Politics thread (USA Elections 2016)

Nope. Trump is super cunning. You can say Trump has a low intellect or any number of things but he's def not low in cunning.

On March 10 2025 20:21 RiKD wrote: Nope. Trump is super cunning. You can say Trump has a low intellect or any number of things but he's def not low in cunning.

low cunning
noun
chiefly British
: clever but morally bad and dishonest methods
He succeeded through a combination of charm and low cunning

Low cunning doesn't mean to be "low in cunning" it means more like to be cunning in a low way.

On March 10 2025 17:13 VanDerMeyde wrote: Show nested quote + On February 28 2025 06:21 Baalim wrote: I think Trump is a vile and cruel man and a conman of low cunning. Yep

weren't you like ultra right wing before?

list of banned words in the US:

Full list of banned words: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...eral-agencies-websites-words-dei.html

Santadummy is our resident idiot who loves to play semantics games so he'll probably come back and say in his typical lazy and ironic way something meaning "but I can say these words in my personal life therefore there's no ban/censorship!"

The government is also trying to deport a kid with a green card for being pro-Palestine because his speech "aligns with Hamas". I bet there is no issue for our resident free speech warriors here either.

What's better: Ukraine winning at the cost of 100,000 more lives? 200,000? 500,000? Or the war ending in the near future with a relatively minimal amount of lives lost and Russia getting a portion of what it was seeking in the beginning?

I voted for Trump. Given the two options, I would do it again. For better or worse, the country is no longer stagnant.

We are $37,000,000,000,000.00 in debt and no one has done anything about it. That's not good. At least something is being done. I just want action and no one was providing that previously. It's incredibly hard to support or get excited about anyone or any group who wins an election and doesn't do anything. That's wasted votes and wasted time.

Most won't agree and that's ok. It's nothing personal and I hope no one feels that way, although I'm sure some may. I've resigned to the fact that as one, I can't do anything to change...I can only be a tooth in a small cog of a very large gear system. We can't predict the outcome of our decisions, we can only make educated guesses and hope it works out. I'll never regret making what I thought was the best choice at that time - it can't be changed. Hell it's a coin flip either way. Crazy to think, but the events of the next four years were already decided and there were only two outcomes. There wasn't an infinite outcome...There wasn't even a third possible outcome. Either Trump was president and we end up where he takes us after 4 years or Harris was president and we end up where she takes us in 4 years. Thinking about it like that... no one can be certain that the only other option would have been better.

Going to bed. I sincerely wish you all the best! Have a good night.

penisballs is a banned word because you would get fired from the White House press office if you released memos saying it

why wouldn't biden and obama put penisballs on their website? this is why the DNC are fascists we need to overthrow just the same as Republicans

On March 15 2025 12:10 Santafairy wrote: why wouldn't biden and obama put penisballs on their website? this is why the DNC are fascists we need to overthrow just the same as Republicans

Here's the thing about being an uneducated idiot: you don't know what "peer review" means so you can come up with a distortion like this. Meaningless words (vulgar or not) have a way of not becoming part of academia or common usage. It is a self-correcting problem. If a word has no meaning it has no use, if it's not going to be used, there is no need to ban it. The act of using top-down power to remove a word suggests the very opposite: that there is a meaning and that this meaning threatens those who benefit the most from shaping a particular cultural narrative that has gotten them where they are. Even in the extremely rare cases where meaningless words are used, like with the Sokal affair, it did not make it through a peer review process and none of it would be targetted for a ban. You don't see something like "Morphogenetic field" on that list for a reason: no one cares about weird niche ideas.

The current administration is fascist in a dozen ways so it's no surprise it would also become authoritarian about language use, this is not an isolated incident, you have to have your head in the deepest depths of your ass to not be aware of this.

did you defend with your life the right of government workers to write penisballs in memos under biden and obama, or are you just another hypocritical conservatard?

On March 15 2025 19:31 Loco wrote: The current administration is fascist in a dozen ways so it's no surprise it would also become authoritarian about language use, this is not an isolated incident, you have to have your head in the deepest depths of your ass to not be aware of this.

