The buck stops here
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@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
It's always interesting to see this type of argument here on a forum composed mostly of IT professionals, many of whom don't have a college degree. College education has never been the only way to get ahead; these days it's not even a way to get ahead unless you major in a STEM discipline. I can't be the only one who knows coffee shop managers with degrees who are still there because they can't get a real job.
Yeah, the "free college education" stuff has done a lot of harm. I couldn't say if it's done more of that than good, but it may go that way. There's no excuse for billions of dollars worth of "studies" degrees. A society that can come up with a masters degree in puppetry probably has its best days behind it, alas.
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@dhromed said:
Many of us occasionally seem rational. It's an illusion, and it rarely lasts long.You seem rational now.
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@boomzilla said:
@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
It's always interesting to see this type of argument here on a forum composed mostly of IT professionals, many of whom don't have a college degree. College education has never been the only way to get ahead; these days it's not even a way to get ahead unless you major in a STEM discipline. I can't be the only one who knows coffee shop managers with degrees who are still there because they can't get a real job.
Yeah, the "free college education" stuff has done a lot of harm. I couldn't say if it's done more of that than good, but it may go that way. There's no excuse for billions of dollars worth of "studies" degrees. A society that can come up with a masters degree in puppetry probably has its best days behind it, alas.
I really, really wish there was a decent technical/vocational school for programmers. I would jump on that shit in a heartbeat.
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@boomzilla said:
That's certainly the conventional wisdom. But we'll see. There are a lot of unsustainable things going on with our Federal government that seem to be nearing the point where it's not just obvious, but stuff starts to fail. The Democrats made a big mistake in designing a program that causes immediate and traceable pain to a lot of people, and no amount of spinning (even with enthusiastic partners in the media) can overcome direct experience. The next few months should be interesting as even the lowest of the low information voters get an education. If interest rates ever get out of the basement, times will get very interesting.
If the majority of the pain falls on people who were already not going to vote for them, or on people in constituencies that won't shift as a result, and there's a corresponding reduction in pain elsewhere (perhaps focused on a different part of the population) then the policy in question not so likely to be reversed as a result as you seem to be hoping. Right now, the main policy pulling in favour of the Reps would appear to be gerrymandering (some states have really bizarre congressional district boundaries) but that's certainly not moral and may well be illegal too. Now I wouldn't ever want to say that the Dems are squeaky clean in this regard, but they've got demographics more on their side so they don't need to play nasty games nearly so much.
@boomzilla said:The Republicans also have a problem in that their established office holders and associated flunkies are often more interested in the status quo (though still less than the Donks are) than is the base.
It's always thus with a political party. The base tends to be more extreme because they are more likely to get off their asses and get involved. Trouble is, the bulk of votes tend to lie towards the centre. That's where the majority of people are, pretty much by definition. Winning at the national level requires giving what the people in the middle want (well, you could also try to satisfy the opposite extremists, but that's much harder) and that requires pissing off the base. Parties that win almost always have a big chunk of centrism about their policies in practice. Parties that insist on extremism almost never win. On the other hand, the longer a party is in power, the more they annoy voters; corruption, cronyism and general assumptions that “we're in power because we're the Right Sort of People who obviously deserve to be in power” abound, and irritate voters enormously. (The observations in this paragraph apply to pretty much every democracy on Earth.)What the Reps need to do is to figure out that they need to change a bit so that they really attract the middle more strongly than they do now. Merely telling the middle that they're wrong and should be more like the base… that won't work much or for very long. (The Dems, for all their faults, appear to have not forgotten this key fact. If I was them, I'd be quietly encouraging the Rep base to be ever more unruly and extreme, so that the Rep party as a whole shifts further to the irrelevant.)
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@boomzilla said:
@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
It's always interesting to see this type of argument here on a forum composed mostly of IT professionals, many of whom don't have a college degree. College education has never been the only way to get ahead; these days it's not even a way to get ahead unless you major in a STEM discipline. I can't be the only one who knows coffee shop managers with degrees who are still there because they can't get a real job.
Yeah, the "free college education" stuff has done a lot of harm. I couldn't say if it's done more of that than good, but it may go that way. There's no excuse for billions of dollars worth of "studies" degrees. A society that can come up with a masters degree in puppetry probably has its best days behind it, alas.
Oh, I know all sorts of people with a college degree that ultimately ended up being worth far less than the paper it was printed on. My wife got hers in "English Lit." Which is a whole WTF in itself. She thought it would help her get a job as a reporter not really understanding that that particular industry was going into the toilet and the pay is crap. She ended up getting a job earning 3 times what a editor does by switching to IT - she applied on a lark and was clear with the interviewers that she had no idea what IT was. Her job was to copy/paste SQL statements and run them across various servers. She was there for two years and never during that time did she bother learning what SQL even stood for. Amazing really. Until you realize that sort of crap happens all the time when foreign companies have divisions over here and are forced to hire a certain percentage of the natives.
But I digress.
Point is, yes, with my idea there absolutely should be a whitelist of acceptable degrees. Namely ones that the industry believes will be in demand within the next 5 to 10 years. If someone is going to school on my dime then I want it to be worth it. A fully functional tax paying member of society would be the goal.
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@boomzilla said:
you should understand that American Liberals are all about increasing corporate welfare. It's basically their signature issue right now
Equating mainstream Democrats with actual American Liberals is an error that only a one-eyed Republican could possibly make. Watching you lot from outside gives us furriners perspective.
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@flabdablet said:
@boomzilla said:
you should understand that American Liberals are all about increasing corporate welfare. It's basically their signature issue right now
Equating mainstream Democrats with actual American Liberals is an error that only a one-eyed Republican could possibly make. Watching you lot from outside gives us furriners perspective.Heh...I always get a laugh out of that guy. BTW, he voted for the thing I was talking about, so your perspective isn't as good as you think it was. But you're right, he's probably more of a crazy socialist than a corrupt corporatist. Either way, calling him a liberal tickles my Orwellian funny bone.
