Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

[Dinh AaronMk]

Crediting Trump - or any president really - with job creation may by very imprudent.

[SleepingSilence]

<Snipped quote by SleepingSilence>

Nice meme

@Dinh AaronMk

Says a bad word in caption?

This is why I take none of this political chatter remotely seriously. :D

If you did literally any research at all, you'd know what kind of man this dude was. But lul meme. Not like I posted a reddit of someone going into further detail. (Though he did defend the person, in saying as likely as true a statement or paraphase it might have been, it also doesn't shine a pure negative light.) Which astounds me, but it's reddit a place proven to have down voting bots, used by the administers themselves. And nor will I bother posting the six hundred other people that have been caught with true intentions of pandering...

[Skepic]

There, done in one. Y'all go home, read this, read it again, then try to maintain hope that one day you'll be able to fool yourself into thinking that things like a "purpose in life" or "Free Will" really exist. Welcome to this Lovely Cell.

Nihilism aside, regardless of wherever any of you are on the spectrum, this is an important book to have in your head when discussing anything about politics. This book is literally why Karl Marx wrote his manifesto, and much of Niche's work is heavily inspired by it. This book certainly earns a claim to being "the most revolutionary book ever written".

[Andreyich]

Deus Vult is all I need to want to keep on living tbh

[mdk]

aight so that's like twice now in just a few hours.... can we back off the language there folks? Forum rules are pretty specific on racial slurs and I know you're not, like, USING them that way, but all the same. No judgments, just precautions.

[mdk]

Crediting Trump - or any president really - with job creation may by very imprudent.

@Dinh AaronMk

Well don't take my word for it. I can pull up half a dozen more if you like, or we can chuckle about how just a few months ago y'all were celebrating Obama pulling us out of the recession for much paltrier gains.

[Penny]

Nihilism aside

@Skepic

Everything is nothing. Sometimes it is a comfort.

[Skepic]

@Penny

True, it does help when things get heated in an argument then its like "Oh yeah, I'm going to die someday, and there will be literally nothing beyond that.... probably wasting my time here on reddit"

A good motivator, if anything. Though I certainly see the irony in it. xD

[SleepingSilence]

aight so that's like twice now in just a few hours.... can we back off the language there folks? Forum rules are pretty specific on racial slurs and I know you're not, like, USING them that way, but all the same. No judgments, just precautions.

@mdk

I hope that doesn't include me, I did "use" them but to show what others were saying, and it was censored. So hopefully wasn't seen otherwise.

[mdk]

<Snipped quote by mdk>

I hope that doesn't include me, I did "use" them but to show what others were saying, and it was censored. So hopefully wasn't seen otherwise.

@SleepingSilence

Like I said, I'm not judging people here, I'm simply saying for precaution's sake that keeping that word out of the thread is the very best way to keep the thread open. So..... I mean do with that information what you will.

[SleepingSilence]

<Snipped quote by SleepingSilence>
I get that the point of the system is to make it less democratic, partly because there was some merit to it. I just think its reasonable to question whether it becomes unreasonable to give a voter from Montana so much more impact than one from New York. Id rather see more lower case D democracy than less. It will be interesting to see what the demographics look like a hundred years from now will we have rotten borough style states? Because there is no way the system will change, why would the three people who live in Wyoming sign off on a constitutional amendment that would make their vote less important.

@Penny

To be perfectly honest and mildly judging, the fact that California literally is a disaster zone in every way and is beyond bankrupt and gives whoever they decide a 3rd of what they need to win, one goddamn state, is one third of their vote. And it's always blue...because of the few big cities (when the map is mostly red.) People telling me, how under valued they just because they have 2 million or more people who can't legally vote doing so, doesn't have the power that a state that has 2 votes and means almost nothing in the grand scheme of things, hurts with irony. And who the hell wants New York, the "you're too stupid to feed yourself" mayor make decisions about any other state. I digress.

I don't really know how else to describe that the electoral college was all fine when it favored the other side. I think even my brother mildly woke up to all temper tantrums and stupid behavior coming from his side. Hypocrites everywhere and despite people pretending its a fringe, it's still constantly happening...

But to put it simply, the "popular vote" should remain utterly irrelevant.

