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

[Anti Democrat Democrat Club]

That’s hilarious! And they arrested this kid for it??? Possibly ruining his entire life and future over a senior prank??? Sounds kinda like something… Hitler would do.

I don't see what is damned hilarious about attributing a Hitler quote to a murdered man. And he was arrested for illegally accessing the computer database, not for free speech or not being woke or whatever you are trying to imply.

What’s (darkly) funny about it is that they apparently would publish anything if it was attributed to George Floyd because the man has been deified so much since his death. The kid tested that theory and took it to its logical extreme, and it worked! Can’t blame him because the school administrators responsible for oversight failed to catch it. Possibly because of wokeness, possibly because of just plain laziness. Maybe a bit of both. Regardless, it’s pathetic for them to dump all the fault onto an 18 year old kid who outsmarted them, and possibly ruin his life over it.

Also I get that he was arrested because accessing the computer database to pull off the prank was technically illegal. But so are a whole bunch of other, more traditional senior pranks that no one is ever arrested for, many of which involve trespassing, vandalism, etc. This is an insanely disproportionate response to an incredibly mild “offense” that was effectively a victimless crime. Again, the kid’s entire future could be in jeopardy over an edgy senior prank. Because the school administrators are too cowardly to own up to the fact that they got the wool pulled over their eyes by a student, and too humorless to appreciate that it was actually kinda clever. Absurd.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I remember well when conservatives used to be the anti-fun, uncool, humorless authoritarians with sticks up their asses who wanted to rigidly enforce every single law and rule to the letter, regardless of whether their response was fair or reasonable or proportionate, or fit within the spirit and principles of liberty (which is very much distinct from the letter of the law). You know… like Nazis. But as much as I hate to say it, more and more the left (very much distinct from “liberals”) are taking that mantle from them. It’s depressing as hell.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

early emo bands like Fugazi

Most emo is post-hardcore, but most post-hardcore is not emo.

[GeorgiaModerate]

The big problem in the west (as I see it) is that my generation does not have a real affinity for the United States as a nation. It’s a necessary evil—basically, we are in an unhappy marriage and are staying together because the alternative would be much worse. I do not want the dissolution of the US because it would embolden the likes of Russia and China as well as hurting California economically. I have seen what Brexit has done to the UK, and they were not nearly as integrated into the EU as the states are economically and politically integrated into the US. With that said, if some of the more authoritarian elements within the GOP get their way and the left is locked out of power despite commanding a majority of the American people (via gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc) then there may be no other option than secession. I (and I assume a majority of my fellow Californians) will refuse to live in a dominant-party state with the GOP in charge. I see this moment we are living in today as a crossroads. A rejection of authoritarianism in the next 5-10 years will save the US for generations, but if the Trumpists get their way and regain full power within the US government? I would then expect the US to no longer exist (at least in its current form) within my lifetime. No matter what happens, I think we will all look back on this time and be able to point to the decisions made now as the reason for whatever is to come for the American union.

[Joseph Cao]

Lol somebody designed a terrible push-poll question and Republicans took the bait.

Thank you for pointing this out. It's essential context.

Priming people to think about science as an institution instead of as a process or a body of knowledge will shift focus from the process/knowledge to the people who do it, and of course the last two decades have been marked by an erosion of trust in all sorts of institutions this will cause people to answer less favorably.

This erosion of trust isn't entirely unwarranted either. The public health establishment (yes, public health is slightly different from medical science and associated fields, but I'm not sure how many non-scientists will make this distincion) has shown its bare ass multiple times in the last 16 months. Scientists have (arguably justifiably, although this would be a good debate) launched themselves into the world of politics  in the last decade and in an era of hyper-polarization (especially along educational lines) this is a recipe to get an outgroup to distrust you and your motives.

I am a scientist. I work with scientists. I believe in the scientific process (when it isn't being corrupted). But if you asked me what I thought about science "as an institution" I would give a less glowing review than I would otherwise.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Re: 'Impossible' to know what caused 2020 polling error

Re: You want to know why the polls were unusually inaccurate in the 2020 election?

We've been over this.

The problem with 2016 was that pollsters were not controlling for education because historically, education level was not a reliable predictor of voting patterns. That has changed, and now the more educated you are the more likely you are to vote Democrat.

That gap is especially true among white voters.

Pollsters are now controlling for education.

So unless there's something else they're missing, they're probably not overestimating Biden's white support.

Here's the thing: weighting by education only solves your problem if the small sample of non-college voters you do successfully get is conditionally representative of the non-responsive non-college population.

As I doubt pollsters' ability to reach non-college whites has increased since 2016, this means inflating the importance of the few non-college respondents you do have, which is a group which tends to be disproportionately elderly. If, for example, elderly non-college voters have moved left since 2016 while others have not (or even moved right), education weighting may actually make polls less accurate than without education weighting.

[MATTROSE94]

According to the most recent Israeli study, Pfizer is only 39% effective at preventing Delta infections. Even if it still prevents severe illness, this is a strong argument in favor of mask mandates because it means that there are many vaccinated people spreading COVID around. The tide is clearly turning; the administration has leaked that it is considering changing the CDC mask guidance, and Fauci said yesterday that vaccinated people could consider going back to masking indoors.

Dread it, run from it, the mask mandate arrives all the same.

Pfizer Inc.’s Covid-19 vaccine provided a strong shield against hospitalization and more severe disease in cases caused by the contagious delta variant in Israel in recent weeks, even though it was just 39% effective in preventing infections, according to the country’s health ministry.