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@boomzilla said:
Either way, calling him a liberal tickles my Orwellian funny bone.
No true Scotsman has an Orwellian funny bone.
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@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
Again, most of us have jobs in IT, and we don't all have college degrees. There are other lucrative professions (auto mechanic comes to mind) that also don't require a degree.
If you think being an auto mechanic is either lucrative or a profession, I really have nothing to say to you.
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@dkf said:
Right now, the main policy pulling in favour of the Reps would appear to be gerrymandering (some states have really bizarre congressional district boundaries)
I may be about to say something stupid, but I don't understand why we must pool voters into districts at all. This seems to favor not numbers but geographic concentrations, and enables this kind of tomfoolery. Total up the votes by state and appoint a proportionate number of representatives from the corresponding party. If it must be geographically based, then don't let a human arbitrarily decide the district, use a proximity radius from evenly distributed points.
TRWTF about gerrymandering is that it's even possible.
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@joe.edwards said:
I may be about to say something stupid, but I don't understand why we must pool voters into districts at all. This seems to favor not numbers but geographic concentrations, and enables this kind of tomfoolery. Total up the votes by state and appoint a proportionate number of representatives from the corresponding party. If it must be geographically based, then don't let a human arbitrarily decide the district, use a proximity radius from evenly distributed points.
Yes, I'd like to see less gerrymandering, but geographical districts makes sense. The real problem is that we don't have enough at the federal level. The representatives are fairly disconnected from most of their constituents. We went from about 30,000 at the founding to over 500,000 today. Even worse for most Senators, who would be better appointed as originally, by state legislatures. I'm not sure how smaller districts would affect gerrymandering, exactly. With modern computers, it could possibly get worse in some cases, but I imagine you'd have fewer completely ridiculous districts. It would also change a lot of things, like the need for fundraising (it wouldn't go away, but the scope would change) and big campaigns.
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@Snooder said:
@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
Again, most of us have jobs in IT, and we don't all have college degrees. There are other lucrative professions (auto mechanic comes to mind) that also don't require a degree.
If you think being an auto mechanic is either lucrative or a profession, I really have nothing to say to you.That whoosh was the sound of you missing the point: auto mechanics make significantly more than minimum wage.
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@joe.edwards said:
@dkf said:
Right now, the main policy pulling in favour of the Reps would appear to be gerrymandering (some states have really bizarre congressional district boundaries)
I may be about to say something stupid, but I don't understand why we must pool voters into districts at all. This seems to favor not numbers but geographic concentrations, and enables this kind of tomfoolery. Total up the votes by state and appoint a proportionate number of representatives from the corresponding party. If it must be geographically based, then don't let a human arbitrarily decide the district, use a proximity radius from evenly distributed points.
TRWTF about gerrymandering is that it's even possible.
I really dislike the idea of voting by party. If you hate candidate Dem2 but like candidate Dem3 then there would be no way to express that. Also, we don't need something that makes the political parties MORE powerful, where you literally cannot get elected without them.
Yeah, gerrymendering can be bad. Your idea to just pick points and draw circles might work - but then, of course, who picks where the points are? The exact location is going to have a big influence on the districts. And you still have to adjust the points if your state loses or gains House seats after each census, so it's hard to fix them forever. On the other hand, this does at least limit what they can do.
But another WTF with the way it's done now is that some Hispanic group sued because they didn't like where a particular line was drawn. They apparently felt that they had a constitutional right to have a majority of Hispanic voters in a particular district. AND THEY WON. The Republicans didn't even bother appealing this because both the districts involved were going to go to the Democrats anyway. I'm sorry, but you do not have a right to have an ethnic majority in a particular district.
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@ceasar said:
@joe.edwards said:
@dkf said:
Right now, the main policy pulling in favour of the Reps would appear to be gerrymandering (some states have really bizarre congressional district boundaries)
I may be about to say something stupid, but I don't understand why we must pool voters into districts at all. This seems to favor not numbers but geographic concentrations, and enables this kind of tomfoolery. Total up the votes by state and appoint a proportionate number of representatives from the corresponding party. If it must be geographically based, then don't let a human arbitrarily decide the district, use a proximity radius from evenly distributed points.
TRWTF about gerrymandering is that it's even possible.
I really dislike the idea of voting by party. If you hate candidate Dem2 but like candidate Dem3 then there would be no way to express that. Also, we don't need something that makes the political parties MORE powerful, where you literally cannot get elected without them.
Yeah, gerrymendering can be bad. Your idea to just pick points and draw circles might work - but then, of course, who picks where the points are? The exact location is going to have a big influence on the districts. And you still have to adjust the points if your state loses or gains House seats after each census, so it's hard to fix them forever. On the other hand, this does at least limit what they can do.
But another WTF with the way it's done now is that some Hispanic group sued because they didn't like where a particular line was drawn. They apparently felt that they had a constitutional right to have a majority of Hispanic voters in a particular district. AND THEY WON. The Republicans didn't even bother appealing this because both the districts involved were going to go to the Democrats anyway. I'm sorry, but you do not have a right to have an ethnic majority in a particular district.
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@boomzilla said:
Yes, I'd like to see less gerrymandering, but geographical districts makes sense. The real problem is that we don't have enough at the federal level. The representatives are fairly disconnected from most of their constituents. We went from about 30,000 at the founding to over 500,000 today. Even worse for most Senators, who would be better appointed as originally, by state legislatures. I'm not sure how smaller districts would affect gerrymandering, exactly. With modern computers, it could possibly get worse in some cases, but I imagine you'd have fewer completely ridiculous districts. It would also change a lot of things, like the need for fundraising (it wouldn't go away, but the scope would change) and big campaigns.
