JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
7d ago
I think Rasputin's role in the demise of Russian monarchy is greatly exaggerated. Russian monarchs have been entrenched in the idea that any change or modernization in Russia are extremely dangerous and should not be attempted in any form, and yet that Russia must play a prominent role in the world affairs. This led to both internal opposition that grew more and more violent as they grew convinced nothing is going to change unless extremely drastic measures are taken, and to the series of humiliating defeats abroad. It pretty much painted itself into a corner, and Rasputin episode, while colorful, was just a footnote to much greater and more fundamental problems which led to Russian monarchy collapsing. It still could go the less bloody road if the following democratic government could govern efficiently and not being eaten by the Leftists, but they been proved incapable, the Left took over, then the Bolsheviks massacred all the rest of the left fractions, and the rest you can read in any textbook. Nothing of it has much to do with hemophilia, though the general atmosphere of everything going wrong and nothing being able to stop the collapse, probably, contributed to being open to weird stuff, out of desperation. But it was the symptom rather than the cause.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
Without spoiling too much, Watts' aliens not just don't like us, they are nothing us, which is rather terrifying and very Lovecraftian - an entity who is entirely incapable of caring for humanity's existence at all, and possessing powers well beyond humanity's understanding.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
Maybe not, but Trump is easy to flatter
If it's that easy why Trump didn't pardon every other guy convicted for corruption? I mean, it's easy to say "I support Trump", especially if you are down on your luck, have no political prospects whatsoever and there's absolutely zero downside to saying that. It's not like you're going to be electable anymore. So if it only took that, I'd expect a lot more people doing it and being pardoned by Trump, but that's not what I am seeing. There's something different in Blago's case, but what?
JarJarJedi
7d ago
Surely the question is whether those political goals are aligned with the country's
Are you implying there's some objective definition of "the country's goals", distinct from its democratically elected leadership? Where does that definition come from?
The claim is that Biden was furthering the US's political goals while Trump was furthering Trump's political goals.
Of course, the partisans always claim they are just worrying for the country and the other guy is only worrying for himself. This is regular political rhetoric and there's no reason to attribute any substance to it.
but that distinction is essential to determining whether an act is corrupt.
Sure, but where that distinction would come from? There's no some magical divine oracle that you can go and ask for "what are the interests of the US" outside of existing democratic procedures, i.e. electing the representatives that would represent those interests. Some people claiming they have exclusive right to represent these interests, outside of the usual processes, are just some people lying.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
Blago took the fall for Obama
Took the fall for Obama for what? He was accused in bribery, do you imply it was Obama that took the actual bribes? If so, why then wouldn't Trump explore this direction more? I heard literally nothing about it.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
There was also the first impeachment of Trump himself. If wikipedia is to be believed, Trump tried to exchange military aid for political favors from Ukraine.
This is literally what politics is. I mean, the whole justification of why US is giving out aid to other countries is to reach certain political goals, isn't it? Given that Biden literally bragged about using the same aid to the same Ukraine for reaching his political goals, it can't be taken as anything but purely political powerplay.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
I'm sure there are a lot of people who got railroaded for one reason or another. In the environment like Chicago politics, there's a lot of mutual back scratching happening, and with certain prosecutorial creativity it's probably not hard to convert it into a criminal case. Trump is not going to pardon all of them, is he? And despite what Blago says now about Trump - which he has a lot of motive to say, as it profits him - he seems to be a pretty run of the mill Democrat, and one with zero power as it seems currently. Is that really just personal sentiment on Trump's side? I didn't place him as an overly sentimental person.
JarJarJedi
10d ago
Selling the performance of official acts to private interests for money or other services
Could you mention more examples of this? I am not sure what to think of Blago case, because bribery cases may be very subjective if there's no hard evidence, and it's easy to abuse it, especially given how politics work - people always work with people that align with their interests, and often profit from that, at which point does it turn to bribery? Of course, "I'll pay you $1M and you appoint me the senator" is bribery, but is that what happened in Blago case? A lot of people say it's not so I'm not so sure anymore, I didn't dig deeper into it. But is Trump really OK with bribery, excepting this case - what other cases support this?
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Blocking means you don't see their comments, just "You are blocking @blocked_dude" instead. It's useful if somebody regularly writes something that you'd rather not read. AFAIR it used to be that the blocked party is notified about the block, but I'm not sure it's still the case.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Can somebody explain Blagojevich pardon to me? Like, why Trump feels the need to pardon him and what justification is for that? Frankly, I didn't bother to look into the matter back when he was arrested because I assumed it's pretty usual stuff for Chicago, he's just one of corrupt politicians that Chicago is full of - was I wrong? Is he somehow useful for Trump? How?
JarJarJedi
11d ago
US Mint is part of Treasury, so the President would be in control of it. I think the difference is between stopping making new pennies (easy) and taking the penny out of circulation as a legal tender (complicated, but also ultimately not necessary since it doesn't cost much to keep it as legal tender).
CFPB is a weird thing. It's basically a power of it's own, which is supposed to be independent from all the executive and controlling a lot of aspects in US financial system. I'm not sure how it is supposed to work in the republican (not Republican) form of government in the US. I mean, if there's an agency that can order banks around, and the President and the Congress have absolutely no control over it, how the President and the Congress can execute their policies that the People elected them to do?
Moreover, aren't there other bank regulators already? I mean there's OCC, the Fed, FTC, FDIC, FinCEN, SEC, CFTC, HUD, Treasury, and that's just on federal level, each state probably has their own stuff. Couldn't all those guys do their job without creating yet another agency?
JarJarJedi
12d ago
What's up with the Epstein client list? I thought it was supposed to be released? Is there any impediment to that, did everybody just forgot it in midst of the whole international payola scandals? Is there such a document at all, or it's just a fantasy?
