The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Atlas Force]

The reason I think Republicans hate poor people has nothing to do with their policies. It has everything to do with their rhetoric. When Republicans like Orrin Hatch say the poor are lazy and need to help themselves, despite the fact that the working poor are very hard working, then what on earth do you want me to conclude other then Republicans don't like poor people?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Voted for Mussolini being worse, but I have to say this: Berlusconis, i.e. those who do not have the interest of the population at heart, make corrupt systems even more corrupt and rotten, and manage to win people's confidence like snakes only to line their own pockets while doing absolutely nothing for the people or the country, create the perfect breeding ground for dictators like Mussolini.

[Atlas Force]

hillboy Sr. Member ★★★★ Posts: 276

Re: IN-Sen: Bayh in « Reply #19 on: July 11, 2016, 11:05:09 pm »It's over for the INGOP. Many Hoosiers have great memories of E-Bayh and will happily vote for him. Say goodbye to IN-Gov and IN-09 while we're at it. Republicans are officially dead in this state.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Context:

Given Dave's specific instructions as regards this particular subject the lack of action over this creature is inexplicable. More than a few posters have been banned for rather less. Arguments that, ah well, he at least contributes are absurd: he does not contribute. He is a waste of space, a pure producer of white noise.

[Landslide Lyndon]

In 2018 that is not happening.  Christians just want to be left alone.  But, for some reason, some people can't accept that Christian bakers or florists don't want to make a product celebrating a same-sex wedding.  But I think I've started a rabbit trail here.

Uh no. The vast majority of Christian florists and bakers have no problem making a cake or whatever for gays.

If "no cakes for gays" was some kind of fundamental doctrine that millions of Americas honestly did believe, we might have to come up with some kind of accommodation or solution, but in reality, every single of of these gay cake deniers is an insincere charlatan who's parlayed their "faith" into becoming a millionaire thanks to donations.

Hell, if I owned a failing bakery, I'd be pretty tempted to turn away a gay couple too and become set for life.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This board is full of small, insignificant and insecure people who want to feel agency in their otherwise dull, powerless lives. This leads them to do things like come on to this board, get outraged at the idea that people have opinions, habits and preferences other than their own, and try to regulate the speech of others and clamor for those they find different from them to be removed, all to demonstrate to themselves that they have some control in some way whereas in most other arenas they do not. People's overplayed outrage at Texarkana is a perfect example of that. People found one or two posts that offended them and, because they live in a world where so many things bother them and they can't do anything to get rid of them, they latch on to this person here who says a few dumb things, turn him into an enemy, and try to get rid of him.

Texarkana has said some really dumb and offensive things, some of which haven't made their way into this thread yet, but the people asking for him to be banned are children who will, within a month, move on to some new target for their bullying and ask for him too to be banned. I have a hard time believing that people on this board really are that offended by a sexualized signature, and that they aren't just trying to prove to themselves that they matter and can have control over the fate of another person. In any event, I can think of several people on this board (some of whom have posted in this thread) who are far more harmful or obnoxious to the forum community than Texarkana, and I would be very disappointed to see him banned while other truly horrible people were allowed to stay.

How out of touch with reality are you? There is no reason to read into something that is not there when basically everyone feels the same way. The same line of argument works for not banning a Nazi like Einzige. "Oh, you can't control the opinions you see in the real world, so you want to ban him here."

This is about wanting a forum community with literally any degree of decency. "One of two posts"...I have him on ignore with Ignored Users invisible, and I still see dozens of atrocious posts coming through in quotes. It is not a difference of opinions and habits. I don't come here to see these types of comments. Every time I see a new post was made in a thread, it is from him, and it is spam - I don't know what "valuable contributions" we would be missing out on. We have standards for a reason. If you have a problem poster who does not conform to certain standards of decorum, you get rid of them. It's rather simple. No reason to put up with something nobody wants to see.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The annoying thing about this guy is it isn't fundamentally untrue or even controversial to say something like "the Democrats are too interested in culture war bickering over material issues". Even SJWs (which I am often labelled) often agree with that. The problem is that he is so OTT with analysing every issue through this prism, his perspective is distorted. It's Mark Latham disorder - people who complain all day that all the left talk about are genderqueers and cultural appropriation, without realising they are contributing to the same issue. They never bother talking about tangible stuff to help the working class , white or otherwise - no interest in health policy, little interest in education unless it's scaremongering about sex ed or whatever, no interest in workers rights, no interest in the redistribution of wealth, no interest in anti-poverty platforms ... I can go on. All it is is bickering about stuff that is irrelevant to 90 percent of workers' needs.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

