It's not about eliminating voter fraud - it appears to be about eliminating large swathes of legitimate voters, largely in correlation with how they are expected to vote.
> If speed limits were automated rigidly enforced 100% of the time, it would be impossible to drive.
Why? Plenty of people drive in areas with speed cameras, isn't that exactly how they work?
> That's absurd hyperbole. A competent policeman will recognise the difference between me driving 90 km/h on a 80 km/h road because I didn't notice the sign.
I'm not sure it is hyperbole or that we should assume competence/good faith. Multiple studies have shown that traffic laws, specifically, are enforced in an inconsistent matter that best correlates with the driver's race.
Can any of the administration's defenders explain to me how this is actually a good thing and not the exact thing people were warning about a year ago?
No they cannot. They don't offer real arguments, they make pre-textual arguments and they bullshit. (bullshit in the formal Harry G. Frankfurt sense of the word.) If an argument they make suits them, they will stand by that argument. If an argument ends up not suiting them, they will readily discard and fabricate a different justification.
So many years of dealing with this administration, and people are still attempting to point our hypocrisy and hold people to standards with regard to principle, past statements, character, etc. None of it will work here.
I agree. I'm not trying to point out the hypocrisy, it is obvious to anyone watching. I am more interested in testing the limits of how people will justify actions to themselves and others. It is fascinating to see the twisting happen in real time.
So your argument is "Biden bad"? That's not even a cogent argument. Biden Bad therefor people totally unrelated get to do a completely unrelated thing, that we're not evaluating on the merits? Get that Woke shit out of here.
> “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
amazon sells a kindle version for ~$6. looks like deadtree copies retail under $10 online (or ~$17 from PRH). IA has it but it's covered under their stupid pseudo-library false scarcity bargain so you might have to get in line. if you're okay with physical, i bet your local library has it.
otherwise... can't check from work, but perhaps anna's archive/slsk has you covered?
"Musk says he'll fix the corrupt Democrat-run government and reduce two trillion in spending and given his track record I have no reason not to believe him."
Real quote from a friend when this whole thing was going down.
> A young programmer asked if he should go work for DOGE, or whether it would end in disaster. I told him that it would at least be interesting, and that if he was worried it would end in disaster, that was all the more reason to take the job. Maybe he could help prevent that.
People can be wrong or caught up in a movement. That's fine.
It's the way they react when proven wrong that's the most relevant. What does your friend say when confronted with the reality of DOGE and the general amateurism and incompetence of the Trump admin?
The Trump administration is 100% responsible for setting up the conditions where this kind of breach is effectively inevitable. They created "DOGE", staffed it with (among other specimens) teenage hackers with established records of malfeasance and names like "Big Balls"---presumably without any serious attempt at checking backgrounds and/or responding appropriately to any findings---and (by many accounts I've seen) granted them the authority to demand root level access to government systems without auditable logging or any other record of their actions. There appears to have been effectively zero oversight within "DOGE" itself, and the organization evidently failed to accomplish its stated goals by an enormous margin. AFAIK The Trump administration never publicly acknowledged any of this or took any visible steps to investigate the allegations.
If I was aware of any remotely comparable precedent in any recent administration, I would certainly criticize them for it. But the "DOGE" episode was so far beyond the pale that I can't think of anything else like it.
That person's actions were only possible because the administration explicitly decided to put that much unchecked power into poorly vetted individuals.
> If you enable reckless behavior, you are even hyping it I believe you are responsible for this behavior too.
Are the people mad at ICE complaining that immigration was perhaps a little too lax under Biden’s admin, and possibly creating a situation where so many people felt inclined to vote for the Mass Deporations Guy?
Is there retroactive anger for Biden Admin? Note that I’m talking about a conservative voter’s right or wrong stance on the popular-at-the-time migrant caravans and not the actions of a specific person in a mid level position.
From my point of view, people are angry at ICE not mainly because deportations exist, but because of the methods being used, and those methods are clearly encouraged from above. Who else would be responsible, if not the policymakers themselves?
You can argue about whether immigration was a real problem or mostly fearmongering. In that case, any realistically achievable level of deportations under the previous administration would probably have been dismissed as insufficient anyway so the outcome would the same. But if policymakers deliberately loosen rules, they can be blamed for the consequences.