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Say thanks to the DIE crowd for slaughtering that cow. Being openly racist has been OK with them for a while now. I hated that. Your crowd didn't, they encouraged it. So, now it's a bit late to pretend it's alive again. If you want to establish a new one, you'd have to prove you are serious about it, and to be honest, I have no idea how the Left could do that, at least not until the current DIE-worshipping generation is out of the picture.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
I don't have to do even that. Musk or Trump have to do that. So far they are doing a spectacular job as far as draining the swamp is concerned. That's precisely what I have voted for, and I want them to continue that for the following 4 years. If on the way they hire a couple of guys that said some stupid shit, maybe I won't be 100% happy with that, but provided that they deliver on the rest of the deal, I don't really care.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Watched a few episodes, and I am not sure whether I am going to continue - it's way too creepy for me. I'm pretty immune to displays of physical horrors, but psychological torture kinda gets to me, and I am unable to derive any enjoyment from observing other humans suffering. It may all be redeemed by the well crafted mystery and satisfying (or properly and insightfully unsatisfying) ending, but it's too early for the latter and so far I can't make any sense of the former.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
On one hand, I don't want racists working for federal government. On the other hand, the left had absolutely no problem with racists working for federal government - in fact, they encouraged it and send billions of dollars to racists that couldn't find employment with federal government, too - so giving them veto power over federal appointment, as if their opinion matters now, feels wrong to me too. Any accusation from their side is and always will be only tactical, nothing to do with opposing racism or supporting any value I'd like to support. So I don't see a positive side to jumping at their command.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
He earnestly believes that Turkey is the next great up and coming country
They had some successes recently, but a sharp turn to islamisation that Erdogan took may eventually take it to the direction of Iran. On one side, Iran is still a power to recognize, on the other - they spend a lot of money on fighting West and Israel and it won't end well for them, eventually.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
Wait, but a convertible is not a regular car. A regular car is Honda Civic.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
To me it sounds like asking "is migraine distinct in any meaningful way from having a headache?" or "is depression distinct in any meaningful way from feeling really bad all the time?" Like yes, I can find a way in which these descriptions might be different (e.g. you can feel bad without being depressed, etc.) but why it would be useful, that's what I am not getting?
JarJarJedi
16d ago
I live in pretty red area and I see quite a number of Teslas and recently some Cybertrucks around. I don't think it's only hardcore wokes who buy them. Tbh, if Tesla changed some of its approaches to control design (like relying on complex screen-driven interactions instead of large simple tactile physical controls) I'd be open to getting one myself (a Tesla, Cybertruck is too ugly for me). Electricity is not that expensive here, and for short commutes (which are like 80% of car usage for me) it makes total sense.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
Also, EOs are much more flexible and dynamic. You can make EO today, see how it goes for a week and amend or rescind it in a week. You usually won't be able to do anything like that with legislation.
But some of it it's not easy to undo. I.e., for example, if Trump closes USAID, in 4 years democrats may create another one, but it won't be the same one as they have now, they'd have to work for a long time to rebuild it to match what it is today. Same e.g. for DEI in federal government - it took years to build all that bureaucratic infrastructure, and if it will be gone, it will take years to rebuild. And Trump has 4 years to try and make the law preventing it that would survive judicial scrutiny. There's no rush in that.
JarJarJedi
16d ago
I'm not sure what would be the difference? Some people are, for some reason unique to them, bad at X. Is it a "real medical condition"? It certainly seems to be real, it certainly seems to be a "condition" - as in, describable and identifiable phenomenon, as for whether it's "medical" I'm not sure that's a robust term. Can you take a pill to cure it? Currently probably not, but there are hundreds of problems that have no pill to cure it. Do we know a sufficiently reduced biological or chemical level cause? Probably not again, but again hundreds of problems without known causes reduced to chemistry or cell biology. The distinction sounds like a political question - e.g. "should people with condition X be covered by ADA and subject to reasonable accommodation provisions, or you just can fire them at will if they're bad at X and you need somebody who's good at X" - but those are impossible to answer objectively. So I think "simply a term that we came up with" describes a lot of things that also absolutely real conditions.
Say you have a condition that makes your leg muscles be 20% slower than average, and that makes you suck at running. If we call that "disrunnia", is it a real medical condition or just a cope parents use to make kid not feel bad for coming last in every race?
JarJarJedi
16d ago
Erm, I am missing something or the point here being "maybe it's true we're being robbed to the tune of trillions of dollars but I am not willing to discuss this until people that claim that present the evidence in a form that is most fitting to my biases"? If so, this sounds extremely childish and unserious approach.
There's also several issues here, which are related but not the same: 1. Is USAID a CIA-directed (or -influenced) front which is being misrepresented to the public as something it isn't? 2. Is USAID directing aid to causes that the American public would prefer not to finance if it knew? 3. Are those causes and recipients mostly leftist partisan organizations and benefit partisan leftist goals? 4. Are those organizations endorsing the ideology that sees US as evil and helps causes that hurt the US public? 5. Is the CIA selecting such organizations with explicit intent of hurting the US, or just tolerating them for other reasons or maybe thinking they gain "soft power" this way or some other reason?
"yes" is not an answer to the question "Where does that definition come from?" If you believe there are some objective "country goals", you should explain who is entitled to set them and how. I mean, "country" can't speak to us and tell us what the goals are. So what is the mechanism by which we know what are the objective "country goals"? How would one make sure, for example, that investigating corruption by somebody named "Donald Trump" aligns with "country goals", but investigating corruption by somebody named "Hunter Biden" contradicts them? Please describe the decision chain here that allows to make an objective decision not reducible to political power balance between competing partisan fractions.
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