It is often assumed that religion is supposed to make someone a better person, but there are people who have became worse because of religion, from the slave owners of the 19th Century to Mel Gibson.

Do you really believe that slave owners would have freed their slaves if they became atheists?  They used religion as a justification.

Religion was one of the reasons for ending slavery.

It was also one of the reasons for preserving slavery.

"Down with the eagle, up with the cross."- Battle Cry of Freedom (Confederate version)

The Confederacy and before them, the Southern zealots corrupted every institution they could get their hands on. If you were a churchman preaching abolition in the pre-war south, you would find out just how "Christian" they really were. As I said in another thread, the only common theme among Confederate and frankly southern politicians generally (even to this day) is rank hypocrisy. They will cite any institution or cause or faith to support their cause, and abuse/violate it just as soon as it suits their whims. Like with State's Rights and the fugitive Slave Act.

A narrative has been kicked up in the past decade or so to discredit the role of religion by trying to equate protestant moralism = South = Slavery and by citing a few examples atheism = abolitionism.

The problem is this fails to acknowledge the fact that New England and the north was the center of the first and Second Great Awakenings, and it was largely under the drive of yankee protestant moralists that formed not only the base of the Republican Party, but also of the free soilers and the like. These people weren't atheists in 1860, if anything they were the strictest of Calvinists. The Quakers also come to mind, as well as Menonites and other groups. Plantation society Southerners balked at these "religious zealots" trying to control their lives, take away their strong drinks and most of all calling them out on their hypocrisy and opposing their immoral institution. It is even listed as a secondary reason why black belt Mississippi whites stayed loyal to Smith in 1928, since he opposed prohibition.

The concept of the south being the most religious region relative to all the others is a late 19th and early 20th century development, but it has entered our minds to the point where it is easy to assume that was always the case. Just ask yourself this, who was the more religious candidate between Adams and Jefferson? If you picked the Southerner, you would be wrong.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

It's upsetting that this is even a thread, let alone that people in it are expressing Incorrect and Wrong opinions. The Lord of the Rings is a legitimately great and important novel not just because of the extraordinary imagination required to create it, but in other ways as well: it's narrative structure is fiendish in its complexity and satisfying in its resolution, its descriptive passages are extremely strong  and its central characters are beautifully and realistically rendered. The book engages with a wide range of philosophical (esp. philosophy of language!), historical and theological themes, and also with the author's own personal history on the Western Front. Additionally, the sense of landscape and of place that Tolkien was able to create can't be praised enough; I'll go so far as to compare his abilities in this regard to those of Lawrence. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, of course, but then no novel ever can be. Star Wars is candyfloss: enjoyable enough but not very substantial (and neither is it supposed to be). Comparing the two is a great example of the worst sort of cultural relativism.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

I've lurked around here for years but very rarely post, but I really want to ask Willips a question. You constantly assert that you're not racist and only oppose immigration for economic reasons. You claim to oppose immigration because immigrants apparently drive down wages, consume more government services than they pay in taxes, and make it impossible to implement a generous welfare state. However, if this is the case, why have you also expressed animosity towards wealthy and middle-class immigrants several times? I'd post examples, but I can't insert links until I have over 20 posts. An example that immediately comes to mind is when you attacked immigrant doctors in the "Immigrants are stealing our jobs!" thread Hillgoose made a few months ago. Wealthy and middle-class immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes, pay much more in taxes than they receive in government benefits, and make it easier to implement a generous welfare state due to the extra tax revenue they provide. Immigrant doctors don't drive down wages and mooch off welfare.  There is no reason to oppose affluents immigrating here from an economic standpoint.

