[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

fangblackbone wrote:

It definitely is a problem. If we continue down this path, we adopt the structure of evangelical christians where we can shield ourselves from consequences from our awful thoughts and actions because no one is more devout than we are.

We will attempt to out "woke" each other like evangelicals out "Jesus" each other. "Nobody gives more or volunteers more to Greenpeace or the ASPCA, so I am above your reproach." Or we will create some left clique club where you either graduate from UC Berkeley or GTFO.

f*ck it, I'd still be for it. People trying too hard to provide healthcare and retirement? People too sensitive to racial and socioeconomic bias? People trying too hard to reduce greenhouse emissions? I'd rather deal with the problems that creates than live with what the last 10 years of compromise has wrought. Imagine a world where the latest presidential twitter rant was about how wearing kimonos is cultural appropriation? The answer isn't always in the middle. Compromise has turned Democrats into Republicans, and Republicans into literal f*cking Nazis. I won't stand for any more of it.

fangblackbone wrote:

It definitely is a problem. If we continue down this path, we adopt the structure of evangelical christians where we can shield ourselves from consequences from our awful thoughts and actions because no one is more devout than we are.

We will attempt to out "woke" each other like evangelicals out "Jesus" each other. "Nobody gives more or volunteers more to Greenpeace or the ASPCA, so I am above your reproach." Or we will create some left clique club where you either graduate from UC Berkeley or GTFO.

We may be trending in that direction, but I think it is going to be a while before it has wide-ranging consequences.

Besides, I'll take "You must be this 'woke' to ride" over "You must be this racist to ride" any day.

Its not the deeds. Its the judgement or placing yourself above those that do less regardless of means.
Under the circumstances you detailed, an oil company is super awesome for spending 5 billion dollars over 10 years in renewable energy. And this company who makes 4+ billion a quarter in profits from fossil fuels and certainly spends more than 5 billion over 10 years in lobbying for removing restrictions on oil drilling, gets the moral high ground on someone who passes out climate change flyers or volunteers for green candidates.

fangblackbone wrote:

Its not the deeds. Its the judgement or placing yourself above those that do less regardless of means.
Under the circumstances you detailed, an oil company is super awesome for spending 5 billion dollars over 10 years in renewable energy. And this company who makes 4+ billion a quarter in profits from fossil fuels and certainly spends more than 5 billion over 10 years in lobbying for removing restrictions on oil drilling, gets the moral high ground on someone who passes out climate change flyers or volunteers for green candidates.

So? Judging others is pretty far down the list on things that actually matter.

If giant companies spend BILLIONS on good causes, then mission accomplished. Who cares if they demand brownie points for it?

Okay so who is better:

Person 1 that lives in an apartment complex where they are only able to recycle 50% of their waste and have no composting.
or
Person 2 that lives in a gated community where they have services to allow them to recycle 80% of their waste and they can separate out the food waste for composting.

What if I told you that person 2 wastes nearly 3 times as much as person 1 because we are talking about a 14 bedroom mansion on a 2 acre plot vs a small one bedroom apartment? (both lived in by one family) And that doesn't even count the water usage and drain on the electrical grid.

fangblackbone wrote:

Okay so who is better:

Person 1 that lives in an apartment complex where they are only able to recycle 50% of their waste and have no composting.
or
Person 2 that lives in a gated community where they have services to allow them to recycle 80% of their waste and they can separate out the food waste for composting.

What if I told you that person 2 wastes nearly 3 times as much as person 1 because we are talking about a 14 bedroom mansion on a 2 acre plot vs a small one bedroom apartment? (both lived in by one family) And that doesn't even count the water usage and drain on the electrical grid.

I'll take dialectical non sequiturs for $500 Alex.

fangblackbone wrote:

Okay so who is better:

Person 1 that lives in an apartment complex where they are only able to recycle 50% of their waste and have no composting.
or
Person 2 that lives in a gated community where they have services to allow them to recycle 80% of their waste and they can separate out the food waste for composting.