I agree, but we already have 435 members of Congress. To take it from 500K per district to 30K per district would mean we'd need 7,250 of them. What are they going to do, rent a stadium?
Which is why things should be decided at the state level when possible. State legislators have districts of a more reasonable size.
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@ceasar said:
I agree, but we already have 435 members of Congress. To take it from 500K per district to 30K per district would mean we'd need 7,250 of them. What are they going to do, rent a stadium?
Who cares? Let them fight about that instead of passing more consequential laws! It also makes it easier to break the two party stranglehold.
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@ceasar said:
Also, we don't need something that makes the political parties MORE powerful, where you literally cannot get elected without them.
I have some bad news for you.
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@joe.edwards said:
@ceasar said:
Also, we don't need something that makes the political parties MORE powerful, where you literally cannot get elected without them.
I have some bad news for you.No, right now it's just very unlikely. But it does happen. This would make it *literally* impossible, and it would let the party pretty much kick you out at any time.
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@ceasar said:
I agree, but we already have 435 members of Congress. To take it from 500K per district to 30K per district would mean we'd need 7,250 of them. What are they going to do, rent a stadium?
No system is perfect, since there's just no way to find a solution that is optimal on all metric axes at once. There's just too many inherent constraints. But gerrymandering — whoever does it — is bad and ought to lead to those responsible getting tarred, feathered and horse-whipped out of town.Perhaps a more practical way of splitting things up would be to say that congressional district boundaries should follow other electoral boundaries to the greatest extent possible. (Perhaps state legislature boundaries, perhaps county boundaries.) That would reduce the shenanigans level a lot.
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@dkf said:
bad and ought to lead to those responsible getting tarred, feathered and horse-whipped out of town
That would describe most of what Congress does here.
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I think two things when it comes to who can vote and who can run could fix a lot:
Get rid of the idea of career politicians, i.e. term limits, or making it less lucrative (I don't think Congress or the President or anyone needs a salary for life when out of office)
If you don't pay into the system, you shouldn't have a say in it. If you take government benefits of more value than taxes actually paid in (I mean after deductions/credits/refunds) or pay 0 taxes, you can't vote.
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@DrakeSmith said:
If you don't pay into the system, you shouldn't have a say in it. If you take government benefits of more value than taxes actually paid in (I mean after deductions/credits/refunds) or pay 0 taxes, you can't vote.
Filed under: Representation without taxation
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@DrakeSmith said:
If you take government benefits of more value than taxes actually paid in (I mean after deductions/credits/refunds) or pay 0 taxes, you can't vote.
Do you count those as some kind of benefit? What about people employed by the government? (Your scheme also has the effect of gradually stripping rights from the elderly, assuming you're going for “lifetime total” rather than a more time-limited approach. Is this intended?)
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@dkf said:
@DrakeSmith said:
If you take government benefits of more value than taxes actually paid in (I mean after deductions/credits/refunds) or pay 0 taxes, you can't vote.
Do you count those as some kind of benefit? What about people employed by the government? (Your scheme also has the effect of gradually stripping rights from the elderly, assuming you're going for “lifetime total” rather than a more time-limited approach. Is this intended?)It's not fair (and probably racist) to ask someone about the actual effects of their proposal for new government schemes. Just Embrace the Suck.
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@dkf said:
@DrakeSmith said:
If you take government benefits of more value than taxes actually paid in (I mean after deductions/credits/refunds) or pay 0 taxes, you can't vote.
Do you count those as some kind of benefit? What about people employed by the government? (Your scheme also has the effect of gradually stripping rights from the elderly, assuming you're going for “lifetime total” rather than a more time-limited approach. Is this intended?)I just think if you don't contribute, you shouldn't have a say - obviously government employees are still contributing. I think a lifetime total is fine as well - besides, in a few years, there won't be any benefits left for the elderly, or we'll just deny them life saving medical coverage under Obamacare and it won't matter.
Allowing people who leech off the system to vote equates to buying votes in my book. A majority of votes against abolishing slavery came from Democrats, and more recently (that some people today lived through) nearly all votes against the Civil Rights Act were from Democrats (of which many were segregationists). Yet Dems get an overwhelmingly majority of the minority vote - I'd say that proves my point of buying votes. And no, this does not mean I don't want to help minorities or poor or elderly or any human being; I just believe that a hand up is far more helpful than a handout.
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@DrakeSmith said:
Allowing people who leech off the system to vote equates to buying votes in my book.
Damn straight. Dick Cheney should never have been eligible to register.
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@boomzilla said:
It's not fair (and probably racist) to ask someone about the actual effects of their proposal for new government schemes.
It's fair if I ask everyone who comes up with a new scheme. (I'd like an equivalent assessment of the status quo too, but I'm not sure who to ask. I sure know I won't get it from the current crop of politicians…) I don't understand the “racist” comment though; must be some sort of reference to something that I'm merrily oblivious about.@boomzilla said:Just Embrace the Suck.
I have different suck that I'm supposed to embrace. :-(
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@dkf said:
@boomzilla said:
It's not fair (and probably racist) to ask someone about the actual effects of their proposal for new government schemes.
It's fair if I ask everyone who comes up with a new scheme. (I'd like an equivalent assessment of the status quo too, but I'm not sure who to ask. I sure know I won't get it from the current crop of politicians…) I don't understand the “racist” comment though; must be some sort of reference to something that I'm merrily oblivious about.Even if your profile didn't mention it, you're obviously not American. Then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said of Obamacare (shortly before it's passage, IIRC) that we'd have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. This was actually pretty much literally true, as the final bill wasn't even released to members of the House with enough time to read, let alone digest it. The media and credulous voters are shocked that the President lied to them about the intent of law with respect to their insurance plans, when simply studying the bill and the regulations that came later, or even taking a few minutes to think about the whole point of the law, would have made it obvious that he was lying.