Again, you've supported censorship for many years, so now shut up and eat it you hypocrite, and only if the police knocks on your door and arrests you for posting in favor of open borders you'd experience an equal amount of censorship that you've cheered for all these years.


Regarding the deported guy, green card holders are foreigners with a work permit, they are not citizens, nor they have their rights, they can't vote, run for public office and for obvious allowing foreigners to protest in favor of foreign enemies isn't protected.

Id say DOGE is basically an axe to wield over people's heads and prevent freedom of thought, in the same way that Bertrand Russell defined free thought: "the absence of economic penalties".

However the Trump administration is basically fascist at this point. It has gone further and set the FBI onto scientists for the crime of being paid to do research on climate change. Similarly in Britain, judges sent XR leaders to prison..for blocking a road? It's entirely politically motivated...at the very least house arrest is a lesser punishment, if they were to be deemed to get any punishment at all. So it's straight punitive. I know absolute psycho's that get house arrest for driving 100km/h in a school zone or whatever. Blocking a road is nothing compared to that.

Its not on the level of environmentalists getting murdered in the phillipines or latin america, but Id say im pretty sympathetic to saying 'Murrica is fascist at this point.

Academia is broken, the social sciences at the rank 1 universities are pretty corrupt and peer review holds no authority. its the same as posting on substack.

Just to give an example, I was reading "The Future is Degrowth" the other day. Degrowth is basically the political solution for the ecological crisis that is most popular in the global south and the left. In the book they brag that they have a couple hundred peer reviewed articles published!!!

Now, lets put something into perspective. According to Benjamin Franta (who was denied postdoc research at Harvard for wanting to work on applied physics of renewables), the fossil fuel industry spent 1-2 billion dollars at 80+ universities getting academics to pretend that fossil gas was somehow better than solar and wind energy (lmao). In his Phd thesis he talks about how he had to teach straight misinformation (fossil gas was better than renewables) on the courses. There's also the consulting industry, which probably spends a lot more on climate denial propaganda. And lots more..., some 500+ free market think tanks exist in the world.

1 billion divided over 1000 articles in degrowth would still be 1 million dollars per article.

There's also other solutions proposed like GND, people's green new deal, green growth, red deal (indigenous people's solution).

Of those, we have had the most 'progressive' economists at the ivy league line up behind green growth...which pretty much every ecologist thinks will end in a climate catastrophe. Where are the ecologists btw? Oh yeah, they all get denied media attention (except the guardian and a couple others), or they got fired from the EPA. What is the EPA? The EPA is a watered down "environmental" organization that takes climate solution talking points like the discount rate, from free market think tanks. And that was under Biden.

They have a history of vastly underestimating the social cost of carbon by using those arguments. Recently the social cost of carbon is estimated at $1367. The EPA estimated it around the $200 mark, based off the discount rate to some extent. What does the discount rate say? It originates from shills like Fred Singer and Neirenberg, and Nordhaus, who argued we shouldnt do anything about climate change or acid rain because a dolla today is worth more than a dolla tommrow, so we can just stick it in the bank and pay for it in 50 years time (let future generations handle it!!). When I bring up the history behind this, economists have no clue what im talking about, but they try to say im commiting the is/ought fallacy. LMAO.

There is also "tech ethics". These are the supreme bootlickers in academia. They study 'racial bias' in algorithms, and deflect attention away from the fact that Big Tech is, idk, making people consume by flooding people with adverts, until the eco system is destroyed? But sure, study the racial bias in training data. Im sure thats top priority (laughs). The number of clothes and garments that are made and thrown away every year is only about half a trillion dolla worth...as much as the stargate programme.

So, academia is pretty broken. Some small pockets of truth there and I learn a lot from them. Some of my favourite echochambers are in academia..I expect many academics to become fascists or fascist in tendency over the coming decade..and the ones that cannot stomach it will have to become rebels. We are well beyond the threshold where the choice has become socialism or barbarism.