What if I told you that person 2 wastes nearly 3 times as much as person 1 because we are talking about a 14 bedroom mansion on a 2 acre plot vs a small one bedroom apartment? (both lived in by one family) And that doesn't even count the water usage and drain on the electrical grid.

What does this even matter on a national political scale? Should people be legally obligated to recycle? Should those with higher land ownership have a larger financial obligation to support green energy? Those are the questions. Hyper narrow, absurdly simplified dichotomies are useless. I feel like I'm listening to Prager U.

@Delbin - I'm sorry but that perspective is incredibly short sighted. Creating these social hierarchies is what has led us to a Trump Presidency and other of our darkest hours in history like McCarthyism. I would also posit that it leads to fascism. It is the reason we can't do anything about gun control. (we'd rather have our toddlers take active shooter training at school) It also worsens income inequality and emboldens the poverty cycle.

ooops, kinda tannhausered! : D

fangblackbone wrote:

@Delbin - I'm sorry but that perspective is incredibly short sighted. Creating these social hierarchies is what has led us to a Trump Presidency and other of our darkest hours in history like McCarthyism. I would also posit that it leads to fascism. It is the reason we can't do anything about gun control. (we'd rather have our toddlers take active shooter training at school) It also worsens income inequality and emboldens the poverty cycle.

Oh no! Racists and Nazis are at a lower social hierachy! We think they're bad! And that's dehumanizing the people who LITERALLY WANT TO KILL MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. Darn it all. Darn it.

That is not at all what I said.
I am saying that social hierarchies are bad no matter the subject they are based on. They are designed to dehumanize which historically leads to our worst historical atrocities.

fangblackbone wrote:

That is not at all what I said.
I am saying that social hierarchies are bad no matter the subject they are based on. They are designed to dehumanize which historically leads to our worst historical atrocities.

Just, darn it you guys. Darn it.

Look more white people hand wringing that perhaps we are too harsh on Nazis and what we should really do is figure out degrees of woke so as to not alienate all those white folk that are super ok with black peoples as long as they stay in their own neighborhoods and not fuss so much when they are murdered at 5 times the rate of white people by the police.

Articles like that piss me off. It’s more bullsh*t libertarian crap that is written by people that really just want people to stop complaining about being marginalized so they can go back to ignoring sh*t.

TheGameguru wrote:

Look more white people hand wringing that perhaps we are too harsh on Nazis and what we should really do is figure out degrees of woke so as to not alienate all those white folk that are super ok with black peoples as long as they stay in their own neighborhoods and not fuss so much when they are murdered at 5 times the rate of white people by the police.

lOoK, 88% of Congress is Christian. That's far more than the 71% of American adults who are Christian. Which clearly that means that leftists are using social hierarchies to overrepresent whack-a-doodle religious cults that conservatives somehow simultaneously claim are being oppressed and destroyed.

Also, cops fatally shoot black people at seven times the rate of white people.

Perhaps concerns over the leftist fascist death camps should be delayed until white people are murdered at seven times the rate of non-white cops that patrol the dangerous and rat-infested white neighborhoods. And that we should shut the f*ck up about sexism until there's fewer white male CEOs than women CEO's named Becky.

Or that concern troll articles written by libertarian white male Millennials deserve about as much attention, reverence, and thought as using said articles to wipe my ass after eating Taco Bell.

P.S. Absolutely no disrespect meant to Gameguru whose post was a jumping off point for my sh*tty comment.

Parents Are Giving Up Custody of Their Kids to Get Need-Based College Financial Aid
It should say rich parents.

First, parents turn over guardianship of their teenagers to a friend or relative. Then the student declares financial independence to qualify for tuition aid and scholarships.

Parents Are Giving Up Custody of Their Kids to Get Need-Based College Financial Aid
It should say rich parents.

First, parents turn over guardianship of their teenagers to a friend or relative. Then the student declares financial independence to qualify for tuition aid and scholarships.

So another argument against means testing.

DSGamer wrote:

So another argument against means testing.