Ever since Obama was elected, any criticism of anything he says or does is dismissed by the bien pensant as racist. Mention that the President is thin? Racist. Talk about him being from Chicago? Racist. Think that we should be trying to shrink government instead of growing it? Racist. Make a joke about how much golf the president plays? Racist. Make correct predictions about his signature legislative accomplishment? Racist.
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@boomzilla said:
@Soviut said:
What the hell does this have to do with coding, development or IT?
What the hell difference does that make?This is a coding and IT forum about badly developer software. The OP had nothing to do with that.
@boomzilla said:
It's not necessarily liberal, but it's certainly an (American) liberal point of view. Witness the people who think McDonalds employee wages could be doubled (or more) with a trivial effect on the business.
So people who have to do shitty jobs shouldn't be paid well? Money is a motivator when the job sucks; Just look at what garbage collectors and sewer maintenance workers make. Do you really want to put something in your mouth that's prepared by someone where even that isn't there to motivate them?
@boomzilla said:
Jeez, it says Dallas, TX right there on his profile, you illiterate cunt.
No kidding, you literal pedant. I was making a point that his socio-economic doomsday prophecy doesn't make sense because plenty of other countries operate just fine under what he'd consider a "liberal illness". I suppose it was those darn union workers who caused the housing collapse by bundling high risk mortgages?
@boomzilla said:
Sure, but you're the guy who never looked at the Sidebar page or even at the basic and relevant information of the post you replied to.
I never looked at the sidebar page? This isn't "general discussion", the OP's post was way off topic. I'm sure he thought he'd get a lot of sympathy because we all act like such hardasses on here regarding IT and software, but the reason we do is because we've been shafted by far more assholes like him than any teachers or public servants.
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@boomzilla said:
(though plenty of anti-American trolling took place). If you said he was doing some political trolling, I'd agree with you, you pinko euroweenie.
I didn't do any anti-american trolling whatsoever. I simply called him out for using the royal "we" when he said "this country". The rest of it was me criticizing his shortsightedness when it came to socioeconomics.
I'm also not European.
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@Soviut said:
@boomzilla said:
Witness the people who think McDonalds employee wages could be doubled (or more) with a trivial effect on the business.
So people who have to do shitty jobs shouldn't be paid well?I can't imagine how you managed to come away with that after what I said. You should try replying to what people actually write instead of listening to the shoulder aliens.
@Soviut said:
...but the reason we do is because we've been shafted by far more assholes like him than any teachers or public servants.
I doubt it. How has an "asshole like him" shafted you? Teachers and other public servants have so many more opportunities to shaft people in ways that are difficult or impossible to avoid.
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@boomzilla said:
Other things I've read indicate that this is pretty much Standard Operating ProcedureTM here, which raises the question of whether Congress can accurately be said to represent us at all.
Even if your profile didn't mention it, you're obviously not American. Then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said of Obamacare (shortly before it's passage, IIRC) that we'd have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. This was actually pretty much literally true, as the final bill wasn't even released to members of the House with enough time to read, let alone digest it.
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@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
which raises the question of whether Congress can accurately be said to represent us at all.
The answer to that question, I think, is 'no', regardless of country or opinion. A country's representatives can only really represent their people if the people would have "representing people" as a hobby or job.
What we got now is people who take care of things and make decisions about how to run a nation, which is obviously fine, because we need that (the alternative is a pre-sumerian "cvilization"), but it's also entirely different from what I do in and want from life, so accurately said nobody currently in parliament represents me.
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@dhromed said:
(the alternative is a pre-sumerian "cvilization")
Gozer the Gozarian seems like a pretty cool guy.
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We have to elect him so we can find out what he'll do once he's in office!
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@boomzilla said:
@dkf said:
@boomzilla said:
It's not fair (and probably racist) to ask someone about the actual effects of their proposal for new government schemes.
It's fair if I ask everyone who comes up with a new scheme. (I'd like an equivalent assessment of the status quo too, but I'm not sure who to ask. I sure know I won't get it from the current crop of politicians…) I don't understand the “racist” comment though; must be some sort of reference to something that I'm merrily oblivious about.Even if your profile didn't mention it, you're obviously not American. Then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said of Obamacare (shortly before it's passage, IIRC) that we'd have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. This was actually pretty much literally true, as the final bill wasn't even released to members of the House with enough time to read, let alone digest it. The media and credulous voters are shocked that the President lied to them about the intent of law with respect to their insurance plans, when simply studying the bill and the regulations that came later, or even taking a few minutes to think about the whole point of the law, would have made it obvious that he was lying.
Ever since Obama was elected, any criticism of anything he says or does is dismissed by the bien pensant as racist. Mention that the President is thin? Racist. Talk about him being from Chicago? Racist. Think that we should be trying to shrink government instead of growing it? Racist. Make a joke about how much golf the president plays? Racist. Make correct predictions about his signature legislative accomplishment? Racist.
Actually, no, there are plenty of people who manage to disagree with Obama and aren't called racists. The problem are those people who take it to a completely unwarranted and unnecessary degree. Like a guy I knew in law school who posted a bunch of facebook pics while on a trip to DC for a mock trial competition. The highlight of his trip? The time he met "Obama", which of course was commemorated by taking a picture of himself infront of a random baboon at the zoo. Or the people who maintained for years that Barack Obama was some sort of musliim sleeper slipped into the White House Manchurian-Candidate-style by his masterminds in Kenya. Or the assholes who say that Obama was just an affirmative action poster-boy with no real talent or credentials despite, you know, being editor of the harvard law review.
And yeah, if you happen to be standing next to that douchebag and nodding along with his (in your opinion) more sensible points about small government and welfare handouts, people are probably going to think you're a racist too. We are judged by the company we keep.
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@Snooder said:
Actually, no, there are plenty of people who manage to disagree with Obama and aren't called racists.