You act as if all immigrants are poor and don't pay taxes, which is false. Most immigrants aren't poor and pay taxes. Despite this, you seem to oppose all immigration, and your reasoning behind that always seems to be "importing poor people here hurts poor Americans," even though most immigrants aren't poor. You claim that your opposition to immigration has nothing to do with race, but your animosity towards economically comfortable immigrants shows otherwise. If your opposition towards immigration was solely due to economics, you wouldn't be opposed to wealthy and middle-class immigrants. Arab and Asian-Americans tend to be very affluent, but you still have expressed animosity towards them. In fact, 43% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children.

Also, Poor immigrants are the least likely group to use welfare. I'd post a link, but I can't. Search it yourself.

[YE]

American democracy is failing because one of its parties has become a radical nihilistic cult.

     It is a convenient talking point to trot out and will get you kudos from your fellow partisans, though it falls apart when you can point to data supporting the conclusion that the system is failing that pre-dates the formation of the Republican Party (e.g. Andrew Jackson popularizing patronage as a basis for appointment). The system of the American government has been eroding for a long, long time, so gradually that it managed to escape notice until relatively recently. When Trump won I had hoped that he would force people to wake up and smell the coffee, but it turned out that for the larger segment of the politically active class I was wrong.

     What it comes down to is that the problem goes far deeper than the actions of a few people or a segment of the political spectrum, and if you are going to go out looking for scapegoats to blame for the deep rot then you ultimately end up just like the misguided fools who think that everything will be alright if Trump is removed from office.

[Atlas Force]

How much did Flake win this district by in 2012?

Apologies for the delayed response, as I just saw this early today when I was sipping a few cups of coffee before I had to work a long factory shift....

There might be a small number of precincts that shifted, but looks to be (39.1 D- 56.0 R- 4.9 Other)...

Other is basically a Libertarian Party Candidate, many of whose voters were likely Republican leaning voters who voted 3rd Party because they saw Flake as "too Liberal" on multiple issues....

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

Coal and factory jobs haven't always been pleasant (nor are they necessarily so today). But, those became gateways to a respectable, middle-class life for Americans regardless of their socioeconomic background. While those jobs have largely disappeared (primary thanks to automation), the memory working class Americans have associated with those jobs and the American culture that arose during their peak (40s-60s) is one not so easily abandoned. Entire cultures developed around those industries in the communities in which they were dominant. Workers knew that a coal or factory job meant a decent wage, health insurance, pension, and other benefits that are not so easily obtained through other careers - even ones that require a college degree. The relatively high standard of living these folks enjoyed is simply unattainable in today's economy outside of certain highly skilled fields or rare exceptions (such as natural gas booms).

It's not simply an attachment to a particular type of work, but to the benefits and security associated with that work. If these people were given opportunities in their communities aside from low wage, no benefit jobs (like service jobs), then they'd take them. Instead, that's all they have and it simply isn't sustainable for families or for local/regional economies. Return the dignity of a hard days work equals good pay and benefits, and these people will do those jobs and let go of coal and factory jobs. College isn't even necessarily the answer either; trade school provides great opportunities, as do community colleges. But, that requires investment and the promise of local opportunity afterward, where they won't be forced to relocate hundreds of miles away from their home just to have career options.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Both Tim Walz and Kristen Gillibrand supported gay marriage when they were elected in 2006.

Obama didn't until Biden forced him to in 2012, and in 2008 he pointedly refused to condemn an anti-gay African-American cleric, Donnie McClurkin, who spoke on his behalf before the SC primary.

My point is that it wasn't some utterly fringe position. And she's not under fire for not supporting gay marriage anyway.