[SleepingSilence]

<Snipped quote by SleepingSilence>

Like I said, I'm not judging people here, I'm simply saying for precaution's sake that keeping that word out of the thread is the very best way to keep the thread open. So..... I mean do with that information what you will.

@mdk

Well it is all censored and it's certainly not talking about anyone else. But duly noted...politics is hard to talk about without being inappropriate. ^-^' (even when you're actively trying and know what your talking about.)

[Dinh AaronMk]

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

Says a bad word in caption?

This is why I take none of this political chatter remotely seriously. :D

If you did literally any research at all, you'd know what kind of man this dude was. But lul meme. Not like I posted a reddit of someone going into further detail. (Though he did defend the person, in saying as likely as true a statement or paraphase it might have been, it also doesn't shine a pure negative light.) Which astounds me, but it's reddit a place proven to have down voting bots, used by the administers themselves. And nor will I bother posting the six hundred other people that have been caught with true intentions of pandering...

@SleepingSilence

I'm not going to deny LBJ was a casual racist, but the fact of the matter is actually digging into the quote's history you don't come up with much credit behind it. You get one guy who said LBJ said it to some governors, and since they weren't identified it's difficult to corroborate the story the Johnson ever made the quip. The position that Johnson was more afraid of him having given the entire south over to the Republican Party has more weight than the loose allegory that he said he'd get niggers voting Democrat for two-hundred years.

Meeting notes during the Johnson era and minutes from cabinet meetings at the time of his ascendancy also supports the notion that he wasn't into it for cold political maneuvering and was as into it as his predecessor was and certainly fought to get it through. And as shrewd a political navigator as Lyndon Johnson was, he would have sensed that passing civil rights legislation would alienate many of the white voters in the South who were the Vanguard of the Old Party (yes, believe or not: party ideology does shift).

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

Well don't take my word for it. I can pull up half a dozen more if you like, or we can chuckle about how just a few months ago y'all were celebrating Obama pulling us out of the recession for much paltrier gains.

@mdk

Emotional spirits, that is all. Stock Market trends rely on the outlook of bankers in the system and investment bureaus who think something will turn out good and in the spirit of positive or negative feelings will invest likewise and kick off a trend. The Stock Market isn't a good indicator of on-the-ground progress in jobs creation, national output, and other more physical measures of how the nation is doing from a economic point of view. It may or will keep highscores going for a while as spirits are up, but should no returns be made stock values will inevitably dip as the honey moon spirit is lost. It doesn't indicate that there's been an immediate shift in the physical productive economy at, and is like judging a person as being wealthy or not by asking him if he's in a glass half-full or glass half-empty mood.

The truth of the matter is that corporate policy moves at a tectonic pace like government, and the only effective and immediate effect Trump has on the job market is giving the green-light to hire in more people in government jobs. But as it stands Congress does and always has controlled the purse strings so Trump can't actively hire on a few thousand more people into federal jobs without first giving the appropriate resources from Congress, he has to otherwise cut in proportion elsewhere.

But, you know, if you don't actually want to chase down other sources and want self confirming information at a finger-click: fine by me. But really, stopping to first consider he wasn't so much as president until the 20th of January then simply by that he's still falling short, using Bureau of Labor Statistic reports. There's also the sticky situation that the previous two months figures aren't totally final and are still an estimation until they finalize those for this month's mid-month review of jobs added, so the number so far can change drastically.

We also have to stop and consider that the shit he's taking credit for happened well before he took office. The Ford job creation announcement came at the end of 2015 deal made with the UAW, not with Trump. Here's the transcript. Full scoop here.

The merger of Charter with Time Warner Cable will add 20,000 jobs; which I recall right Trump took some credit for. However, this is a deal that goes back as far as 2015 with the final announcement made well before the election wrapped up in 2016.

And the 45,000+ jobs creation program by Exxon was started in 2013, Reuters reports.

An Intel deal to build a new factory in Arizona was initiated in 2011.

GM job creation announcements make no mention of Trump, and comes following action taken by the company in 2016 and 2009.

The source you gave doesn't even touch on or acknowledge the glacial pace at which things move and mostly settles itself on stock market feels with fifty CEOs with no conclusive plan revealed to actually physically do anything. If we're going to credit Trump for job creation it'd be years down the line, since so often development plans and action on the corporate front are rarely ever done in an instant and get dragged out over long periods. Everything Trump is trying to take credit for in this first semester of his first year was already decided on with or without him and is the part of post-recession momentum.