The vaccine, developed with BioNTech SE, provided 88% protection against hospitalization and 91% against severe illness for an unspecified number of people studied between June 20 and July 17, according to a report Thursday from the health ministry.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-23/pfizer-shot-just-39-effective-in-halting-delta-israel-says?srnd=premium-europe

[MATTROSE94]

I think we're all forgetting one MAJOR sleeper entity: State legislatures. The rank and file GOP faithful are starting to catch on to this dirty little trick and operate under the radar to "stick it to Washington" or whatever political jihad they're angry about now.

Somehow, the Democrat electorate at large really doesn't seem to connect the dots on the importance of these races. As we saw in 2020, not only did Democrats fail to flip any state legislatures, but actually lost NH. Link here: https://www.multistate.us/issues/2020-state-legislative-elections.

It isn't entirely out of the question. There are 31 states already fully under GOP control. In a lousy Dem midterm, GOP could potentially flip MN-house, NV, CO, NM, VA, ME. They would only need one more to get 38, which would be enough to have a convention of states and override acts of Congress, however unlikely this is. Call me a crazy person, but that just may be their plan. No one is talking about this. Were they to pull this off, it would the upset of the millennia, much greater than what Donald Trump did in 2016.

But since the question obviously is about the national race, Arizona and Wisconsin are must-wins, and either GA/PA would do it. Small chance of a sleeper state being NV. There's always one that surprises us each cycle. I still think as far as a federal national race goes, they're DOA, and they will be for a while.

[KaiserDave]

Jesus is a manifestation of God a High Priest, just like Moses was too that also died and was buried, we learn the difference between Universe and High Priest in Buddhism and we know that there is a difference

It's probably no Hell or Heaven either but the Astral plane and maybe Reincarnation, but it's up to you to believe

The ending of the World is probably not a Rapture either but a Cosmic Event

He may have outdone himself this time

[beesley]

1995 results are clearly wrong and inversed: it was Chirac who won 60.9% in the second round, not Jospin. A fair number of 1995 second round results at the local level were erroneously inversed in this way. Therefore, the rather sharp shift from right to left in presidential voting happened between 1995 and 2007 (when Ségolène Royal won with 60.9%), and has only gotten more marked since.

Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon is very much sui generis in its politics like most other overseas collectivities, and national politics - especially in the past - may have been far less relevant to them.

Still to this day, parochialism - relative dislike of outsiders, longstanding resentment of metropolitan technocrats, strong local culture - seems to be the dominant tone of archipelago's politics. It seems as if the national political parties were not locally organized into federations until relatively recently, and local politics remain dominated by local parties only loosely tied to national parties - Archipel demain, which controls the territorial council and the Senate seat, is affiliated to the centre/right; Cap sur l'avenir is led by Annick Girardin, the current minister of the sea and ex-PRG/LREM deputy since 2007.

Local politics have also long tended to be dominated by a small number of political figures, often with distant family ties among themselves (their surnames also reveal the Breton, Norman or Basque origins of the majority of the insular population) - for example, Albert Pen (senator 1968-1981, deputy 1981-1986, senator 1986-1995), Marc Plantegenest (deputy 1978-1981, senator 1981-1986), Gérard Grignon (deputy 1986-2007). All three had fluctuating metropolitan political affiliations: Pen was initially a Gaullist, but became a Socialist in 1974, and remained affiliated with the Socialist group although he quit the PS as early as 1977; Plantegenest, at first a protégé of Pen, sat as a non-inscrit in the National Assembly and gave his signature to Giscard in 1981, but then sat as a Socialist in the Senate, which reveals a certain tendency (in the past, at least) to side with whoever was in power centrally (a trait shared with other overseas places, hi Wallis-et-Futuna!). Grignon was among the founders of Archipel demain, the centre-right local party, and always sat with the UDF or UMP groups, although in his unsuccessful 1981 campaign he said that he would sit with the Socialist group if elected and support Mitterrand.

There's also tended to be disconnect between voting patterns for different levels: as a recent example, Archipel demain has won the last three territorial elections (2006, 2012, 2017) - with no less than 70% in 2017 - while Cap sur l'avenir (Girardin) won the last four legislative elections (2007, 2012, 2014 by-election, 2017) - although her 2017 reelection was very close (surprisingly close, at least seen from Paris, given that she was an incumbent cabinet minister).

As an older example, while Giscard won the archipelago by huge margins in 1974 and 1981, left-leaning candidates - Plantegenest and then Pen - won the 1978, 1981 and 1986 legislative elections. Both in their times campaigned as the 'local' candidates, defending territorial interests (at the time in opposition to the departmentalization of the island in 1975, which was locally controversial, in part because of the threat of a huge influx of metropolitan bureaucrats), against 'carpetbagger' (parachutés in French parlance) candidate from metropolitan France. While Pen didn't hide his sympathies for the left/PS, he largely campaigned as the 'local' candidate; in both 1978 and 1981, Plantegenest and Pen's opponent in the runoff was a UDF candidate from metropolitan France, who tried to campaign with a then-typical 'socialo-communist danger' red scare campaign. As a fun anecdote, the RPR's candidate in 1981 was Julien Lepers - later the host of Questions pour un champion on France3 (1988-2016), who got trounced, in part because he was not a local. When Grignon won the archipelago's seat in the National Assembly in the 1986 by-election (against Plantegenest I believe), it was in good part because he campaigned against the monopolization of all local powers by Pen's political group.