It wasn't an utterly fringe position, but bigotry wasn't a fringe position either, with a very large fraction of the population at that time thinking gay sex should be illegal:

http://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx

I assume you don't think anyone who thought that at the time should now be completely unemployable, so I'm curious where you think the line is.  They shouldn't be employed as a cable news host?  Or in any kind of role that makes them a public figure?  Or they can be a public figure as long as they apologize?  Or they can be a public figure as long as they didn't express their bigotry in a public forum on the internet?, etc.

She needs to apologize.

Honestly the most cringeworthy aspect of this is the white people saying that she should get a pass because she's a black woman. It's part of the racist notion that minorities are too stupid to be liberal on non-racial issues. There are plenty of black people who are not horribly homophobic.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Both Tim Walz and Kristen Gillibrand supported gay marriage when they were elected in 2006.

Obama didn't until Biden forced him to in 2012, and in 2008 he pointedly refused to condemn an anti-gay African-American cleric, Donnie McClurkin, who spoke on his behalf before the SC primary.

My point is that it wasn't some utterly fringe position. And she's not under fire for not supporting gay marriage anyway.

It wasn't an utterly fringe position, but bigotry wasn't a fringe position either, with a very large fraction of the population at that time thinking gay sex should be illegal:

http://news.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx

I assume you don't think anyone who thought that at the time should now be completely unemployable, so I'm curious where you think the line is.  They shouldn't be employed as a cable news host?  Or in any kind of role that makes them a public figure?  Or they can be a public figure as long as they apologize?  Or they can be a public figure as long as they didn't express their bigotry in a public forum on the internet?, etc.

She needs to apologize.

Honestly the most cringeworthy aspect of this is the white people saying that she should get a pass because she's a black woman. It's part of the racist notion that minorities are too stupid to be liberal on non-racial issues. There are plenty of black people who are not horribly homophobic.

Came here to post this

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I actually disagree with the premise of this thread.  I don't even think it's necessarily accurate to say most movies with strong Christian religious themes are necessarily bad.  There are Christian movies which are both legitimately good films, some of which were extremely subversive by the standards of the time period.  

For example, I'd argue that The Exorcist has one of the most explicitly pro-Christian spiritual messages I've ever seen in a film.  The movie is at its core about overcoming the evil in the world (depicted as the devil itself taking possession of an innocent little girl's body in a truly horrific manner) through faith in God.  The main character arc in the movie is Father Karras' transformation from a disillusioned/lapsed Catholic into a true man of God, a change which climaxes in Father Karras successfully confronting the devil by sacrificing his own life to save an innocent child (seems like a clear Christ analogy).  This is not only one of the greatest movies ever made, period; it was also about as subversive and terrifying as you could possibly get with a movie at the time.  Even so, there's a reason the Catholic Church permitted Friedkin to shoot some of the film's scenes on church grounds and that one Catholic priest even accepted an offer to play a minor role in the film.  The people who said it was anti-Christian because Regan stabs herself in the crotch with a crucifix while possessed by the devil completely missed the point imo.  

It's a Wonderful Life (a very different type of Christian film, but one which I'd argue is – for good reason – the definitive Christmas classic) may not seem particularly controversial today, but keep in mind it was made in the mid-40s and I'd encourage anyone who hasn't done so to pay close attention to the pre-third act conflict between Mr. Potter and George Bailey.  Mr. Potter is the archetypical cinematic rogue Capitalist and was basically the trope codifier for that type of character until Gordon Gekko came along.  When It's a Wonderful Life was made, its anti-corporatist, anti-greed message was not only highly controversial, but it led to many folks accusing Frank Capra of being a Communist and arguably damaged his career.  In fact, J. Edgar Hoover considered the film to be "Communist propaganda" and opened an FBI file on Frank Capra specifically due to 1) the film's depiction of Mr. Potter and 2) his belief that the movie's message was incompatible with capitalism.

And of course, there's the fact that – in a 1940s Christmas movie – the main character nearly commits suicide.  That was something folks simply didn't talk about at the time (it was even considered remarkable when Ordinary People dealt with suicide all the way in 1980) and yet here we have a film in 1946 where the protagonist nearly jumps off a bridge to his death.  