Sure, but do they understand hyperbole? A more accurate statement (than yours) would be that there are plenty of people who agree with Obama who don't call his critics racist.
@Snooder said:
Or the assholes who say that Obama was just an affirmative action poster-boy with no real talent or credentials despite, you know, being editor of the harvard law review.
I don't see a contradiction at all, and if there's any assholishness involved in there, it's being impolitic enough to notice and draw attention to the fact. Why can't an "Affirmative action poster boy" get into law review at Harvard and become President? It's hard to judge his output as editor, because he didn't really write anything. But his performance as President has been awful enough (and his pre-Presidency resume light enough) that "Affirmative Action poster boy" is an entirely plausible, not to mention charitable, description of him.
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@mikeTheLiar said:
@dhromed said:
FTFY(the alternative is a pre-sumerian "cvilization")
Gozer the Gozarian seems like a pretty cool guy. Eh busts ghosts and doesn't afraid of anything.
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@boomzilla said:
@Snooder said:
Or the assholes who say that Obama was just an affirmative action poster-boy with no real talent or credentials despite, you know, being editor of the harvard law review.
I don't see a contradiction at all, and if there's any assholishness involved in there, it's being impolitic enough to notice and draw attention to the fact. Why can't an "Affirmative action poster boy" get into law review at Harvard and become President? It's hard to judge his output as editor, because he didn't really write anything. But his performance as President has been awful enough (and his pre-Presidency resume light enough) that "Affirmative Action poster boy" is an entirely plausible, not to mention charitable, description of him.
See, here's the thing. When most people call Clinton a communist because they don't like his policies, and he went to Moscow once on vacation, everyone can be reasonably certain that they don't actually believe that Clinton is secretly a tool of the Politburo. Because the number of actually crazy people who really DO believe such a thing is low enough that it can be used as hyperbole. However, when you say that Obama is an incompetent hack who has never accomplished anything except by virtue of the color of his skin, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it's significantly more likely that you are doing so because you are a racist who refuses to believe that anyone of that skintone can have accomplishments, rather than merely engaging in the sort of bullshit mudslinging that everyone knows is fake. And thus, anyone who isn't a racist avoids acting that way, or saying those things. There are a multitude of ways to disagree with the president, or to insult him. Choosing to use the ones that focus on his race is a poor choice that shows either a complete lack of social awareness, or a deliberate racism masquerading as such.
And yes, before we get into such things, there really is overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm not sure if it's just because you don't understand how law reviews work, or what. Pro-tip: trying to measure the value of a law review editor by how many articles he wrote is entirely wrong.
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@Snooder said:
However, when you say that Obama is an incompetent hack who has never accomplished anything except by virtue of the color of his skin, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary,
Wait, what? As a legislator, he's most known as the guy who votes "Present." As a President he is forever learning about things happening in his administration by reading them in the newspapers. He was supposedly focused on the implementation of his signature legislative accomplishment but was also apparently completely blindsided by how utterly full of fail the implementation was. A rhetorical blunder in a news conference almost lead us into a war that almost no one wanted, until an underling's rhetorical blunder gave a top geopolitical rival a way to step in and use it to his advantage.
In response to any challenge, his response is always another speech. Which pretty much never affects public opinion. If he isn't the incompetent he comes across as (and admits to be!) then it would sure be nice if he'd get off his ass and show us.
@Snooder said:
There are a multitude of ways to disagree with the president, or to insult him. Choosing to use the ones that focus on his race is a poor choice that shows either a complete lack of social awareness, or a deliberate racism masquerading as such.
I get it. You're one of the cowards that Holder talked about who are afraid to have an honest conversation on race (so is Holder, BTW). You can't even bring up one single point in favor of your point, but you can call people who disagree with you racist. Or maybe you're just trolling and trying to make Obama apologists look stupid. I guess I'm happy to play along with that game.
@Snooder said:
And yes, before we get into such things, there really is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Like what?! It's so overwhelming that even a single example has slipped your mind?
@Snooder said:
Pro-tip: trying to measure the value of a law review editor by how many articles he wrote is entirely wrong.
No shit. But if he had, at least we'd have something on which to judge. But then I'm not the one claiming that something we can't really measure (or even observe) is good evidence of his competence. Pro-tip: Don't undermine your own argument by bringing up topics that make your opponent's argument for him.
We've heard tales from people who knew him then who say what a genius he is at listening to two sides and then synthesizing the two opposing points of view. I believe this was supposedly what made him a great editor at the law review. People say he still does that. If that was ever true, it certainly stopped by the time he got to the White House.
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@boomzilla said:
[Obama] was supposedly focused on the implementation of his signature legislative accomplishment but was also apparently completely blindsided by how utterly full of fail the implementation was.
Sorry, but this one lead to such a super duper display of incompetence that I had to follow up. Obama should have known (maybe did know?) what a steaming pile was going to be the rollout of the exchanges before it happened, which, coincidentally, was when the government shutdown happened. A smarter President would have put these things together and "caved" to a Republican demand for a delay in Obamacare. Then we'd all still be talking about how horrible those Republicans are for preventing people from getting health insurance instead of about what a horrible law Obamacare is for cancelling policies and not having a way for people to replace them. Massive political cover plus breathing room to get stuff actually working, plus something on his record that actually looks like compromise. A lot of people say that Obama is just focused on politics and not actual governance, which I think is fairly accurate. He sucks at that, too.
But no, snooder, you're probably right, the way he handled the shutdown was overwhelmingly competent, and is undoubtedly why Republicans are overtaking Democrats in the polls after we were all so sure they were, like, totally doomed.
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Not to mention that Obamacare is a band-aid on top of a gunshot wound to begin with. Medical care here is fast becoming unaffordable even with health insurance.