It is more a systems scam against FAFSA. Basically, several scummy law firms are creating legal circumstances which allow one to check certain boxes on financial aid applications.

Many of the schools targeted claim to be investigating suspect guardianship cases and have the authority to adjust financial aid awards.

If you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin, right?
I am so disgusted!

Reaper81 wrote:

Many of the schools targeted claim to be investigating suspect guardianship cases and have the authority to adjust financial aid awards.

They probably will adjust it, since parents cheating the system means they have less incentive to donate to the endowment...

Which is going to suck for the kids who legitimately have guardians and have to face new scrutiny they don't deserve. But I'm not to upset about the fate of the cheating families: yes, it's legal, but not everything legal is moral. So having them actually have to pay up (or go to their second choice school! Lots of options here) is a level of consequence below my ability to have compassion, when there are so many other students who have harder, legit financial problems...

So I am debating rejecting the equifax group settlement and suing in small claims court, sounds like some folks are having success there. Thoughts from anyone? I am just upset that they got a small slap on the wrist and consumers are just rolled over again.

Hobear wrote:

So I am debating rejecting the equifax group settlement and suing in small claims court, sounds like some folks are having success there. Thoughts from anyone? I am just upset that they got a small slap on the wrist and consumers are just rolled over again.

How much you planning on suing for? You'd have to be able to show real damages to justify your figure, no? Can you do that?

My thought is that at best, you're going to get a settlement many orders of magnitude smaller than anything that will make a blind bit of difference to a huge corporation like that.

At worst, you'll get nothing (and be out fees?).

having signed up for the cash, there are extra provisions that conveniently i haven't seen mentioned outside of the sign up sheet: if the breach cost you time in mitigation (and you have proof) or actually cost you money (and you have proof), you get that money back on top of the $125.

Hobear wrote:

So I am debating rejecting the equifax group settlement and suing in small claims court, sounds like some folks are having success there. Thoughts from anyone? I am just upset that they got a small slap on the wrist and consumers are just rolled over again.

If you have the time and resources, it can work pretty well. Giant companies will often let small claims go to a defaut judgement.

Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon

The Atlantic wrote:

The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.

...

When the UN took its vote to seat a delegation from Beijing instead of from Taiwan in 1971, members of the Tanzanian delegation started dancing in the General Assembly. Reagan, a devoted defender of Taiwan, was incensed, and tried to reach Nixon the night of the vote. Reagan despised the United Nations, which he described as a “kangaroo court” filled with “bums,” and he wanted the U.S. to withdraw from full participation immediately. Nixon was asleep when Reagan called, so they spoke the next morning.

Reagan’s slur touched an already raw nerve. Earlier that day, Nixon had called his deputy national security adviser, Al Haig, to cancel any future meetings with any African leader who had not voted with the United States on Taiwan, even if they had already been scheduled. “Don’t even submit to me the problem that it’s difficult to turn it off since we have already accepted it,” Nixon exclaimed. “Just turn it off, on the ground that I will be out of town.”

Nixon’s anger at the UN delegations from African nations for the loss was misplaced. His own State Department blamed factors other than African voting, including maneuvering by the British and French behind the scenes, for the loss. But Nixon would have none of it. The Africans were to blame.

Had the story stopped there, it would have been bad enough. Racist venting is still racist. But what happened next showed the dynamic power of racism when it finds enablers. Nixon used Reagan’s call as an excuse to adapt his language to make the same point to others. Right after hanging up with Reagan, Nixon sought out Secretary of State William Rogers.

Even though Reagan had called Nixon to press him to withdraw from the United Nations, in Nixon’s telling, Reagan’s complaints about Africans became the primary purpose of the call.

“As you can imagine,” Nixon confided in Rogers, “there’s strong feeling that we just shouldn’t, as [Reagan] said, he saw these, as he said, he saw these—” Nixon stammered, choosing his words carefully—“these, uh, these cannibals on television last night, and he says, ‘Christ, they weren’t even wearing shoes, and here the United States is going to submit its fate to that,’ and so forth and so on.”