The Last Temptation of Christ wasn't a classic like the other two, but it was still an extremely controversial, subversive, risky film that (if memory serves) went where just about no film had ever gone before and depicted Jesus being tempted by sexual fantasies (among other things).  I haven't seen it in quite some time, but I'm sure there's other stuff I'm forgetting.  

For that matter, you can say a lot of things about The Passion of The Christ (among my issues with that movie are the blatant anti-Semitism, the fact that it – imo, no offense to those who disagree – often devolves into torture porn, etc; plus, I just don't think it was a very well-made movie), but I don't think anyone would argue the issue with that movie was it played things too safe  

Now there has been a recent spat of (often direct-to-video) films marketed exclusively to the Christian Coalition crowd, but I'd argue it's far more accurate to call The Exorcist a Christian film than it is to call  something like God's Not Dead or God's Not Dead 2 (I'm gonna pick on them a bit because they're the only films in this subgenre that I've seen, albeit only for "so bad it's good" comedic value).  If the God's Not Dead films are anything to go by, these films are about two things and neither of them are Christianity.  They're about hating the "right" people and the mass-indulgence of a truly remarkable persecution complex.  We never see Christian characters doing things like helping the poor, showing compassion for the less fortunate, or making compelling arguments in support of Christianity (IIRC we barely see the Christian guy's arguments in the Christian vs. obnoxious straw-Athiest "debate" in the first one, probably because the filmmakers didn't care enough to actually think of any).  There's a reason for this: these sorts of movies aren't really about the Christian characters so much as the deliberate hate sinks of anyone who doesn't think the exactly way the target audience does.  

One atheist immediately breaks up with his girlfriend when she tells him she has cancer and won't visit his mother who has Alzheimer's b/c he's an atheist and apparently only Christians aren't complete sociopaths.  Speaking of that character's girlfriend (who is a laughably one note caricature of a #FakeNews liberal blogger), God's Not Dead asks its viewers to basically take an attitude of "if you are liberal then you deserve to get cancer" (or if you are an atheist, you deserve to get hit by a car because...umm...hate the sin, love the sinner or something).  The series hits all the notes you'd expect if Roy Moore had a Fox News show.  There's the spoooooky Muslim who makes his daughter where a hajib and then beats/disowns her when he finds out she listened to a Christian sermon.  The film's chief antagonist is an emotionally abusive, one-note, hyper-narcessistic atheist who is given such weak "arguments" by the writers that even a scarecrow would call him a strawman and who (like all atheists in these sorts of films) can't be an atheist b/c he simply doesn't believe in God; it has to be that he really does believe and just hates God for some reason.  We have the random immigrant who also disowns his son for converting to Christianity.  And of course, there's the "ACLU prosecutor" (whatever that means lol) who always wears all black, randomly goes around telling Christians that he hates "everything you stand for," and literally says at one point "And soon we we will finally be all to prove once and for all that God is...DEAD!  *evil laugh*"  Yes, that is an actual line from one of the movies (I forget which one).  

The point is, I don't consider such movies to really be Christian films.  They exist only to give a certain segment of the country its 90 minutes of hate and I wouldn't call that clean.  I'd just call it hateful and disgusting in a way that doesn't involve swearing or torture porn (every once in a while they slip into that territory from what I've read).  I'm obviously not a Christian, but I'm pretty sure that's not what Christianity is about and I think such films give a bad name to Christians who do take their faith seriously instead of just using it for superficial tribalistic virtue signaling to show how much they hate "the enemy."  Well...that post was much longer than I intended.  Sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If I were an Iowa State Legislator, I would have voted for the bill.

I would not have worked actively for the bill.  I would not have spent countless hours grandstanding in front of cameras if I didn't believe it would do any good.  But I would vote for the bill, because abortion is the taking of an unborn human child's life.