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@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
Not to mention that Obamacare is a band-aid on top of a gunshot wound to begin with. Medical care here is fast becoming unaffordable even with health insurance.
Relevant.
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@boomzilla said:
@Snooder said:
And yes, before we get into such things, there really is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Like what?! It's so overwhelming that even a single example has slipped your mind?
Like (a) getting a scholarship to a rather famous prep-school, (b) getting into Columbia, (c) several achievements as a Community Organizer in Chicago (d) getting into Harvard Law, (e) making Law Review at Harvard (f) getting a coveted SA position at one of the largest law firms in the country (g) getting a teaching position at University of Chicago law (h) winning multiple elections to the illinois legislature (i) getting elected as a senator. And that's just the basic stuff I know without really delving into it.
Look, you can disagree with his policies, sure. Personally, I think he's done a pretty damn good job as president, and I consider both the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the Healthcare Bill to be pretty great accomplishments in themselves. I can see how someone who has different values might not be so happy about them though. What is bullshit though, and makes you seem like a racist is to pretend that he's never done anything in his life, or that everything he's done, including several that require hard work in addition to innate talent, is just because he's black.@boomzilla said:
@Snooder said:
Pro-tip: trying to measure the value of a law review editor by how many articles he wrote is entirely wrong.
No shit. But if he had, at least we'd have something on which to judge. But then I'm not the one claiming that something we can't really measure (or even observe) is good evidence of his competence. Pro-tip: Don't undermine your own argument by bringing up topics that make your opponent's argument for him.
What you don't understand is that just being president of the law review is the accomplishment itself. It's not really a job where you 'prove' yourself after being hired. It's essentially a vanity plaque to show awesome you are in law school. Like the law school equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa. I'm not 100% sure of the standards at Harvard, since I didn't go there, but where I went to law school just to get on the law review you had to be in the top 10% of the class after the first year. It's actually better regarded than being valedictorian because anyone can pick a bunch of easy bullshit classes in 2nd and 3rd year to boost their grades, but the 1st year curriculum is both standardized for everyone, and (usually) the most rigorous year. Plus nobody wants to deal with all the tedious bullshit that goes with being editor of the law review since it means you spend hours doing tedious bullshit like editing an article on "The Application of Revenue Service Internal Memo #1194 to Taxation of Corporations With 50% Foreign Ownership" or some other meaningless crap. You don't get to write the articles, most of them are either written by alumni or professors, you just make sure all the citations are correct and there's an em-dash instead of an en-dash, or double spaces after each period, or what have you.
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@Snooder said:
Like (a) getting a scholarship to a rather famous prep-school, (b) getting into Columbia, (c) several achievements as a Community Organizer in Chicago (d) getting into Harvard Law, (e) making Law Review at Harvard (f) getting a coveted SA position at one of the largest law firms in the country (g) getting a teaching position at University of Chicago law (h) winning multiple elections to the illinois legislature (i) getting elected as a senator. And that's just the basic stuff I know without really delving into it.
Yes, he got those scholarships. That doesn't say anything about whether he got them based on the merit or some sort of affirmative action. He hasn't released his transcripts. Maybe he was an ace student and keeps them hidden to give critics something to attack. Whether that's true or not, their existence provides more potential for affirmative action poster boy without giving any evidence against.
What accomplishments did he have as a community organizer? I've always heard that he never got much done, and that was actually part of the reason he decided to get into politics, because he thought he might be able to do something there.
Huzzah! He's good at winning elections. His state and US Senate elections seemed to mostly be due to the unsealing of opponents' divorce records, plus getting an early career boost from "some guy in the neighborhood." Your'e not helping your case here. You haven't delved into anything. Some examples might be laws that he wrote (or at least helped to write). Or for which he was a critical player in building support for. I'm not aware of any such thing. His national fame came when he got to give a speech at the 2004 convention. He never lead his state into success or anything like that.@Snooder said:
Look, you can disagree with his policies, sure. Personally, I think he's done a pretty damn good job as president, and I consider both the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the Healthcare Bill to be pretty great accomplishments in themselves. I can see how someone who has different values might not be so happy about them though.
What is bullshit though, and makes you seem like a racist is to pretend that he's never done anything in his life, or that everything he's done, including several that require hard work in addition to innate talent, is just because he's black.I'm not pretending anything. I'm saying that his limited experience prior to becoming President makes me skeptical. He didn't do much of anything before getting there. Was in a couple of legislative seats for a little while where he did nothing of consequence. The last Senator elected to the Presidency dominated that place, and whether you liked him or not, he'd proved himself to not be an empty suit. Obama hasn't done anything of the sort (just the opposite by voting "present"). And since he's been in he's done lots of stupid things, some of which I already listed.
He evolved in office to be sharp enough to get in front of DADT. But what did he really do with "his" healthcare bill? He wasn't terribly involved in writing it or shaping it. In fact, it went a direction that his primary opponent endorsed and that he said he'd never do (an insurance mandate). And then once it was passed, he dropped the ball, as I already mentioned.
It's really hilarious that your main defense against a complaint that Obama critics' arguments are simply dismissed as racist is to dismiss his critics as racist. You prove my point better than I ever could, so thanks for that again. Hey, how do you know I don't think the white half of him is the incompetent part? Why do you jump to the conclusion that I blame the black part of Obama you racist? If you like your racist assumptions, you can keep them. Period. I'm not the one viewing this President through the prism of race. How do you think my criticisms would change if he were white?
@Snooder said:
What you don't understand is that just being president of the law review is the accomplishment itself.
So maybe he was a really good law school student. I accept that getting this position is certainly an indicator of not being in danger of flunking out. I'll take it as a concession of failure on your part that the only specific thing you can point to is something that is a proxy for student achievement and, while something of an executive position, not one where we can really judge his competence as an executive. We might as well cite some WTF factory's past in getting on the Dean's list as evidence that he's a rock star developer.