The president wanted his patrician secretary of state to understand that Reagan spoke for racist Americans, and they needed to be listened to. “You know, but that’s typical of a reaction, which is probably”—“That’s right,” Rogers interjected—“quite strong.”

Nixon couldn’t stop retelling his version of what Reagan had said. Oddly unfocused, he spoke with Rogers again two hours later and repeated the story as if it would be new to the secretary.

“Reagan called me last night,” Nixon said, “and I didn’t talk to him until this morning, but he is, of course, outraged. And I found out what outraged him, and I find this is typical of a lot of people: They saw it on television and, he said, ‘These cannibals jumping up and down and all that.’ And apparently it was a pretty grotesque picture.” Like Nixon, Rogers had not seen the televised images. But Rogers agreed: “Apparently, it was a terrible scene.” Nixon added, “And they cheered.”

Then Nixon said, “He practically got sick at his stomach, and that’s why he called. And he said, ‘It was a terrible scene.’ And that sort of thing will have an emotional effect on people … as [Reagan] said, ‘This bunch of people who don’t even wear shoes yet, to be kicking the United States in the teeth’ … It was a terrible thing, they thought.”

Nixon didn’t think of himself as a racist; perhaps that’s why it was so important to him to keep quoting Reagan’s racism, rather than own the sentiment himself. But Reagan’s comment about African leaders resonated with Nixon, because it reflected his warped thinking about African Americans.

In the fall of 1971, the Nixon administration was engaged in a massive welfare-reform effort, and was also facing school busing. These two issues apparently inspired Nixon to examine more deeply his own thinking on whether African Americans could make it in American society. Only three weeks before the call with Reagan, Nixon had revealed his opinions on Africans and African Americans in a conversation with the Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had briefly served in the Nixon administration. Nixon was attracted to the theories of Richard Herrnstein and Arthur Jensen, which linked IQ to race, and wondered what Moynihan thought.

“I have reluctantly concluded, based at least on the evidence presently before me … that what Herrnstein says, and what was said earlier by Jensen, is probably … very close to the truth,” Nixon explained to a quiet Moynihan. Nixon believed in a hierarchy of races, with whites and Asians much higher up than people of African descent and Latinos. And he had convinced himself that it wasn’t racist to think black people, as a group, were inferior to whites, so long as he held them in paternalistic regard. “Within groups, there are geniuses,” Nixon said. “There are geniuses within black groups. There are more within Asian groups … This is knowledge that is better not to know.

The National Archives released these Nixon tapes in 2000, but they apparently edited out all the racism to protect the "privacy" of Nixon and Reagan because god forbid Americans learn that at least two of the presidents in their lifetimes were hardcore racists.

You'd think having a living and sitting racist president would be enough to hold people's attention.

thrawn82 wrote:

having signed up for the cash, there are extra provisions that conveniently i haven't seen mentioned outside of the sign up sheet: if the breach cost you time in mitigation (and you have proof) or actually cost you money (and you have proof), you get that money back on top of the $125.

FTC has stated that most folks won't get much due to the small settlement size and people already signing up for cash option it will most likely be a few bucks.

Hobear wrote:
thrawn82 wrote:

having signed up for the cash, there are extra provisions that conveniently i haven't seen mentioned outside of the sign up sheet: if the breach cost you time in mitigation (and you have proof) or actually cost you money (and you have proof), you get that money back on top of the $125.

FTC has stated that most folks won't get much due to the small settlement size and people already signing up for cash option it will most likely be a few bucks.

Yeah I just signed up for the credit monitoring. Fortunately, I’ve dealt with having my info stolen in the past so I have lots of alerts already set up. This current breach didn’t directly harm me though my info was taken again.

I also just signed up for the credit monitoring, on the theory that not only would it be somewhat useful, but also that it doesn't come out of the cash settlement pool so will cause maximum pain to Equifax. Not very much maximum pain, mind you.