That we are not doctors does not mean that we cannot weigh in and make moral judgments as to when human life begins.  Indeed, we ought to.  And if we, indeed, can't know exactly when it begins, then we have a moral right to assume that it begins at the earliest possible point, and that point is conception.  At conception, a human being has everything it needs to develop into what you or I are today, without adding anything else other than normal care. 

I believe that there is a soul in that fetus from the first moment of it's existence.  Whether the reader does or doesn't is another question.  I believe it.  I note that most abortion advocates will never discuss the issue of where human life begins, and I find that to be telling.

I'm not one to wail about the "Holocaust" of unborn babies.  Hitler and Company knew they were killing human beings at Dachau and Auschwitz and such, and they did not care.  That's a Holocaust.  I recognize that the folks who perform abortions and the folks who get abortions are either sincerely deluded about the humanity of the unborn child, or honestly don't see that child as a human being.  But my understanding in that regard does not change the fact that you and I existed at every level of human development that aborted fetuses existed at, before their Earthly existence was terminated by someone's "choice".

I also understand that there are difficult circumstances surrounding the women who have abortions, and surrounding their families as well.  Some circumstances are heart-wrenchingly difficult, but you or I are not excused from doing the right thing because it's tough.  And the circumstances of the pregnancy, however difficult, do not change the humanity of the child one bit.  That last sentence isn't an opinion; it's a fact.

[Badger]

From the "What's the worst effects of the (Trump tax cut)" Thread:

The biggest negatives are:

1) It will make more effective varieties of fiscal stimulus politically harder to enact, because it successfully bamboozles people such as yourself into thinking that it implies anything whatsoever about Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid.

2) It increases inequality even more, especially by increasing profits relative to wages - property income is less equally distributed than wage income, so increasing corporate profits increases inequality by more even than simply just reducing marginal income tax rates in brackets.

3) Corporations will use most of the additional profits in order to buy back their own stock shares, and also to increase dividend distributions which will mostly be re-invested by share-owners, thus having the same general effect as stock share buy-backs. As far as the stock buy backs go, although in the short term this is a good thing because it helps to inflate asset prices and thereby promote bubblish tendencies in financial asset markets, in the long term this is a bad thing because... it helps to inflate asset prices and thereby promote bubblish tendencies financial asset markets... What makes this worse is that in the short term, since corporate profits do actually go up, it seems initially like expectations of higher profits that seem to justify higher asset prices are being fulfilled. This increases the confidence of investors in financial markets, drives them to take more risk, and pushes up asset prices further. Again, this is good for the economy in the short term, because it promotes bubblish tendencies, but bad in the long term, because it promotes bubblish tendencies. As far as the increased dividend distributions that corporations will make are concerned, see point 2. To a significant extent, since even the income tax reduction portions are geared towards high income earners, a significant portion of the extra after-tax income will go towards purchasing and re-purchasing additional financial assets, thus also tending to further inflate asset prices.

4) To the limited extent that it helps the economy, it also increases greenhouse gas emissions and further damages the environment. This is not a contradiction with recognizing that it is (slightly) beneficial to the economy; it can simultaneously be good for the economy when the economy does better in economic terms, but also bad for the environment when the economy does better in environmental terms. That is a trade-off we have to simply have to live with as long as we don't have a major sea change in attitudes and major reforms towards making the economy more 'green.'

5) Since the US has slashed corporate tax rates, this creates pressure on the rest of the world to likewise slash corporate tax rates so as to 'compete,' thereby promoting similar problems in the rest of the world as well. Corporate tax rates are already lower in many of these countries than in the US.



The biggest positive is:

1) It will have a small positive impact on economic growth, not by increasing corporate investment (investment is caused by sales, not profits - profits are likewise caused by sales, so the causation runs from sales to both investment and profits, not from profits to investment and sales), but rather by increasing the disposable income of the very-well-off, and thereby increasing demand for things such as yachts, private jets, and gold-plated toilets, thereby creating some additional jobs in the yacht, private jet, and gold-plated toilets and industries.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I don't agree with all of McCain's views, but he's a good man and dedicated public servant, and deserves much better than what he's getting from his very ungrateful party.