[Vilageidiotx]

The margin of error in this case is an example of how utterly negligible 2% or so of the entire United States population is skewed. This is such a relatively insignificant number, the point was to show this is not an issue of "majority vote" and "minority rule". It is a comparison that it has not enough of a factor to be weighted as extreme or important and there was not even a close race. The fact that the Trump administration won 46% of the popular vote to the Hillary campaign's 48% shows there's not a significant enough difference to bring issue here, hence the 2000 election example used which was closer by both popular and electoral vote; there's no issue at all here. Had the 2008 election been 52% to 45% with an electoral victory for the McCain campaign despite massive losses under popular vote, there might be an argument; that never happened however.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity

The bare fact that the minority won looks bad no matter how you cut it. Saying that it could be worse is irrelevant.

And no, it is not that easy to communicate or sway voters because of density alone. It is far easier to influence 100,000 people in a single city than it is across an entire county of 100,000 people. This might be the 21st Century where this is easier than ever, but that does not solve the issue of concentration, because availability isn't the issue; mass is easier to market to. Getting more people together in a single place is easier to pander to and talk to their collective situation rather than make pock marks across multiple areas, especially when those people are predisposition to be more sympathetic or interested in your platform or product. This is generally true with just about any marketing.

I simply disagree with this entirely. Rural America is about as uniform, possibly even more uniform, than the urban demographic. It's easy as shit to sell things to.

The system already is a product of legitimacy. It is written, codified, documented, and implemented, no less it includes a history to base itself on that is not part of the modern era. This is not a new process, neither is it one that is not in part a representative democratic process. It is meeting its own criteria, with people crying foul now only because they lost, not because there seems to be any legitimacy to the argument. It is continuing to behave and be validated by its design and its historical track record.

By legitimacy, I mean people's faith that the system achieves what we are taught it is supposed to achieve. We say we are democratic, we are a government of the people and all that, so it is the voting side of representation that legitimizes it. Things that fly in the face of this statement delegitimize the system. It's sort of like a Pope having sexy parties all the time. A lot of politics comes down to illusion, and when the illusion is broken, the system breaks down.

People are undisciplined. If the general population is so hopeless that they cannot be bothered to cast their vote if they win or lose, they more or less lose the right to complain about it. I still voted for the Romney campaign despite the fact I knew the Obama administration was likely to sweep the electoral and popular vote again, which it did. That is discipline and execution of duty. My vote "might not have mattered", but I exercised my right and did what I was supposed to do, regardless of my feelings on it. I do not accept the thought that "peoples votes do not matter". They do, especially en masse.

I don't accept the idea that votes don't matter either, I generally try to do as much with a vote as I theoretically can, but I see how people get disillusioned and give up on the system.

The electoral voters are supposed to represent their people in ideology. Again, if I was a voter for my district, as much as it would hurt me to vote for the Clinton campaign personally, my objective is to represent the interests of the area I am responsible for as unbiased and impartial as I can be. I have a duty to perform, not a moral obligation to challenge what is "unjust". I would be out of my lane if I did that.

We don't really need to expand on this because we both agree on this particular point.

While this time I believe the electoral vote to have been in my personal favor, again I cannot fault it for the previous two elections which I Was strongly against. It did what it was designed to do and I resigned myself to going on with my life and keeping tabs on what I hoped would be a turning tide; which it was. This is not a matter of "technicality", this is a matter of the system doing exactly what it was meant to do. If anything that should legitimize the system because it worked as intended. Again, if the Trump administration had lost by 5%, they might have an argument, but this is a clear cut case that the United States' approach to voting for leaders works within its design. The popular vote was relatively close, especially if we look back to recent events and then further back. A 2% win of popular vote is very, very little.

This was not what the system was meant to do. It is an unfortunate quirk. The founding fathers tried to design a system where states were the basis of the electoral system, but where also too the system would be weighted so the popular vote followed the electoral (hence why it isn't one state one vote). This worked better at a time when the population was generally rural, but as the system becomes increasingly urban and in an uneven way, we get these quirks. I will note that they have happened before, and people have generally been pissed back then too. 1876 is pretty comparable actually, in the sense that the partu that won the popular but lost the electoral basically stated they wouldn't accept the election and the electoral winner had to make concessions before they could proceed into office.

