Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Cancer]

And yet I don't think they're protesting in g-strings like I do.

Having seen a stunt photo from astronaut training in Antarctica, shown by someone in the picture, you could well be mistaken.

[Pariah]

From Lord Mhoram on Facebook:

 

"We now know who is playing in the Superbowl. So we can take a break of people ranting and hating about politics to hear them rant and hate over sports?"

[Old Man]

If they won the election by feeding the public cow-cookies the whole time, why would they feel the need to stop?

Of course they wouldn't but it's still insulting.

[BoloOfEarth]

Of course they wouldn't but it's still insulting.

 

It's not insulting.  It's "alternative praising."

[Pariah]

Oh, please don't let's go there.

[megaplayboy]

Zombies aren't undead, they're alt-life.

[Joe Walsh]

Reminds me of the "reality-based community" stuff from the GWB administration.

 

 

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

 

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

[Starlord]

Which is still a non-answer.  I guess my response would've been, "Ok, sir.  Then perhaps you can you tell me when you'll start creating a reality that doesn't suck?"

[Iuz the Evil]

That's the craziest thing I've ever heard, and I work in mental health.

 

Seriously, "I reject your reality and substitute my own" is delusional thinking.

[BoloOfEarth]

I'm thinking that's the full 20 points of Psychological Complication:  Arrogance

[Old Man]

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.  - Carl Sagan, 1995

 

Sagan was a prima donna, but he wasn't wrong about a lot of things.

[Cancer]

One wonders how long the dinosaurs lived in a reality of their own choosing prior to that awkward non-substitutable event off of what we now call Chicxulub.

[Old Man]

Except that Chicxulub wasn't self inflicted the way the current trainwreck is.

[aylwin13]

Her power set apparently includes "Alternative Facts": 2d6 Mind Control, incantations throughout, only to convince of truth for obvious falsehoods, Side effect (2d6 PRE drain if does not achieve +20).

 

She also has the Psychological Complication: Absolutely Cannot Give A Direct Answer To A Question (Very Common, Total): 25 points

[Cancer]

Except that Chicxulub wasn't self inflicted the way the current trainwreck is.

It is interesting to speculate that it might have been, if the orbital perturbation station had been located at the impact site. And that would be analogous to the current situation.

[Cancer]

She also has the Psychological Complication: Absolutely Cannot Give A Direct Answer To A Question (Very Common, Total): 25 points

At some point someone is going to give a speech where they hold up a long-handled garden tool and say, "This is a spade!"

 

That someone will absolutely not be an incumbent.

[Old Man]

[Cancer]

See also a more reasoned discussion of what happened over time that appeared in the Jan-Feb 2017 issue of American Scientist. (Full disclosure: I subscribe to that because of one of the organizations I pay dues to.) It might be available here. There is a lot of misinformation about water safety, and Flint, and other stuff, out there, and there are entities trying to whip up mistrust and increase the polarization of the situation.

 

(EDIT: relevant to a different thread, the same issue has a column on "Autonomous vehicles".)

[Sociotard]

I thought this was at least interesting in passing:

 

The Trump Cabinet contains an unusually high number of people from the old Confederacy.

 

 

C for confederate state, U for union state, W for western state (not admitted in 1865):

C: TX (SecState)
U: NY (SecTreas)
W: WA (SecDef)
C: AL (AttyGen)
W: MT (SecInt)
C: GA (SecAg)
C: FL (SecComm)
C: TN (SecLabor)
C: GA (SecHHS)
C: FL (SecHUD)
C: KY (SecTrans)
C: TX (SecEnergy)
U: MI (SecEd)
U: PA (SecVA)
U: MA (SecHS)

3 Westerners (states not admitted during the War)
4 Union
9 Confederate States

2016 estimates (Census Bureau):
Current population of the Confederacy: 113 million
Current population of the West: 33.5 million
Current population of the Union: 177 million
Total population of the United States: 323.5 million

Probability that a randomly chosen Cabinet member would be from:
* the Union: (177/323.5) = 54.7%
* the Confederacy: (113/323.5) = 34.9%
* the West: (33.5/323.5) = 10.3%
Probability that a randomly chosen Cabinet would contain:
4 or fewer Union denizens: CDF(binomial, 15, 0.547, 4) = 2.7%
9 or more Confederate denizens: 1 - CDF(binomial, 15, 0.349, 9) = 1.2%

Conclusion: There is a statistically significant bias against the Union and in favor of the Confederacy in choices for Cabinet members.

 

Obama's initial cabinet: 3 Westerners, 1 Confederate, 10 Unionists.
G.W. Bush's initial cabinet: 1 Westerner, 5 Confederate, 9 Unionists.
Clinton's initial cabinet: 2 Westerners, 6 Confederates, 6 Unionists.
Bush the Elder's cabinet: 3 Westerners, 4 Confederates, 7 Unionists.
Reagan's initial cabinet: 2 Westerners, 1 Confederate, 10 Unionists.
Carter's initial cabinet: 2 Westerners, 4 Confederates, 7 Unionists.
(skipping Ford as he inherited the cabinet of:)
Nixon's initial cabinet: 3 Westerners, 1 Confederate, 8 Unionists.

Before this was JFK and LBJ, and the Cabinet was a different creature with fewer members. I'm not bothering to look up the numbers, I can spitball here. Obama, Reagan, and Nixon made little attempt to include the Confederacy in their Cabinets. Clinton made a special effort to be inclusive. But no one EVER picked more Confederates than Unionists.

Something is, as they say, #NotNormal.

 

Again, this isn't a bad thing. There are fine, qualified people in the South, though I think some of Trumps picks are not fine or qualified. We have no attainder of the blood, as required by the Constitution.

 

I just thought it was unusual, and unusual is interesting.

[Nolgroth]

All I saw was a garish red, white, and blue outfit that I am sure a fashion "expert" would actually praise.

 

 

Edit:   I was also that kid who wanted to wear one white sock, one gray sock, so take it as you will

 

Don't judge socks on color. Judge them on thickness.

[Badger]

She also has the Psychological Complication: Absolutely Cannot Give A Direct Answer To A Question (Very Common, Total): 25 points

 

 

THough to be fair, that is pretty much a requirement to get a gig in politics.

[Badger]

Don't judge socks on color. Judge them on thickness.

 

Well, yes.  But, I don't think that will help my mother back in 1979, when I wanted to wear one white sock, one brown sock, one sneaker, one dress shoe to Sunday School.  I probably took 10 years off her life.   

[Michael Hopcroft]

Neo-Nazi flyers are turning up in, of all places, the Southern Oregon town of Ashland. Ashland is a fairly liberal community that hosts a world-renowned live theater festival every year. Claims that Trump's candidacy and victory have emboldened hate groups have seen anecdotal verification (statistical verification may take a while) as these things are cropping up all over.

 

Whether the group named in the flyers actually exists is unknown. There is also the possibility of an elaborate prank, though how someone could find it funny I don't know.

[aylwin13]

THough to be fair, that is pretty much a requirement to get a gig in politics.

 

I am not a doctor, but with her it seems to be at a pathological and delusional level.

[Michael Hopcroft]

And now for a potentially horrifying development -- a former drug convict has been shot dead in a Michigan halfway house weeks after then-President Obama commuted his sentence. Apparently masked men with assault rifles invaded the facility, and one kept people away at gunpoint while the other put a couple of bullets in the back of his head.

 

There are two possible causes. One is gangland revenge. The other, perhaps less likely but infinitely more disturbing, is viglantism of the sort that is typical in countries like the Philippines (whose president has declared that anyone who kills "criminals" is doing the country a favor). Death squads in America? No. Please, No.