It is no different from weakening medicine purity standards and then acting surprised when people die. In that case, responsibility clearly falls on the people who made the policy too.
It may sound blunt, but assigning blame is a normal part of politics. Politicians are there to make decisions, and they should be praised or blamed for the results.
> the best attack that someone could make on the Trump administration.
It doesn't need to be, nor should we measure things against eachother by their ability to be used as an attack. We should measure this on it's own, based on what has happened.
In this case, an agency created by the President's Executive Order, that reports directly to the President made significant personnel and security access changes. There have been many security issues coming from that new personnel and department. If this doesn't fall on the administration, what does?
The public do forget (even egregious) things. I usually find that unfortunate, rather than the reverse, and tend to distrust those who count on public amnesia to obfuscate what they do. That's not a partisan, or even political - lots of corporations operate in the same manner - point, but I think it's a pretty good heuristic for sussing out who's being dodgy and who isn't.
> This is a nation built on egg-breaking.
Is too capacious. The USA is a nation based on "these truths [that] are self-evident", and (as the federal oath puts it) protecting and defending the Constitution.
That's not to say that egg-breaking can't be great, but it a) isn't usually to be commended for its own sake, but rather when it's to some specific and important purpose, and b) the "eggs" broken are not those in the preceding paragraph.
We break eggs into the known confines of a pan. We don't spray egg all over the place unless we want to end up with it on our face.
Even if it did make sense to "move fast and break things" inside working critical systems, doing so should surely be within the law and without going against the most basic of known security measures.
Damn, hoss, I wish this shit would just fall out of my stack.
Instead, I have a steady and ever-growing list of real and vicious shit that the US has done, going back to its formation.
You can pretend that everyone is just outraged because of some flavor of the month. You can pretend you're okay with breaking eggs because you don't think they are your eggs.
But at the end of the day some of us really don't like this stuff because we pay attention and have a memory- if you don't, then that's something you should work on.
I fail to understand how a random "special government employee" dumping sensitive government data into a flashdrive and trying to share it with private corporate is not a big deal?
It is not a big deal as it doesn't affect the average American like what may be implied. Our data already has been leaked and stolen before this. So this is smaller issue of a government employee breaking the rules.
No need to assume, Elon is a very public figure. We have plenty of receipts on what he's said and done. DOGE was a disaster, it was unconstitutional, it did not find significant fraud, waste and abuse, it did put our information at serious risk and we still don't know who all gained acces.
I didn't treat it as anything. It really doesn't even need to be proven as fact. The actual thing people were warning about was untrained and unqualified people having access to this data in the first place. I can't find a statement denying that this employee had that level of access.
If those people weren't granted unprecedented access to our data, there would be no whistle to blow. You can wait for the "investigation" to play out, the rest can see that obvious risks were ignored to benefit someone.
The steelman is that this issue is politically loaded, and there is not yet proven public evidence for the most explosive version of the claim. That makes it an easy target for partisan amplification, especially because it maps perfectly onto an existing fear people were already primed for. It is emotionally potent by design.
> there is not yet proven public evidence for the most explosive version of the claim.
Again, there doesn't need to be evidence. The point is that a claim like this is clearly plausible and worth investigating because of political decisions this administration made. They took a non-political issue (access to social security data) and explicitly made it political. You don't get to later use those same politics as a protective shield for criticism.
> it maps perfectly onto an existing fear people were already primed for.
People were primed because of the repeated warning that experts were giving about the security of this data and carelessness in allowing access. You are helping to prove my point that the administration encouraged this by their own actions.
Anyone whose looking at this administration as anything but corrupt thieves that need to be immediately jailed is a patsy, a fool, or a thief themselves.
I'll treat this as a genuine question. No, to "steelman" is to engage with the strongest possible version of your interlocuter'so argument, rather than the weakest. An especially effective steelman case will (genuinely!) strengthen or clarify the opposite point of view before laying out the case against it. It's a way of granting respect to those with whom you disagree, and (I find) a discipline that helps me avoid empty rhetoric.
But, yeah: if you find that the steelman version of the opposing argument won't be borne out in reality that's a promising line of attack. You'll argument will be more likely to be effective, however, than if you attack the strongest rather than the weakest ("strawman") version of the case.