Has John McCain apologized once for the countless innocent people he personally incinerated in an unjustified proxy war?

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The reality is that Donnelly is still going to face millions of dollars in attack ads claiming that he supports terrorism, that he supports illegals etc etc.

Sure I get not pulling a Gillibrand and opposing everyone; but if the Republican Presidential Nominee opposes Haspel, as a Democrat you've got every right to oppose her.

There's nothing worse than this sort of virtue signalling politics (a word I hate to use), if you support torture, if you support the Bush era CIA tactics then great support Haspel. But don't support her because you think it's going to somehow win you some imaginary voter

[PragmaticPopulist]

MS-13
AR-15
CA-48

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Context:

This thread is really two different topics:

1. The quote taken out of context to make it sound like Trump was talking about all undocumented immigrants rather than MS-13 members, and delusional commentary calling him a Nazi.

2. The question of whether human personhood includes members of gangs. While I get that emotive persons often refer to violent criminals as animals rather than people, I think, based on any remotely plausible definition of personhood, they're quite human. People mistakenly think dehumanizing others will aid in justice, but really it distorts it. The totality of justice is not only a restitution of wrong, the protection of society, but also the punishment and rehabilitation of the criminal. This makes no sense if the criminal is not a person. You cannot hope to rehabilitate a mere animal, nor can you hold it responsible for its actions in the same way as you can a person.

[Blair]

I imagined this read in the voice of Peter Mannion

lol this is a candidate for worst D primary in the country. I'm rooting for none of these candidates. I mean I'd be fine if one of them was dragged over the line thanks to muh blue wave but I'm not glad any of them would be Governor.

Phil Levine is the kind of horrendous political oppurtunist that makes Charlie Crist look principled, also a weird centrist. Gwen Graham is so old fashioned that Lawton Chiles seems modern, also a boring centrist. Meh Gillium. Chris King looks like a vampire.

... and then the failed Senate candidate who lied about his qualifications and was just an all around dud is about to enter the race while also being a boring centrist.

[Atlas Force]

most people I know vote on the issues

Here's how people actually vote:

1) Your either left or right politically

2) You adopt the positions of your party or political leanings the majority of the time without much thought

3) You then seek out information from your preffered biased sources to justify a position on an issue you know nothing about

4) But you never actually give a shìt if the issue is achieved and never check up on it again (notice Trumps base doesn't care he failed to build the wall)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The 2016 election almost doesn't deserve to be judged in the same category as any of the other elections, given the simultaneous Russian interference in the election and the utter failure of the press to hold Drumpf to any of the standards that all previous candidates had been held to. It would be like comparing the 1919 World Series to any other World Series.

Long post incoming!

You're right, darthpi. Our institutions absolutely failed us in this election. I hope I'm not a hypocrite for quoting this after the fact since I already posted that I think Drumpf ran the worst campaign. I stand by it though. Seriously, under no circumstances would a truly successful campaign have gone through three campaign managers, one of which was ousted for assault and the other ousted for being a criminal.

I do kind of want to elaborate on your post and come to the defense of Clinton, the apparent popular answer in this thread,  like Landslide Lyndon, Icespear, and a few others have.
You can complain about Clinton's allocation of resources, I get that, maybe that would have made a difference. You can complain about where she did or didn't campaign (though I doubt a visit or two to Wisconsin really would have mattered if Pennsylvania was so heavily invested in and voted against her). You can complain about her past choices to vote for the War in Iraq or how she handled her email sever. I get all that. But most of what affected her negatively, as related to actual campaigning, throughout the general election was outside of her control.