The trend in presidential voting can, I think, as Estrella mentioned, be explained by the usual patterns of secularization/decline of religious practice/weakening of the religious cleavage seen elsewhere in France. Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon was a very religious place - I think, as late as the 1980s, a majority of students attended écoles libres (private, usually Catholic, schools), although don't quote me on that. From its wartime history, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon was also a Gaullist stronghold - Jacques-Philippe Vendroux, the nephew of de Gaulle's wife, was the deputy (UDR) between 1967 and 1973 (despite not being an islander and very much a parachuté).

Historically the archipelago's economy was dominated by the cod fisheries, like for Newfoundland, but the cod fisheries collapsed following the delimitation of France's EEZ in 1992 and the Canadian cod moratorium in the 1990s. Since then, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon has been heavily dependent on public sector employment and funding and subsidies from metropolitan France (which have been very generous: the economic situation, post-cod fisheries collapse, on Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon has been better than neighbouring fishing communities in Newfoundland...). Your guess is as good as mine, but perhaps the dependence on public employment and funding may explain (along with secularization) the bias towards the left in recent presidential elections. In 2017, Mélenchon (35.5%) and Panzergirl (18.2%) placed first and second, and Panzergirl overperformed her national result in the runoff (36.7%, although less than half of voters cast valid votes) - Panzergirl had made a point of visiting Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon during the campaign (something which I think is rare for any presidential candidate) to sell the image that she wouldn't forget about them. Perhaps the traditional isolation from/resentment against metro France helped Mélenchon and Panzergirl, and hurt someone like Macron.

Edit: for those in Canada, here's a really good documentary about the archipelago: https://www.knowledge.ca/program/island-diaries/s4/e8/st-pierre-and-miquelon

I don't think anyone will begrudge this?

[LostFellow]

Even if the vaccinated can spread the virus as easily as the unvaccinated, which I doubt, only the unvaccinated are going to get seriously ill.

I wish you were right, but unfortunately you are incorrect.

I can only assume that you didn't actually look at the CDC presentation (and other related studies and data that have come out over the past day or two), or else you didn't understand.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/cdc-breakthrough-infections/94390e3a-5e45-44a5-ac40-2744e4e25f2e/

According to the CDC, 15% of deaths in may and 9% of hospitalizations in the USA were among fully vaccinated people:



This time period (May) is while vaccines were still relatively "fresh" in the immune systems of most vaccinated Americans, and was also before the delta variant started becoming really prevalent/dominant. Once we start getting to the 6+ month period after people got their 2nd dose, and now that delta is prevalent rather than the earlier less virulent variants, there is plenty of reason to fear that this may go up further.

Here's a graph showing the CDC's estimated fatality rate and transmissability ranges for the delta variant. Clearly it is much more transmissable, but the worrying thing is also that it has a higher fatality rate. If you are not used to looking at graphs like this, the important thing you need to realize is the Y axis (fatality rate) is shown on a logarithmic scale, not a linear scale. That means that each unit by which you go higher on the graph is exponentially larger, not just linearly larger. So while visually it looks like the fatality rate is only slightly higher, it is higher by more than it looks.



CDC also references studies indicating that the delta variant has higher hospitalization and death rates (not surprising given the higher viral loads with the delta variant):



This unfortunately confirms a lot of what I was worried about and explained a couple of pages back in a few different posts in this thread. The fact that CDC's estimates are indeed that the delta variant has a higher fatality rate than previous variants is very bad, not just because it will directly mean more deaths (and more severe illness), but also because it suggests that viral evolution is NOT selecting for less deadly variants, but instead that deadliness and transmissablity are going hand in hand (both are associated with increased virulence and higher viral loads). That means that there is a very worrisome probability that the next variant that arises after Delta (and the one after that, and the one after that...) will have an even higher fatality rate. If virulence and the base fatality rate continue to rise as new more virulent variants evolve, then things will get hairy for those of who are vaccinated, even given that vaccines should continue to reduce our risk substantially relative to unvaccinated people (and that is even assuming that vaccine-resistant variants do not evolve). When you consider the possibility of getting re-infected multiple times by more virulent variants with higher fatality rates in the future, what are now small risks of death become larger.

The other important thing that we need to be on the lookout for is Long COVID from the delta variant in vaccinated people who were vaccinated a while ago and may have waning immunity. We simply don't know much about how prevalent and how severe that is yet because not enough time has passed and data is simply not really available yet.


Finally, lest you be confused, none of this is in any way "anti-vaccine." Quite the opposite. In fact, it makes it much MORE clear and important that we need to get EVERYONE vaccinated (not just in the USA, but in the entire world) using all means necessary, and we need to do it NOW. On the one hand, in the USA, we need to massively ramp up both the carrots and the sticks to get more of the "hesitant" people to get freely available life saving vaccines. Meanwhile, the Federal Government needs to step in and get vaccine production capacity ramped up on a true world-war-two-style all-out mobilization level. We need a crash program to produce vaccines much more quickly for the world's 8 billion people, as well as to produce more of any extra infrastructure needed to administer vaccines in other countries that lack that infrastructure (e.g. freezers for mRNA vaccines) and send them to developing countries across the world so that they have the supply much more quickly to get their populations vaccinated.

Otherwise, this is likely to get worse. The time for twiddling our thumbs has passed.

Great summary of some more findings on the delta variant. I personally strongly agree with the pushback against the notion that saying the delta strain is vastly more transmissible is "anti-vax."

I get most people are tired of the "COVID hysteria" over the past 18 months, but these are the exact reasons why we need to be looking into vaccine mandates and booster shots sooner rather than later.

I also personally would encourage wearing a mask more in crowded indoor spaces, but that seems to be a more contentious point on this forum.