I don't understand, declaring on your own terms what you think the argument actually is isn't respectful, it's deeply disrespectful. Take the claim at face value, details can and will be clarified through conversation.
> declaring on your own terms what you think the argument actually is isn't respectful
Which is usually a strawman tactic, and I agree both disrespectful and useless.
But... We will always respond to our own understanding of someone else's argument! That's inevitable, short of mind-reading. A habit of steel-manning the opposite case is a useful discipline for demonstrating respect - and, ideally, minimizing the necessity for clarification.
In practice, this means to make (to the best of your ability and understanding) an honest and accurate restatement of their case, and (if you see an opportunity - you won't always) a genuine suggestion that it would be stronger if it considered [x, y, z], before you attempt to refute it. You may not get it quite right, but you will have given your interlocuter a straightforward opportunity (as you say, conversationally) to clarify.
I think this is, given as I say that we're not able to inhabit anyone else's mind directly, the closest that we can rhetorically come to taking another's claim "at face value".
I suppose the data just ended up in their hands at no fault of their own, through complete random happenstance, unrelated to their previous employment with DOGE?
You're right. This administration has done nothing but sit on it's laurels the past 2 years.
I think given the performance of DOGE, the wars, the executive orders, the epstein files, we can make a SMALL logical stretch here and assume, FOR THE MOMENT, that this happened.
Neither of these involved legal allegations later proving to be false, they were simple news story retractions (just like Fox News did Sunday with Trump's dignified transfer performance [0]).
The topic at hand was a whistleblower report, which would have serious ramifications if proven false. It isn't apples-to-apples.
DOGE was a shit show. It didn’t need to happen and achieved nothing. It was distraction so that musk could gut regulatory organizations probing his self-drive claims.
I was for the admin based on claims of lawful immigration enforcement and keeping out of foreign wars. however, after inept efforts with immigration, doge and the Iran war I will not be for republicans again.
Do you find those more impactful on your future voting than the lies, the massive amount of money funneled to the trump family, threatening to invade our allies, and the epstein involvement plus its subsequent cover up?
I'm not trying to be snarky but I am trying to take the opportunity to gauge how some folks are prioritizing these things when they vote.
I think it has a lot to with where people get their information. If you stick your head in the Fox News / NewsMax sand you aren't even going to see the all of the corruption that was clear before the election.
And the twitter sewer is full of unsubstantiated rage bait and thinly veiled toxic innuendo. Musk knew exactly what he was doing when he used his direct control of a multi billion dollar communication network to influence the election.
I'm just glad some people are finally saying "hey, wait a minute..."
Frank answer - the total release of Epstein files was a promise during election time. As was not getting into foreign wars. Immigration enforcement is a problem - all they had to really do was turn the tap off at the border and use legal means to deport as opposed to the mess they created.
During the previous time they were in power - these were mostly adhered to. Tariffs - again inept. They need to be targeted to keep allies close and wean off of Chinese dependence.
So all in all - most of the corruption didn’t exist during trumps first term.
You can of course discuss whether a thing is good or bad, even before it has been proven a fact. As an example, you could discuss whether it would be good or bad if it turned out that Trump fucked a minor in the presence of Epstein. Doesn't have to be proved first. You can still discuss whether it's good or bad. You could even discuss things that are totally hypothetical: if we colonize the moon, should we make murder legal or illegal on the moon? We can answer that question even if it hasn't happened yet.
Well, there was the previous whistleblower complaint that members of DOGE accessed and shared sensitive Social Security data without the awareness of agency officials, which the government denied...until this January when they were forced to admit in a court filing that it was true. [https://archive.is/efY6S]
That is to say, there is no reason to extend this administration or anything DOGE-related the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe because the constant lying of the U.S. administration means that any kind of whistle-blowing should be treated as fact, especially when there's likely to be significant risks to the whistleblower. It seems very likely to be true.
> There is a reason American families move away when Asian immigrants move into school districts
Here, you equate "American families" to "white families." Your source (below) says that Hispanic and black student enrollment didn't change, just white enrollment. Maybe there are other factors?
"First off, no statistical relationship existed during those years between Asian American student enrollment and that of students from other groups, such as African Americans or Hispanics"
> they don’t have the mentality of someone who is a generation away from having to take a boat to school during monsoon season.
Are Asian immigrants in the California suburbs (the location of your source study) coming from this type of poverty?