On March 15 2025 06:48 Loco wrote: Full list of banned words: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...eral-agencies-websites-words-dei.html Santadummy is our resident idiot who loves to play semantics games so he'll probably come back and say in his typical lazy and ironic way something meaning "but I can say these words in my personal life therefore there's no ban/censorship!" The government is also trying to deport a kid with a green card for being pro-Palestine because his speech "aligns with Hamas". I bet there is no issue for our resident free speech warriors here either.

They probably got that list of words from asking chat-gpt to give them words associated with leftwing, science, and critical race theory lmao.

On March 16 2025 04:12 Santafairy wrote: did you defend with your life the right of government workers to write penisballs in memos under biden and obama, or are you just another hypocritical conservatard?

They should have the right to write "penisballs". Obviously the terminology is a pretty dumb choice if it distracts and makes people laugh everytime its used. But I mean there is some weird academic terminology out there. Like "sexy primes", and "rapeseed". Cannot be helped I guess. The name was chosen and we gotta run with it.

On March 17 2025 19:20 Stroggoz wrote: Id say DOGE is basically an axe to wield over people's heads and prevent freedom of thought, in the same way that Bertrand Russell defined free thought: "the absence of economic penalties".

You think auditing and cutting government wasteful spending is censorship? lol.

I wish DOGE were 10x more powerful and swift, firing the people who didn't have a good reason to not answer the email would have been blissful, so many people's work wasted, digging up holes and filling them up metaphorically, they would be much more useful in the private sector doing actual productive things.

Similarly in Britain, judges sent XR leaders to prison..for blocking a road? It's entirely politically motivated...at the very least house arrest is a lesser punishment, if they were to be deemed to get any punishment at all. So it's straight punitive. I know absolute psycho's that get house arrest for driving 100km/h in a school zone or whatever. Blocking a road is nothing compared to that.

Blocking roads is against the law, imo far worse than driving 100kmh in a school zone, deliberate violence against others are in general terms much worse than wanton recklessness that endangers others. Curious thing that this is what you feel as fascistic and not sending thousands to jail every year for "hateful" posts on social media.

On March 17 2025 20:17 Stroggoz wrote: Show nested quote + On March 16 2025 04:12 Santafairy wrote: did you defend with your life the right of government workers to write penisballs in memos under biden and obama, or are you just another hypocritical conservatard? They should have the right to write "penisballs". Obviously the terminology is a pretty dumb choice if it distracts and makes people laugh everytime its used. But I mean there is some weird academic terminology out there. Like "sexy primes", and "rapeseed". Cannot be helped I guess. The name was chosen and we gotta run with it.

rapeseed is the common name of a plant, and why have you and the revolutionary latched onto this idea that the US federal government is some kind of giant peer reviewed academic journal?

On March 18 2025 00:38 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On March 17 2025 19:20 Stroggoz wrote: Id say DOGE is basically an axe to wield over people's heads and prevent freedom of thought, in the same way that Bertrand Russell defined free thought: "the absence of economic penalties". You think auditing and cutting government wasteful spending is censorship? lol. I wish DOGE were 10x more powerful and swift, firing the people who didn't have a good reason to not answer the email would have been blissful, so many people's work wasted, digging up holes and filling them up metaphorically, they would be much more useful in the private sector doing actual productive things.   Similarly in Britain, judges sent XR leaders to prison..for blocking a road? It's entirely politically motivated...at the very least house arrest is a lesser punishment, if they were to be deemed to get any punishment at all. So it's straight punitive. I know absolute psycho's that get house arrest for driving 100km/h in a school zone or whatever. Blocking a road is nothing compared to that. Blocking roads is against the law, imo far worse than driving 100kmh in a school zone, deliberate violence against others are in general terms much worse than wanton recklessness that endangers others. Curious thing that this is what you feel as fascistic and not sending thousands to jail every year for "hateful" posts on social media.

I do think sending people to jail for hateful posts is fascist, or at least an attack on freedom of speech.I have talked about that before actually.