[Nightcore Nationalist]

It is not impossible.  Voters with lower levels of social trust have always been more difficult for pollsters to reach.  The polls have looked more skewed recently because low social trust has never been as strongly correlated with partisan preference as it is now. 

This is textbook non-response bias.  Simply weighting by education will not fix it because there will remain a fundamental, unobservable difference between non-college educated voters who do respond to polls and those who don't respond to polls.

If trends continue, polls will just continue to get worse and worse.  This will upset the established media and pundit class, who value predictive polls for their narrative- and expectation-setting qualities.  This reckoning over polling is a big reason for the MSM's conspiracy-laden vitriol in the aftermath of Trump's unexpected overperformances:  they feel unempowered to police a body politic they increasingly know less and less about.

The reason America became far greater than any European nation in history is cause of our emphasis on individual freedom which includes the free market

The American Economy surged past the Europeans Economies in the Gilded Age during which time:

1. The US industry functioned behind a wall of tariffs
2. With massive subsidization for it lead industry (rail) and it secondary (steel).
3. With a direct and assertive effort to link the country via infrastructure after the Civil War (rail again)
4. financed with loads of cheap money
5. assisted by direct gifts of land to farmers to encourage settlement of the Prairies (which would not have been economically viable without gov't support and post Depression history and emptying out of that territory has proven several fold)
6. also assisted by land grants for the formation of colleges, and expansion of access to education and literacy.

There is this big lie that comes from neoliberals in the world of finance, finance journalism, economics departments at major universities and the world of business, that this country was built solely by free trade, freedom and lassiez faire. All discussion or talk of nationalist economic schools of thought are buried or white washed from history with over emphasis on Smoot-Hawley and not enough emphasis on impact 70 years earlier, to promote generalized statements of "free trade - the source of all things great" and "protectionism causes war and depression".

If we actually did take that approach some 200 years ago, we would be an economic backwater, we will still have slavery and we would be at the mercy of whichever was the latest foreign power who decided to take a crap all over the fanciful delusions of utopians (right or left) and manipulate the market to their own benefit. Economically speaking the Civil War and the abolishing of slavery played out as America's rejection of the international trade system (namely with Free Trade Britain buying cheap American cotton grown by unpaid slaves) alongside of the tariffs and other polices, in favor of domestic manufacturing.

It was not in John Tyler's, Martin Van Buren's or Grover Cleveland's administration that the US surpassed Great Britain. It was during Rutherford B Hayes'.

Manipulating the market for domestic benefit is the policy used by rising powers (Britain in the 16th-18th centuries, US in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, China Now), free trade is the policy used by ascended powers to cash in on their dominance (Britain in the 19th century, US in the 20th Century).

Furthermore, population size and growth is the main driver of GDP once all other factors are accounted for, something that Japan has learned the hard way as its nominal GDP has stagnated even as its per Capita GDP mirrors that of most developed nations.

Essential factors thus in the US and its ability to surge economically past Europe was its vast size, resources and population.

All of this need to be considered alongside its history and legacy of freedom and such forth.

[MATTROSE94]

Masks and social distancing restrictions should be separated. It was a big mistake to combine them in messaging as now they are conflated in the mind of the public. Social distancing restrictions hurt the economy and are not sustainable except as short term measures. However, masks have negligible cost, don't restrict activities once the usual exceptions for bars and restaurants are carved out, and are sustainable as a long term solution. They're not even so uncomfortable to wear indoors, nobody calls for outdoor mask mandates. There is no rational reason why indoor mask mandates cannot be employed long term.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Life's too short to pearl-clutch and hand-wring about the possible potential future health effects of things like weed and booze, let alone to impose draconian measures restricting people from accessing these things. People should be free to make their own decisions about what they put in their own bodies, knowing the risks. All I know is that my risk of dying in a car crash is probably at least as high as my risk of dying from alcohol-related complications, but that's not gonna stop me from driving. At a certain point you just have to accept the fact that there is inherent risk in life and you simply cannot control everything. You can be the most cautious, clean-living person in the world and still die young in some freak accident or of some genetic disease. Or conversely you can be a hard-drinking, drug-using risk taker who lives fast and hard and yet make it to 90 with no major health complications. It's impossible to know which group you are in until it happens. Sure you can do certain things in an attempt to minimize risks, but you can't eliminate them, and attempting to do so seems like insanity to me. Live the life you have now to the fullest because it's all you know for sure you'll ever have. And even if you don't want to do so, it's wrong to try to stop others from doing it.

[Kamala's side hoe]

If you grew up in Highland Park, you will almost certainly be absolutely fine in life even if you attend a mediocre local school like UT-Arlington or North Texas.

Going to an Ivy League school isn't really worth the expense/effort from the standpoint of significantly improving your relative socioeconomic status if you're already in the upper socioeconomic strata.

The threshold for kids being able to just "whatever" their way through life and maintain high social status is a lot higher than this.  That works if your parents are tech founders, it doesn't work if they are just VP of XYZ making $200K at age 55.  You don't have to go to an Ivy, but you still have to be academically successful.

I said "do fine in life," not maintain elite social status. You can be academically successful or unsuccessful at any school. Some people fail out of Cornell. Some people graduate magna cum laude with a 4.0 at San Diego State.

If you want to live a "name brand" life where you work in the New York office of a white shoe law firm or at McKinsey/Bain or are a fellow at the Brookings Institution or a tenured Ivy League academic, or become a columnist for The Atlantic or The New York Times, then yes, you basically have to go to an Ivy League school (or Stanford or Chicago) to do those things no matter what your personal background is.