You haven't addressed the breakdown I provided showing why those initial assumptions don't match the data. Can we acknowledge that the original premise was based on a misinterpretation of the figures rather than just delete the history of your statement?
I haven't had a chance to dig into study carefully. But I just noticed that you misinterpreted the quote you rely on above. You said:
> Your source (below) says that Hispanic and black student enrollment didn't change, just white enrollment. Maybe there are other factors?
> "First off, no statistical relationship existed during those years between Asian American student enrollment and that of students from other groups, such as African Americans or Hispanics"
But you omitted the portion after the semicolon:
"First off, no statistical relationship existed during those years between Asian American student enrollment and that of students from other groups, such as African Americans or Hispanics; therefore, white movement was a reaction not to the broader emergence of non-white neighbors, but to Asians specifically."
To be totally fair to you, the first clause in isolation clearly means what you interpreted it to mean, it seems like the author of the article doesn't understand what "correlation" means. But it looks like the co-author of the underlying study draw the same conclusion as I did:
"'If we just look at the basic correlations, we don’t see this kind of white flight from low-income suburbs,' said Boustan. 'To me, this very clearly rules out basic racial animus.'"
The rest of the article explains that the white flight is caused by dislike of the increased competition Asian students bring, not racial animus like you suggested.
The portion after the semi-colon wasn't relevant to your initial claim. Which was this:
> There is a reason American families move away when Asian immigrants move into school districts
The study shows that "American" families didn't move away, "white American" families moved away.
> not racial animus like you suggested.
Can you share what it is you think I suggested? I don't see where I provided a view on this topic. I simply pointed out your incorrect assumptions of the data.
I edited the post because I decided it was a tangent and wanted to make room for a point that was more relevant. I’m happy to address the point on the merits.
> Here, you equate "American families" to "white families." Your source (below) says that Hispanic and black student enrollment didn't change, just white enrollment. Maybe there are other factors
The article says that there was no “statistically significant relationship” for other races. That doesn’t mean you can infer that people from other races didn’t move away. It could be that there simply weren’t enough hispanic and black families in the sample to draw an inference. The study looked only at affluent school districts in California. There’s not a lot of black and hispanic students in those school districts to begin with. And the white families are much more likely to be wealthier and have more freedom to move.
I suspect the trend would hold true for affluent native-born black and hispanic families too. There’s just very few school districts where you have affluent asians living alongside affluent black or hispanic people. In fact, I’m not aware of any. I live in a county with a lot of affluent black people, adjacent to the most affluent black-majority county. My daughter is the only Asian in her class, which is otherwise about 70-30 white/black.
> Are Asian immigrants in the California suburbs (the location of your source study) coming from this type of poverty
My dad’s family was actually affluent landowners. That’s just what most of Asia was like until very recently. My sister in law is Taiwanese. The communists killed much of her extended family during the revolution.
> It could be that there simply weren’t enough hispanic and black families in the sample to draw an inference. The study looked only at affluent school districts in California. There’s not a lot of black and hispanic students in those school districts to begin with. And the white families are much more likely to be wealthier and have more freedom to move.
It could be that, but the study itself doesn't show that at all. It actually shows the opposite. Hispanics were, by far, the largest subset of students in the study. In the Central Cities area of the study, Asian and black student population was about even.
I don't believe that will happen. The Constitution will continue to be paraded as a tool to attack perceived enemies and protect allies. We already see it all over the place when MAGA talks about the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
The hypocrisy doesn't matter to them because it isn't (and never was) about the "ideals" of the Constitution, it is about punishing enemies.
> California can't restrict the importation and sale of items manufactured legally in other states if the item itself (after manufacture) is safe.
I'm not sure about that, maybe it is based on the definition of "safe". There are tortilla chips made in Chicago that explicitly say they cannot be sold in California on the packaging. This is due to chemicals banned in Prop 65.
Right, because the "bad" chemical will be in CA, harming CA residents.
CA can't say "the factory that made these chips emitted chemical X into the air during manufacturing, but none of it is in the final product", so you can't import it.
The Federal Government can, but not an individual state.
I'd like to see your math, as it isn't just the loading of passengers that takes time. It would seem that slowing down, completely stopping, lowering the bus, opening the doors, and then closing the doors takes up at least some of the time at each bus stop.
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