I do have an interesting thought to throw out, something that has been more of a back-of-the-mind concern as a Kansas Citian watching the the political upheavals of the neighboring state of Kansas in the Brownback years - one quirk of the electoral system is that it technically rewards Republican governments for damaging economic growth in their own states. If St Louis were to catch back up, and Kansas City to keep on growing, Missouri will probably become a blue state. Whereas if the state government keeps its cities from developing, the Republican Party pretty much has the state in the future, at least in federal elections. Now, I don't think my state government is doing that - it's too busy trying to root out gays and strippers - but the idea that a party would have political motivation to depress its own citizens, and that I just happen to live in a perfect state for that strategy to be enacted, sorta makes me paranoid to be honest.

There's the problem, and makes my point of discussion things moot. I can't recommend you a goddamn book to read...videos are the best and easiest way to express a point. Especially when you yourself had a heart attack when I typed too much stuff. Well how can one remove thousand of words of typing? A video. But I digress.

I've said a billion times, I ain't got time. I'm kinda outnumbered here and I work for a living besides. I can't take on the entire Republican party all at fucking once. And youtube political videos suck a couple of rotten balls.

And No, because the popular vote has never been a thing. And no, the city thing is not a fallacy. If we only did a popular vote, they WOULD pander to cities. Because they could promise that city endless benefits, and make other states pay for them. Why wouldn't they do that? I won't argue the electoral college is perfect or flawless, but if you are arguing to remove it entirely for a popular vote. I reject that ideal for a very good reason.

Like you've done before and I will correct you again. We aren't a democracy. That is a clear distinction needed to be made. We do not get things done by mob rule and presidents have not all been elected 'because of representation of beliefs' because like I said, many people don't even know who believes what. And it's not just kids and teens either. There's no way I can convince you that the electoral college is needed, if I can't even provide evidence that you'll look at. So what's the point? Probably is none.

Missouri isn't about to pay for California and NYC. It's more or less the other way around. Which makes sense, because the modern economy is highly specialized and it is hard to specialize in a rural environment, so that [urlhttps://i0.wp.com/www.brookings.ed… sort of thing[/url] is sorta obvious. So the goofy meme that cities are sucking all the super-productive country folk dry is silly. More often than not rural Americans are just sucking socially acceptable government teats, like agricultural grants or social security.

Also, I didn't say we are a direct democracy, so your shoehorning that point in is impertinent. Democracy is the legitimizing factor in the government. Those are two different things. Because a monarchy claims divine election as the reason it exists does not mean it is now the kingdom of god. In the same sense, because we are a Republic that uses democracy as its claim to legitimacy doesn't mean we are a direct democracy. At the same time, the democratic elements are still our legitimizing factor.

Okay. Gotta take a breath. Let's move on.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity@mdk@Vilageidiotx

@Dynamo Frokane

didn't get to see your meme, bro

I get that the point of the system is to make it less democratic, partly because there was some merit to it. I just think its reasonable to question whether it becomes unreasonable to give a voter from Montana so much more impact than one from New York. Id rather see more lower case D democracy than less. It will be interesting to see what the demographics look like a hundred years from now will we have rotten borough style states? Because there is no way the system will change, why would the three people who live in Wyoming sign off on a constitutional amendment that would make their vote less important.

@Penny

Yeh, it probably won't change this is true. Not immediately anyway. We've went through politically tense periods in our history before, and we've came out of them. We're very possibly rocking our way into the seventh party system (i think that is the number anyway), and that could possibly bring a more United USA. Fuck if I know. The future is wild. Four years ago none of us would have guessed we'd already have President Camacho.

Upsides: DOW up 16%. NASDAQ up 19.5%. Drilling & energy sector way up. Regulations way down. 600,000+ new jobs added. Unemployment down to 4.3%. Business and economic enthusiasm way up- record levels.

Downsides: HE'S MEAN!!!!