Clinton ran a conventional campaign in a time when conventional was not received well. Drumpf's wild card status and being the constant focus of most of the campaign's attention forced her to run based around him. Even in spite of that, she did have policies that she emphasized and campaigned on. It was hard to pay attention to them as Drumpf's latest outburst or rally made the rounds on the news, but they were there. When she wasn't forced to address Drumpf's controversies; she discussed health care, student loan reform, paid leave policies, equal pay for women, criminal justice, trade, green energy and the jobs it would bring, preserving beneficial Obama-era policies under her watch from a likely Republican Congress, and her ability to accomplish it all as an experienced public servant with the expertise to back it up. She had the backing of President Obama, Vice President Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and others who helped her try to sell these issues. She aired ads that discussed these things while contrasting her life of public service to Drumpf's life of deceit and self-interest. Does anyone remember that tool on her site that displayed what she was accomplishing and when compared to what Drumpf was doing at the same time? That was a neat and effective idea. I wish more people paid attention to that than her damn emails.

In thinking about it, what I would really fault Clinton for were some of the assumptions, and I don't mean that based on a notion of her inevitability winning. Contrary to what most people thought would happen, Clinton and her campaign knew what was happening especially during the Comey letter aftermath. They never got complacent and I don't remember a spokesperson of her's on the news ever forgetting to emphasize that Drumpf could win and that it wasn't a guarantee that people wouldn't rationalize his despicable behavior or buy his demagogic, near-constant, compulsive lies and his false promises. No. What Clinton assumed was that the American people were more rational than they turned out to be. It's pretty common to hear undecided voters complain about how negative and divisive politics can be. This was no exception, but she ran with the "Stronger Together" slogan to hopefully appeal to people's better instincts rather than their darker ones like Drumpf did. Clearly people wanted politics to be negative and divisive. Oh but she said "basket of deplorables!" That only turned out to be an error since it was taken out of context. If you look at the entire quote it is actually a defense of the average Drumpf voter. She was asserting that just because Drumpf appeals to the alt-right and the David Dukes of the world that it didn't necessarily translate to representing the majority of people who support him. Sure, she ran some negative ads, but it's stupid not to point out his ignorance, numerous hypocrisies, and despotism. She categorized him as "temperamentally unfit and displayed why. Hillary Clinton is an overtly cautious politician and she ran her campaign in a similar fashion, for better and worse. I'm sure everything she did was well researched and evaluated, that's probably why she performed so well in all three debates. But when you are running with factors like an absolute enigma being your opponent, hostile news cycles, the electoral college, and a country of uninformed voters with short attention spans, it's hard to know what to do. That gets especially more difficult in the face of being so vitriolically hated by unreachable right-wing voters in addition to other unexpected circumstances like collapsing from pneumonia or facing an onslaught of Russian commissioned misinformation and manipulation. Honestly, Drumpf won due to luck and the environment which couldn't really be helped either. He also only barely won thanks to a technicality.

Clearly it did not have work out for her. And I certainly don't think it was the best campaign ever, but her losing doesn't necessarily mean that it was a bad campaign to me or that she didn't try her damnest. I didn't hear much criticism of these aspects of her campaign, that I laid out, during the general election. Everyone assumed that conventional was good and it isn't her fault that people chose to put their impulses before their actual interests and chose to focus on petty superficial things rather than constructive policies or ideas. I'm being harsh on the average American voter, I know, and it may not be a popular sentiment, but I don't think it's unreasonable to waive our want of "excitement" or "inspiration" when exposed to a recognizable threat like Donald Drumpf as President. Was running to preserve the Iran Deal, the ACA, net neutrality, or a rightful Supreme Court Justice nomination really such an "uninspiring" message? I always hear about how Clinton had a weak message but it was pretty clearly "don't fix what isn't broken." That doesn't need to be exciting, it's important! A campaign is a means to an end for a candidate to govern, not a form of entertainment. Drumpf is breaking what doesn't need to be fixed and worsening the things that do need to be fixed. All of the policies and accomplishments that I mentioned in the preceding few sentences have been threatened. Clinton has been right about a lot of what to expect from this administration. Drumpf is indeed temperamentally unfit, and our country (and the rest of the world too) is suffering for it. Even as there is a lot of blame to go around in general, that blame goes way beyond one person's campaign choices. At a certain point we all have to look at ourselves and at our fellow American and hope we all learned a few lessons for the better in 2020. It's the only thing we can do now.