But if you "just" want to be in the highest earning 10% or so of society, living a nicer and more secure life than the overwhelming majority of Americans (to say nothing of the rest of the world) will ever experience, then, no, you really don't.

You can go to a UT-Arlington and get high grades and go to medical school (even one of those questionable ones in the Caribbean) and go be a specialist physician in a small town making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. You'll never be asked to join the National Academy of Medicine or be lecturing at Harvard Medical School or receive the prestige and deference of, say, Anthony Fauci, but you will have job security and a nice work-life balance and retire with millions of dollars in accrued wealth in a relatively inexpensive area. At a clinic I go to, one of the doctors went to medical school at Yale and another one went to medical school in the Barbados. You want to know what the difference is between them? The name that's on the piece of paper that hangs in their office. They both make plenty of money and do the same job.

You can go to a mediocre state university and major in engineering and become a project manager or go into technical sales and be able to live in a big house in a nice neighborhood, drive a nice car, and take nice ski and beach vacations. You won't be working on AI projects at Google; you won't be the next Zuckerberg. You'll be working on bank software or selling hydraulic components for oil rigs or construction companies. You'll be living in someplace like Sandy Springs, not Palo Alto. But that's hardly a life deserving of any sort of sympathy.

Plenty of kids who grow up in Highland Park and Preston Hollow and the other rich white Dallas neighborhoods just go to SMU, live the frat/sorority life, and use family/friend/alumni connections to go work for a local law firm or real estate firm. They end up in exactly the same place they were in before. "Giving up" going to Harvard/Yale/Princeton doesn't actually require them to give anything up.

[MATTROSE94]

I generally try not to hold opinions of silly culture war issues that Fox News foists upon the rest of the country.

[S019]

No it's not, NZ Labour has consistently moved policy to the left in government though of course a lot of people (sometimes myself included) would like them to go further. It's clear that Labour MPs and party leaders have the same basic left-wing values as any other Anglosphere left-wing party.

I'm not sure how supporting the rights of indigenous people is a right-wing policy. The context of this is that in 1840 the British government signed the Treaty of Waitangi with the Maori, which promised them continued sovereignty over their land. The breach of this Treaty is a big reason why Maori have such worse social and economic outcomes than Pakeha/NZ Europeans, and so it's right that we apply the principles of the Treaty so we can start upholding our obligations under it. Plus, this has evolved to be a bipartisan consensus.

The NZ Labour Party has moved on from policies like a capital gains tax not because it doesn't believe in them, but because it is making that sacrifice to win elections. Having lost 3 consecutive elections before the u-turn and clearly underperformed in the 4th (2017) compared to how they would have done if they hadn't left themselves vulnerable to tax scaremongering, and given the polls were actually close in 2019, the u-turn was an obvious choice politically (policy wise it was regrettable). NZ Labour right now is doing so much better than other Anglosphere left-wing parties, so it looks right now like their approach is a good one. Plus, New Zealand doesn't have much of a mood for radical change or populism-most people are happy with the direction of the country (the polling data on this question is very different to countries like the US), satisfied with democracy, and New Zealand didn't get damaged much by the GFC. So politically, New Zealand is still fine with third way politics and in some ways stuck in the 2000s. This doesn't mean Labour is 'at heart' conservative. Jacinda Ardern explicitly said she believes in a capital gains tax when she pledged never to implement one due to public opinion, and Grant Robertson clearly was very passionate about undoing the 1991 Mother of All Budgets.

Meanwhile, Labour has moved economic policy to the left in many other important ways-such as raising the minimum wage, expanding sick leave, extending the bright-line to 10 years so there's a quasi-capital gains tax on investment properties, undoing the cuts to welfare benefits in the Mother of All Budgets, increasing the top income tax rate to 39% and now  instituting sector-wide Fair Pay Agreements so that trade union power increases and the effect of the Employment Contracts Act is reduced. As you'd expect, Labour has been bolder once they won a majority-both because they can worry less about losing the next election and because NZ First is no longer there stopping left-wing policies from getting a majority in Parliament.

The obvious and simple answer is that Labour is a left-wing party that has policies applied to the NZ context rather than theories based on what other countries experience, and they are political pragmatists that want to be electable and keep power.

[S019]

When did Republicans actually care? I mean under Clinton, sure, but even then it was abysmal. Clinton wasn't fiscally responsible by the way. The GOP just forced his hand. They should have done the same under Obama, if they cared. The GOP didn't care because we pretty much have everyone dependent on entitlements and people will vote against the GOP if entitlements are reformed or cut. They need to be.

There's only been a handful of Republican politicians and voters that actually care. Trumpism pretty much killed fiscal conservatism. The era of Fusionism that Reagan helped bring to the forefront is gone. Buchanan's more liberal ideology on economics that he pushed for more towards the late 90s and early 00s is pretty much where the GOP is at now at this point. Most of the GOP base is ok with massive spending. Maybe states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida still care, but that's not enough. It sucks, but cultural conservatism is more the identity of Conservatism and the GOP than anything else.

That's nonsense.  Every Republican voted against the 1993 Clinton budget that led to the balancing of the budget.  The Clinton 1993 budget had $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases.  It was painful and politically risky with no short term political upside.  On top of the $500 billion over 10 years in spending cuts and tax increases passed earlier under and with the assistance of George H W Bush, the budget was balanced.  

The Republicans like to claim credit for this, even though every single Republican in Congress voted against this budget and offered no serious alternative simply because they happened to have taken the majority in Congress when the budget finally went into balance.

