as those who score higher than zero when the Black-White differences on all traits are averaged. For example, if a subject ranked “Blacks” as more violent than “Whites” but indicates the two races are indistinguishable on other traits, then this person is coded as endorsing the group-level inferiority of Blacks. [...] The measure of racial resentment we use is identical to the 4-item battery of questions asked on various waves of the ANES survey since 1986. Respondents were asked to agree strongly, somewhat, neither agree nor disagree, disagree somewhat, or strongly with four statements:
1. Irish, Italians, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way
up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.
2. Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for
Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.
3. Over the past few years, Blacks have gotten less than they deserve.
4. It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if Blacks would only try harder
they could be just as well off as whites.
We construct the Racial Resentment Index with the canonical transformation used in prior empirical studies (e.g. Tesler 2012). Responses to each of the questions are coded from 0 to 1 by .25 increments (0.5 a neutral midpoint) then summed and divided by 4 (the number of questions) to make a scale with range [0,1]

(See Wallsten et al, 2017 if you're unconvinced of the value of RR as a measure of prejudice (hint: it doesn't measure conservatism)

there's a lot of stuff in here about interpersonal discrimination, but that's not too relevant to what we're talking about here, so i'll skip that
anyway:

We also find that a majority of white Americans are willing to state their explicit prejudice in the anonymous survey context by endorsing the group-level inferiority of Blacks relative to whites. As an indicator of racial prejudice, this direct measure is also significantly less partisan than resentment. In Study 2, for example, Republicans were 40 percentage points more likely to be resentful than Democrats (72 vs. 33%), but only 18 percentage points more likely to be explicitly prejudiced (69 vs. 51%). Although one interpretation of the partisan difference in resentment is that the Democratic identity has a palliative effect on racial animus (Engelhardt 2019), this indirect measure grossly underestimates levels of racial prejudice among white Democrats. We find that, despite substantial differences in racial resentment, white Republicans are no more likely to discriminate against Black individuals than white Democrats.

there's a lot more technical stuff in the annexes if you're curious, but this was the most relevant portion

So 59% had some sort of prejudice and 52% were downright openly angry and hateful?

[Kowani]

So 59% had some sort of prejudice and 52% were downright openly angry and hateful?

no
quite literally the other way around
(and those numbers are for the white population at large, the partisanship looks worse)
for the GOP, 69% openly embrace hateful beliefs about black people, while 72% are "only" racially resentful
for the dems, it's 51% and 33% respectively

[Salus Maior]

They did literally conquer all of continental Europe, or had them as satellites, outside of Russia but even then they nearly conquered Moscow.

Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal would like a word. Finland couldn't really be called a satellite either, only really a collaborator sharing mutual goals against the Soviet Union.

Switzerland was neutral, but absolutely would have capitulated if the Nazis invaded and the Swiss themselves knew this. Sweden maintained neutrality by giving the Nazis access to iron, Spain was more or less on Germany's side but remained neutral, and Portugal was neutral.

Everyone who sided against the Germans in Europe was quickly conquered. That's Napoleon level of domination.

[Great Algerstonia]

Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal would like a word. Finland couldn't really be called a satellite either, only really a collaborator sharing mutual goals against the Soviet Union.

Switzerland was neutral, but absolutely would have capitulated if the Nazis invaded and the Swiss themselves knew this. Sweden maintained neutrality by giving the Nazis access to iron, Spain was more or less on Germany's side but remained neutral, and Portugal was neutral.

Everyone who sided against the Germans in Europe was quickly conquered. That's Napoleon level of domination.

The Swiss collaborated with Nazi by stealing funds from Jewish refugees from their bank accounts and giving the money to the Nazis, iirc.

[Duvniask]

Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and Portugal would like a word. Finland couldn't really be called a satellite either, only really a collaborator sharing mutual goals against the Soviet Union.

Switzerland was neutral, but absolutely would have capitulated if the Nazis invaded and the Swiss themselves knew this. Sweden maintained neutrality by giving the Nazis access to iron, Spain was more or less on Germany's side but remained neutral, and Portugal was neutral.

Everyone who sided against the Germans in Europe was quickly conquered. That's Napoleon level of domination.

So, while you are more or less correct here, your earlier claim was in need of some nuance. They simply did not "literally conquer all of Continental Europe" or "have them as satellites". They relied on support from allies such as Italy and could count on the neutrality of nations that would otherwise have been a thorn in their side; not all of the Continent was unilaterally under the German boot, neither through conquest of satellite-status as you said. Were that really the case, the Germans would have been even more overstretched.

[Salus Maior]

Switzerland was neutral, but absolutely would have capitulated if the Nazis invaded and the Swiss themselves knew this. Sweden maintained neutrality by giving the Nazis access to iron, Spain was more or less on Germany's side but remained neutral, and Portugal was neutral.

Everyone who sided against the Germans in Europe was quickly conquered. That's Napoleon level of domination.

So, while you are more or less correct here, your earlier claim was in need of some nuance. They simply did not "literally conquer all of Continental Europe" or "have them as satellites". They relied on support from allies such as Italy and could count on the neutrality of nations that would otherwise have been a thorn in their side; not all of the Continent was unilaterally under the German boot, neither through conquest of satellite-status as you said. Were that really the case, the Germans would have been even more overstretched.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztVMib1T4T4

Germany carried it's allies almost the entire time. Especially Italy.

[San Lumen]

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... work-plans

White House tells federal agencies to prepare return-to-work plans

[San Lumen]

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5 ... -nyc-mayor

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani endorses Republican Curtis Sliwa for NYC mayor. If he gets the nod that's only going to hurt him as Giuliani's is persona non grata in NYC now. To think he was one a respected mayor and had a legit shot at being governor but chose instead to run a quixotic bid for President.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Disregard this.

[Kowani]

[Snip]

This very well be true, but I will not allow myself to feel explicit shame over this, as I doubt other ethnic groups are inherently more progressive. Other whites shouldn't either.

what the fuck are you talking about
nobody said anything about "shame"
life isn't some grand competition between ethnic groups about who is or isn't more progressive than another
and i'm not sure why you tack on the "inherently", for that matter, unless you think there's some sort of progressive gene that differs by racial group???
this is nonsensical

[Borderlands of Rojava]

[Snip]

This very well be true, but I will not allow myself to feel explicit shame over this, as I doubt other ethnic groups are inherently more progressive. Other whites shouldn't either.

No one is asking you to apologize for what other people do. If you aren't being racist, you got nothing to hide, and I think you've gone above and beyond the call of duty to prove that you don't have a bigoted bone in your your. I will say there's plenty of racists in every so called race. You don't gotta dig that deep to find them. Matter of fact it's worse than there's large amounts of racists in all ethnicities in America, as opposed to it only be white people.