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@boomzilla said:
@Snooder said:
What you don't understand is that just being president of the law review is the accomplishment itself.
So maybe he was a really good law school student. I accept that getting this position is certainly an indicator of not being in danger of flunking out. I'll take it as a concession of failure on your part that the only specific thing you can point to is something that is a proxy for student achievement and, while something of an executive position, not one where we can really judge his competence as an executive. We might as well cite some WTF factory's past in getting on the Dean's list as evidence that he's a rock star developer.
But, and this is what I'm trying to get across here, I'm not talking about his competence as an executive. And when you criticize him for being an "affirmative action poster-boy" neither are you. You can critize his policies just fine. Or call him an incompetent hack if you want. But when you say that the only thing he ever did was to manage to be born black (which is what "affirmative action poster-boy" implies) you are being racist.Here's a good analogy involving said "WTF-Factory". Imagine you have a chick who graduated top of her class from Stanford, wrote a few published articles in ACM, and picked up a doctorate at the age of 24, but just happens to write shit code. If you're the sort of guy who points to her shit code as "evidence" that she must have obviously slept her way into her current position, that would make you a sexist asshole. Because you are willfully ignoring all her other accomplishments and declining to criticize the merits of her code itself just to focus on something that's not only irrelvant, but insulting to just about every woman out there.
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@Snooder said:
But, and this is what I'm trying to get across here, I'm not talking about his competence as an executive. And when you criticize him for being an "affirmative action poster-boy" neither are you. You can critize his policies just fine. Or call him an incompetent hack if you want. But when you say that the only thing he ever did was to manage to be born black (which is what "affirmative action poster-boy" implies) you are being racist.
Yes, it's true that calling him an affirmative action poster boy isn't a criticism, per se. It's an attempt to explain how some dude without the typical Presidential experience makes it there. It doesn't imply that I'm being racist at all. I never said that he's incompetent due to his race. I'm just saying he's incompetent based on his public record. Why does such an inexperienced and unproved guy get elected to the Presidency? Affirmative action on the part of the American people seems like a plausible explanation. There are others, to be sure, but putting that forth isn't racist.
You're focusing on the affirmative action stuff, but that's not the actual criticism. It's just the obvious conclusion based on the criticism. It's an attempt to explain what happened given what we see. And again, this is all orthogonal to policy, though I disagree with most of his. Wait a few years, and after his legacy is going to shit, liberals will talk about how incompetent he is, because they'd rather blame the messenger than the message. They already have been to a certain extent: "He needs to get his message out better." Geez...the guy is supposedly the World's Greatest Orator, and he's given a zillion speeches. When will he give one that convinces people? For a great speaker with a friendly media, he sure has a tough time getting through to people.
@Snooder said:
Here's a good analogy involving said "WTF-Factory". Imagine you have a chick who graduated top of her class from Stanford, wrote a few published articles in ACM, and picked up a doctorate at the age of 24, but just happens to write shit code. If you're the sort of guy who points to her shit code as "evidence" that she must have obviously slept her way into her current position, that would make you a sexist asshole. Because you are willfully ignoring all her other accomplishments and declining to criticize the merits of her code itself just to focus on something that's not only irrelvant, but insulting to just about every woman out there.
Your straw man analogy is correct in and of itself, but stupid when compared to what we're talking about. To make it more real, we'd say that she graduated from Stanford, but we don't know where in the class she was or what her GPA was. She had some coding jobs and didn't do much of anything to distinguish herself. She got picked to run a big project and made lots of obvious mistakes. After a review, management has decided to keep her in charge. Some people are totally enthused about her. She's the first woman in the company to run such a large project, and management has been trumpeting this fact, as they have a long history of having a serious glass ceiling problem. Others believe that she doesn't have the sort of experience required to run a big project and that the things she's been doing while leading are proving their point. Those guys suspect that affirmative action is the reason she's still there. No one wants to be the one to fire her for gross incompetence and be called sexist.
You seem to be of the opinion that if race is ever mentioned at all it immediately invalidates everything a person has ever said because he's racist. You can disagree that he's incompetent (and you do) but you haven't been able to refute my reasons why I think he is. I guess racism is just how you handle the cognitive dissonance.
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@boomzilla said:
@Snooder said:
Here's a good analogy involving said "WTF-Factory". Imagine you have a chick who graduated top of her class from Stanford, wrote a few published articles in ACM, and picked up a doctorate at the age of 24, but just happens to write shit code. If you're the sort of guy who points to her shit code as "evidence" that she must have obviously slept her way into her current position, that would make you a sexist asshole. Because you are willfully ignoring all her other accomplishments and declining to criticize the merits of her code itself just to focus on something that's not only irrelvant, but insulting to just about every woman out there.
Your straw man analogy is correct in and of itself, but stupid when compared to what we're talking about. To make it more real, we'd say that she graduated from Stanford, but we don't know where in the class she was or what her GPA was. She had some coding jobs and didn't do much of anything to distinguish herself. She got picked to run a big project and made lots of obvious mistakes. After a review, management has decided to keep her in charge. Some people are totally enthused about her. She's the first woman in the company to run such a large project, and management has been trumpeting this fact, as they have a long history of having a serious glass ceiling problem. Others believe that she doesn't have the sort of experience required to run a big project and that the things she's been doing while leading are proving their point. Those guys suspect that affirmative action is the reason she's still there. No one wants to be the one to fire her for gross incompetence and be called sexist.
But, and you still seem to be missing this, to say "we don't know where in the class she was or what her GPA was" about someone who graduated at the top of her class is incredibly fucking insulting, and demonstrates that the person criticizing doesn't actually care about the facts but instead is grasping at whatever he can because he just doesn't like her. Which could be because he's jealous, because she stole the last pastry at the christmas party, because her mismanagement got his buddy fired, or because he's a sexist jerk. When he compounds that willfull blindness by constantly talking about her gender, it's pretty apparent which of those it is.@boomzilla said:
You seem to be of the opinion that if race is ever mentioned at all it immediately invalidates everything a person has ever said because he's racist. You can disagree that he's incompetent (and you do) but you haven't been able to refute my reasons why I think he is. I guess racism is just how you handle the cognitive dissonance.