When Clinton was no longer President, but George W Bush was President and the Republicans still controlled Congress, the deficit ballooned again.  If the Republican Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget, how did this happen?

This claim that the Republicans in Congress had anything to do with balancing the budget is more dishonest Republican revisionist history.

Well the budget raised taxes so it makes sense why Republicans were in opposition to this. I'm not sure where this nonsense/dishonest/revisionist history claim comes from. You conveniently ignored the fact that the budget increased taxes and the most popular argument for why HW Bush lost re-election is because he lied to the public about no new taxes. So Republicans backing a budget that raised taxes would be suicide and antithetical to what the GOP wanted at the time. Again, it's not like Clinton truly wanted to balance the budget. He was forced to because it made democrats look bad which is why it narrowly passed. The GOP did force his hand because he would have looked like the spender in chief and made the budget skyrocket. An easy hit for Republicans back then. You claim there's no upside to this, yet the very upside can be seen given the 20+ history after 93 where Republicans blast democrats for trying to spend uncontrollably. It's the same talking point Clinton and his cabinet wanted to avoid.


I already said Republicans never really cared besides under Clinton.  The deficit wasn't eliminated until the BBA btw

Let me see how much of this I can make sense of.

1.You said 'the Republicans forced his hand.'  How did they 'force his hand' when Clinton had already exposed their insincerity and hypocrisy when every Republican announced opposition to the Clinton budget but did not come up with a credible alternative?

2.If you want to argue that President Clinton/the Congressional Democrats didn't really want to cut the deficit either, there is probably some truth to that, as they were forced by the circumstances of high real long term interest rates and the resultant sputtering economic recovery.  But, to claim the Republicans forced President Clinton and the Democrats into cutting/eliminating the deficit is, indeed, nothing but dishonest Republican revisionist history.  

Polling at the time also showed that it was the slow pace and inconsistency of the economic recovery that cost George H W Bush reelection.  Breaking his 'no new taxes' pledge had little to no impact as voters consistently said to pollsters that they expected him to break that promise anyway. The big issue in the 1992 election was the sputtering economy, and the belief that the high federal government budget deficit was the reason for this.  Ross Perot's Presidential campaign played that up and became something of a folk hero over this, although he never provided any credible deficit reduction plan and he never even explained the connection between the budget deficit and the slow economic recovery.  

However, the point here is that the claim Bush lost because he reneged on his 'no new taxes' pledge is also dishonest Republican historical revisionism.

3.The Republicans did nothing but obstruct President Clinton and the Democratic attempts to balance the budget, and as soon as they re-took the Presidency, they ballooned the deficit again.  That is the real historical record, and to claim anything else is an outright lie. And it really doesn't matter why the Republicans were opposed as they proposed no alternative.

So, no, the Republican demands the Republican demands that Clinton balanced the budget had no effect on President Clinton, his cabinet or the Congressional Democrats other than the Republican hypocrisy and dishonesty annoyed the Democrats.

4.I have no idea what you are referring to with the balanced budget amendment.  There is no balanced budget amendment in the Constitution, and yes, President Clinton did balance the budget and then achieve 'surpluses as far as the eye can see.' It may have taken the social security fund surplus to do that, but there is not a single Republican President who has even come close since then, and the social security fund surplus was counted as part of the overall budget long prior to President Clinton.

I think you may mean 'PAYGO' not the balanced budget amendment, but it was the Democrats who have mostly supported that, while Republicans have not because it would have prevented them from passing ever more tax cuts for their wealthy friends/future employers/fellow grifters.  George W. Bush and the Republicans let PAYGO expire in 2003, and it was reinstated by Speaker Pelosi in 2007, and she then reinstated it again after re-taking the Speakership in 2019.

5.It's also the case that as mediocre as President Obama's deficit cutting was, he did leave office with a $450-500 billion deficit while President Trump in 2019 had a $1 trillion deficit even though the economy was in better shape overall in 2019 than in 2016.  So, it is still completely false to argue that even since President Clinton that the Democratic record on deficits is no different than the Republican record.  As disappointing as President Obama was here, the Democrats are still much better than Republicans on the deficit/debt overall.

[Horus]

You guys are effectively saying your immense understanding and respect for science is going to allow your life to be held hostage INDEFINITELY because a subset of people are not smart enough to get vaccinated.  If you can’t see that as hysterical, maybe you’re too far gone.

People should get the vaccine or live with the consequences, and indefinitely suspending basic tenants of peoples’ social lives that provide the most happiness and give the most meaning/connection in life out of a rather irrational fear (i.e., unvaccinated idiots are going to spread a disease I’m 100% protected against as far as serious illness goes) is literal insanity.  Complete, fear-based hysteria.  

It’s like some of you actually support public health measures to stop human beings from getting sick … not hospitalized, not killed, much less not only as a measure to stop ICUs from overcrowding … but literally to stop DISEASE as an abstract entity in its tracks.  That idea is so unnaturally stupid I can’t even entertain it, and thankfully most in society agree and are just moving on with life.  Anyone is free to wear a mask their entire life (outside even!  LMFAO) and avoid crowds and become a reclusive, Zoom-bound loner, but that type of thinking will remain in the minority.  Thankfully.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I don't say low-info voter as a demeaning term. I am one of the low-info voters for Cuomo. People here tend to care about specific and intellectual dedication to key policy issues. I'm not among that group. Politicians like Cuomo and Kamala (and to some extent Trump) have limited allegiance to any policy objectives or ideology and really have solely built a personal brand around themselves more than anything else. Kamala's low-info voters may actually be of the high education, low curiosity subset whereas the other two are built around low education.