DOW and NASDAQ are temporary readers most of the time since they measure what is going on in the market today. If you actually look at those charts over long term periods (google is giving me five years) it isn't exactly special. Regulations being down is just a simple way of saying we are going to do the Great Recession again. Unemployment has been following a trend line down since 2010 and isn't super special either. The oil and energy sector being up is sort of obvious because the Republicans favor those industries so naturally they'll be super stoked, I mean, anybody could have predicted that.

On the flip, honestly, I don't think he is super mean. He's opened the door for some nasty fuckers, but that's the chaotic result of him being a shit communicator.

This is my age-long frustration with both parties I guess. Democrats focus on all the wrong shit, and Republicans just fuck shit up. All we can do is watch the fallout and hope we keep our asses.

[Dolerman]

@Dinh AaronMk@Vilageidiotx watching you two commies fight the right back 2 back is bringing a tear to my eye.

@Skepic Hello wingmate! out of interest what other RPs do you like, outside of Warplanes and Mechs...trading card games perhaps?

Oh and I need a meme.....ummm

Yeah this'll do


eat your heart out @Andreyich

[SleepingSilence]

@Dinh AaronMk
I'm not absolutely stating that person's intentions, though I highly doubt someone could say that without some hedonistic angle to it, especially since he was often a liar, though I am with many of the other people that have said similar things that are completely glossed over. Just noting I already posted a video about this, but the parties didn't switch ideologies or sides. Maybe you just mean people can change their opinion and you're implying that's what he did. And I agree with that sentiment, but in this day of irrational political belief, you cannot change yourself or the evils of racism. (As I had already discussed once before.)

Also now suddenly people are actually siting sources for things while talking? Better late than never...

@Dynamo Frokane The fatal flaw of that picture is all racists are idiots, and therefore have not read those books or know about history well enough to know any of those icons. But I suppose all being secret frog people, just gives more credence to the lizard people conspiracy. /s

On that note. Since I already started. (Note the picture isn't directed at you or anyone. Just too lazy and thoughtful of spam to post twice. But since this is all this thread is. Might as well humor it.)

Look everyone, a picture with facts and reality opposed to strawmen. :O

I don't know, feel like at least one of those was needed.

[Andreyich]

Out of curiosity why is racialism conflated with racism, even if by some crazy chance it is wrong?

[SleepingSilence]

Out of curiosity why is racialism conflated with racism, even if by some crazy chance it is wrong?

@Andreyich

That just sounds like a recently made up word to counter the statement of racism. (And ignoring the fact that racism as a word is already flawed and nearly irrelevant from how often it's used in the first place.) But I digress. Racism is conflated with everything. :P

Also, can we (the culture in general) stop making up new words please? The fact that published dictionaries had to change the definition of the word literally. Makes me depressed. Like do we need to add 'man-' as a prefix to everything we define as evil now?

[Dolerman]

@Dynamo Frokane The fatal flaw of that picture is all racists are idiots, and therefore have not read those books or know about history well enough to know any of those icons. But I suppose all being secret frog people, just gives more credence to the lizard people conspiracy. /s

On that note. Since I already started. (Note the picture isn't directed at you or anyone. Just too lazy and thoughtful of spam to post twice. But since this is all this thread is. Might as well humor it.)

Look everyone, a picture with facts and reality opposed to strawmen. :O

I don't know, feel like at least one of those was needed.

@SleepingSilence

There is no flaw in this picture, some idiots racist or otherwise do read history books. Its their understanding of race and accomplishments which is skewed. And I hope you werent accusing my meme of strawmen, there are people who think like that, I'm not sure of the exact number but they do exist.

And I've got no problem with your picture of stats at all, islam is an ideology with a set of values so beliefs can be attributed to its followers without it being prejudice.

I will take issue with your somewhat snide jab at this thread, like I've said at least 4 times before, if politcal discussion threads annoy you so much then stop having political discussions in said threads. Or if you are going to insist on taking part like everyone else, stop slinging insults at the subject matter.

We can debate and we can post memes, that's what this thread is for, stop complaining.

@Andreyich explain racialism, I'm not 100% familiar with the term.

[Andreyich]

@Dynamo Frokane
Genetic and ingrained differences in IQ, anatomy, behaviour, etc. Basically, evolution on a human scale. Whenever someone expresses the slightest belief in it or even interest in researching it they get "called out" as racists.