No, I'm saying that anyone who find the need to mention race when it is irrelevant is probably racist. You don't need "affirmative action" to say that you think Obama is incompetent and only good at getting elected. There are plenty of white guys with the same problems. The only time it becomes necessary to bring it up is if you actually believe that most black people are incompetent and the only way a black guy could possibly rise to that office is through some means other than his own merits.
I'm not trying to refute your reasons for thinking that Obama is incompetent. That debate basically boils down to "I support his policies and his political views on the future of America and you don't." What I'm trying to get you to understand is that there are forms of criticism. Some of them are valid and strike at the merits of a particular position. Some are ad hominem attacks with no merit. And of those ad hominem attacks, choosing to employ the ones that strike specifically at race is a choice that exposes yourself as being prejudiced about it. Most people understand this, so when you have people who keep using those attacks, it's not a stretch to call them racist for doing so.
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@Snooder said:
But, and you still seem to be missing this, to say "we don't know where in the class she was or what her GPA was" about someone who graduated at the top of her class is incredibly fucking insulting, and demonstrates that the person criticizing doesn't actually care about the facts but instead is grasping at whatever he can because he just doesn't like her. Which could be because he's jealous, because she stole the last pastry at the christmas party, because her mismanagement got his buddy fired, or because he's a sexist jerk. When he compounds that willfull blindness by constantly talking about her gender, it's pretty apparent which of those it is.
That's fine, and I suppose applies to your original analogy. I'm just saying your analogy doesn't do much in explaining what we've been talking about. I'm not the one pointing to Obama's education as an example of how awesome he is. That was you, except you don't really have much to back up his awesomeness, except that he got in. If you had actual evidence of good grades, it would be a minor point in your favor (what's the correlation between academic success and executive skill? better to have actual examples of executive skill on record), but as it is, you're begging the question in suspicious circumstances.
I actually have a lot of specifics to back up my argument that don't rely on any dot connecting. You haven't even tried to refute any of them, instead presenting really weak arguments that could support my case as well as yours. It's as though you're refusing to believe anything bad about her because she's a woman. You've just created another non sequitur attack here based by substituting sexism for racism. Right or wrong, it's a nice rant, but it doesn't make any sense here, except to once again demonstrate my point about people using bogus defenses based on some -ism name calling that makes no sense in context.
@Snooder said:
No, I'm saying that anyone who find the need to mention race when it is irrelevant is probably racist.
I think we agree on this.
@Snooder said:
You don't need "affirmative action" to say that you think Obama is incompetent and only good at getting elected.
I agree, and you still haven't grasped that my argument is different. I think he's incompetent and affirmative action is part of why he's good at getting elected. Because firstly, he's incompetent, and when he was elected, there was a lot of talk about how awesome it would be to elect the first black President. And how it would prove that we were really awful as a people if we didn't elect him.
@Snooder said:
There are plenty of white guys with the same problems. The only time it becomes necessary to bring it up is if you actually believe that most black people are incompetent and the only way a black guy could possibly rise to that office is through some means other than his own merits.
I don't think it's the only way "a black guy" could do that. I'm just saying that Obama didn't get elected on the merits, because they objectively weren't there.
@Snooder said:
And of those ad hominem attacks, choosing to employ the ones that strike specifically at race is a choice that exposes yourself as being prejudiced about it.
That's true, and I'm not using anything like that, but for some reason, you can't seem to see that, and I can't figure out why. I have a few theories, though:
- You might just be that stupid (I don't think this is very likely).
- Like I said previously, it's how you deal with the cognitive dissonance of observing Obama and his past and your favorable opinion of his performance, because you want him to succeed, because you agree with what you believe he's trying to do.
- You are deeply affected by white guilt, and any honest conversation about race really freaks you out, and you really believe I'm making a racist argument.
I think 2 is most likely, followed by 3. Of course, there could be a mix of stuff in there. Only you can say for sure.
@Snooder said:
I'm not trying to refute your reasons for thinking that Obama is incompetent. That debate basically boils down to "I support his policies and his political views on the future of America and you don't."
This isn't really true, either. Here's an example: You could think that Obamacare is the best law since sliced bread, and still be pissed off at Obama's incompetence in implementing it and getting people on board with it. Or you could be upset about how an offhand impromptu remark got away from him and almost caused us to go to war in Syria. He basically has most of Europe pissed at us for the NSA stuff. He refused to compromise at all with any of the Republicans on the ACA, thereby not getting any of their votes, so he has no "bipartisan" cover for anything that happens. He had a golden opportunity to hide his incompetence and give his political opponents a black eye. Instead he pushed ahead, and now no one remembers that at all, because we're all looking at the mess he's made. Seriously, how can you not be pissed at him for that?
Or maybe you really can't separate those things, and can only look at him as your guy, right or wrong, and see admitting any sort of fault as an intolerable weakness.
@Snooder said:
Most people understand this, so when you have people who keep using those attacks, it's not a stretch to call them racist for doing so.
Let me know when you find these people. Because those aren't the people I was originally talking about, and I'm not one of them. By your own criteria. You may recall that you're the one who brought up the topic of "affirmative action poster boy." I just posted to point out that your assessment of that phenomenon was incorrect. And you've demonstrated repeatedly that you are one of the people I was talking about who cries racism inappropriately. But at least you're not at a Chris Matthews level of inanity.
The 2008 Democratic primary was totally the affirmative action primary, though. The only people with a chance were people with very little of the traditional serious Presidential contender experience.