The best example of the candidate for high-info voters is Michael Bennet in 2020. Of course, he was not viable. Most high-info candidates are not viable because voters are not high-info. I agree with you that this forum is unnecessarily pessimistic on Kamala when she is the single most likely person to be the next president. I was just offering the reason why this is the case. Atlas' favorites will never do well in an election because Atlas is out of touch with what voters want.

Elizabeth Warren is perhaps the only viable candidate that best represents the high education, high curiosity quadrant last time around. I don't follow politics enough to know who the Democrats might run in the future.

[Badger]

Andrea Stewart-Cousins will be acting Lt Governor as Senate Majority Leader.

At most, ASC will only serve as Acting L.G. for the presumably few moments between Hochul's accession to the governorship & her appointment of a new permanent L.G., as she said during her press conference yesterday that she'll be selecting said appointee prior to becoming Governor, during the transition period in which only 11 days now remain.

Remember 2009 when no one knew who was Lt Governor because of the control of the State Senate being disputed?

No matter what else can be said about David Paterson, it simply can't be denied that he made up for his blindness with the sheer size of his political balls. Skelos v. Paterson was a landmark ruling in NY constitutional law, & it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't decided to just say "f**k you petty-ass bitches, MTA legend Richard Ravitch is your tie-breaker now."

Don't forget the whole "Believe all women who don't accuse a powerful Democrat" thing.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/08/elite-liberal-feminism-times-up-roberta-kaplan-andrew-cuomo-metoo

Every mainstream Democrat under the Sun believed the women who were accusing a powerful Democrat & so called for a verifying investigation, which is why that Time's Up chairwoman whom you point to - let alone, y'know, Cuomo - has been forced to resign-in-disgrace. If there's a point which you're trying to make here, it's not being made in any successful way.

If Cuomo is indeed guilty he should be prosecuted, but it's too bad the current POTUS (against whom there are more credible accusations) isn't held to the same standards.

I do think this is largely a ploy to hurt DeSantis. Democrats can say they got rid of their governor who screwed up his state's Covid response the worst and drive public opinion against DeSantis for how he has handled Covid in Florida. I don't agree that he has screwed it up, but since I think DeSantis is a poor candidate and a neocon I don't mind if this happens.

Those are certainly all words.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

If President Biden (whose lead moderate senators like Joe Manchin generally follow) still refuses to support either the elimination of the filibuster or at least a carve-out for voting rights, then all that is really happening is political kabuki theater.  Biden is merely giving speeches full of empty words in support of voting rights, while congressional Democrats are holding empty, symbolic votes (if that) on voting legislation that everyone knows will never see the President's desk.  The only likely lesson that will be imparted to black voters is that they've been taken for a ride, that they are not important enough to President Biden despite the fact that they are the main reason he won the presidential nomination in the first place. I suspect that Biden is too busy trying to ingratiate himself with white working class voters in the Rust Belt to be concerned with the very real likelihood that minority voters in key Sun Belt states will not be able to exercise their right to vote as a result of Republican voter suppression laws that Biden evidently doesn't care enough about to eliminate or alter the filibuster.      

[Joe Republic]

I forgot what it’s like for the out-of-power party to need to resort to pure disingenuousness for political point-scoring. Under Trump, reality did most heavy lifting for the Democrats on its own.

[Alcibiades]

This question is really the question of, "when does it make sense to have a humanitarian intervention?"

Obviously, the reason why you are asking it is also just because of Afghanistan, and you are trying to make the argument that "if we did humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan, we ought to do it in a bunch of other places, therefore we ought not to do it in Afghanistan."

So....



First of all, that is the wrong question to ask with regards to Afghanistan, because if we were to have maintained a presence in Afghanistan, the primary reason to have done so would not have been humanitarian, but would have been to maintain a presence nearby the Taliban Pashtun strongholds, which would make it easier to ensure that Taliban-controlled areas would not become safe havens for terrorist organizations (in particular Al Qaeda) to be able to plan and organize for attacks on the US and other countries.

The question is also misleading, because you ask which nations America should "occupy." However, America was not really occupying Afghanistan prior to the withdrawal. America only had a pretty small amount of troops, and only in limited areas, and in general with support from a reasonable number of locals who wanted them there. For the last 5-10 years or so, this was for the most part not like in earlier years when US troops were occupying Pashtun areas where the locals really didn't want the U.S. around. If a humanitarian intervention were justified, the justification of it would not be to occupy territory, especially if the people there did not want to be occupied.

The potential humanitarian benefits would have been a side benefit.

Please note that I am not saying that getting out was necessarily the wrong decision, merely that there were some plausible security-related reasons (anti-terrorism) why it may have made sense to have maintained some sort of limited presence (if feasible). And for that reason, while I have a hard time faulting Biden too much for making a difficult call in an imperfect world, I think it is certainly reasonable to at least second guess him and consider carefully.


Nevertheless, I will try to address the question, even though it is really not an "aha you see we were right to pull out of Afghanistan" proof that you think it is.

I would say that humanitarian intervention may make sense, and is at least worthy of consideration, when the following circumstances apply. That doesn't mean that meeting these conditions is sufficient to make intervention the best policy, but rather just means that if these conditions are NOT met then intervention can be ruled out:


1) It has to be militarily feasible, and the cost of the intervention in terms of expected lives lost has to be a much much lower than the expected amount of lives that could be saved by the humanitarian intervention. This rules out humanitarian interventions which involve fighting countries with nukes, very strong militaries, etc. This also makes it less likely that interventions are feasible in areas with dense terrain (e.g. jungle, forest) where ambushes and guerrilla warfare can more easily be conducted, whereas they are more feasible in places with open terrain, where it is possible to set up a "safe zone" with a boundary of clear terrain with high visibility, which can be easily defended primarily by air power.