As for doge austerity, your applying that very selectively. A lot of hard working people lost their job.

But it makes little economic sense to fire people on the spot if they are not good at their job usually. Either in public or private sector. Sudden unemployment has a bigger cost to society than idk, giving someone a few months notice to move on. This is especially true when there's no safety net. Unemployment is basically a social virus in neoliberal societies.

It's ideology to think the private sector is some beacon of efficiency. The tech sector just wasted 100 billion on self driving cars. Then they spent hundreds of billions more on AI and still got outdone by a random Chinese startup.

Are you forgetting how research and development works?

The financial sector extracts rents rather than putting it into productive investment. Trillions spent on sharebuybacks since the great recession.

So I mean yeah you can find economic waste all around the place. It doesn't make any economic sense to apply Sudden mass layoffs without warning especially when the person in charge is clueless.

Hate speech is largely a propaganda term imo. I'd say a lot of genocide is done through love speech, possibly more so than 'hate' speech.

Makes zero sense to discriminate. It's just something for the liberals to feel righteous about. Actual left wing people are more disturbed by apathy than hate.

On March 19 2025 17:29 Stroggoz wrote: I do think sending people to jail for hateful posts is fascist, or at least an attack on freedom of speech.I have talked about that before actually.

Ok good to know you are not with Loco there.

As for doge austerity, your applying that very selectively. A lot of hard working people lost their job.

You can work hard at digging holes and filling them back up which is what most of the gov do.

But it makes little economic sense to fire people on the spot if they are not good at their job usually. Either in public or private sector. Sudden unemployment has a bigger cost to society than idk, giving someone a few months notice to move on. This is especially true when there's no safety net. Unemployment is basically a social virus in neoliberal societies.

AFAIK the fed workers were given many months of payments in advance after being fired.

It's ideology to think the private sector is some beacon of efficiency. The tech sector just wasted 100 billion on self driving cars. Then they spent hundreds of billions more on AI and still got outdone by a random Chinese startup. Are you forgetting how research and development works?

Both of your examples are flat out wrong.

"Show me the incentive and ill show you the outcome" - Charlie Munger

Of course there is waste in the private sector but being profit driven has a strong mechanism to avoid waste since you lose money, there is no such mechanism in the Public sector, the incentives are others.

The financial sector extracts rents rather than putting it into productive investment. Trillions spent on sharebuybacks since the great recession.

I agree that there is a lot of parasitism in the financial sector but I think its a net positive, regarding public companies the issue is a misalignment of incentives between shareholders and the company itself, the value of a stock is immediate, short-sighted and whimsical, the company is interested in profitability, long-term, and stability, and management answering to shareholders often hurt the company, frankly I haven't thought to even suggest a solution for this that wouldn't cause more problems than it fixes.

So I mean yeah you can find economic waste all around the place. It doesn't make any economic sense to apply Sudden mass layoffs without warning especially when the person in charge is clueless.

I don't think we are gong to agree on the layoffs since I want a minimalist government, the bureaucracy is inefficiency manifest, it's so big that even a radical president with majority in the senate, house and supreme court they can easily grind him to a halt, DOGUE won't accomplish much, every significant action thawed by a random judge, every move trapped by lawsuits, challenges, noncompliance and the all devouring human blob that is the American bureaucracy will just end up with a few scratches after Trump's terms, it will heal them and attach a few extra limbs... It reminds of that INSIDE game.

In regards to my example, deepseek is a AI model that cost 5 million dollars to train by what seems to be a bunch of moneyed independent Chinese scientists. They made it open source. It dropped the price of industrial AI use by over 10x instantly.

It outperformed every single model from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia, which have
Some 10 trillion in combined capitalization, and argued in favor of a 500 billion dollar data center investment as well as blocking gpu exports to China so they could beat em.

It caused a 500 billion dollar drop in Nvidia stock.

In my view that demonstrates that the tech
Sector in America is not very good with money.

It's like if north Korea beat America in the space race imo

In any case, doubt it will last but pretty amazing while it did.