2) There must be some large scale humanitarian catastrophe. This for the most part probably means something that can reasonably be considered a genocide, though it might also include tremendous oppression and violation of self-determination, in particular if basic human rights are extensively violated. However, this conception of "human rights" cannot be too western-culture-centric, and must depend on local culture and popular support/local ideas about what constitutes an egregious abuse of human rights.

3) The people that are being genocided must have some willingness to help defend themselves against the people who are genociding them, and must actually want/request aid from the international community. This means that if a "safe zone" is set up, they should be willing to help man defensive positions on the ground to defend themselves, with some support. This condition is basically recognizing that it is not possible to sustainably save people who do not want to save themselves, or at least help save themselves. An example of a group that would fulfill that requirement would be Kurds being attacked by ISIS.

There may be some other limiting conditions, but that seems like enough to probably narrow down your list.



Afghanistan - Condition 1 seems to be met, it is militarily feasible to protect against the Taliban, at least in some "safe areas." Condition 2 can plausibly be met, though it is debatable maybe. Condition 3 may be met, but is questionable given the surrender of the Afghan Army (however, if they had support they probably would not have surrendered in the same way).

Syria - Seems to apply at least for the Kurds, could potentially apply for other civilians who might want to go to a "safe zone."

North Korea - Fails from condition 1, due to Nukes and North Korea having a large military force that could do a lot of damage.

Tigray region, Ethiopia - Haven't followed it close enough to say.

Xinjiang autonomous territory, China - Fails condition 1 due to Chinese Nukes and massive army.

Somalia - Don't think there is sufficient genocide/humanitarian catastrophe right now, and who is it that would want to be protected from humanitarian catastrophe/geneocide?

Iran - Fails by condition 2, there doesn't seem to be anyone who would really want the intervention, and no clear genocide etc. Also would fail by condition 1.

Cuba - Probably fails due to condition 1, with jungle terrain making it not really possible to set up safe areas that could be mostly defended primarily with air power, this would probably entail jungle guerrilla-style warfare. Also probably fails some or all of the other conditions.

Saudi Arabia - Similar to Iran, seems to fail condition 2 and probably condition 1, and probably also condition 3.

Boko Haram-held regions of Nigeria - First of all, non-humanitarian intervention might be justified on the basis of security concerns (terrorism). But any intervention in any case would largely be supporting the Nigerian military as opposed to direct unilateral/multilateral intervention. As for humanitarian intervention, probably not justified in regions where they have support (similar to the Taliban in Pashtun areas), but may be justified if they cross into other areas and try to slaughter people (basically, non-Muslims) further south. A lot of this is really just an ethnic conflict that results from the fact that the European colonial borders drawn in Africa don't make any actual sense and are combining disparate peoples into one country. Jungle terrain is probably a problem though at least in the more southern areas of Nigeria, if B.H. is trying to attack south into non-Muslim areas, so may also fail condition 1.

Rakhine state, Myanmar - Probably fails due to Jungly terrain, and potentially also resistance. Also it seems more like garden variety oppressive government as opposed to genocide or extreme widespread human rights violations.

Venezuela - Probably fails to Jungly terrain and lack of sufficient genocide/extreme human rights violation.

Turkmenistan - Just a garden variety oppressive dictatorial government as opposed to genocide etc. Though if there were genocide etc, the clear terrain probably makes intervention feasible.

[WMS]

So whats missed here is that Cuba does not want the sanctions dropped. There is some weird myth Cuba is a "Communist" regime which is really a left-nationalist. It isn't. It is much more ideological than Eastern Europe or Vietnam. Ie. all those places had government institutions, fake elections, fake parties. Cuba did not bother setting up a fake National Assembly until 1976 and that was under Soviet pressure.

Ben Rhodes believed the sort of Liberal Arts IR 101 line being pushed here but Cuban Communism has much more in common with North Korean than with "mainstream". It is about exporting.

Carter offered an end to sanctions and normalization. The terms were Cuba abide by the basic principles of international law. Not launching armed attacks on other countries. Cuba refused. Cuba is not willing to accept the principles of the international system, any sorts of law or rules. You cannot normalize relations with a rogue state.

Now whether sanctions have an end game is a different matter. But it has become breathtakingly clear over the last five years that engagement is futile and that is why not just Republicans but most Democrats who worked on the issue have abandoned the policy.

Maybe there is some Machiavellian case for lifting sanctions and using that to undermine the regime. But the conviction is pretty universal in policy circles that engagement is a dead end.

Also this extends to the left-wing Pro-Havana constituency. In the middle part of this decade Cuba ran a constitutional reform consultation. They held local meetings, invited foreigners and the overwhelming demands were for direct elections.  This was widely covered in glowing manner in left-wing circles. Then what did the CPC do? They made a constitution that not only did not allow for the election of the president but did not allow election for the national assembly. MPs are to be elected not be voters but by electoral colleges. It was made obvious that no one in the CPC cares about what the Cuban people want, what their foreign friends think, or anything other than what they feel like doing.

[KaiserDave]

We all know now that Old Testament God is Moses, whom came to Jesus in a Transfiguration and told him to die at the cross, no one knows how the World began except Dinosaurs, but Jews, Muslims believe Moses not Jesus was the Son of Man

Also, when Moses went to transcribe the Ten Commandments he was talking to the Universe just as Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha did