The 2016 US American Election Thread

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Okay, but if we want to put it in moral terms, the conservative position on abortion has an overall negative effect on women's health, so it does appear in that sense to be a sexist position.

I know you like to argue that there needs to be demonstration of intent, which I don't agree with, but I would argue that purposefully ignoring the aspects that make it women's health issue when those aspects have been studied and are well known constitutes some form of intent.

Sure, it does. There's a difference between the three cases. In one, you're taking an action that has multiple results X and Y because you want X and Y to happen. In the other, you're taking an action that has multiple results X and Y, and you don't want Y, and you knew Y might happen, but are ignoring Y because you think X is more important. In the last, you're taking an action that has multiple results X and Y, where you don't want Y but you also didn't foresee Y - it was just an accident.

This is best illustrated by a hypothetical. Last week, my neighbour's house caught fire. The fire spread to the houses next door, and several people died. My neighbour claims it was an accident. Those are the results - my neighbour's actions had a negative effect. But how did we get here?

One possibility is that my neighbour wanted to cook dinner, and got distracted by something. The fire was a total accident.

Another possibility is that my neighbour wanted to collect insurance proceeds, and so set the house on fire on purpose by staging it to look like a cooking accident. They weren't trying to burn down the adjacent houses, but that was a risk they either knew about and didn't care, or just weren't paying attention to.

A third possibility is that my neighbour is a psychopath. He hates people and wants them all to die. So he deliberately set fire to his house, knowing that it could spread and hoping that it would. He claims it was just a cooking accident, and set it up to look that way so that he won't be arrested and can go on murdering people in the future.

Those three possible scenarios have exactly the same results, but my neighbour's motivations and intentions are different in each. Those differences, almost anyone would agree, are completely relevant to making a moral judgment about my neighbour's actions in starting the fire.

[troutman]

A Brief History of Conservatives Rejected by Musicians They Love

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1339-a...ocial_facebook

[Flamenspiel]

Originally Posted by Drak

"Pro life" indeed.


Yet:

Pro guns - Tools designed to take life away.

Pro death penalty

Pro war tendency

Anti immigration - Leave them to a poor quality of life. Or, let em die in their war torn country. See Trump's rhetoric on Syrian refugees for example.

Anti health care - Why should we pay for other people's healthcare? Free handouts etc. If you can't afford it then die.

Anti social programs - For poor quality of life.

Denial of human rights and civil rights - Historic war against minorities and the LGBT community.

Advocate deregulation of safety standards in factories and industries - Work at your own risk. Why can't children work? Slave labor.

Promotion of the highest prison population in the world.

Anti climate change - All life on the planet.

Well the other poster may not have been 100 percent caricature, but you nailed the 100% on this one. Excuse me if i missed the sarcasm, in that case you nailed it as well, just from another angle.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Those three possible scenarios have exactly the same results, but my neighbour's motivations and intentions are different in each. Those differences, almost anyone would agree, are completely relevant to making a moral judgment about my neighbour's actions in starting the fire.

Okay, but that entire conversation then shifts the focus to the morality or intention of your neighbour's actions and not the impact of the dude whose house was set on fire. I get that, in theory, you can have both conversations simultaneously but that generally isn't how it works out in practice. Often we see intent tossed out at as a way to trivialize or discredit the impact of the action. When you have minorities say "Hey, that policy is racist," and policy-makers going "No it's not, because I didn't intend it to be racist," it negates the experiences of those impacted by it in favour of giving the perpetrator moral absolution. If the dude with the burned down house confronted your neighbour and said "Hey, you burned down my house," the widely accepted response to that would be "####, sorry. I'll help you with the repairs, etc." If the neighbour responded with "Well it wasn't my intent," we'd probably think he was an #######.

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Flamenspiel

Well the other poster may not have been 100 percent caricature, but you nailed the 100% on this one. Excuse me if i missed the sarcasm, in that case you nailed it as well, just from another angle.

What's caricature? That has all been part of Republican policy in the US for as long as I can personally remember. What a conservative in Canada might think about those issues is totally irrelevant. Their party nominee is consistently spouting things along the lines of every single one of those points. And people cheering for him.

[Bunk]

This NYT essay on the intellectual compass of the right versus populism is really on point. A good analysis.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/26...share&referer=

[Drak]

Originally Posted by Flamenspiel

Well the other poster may not have been 100 percent caricature, but you nailed the 100% on this one. Excuse me if i missed the sarcasm, in that case you nailed it as well, just from another angle.

You would have been better off arguing there might be some hyperbole in my post, rather than 100 percent caricature.

[PsYcNeT]

"Hey you burned down my house"

"Well I think houses are an affront to god, it's not because you're black or anything"

"Oh well that's reasonable then"

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Okay, but that entire conversation then shifts the focus to the morality or intention of your neighbour's actions and not the impact of the dude whose house was set on fire. I get that, in theory, you can have both conversations simultaneously but that generally isn't how it works out in practice.

Really? I just gave you an example of a situation that could very well happen, and probably does quite frequently - a house fire. Are you really telling me that when it comes time to wonder how it happened, your answer would be "it doesn't matter what happened, at the end of the day my house is burned down and that's all I care about"? You don't care at all if your neighbour just made a mistake, or was actively trying to kill everyone in the neighbourhood? I definitely don't agree that that's how we make moral judgments in practice. I really think that's a position that very few people are going to hold, if they think about it hard enough.

For the same reason, if you take the view that the results of a pro-life policy are going to be bad for women's health generally, let's look at three pro-life positions.

Pro-lifer 1 thinks men should be and are inherently equal in every way to women and in principle is in favour of women's rights every bit as much as you and me. However, s/he thinks that abortion is murder, because s/he can't see any moral difference between the baby before it's born and after. S/he also doesn't think that his position has any negative effect on women's health - s/he has a bunch of reasons for believing this that might be wrong, but s/he's totally convinced that this is the case.

Pro-lifer 2 also thinks men should be and are inherently equal to women, and is in favour of women's rights every bit as much as you and me. However, s/he thinks that abortion is murder, because s/he can't see any moral difference between the baby before it's born and after. S/he understands that the consequences of being pro-life might have a negative effect on women's health overall, but ultimately thinks that preventing murder is more important here, and so is willing to live with that negative effect - though s/he wishes s/he didn't have to.

Pro-lifer 3 thinks women are inferior to men. Sure, they should have some rights, but those rights aren't a real concern, according to this person. Pro-lifer 3 also thinks abortion is murder, for the same reason as above: no apparent moral difference between a baby before birth and after. Pro-lifer 3 understands that some people are worried that the consequences of being pro-life might have a negative effect on women's health overall, but doesn't really care about those effects, because again, women are less of a concern.

Your view of intention requires us to approach this by saying all of these three people are sexist.

Mine is that the first person is innocently mistaken as to the facts of the matter. The second is taking a consistent moral position, but I disagree with it, because I'm less convinced about the moral worth of the fetus relative to the importance of the mother's autonomy and women's health. The third is a sexist.

The results still matter, but so do the intentions. The three people above are very different people. They're not all morally blameworthy, and certainly not to the same degree. If you want to expand the definition of "sexist" so that it encompasses all three, just because they take a pro-life view and regardless of their reasons for reaching that view, you've defined the term "sexist" so that it applies to really terrible people, and also much less terrible people who may be confused or have earnest, honestly held positions based on different value judgments. Given how bad the connotation of the word "sexist" is (and I think rightly so), it shouldn't be given such an expansive definition.

I think in future we should probably just have these sorts of discussions over PM. I doubt it's going to yield much of worth in here.

[PsYcNeT]

I'm pretty sure that every descriptor (with the exception of absolutes like "murderer" or "nickelback fan") has varying degrees.

"Sexist" much like "racist" or "bigot" or "misandrist" all can have varying levels, and still be described using the same word.

An old lady who refers to her Korean server at a restaurant as an "Oriental" is racist, but to much lesser degree than your average Stormfront poster.

Words man. Words.

[photon]

Ugh...

Jason Chaffetz, the Utah congressman wrapping up his first term atop the powerful House Oversight Committee, unendorsed Donald Trump weeks ago. That freed him up to prepare for something else: spending years, come January, probing the record of a President Hillary Clinton.

“It’s a target-rich environment,” the Republican said in an interview in Salt Lake City’s suburbs. “Even before we get to Day One, we’ve got two years’ worth of material already lined up. She has four years of history at the State Department, and it ain’t good.”

If Republicans retain control of the House, something that GOP-friendly maps make possible even in the event of a Trump loss, Clinton will become the first president since George H.W. Bush to immediately face a House Oversight Committee controlled by the opposition party. (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama lost Congress later in their presidencies.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...acb_story.html

[Senator Clay Davis]

I would imagine there will be hearings and committees every single day she's President (and the GOP controls the House). Benghazi hearing 29 on tap!

[Drak]

The party of obstruction and tax waste continues.

[Senator Clay Davis]

You would think after 17 months of this I would be desensitized by this point, but I can't stop laughing at these types of absurd quotes.

Sopan Deb ‏@SopanDeb 2h2 hours ago
Trumpism at the ribbon cutting: "I've never seen scissors that look so beautiful before."

https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/791312772348928000

[nik-]

I just got a "Trending Now" youtube notification on my phone which was basically a Trump puff piece video talking about how no one likes Clinton because 1000's show up to Trump rallies and no one shows up to hers.

What the #### YouTube?

[Fuzz]

Maybe your hat confused them?

[PsYcNeT]

Sounds like you need to sever all of your Google+ contacts.

[jammies]

What if your house catches fire because you wanted to save money by skimping on materials and deliberately ignoring fire code regulations because "Big Government" can't tell you what to do? Then the fire department took an extra 10 minutes to get there, letting the blaze go out of control because you continually voted down critical new tax measures that would have stopped its budget being slashed? And don't forget that they couldn't run the hoses properly to get at the fire because having 8 cars on blocks in your front yard is a constitutional right!

[Drak]

Trump news linked to Bum Fights and Fail Nation?

[photon]

https://theringer.com/electing-hilla...h-9f4651f0f852

After George W. Bush left office with a near-30 percent approval rating, the party’s center of power and influence shifted from elected officials to media activists like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the Breitbart crew, who kept their audiences enraged with a business model based on grievance, resentment, and bizarre conspiracies. They didn’t just target Democrats, but any Republican who even contemplated compromising with Democrats, a sin which often led to a primary challenge.

For eight years, nearly every decision made by Republican lawmakers has been motivated by a paralyzing fear of a base whose news diet has become completely detached from reality. The right-wing media didn’t make an argument that the Affordable Care Act contained too many regulations, they said it contained grandparent-murdering death panels. They didn’t argue that climate change legislation was too costly for businesses, they said that climate change was a hoax. The debate about immigration reform devolved into talk of hordes of brown criminals pouring over the border. The push for background checks was reduced to warnings that Barack Obama planned to confiscate the guns of all law-abiding Americans.

Former Speaker John Boehner personally wanted to pursue a “grand bargain” with the president on taxes and spending. But his base wanted to him to shut down the government and threaten to default on our debt — the one move which may have been more reckless than endorsing Trump. Boehner chose the base. In return, the base pushed him out of his job a few years later.

Also saw this, Trump's blog post on the new defunct Trump University website. Gives condolences to Kelly Preston over the loss over her son after talking about, despite his outstanding track record, failed to pick up Kelly Preston. In case there was anything more needed to pad the narcissistic personality disorder case.

I have always respected people who were loyal and faithful--which brings to mind Kelly Preston. A long time ago, before I was married, I met Kelly Preston at a club and worked like hell to try and pick her up. She was beautiful, personable, and definitely had allure. At the time I had no idea she was married to John Travolta.

In any event, my track record on this subject has always been outstanding, but Kelly wouldn’t give me the time of day. She was very nice, very elegant, but I didn’t have a chance with her, and that was that.

When I later found out she was married to John, I liked and respected her even more. Some people have values that matter to them, and she is one of them. Her loyalty was unwavering and I have always remembered that about her.

Being true to someone is very close to being true to yourself. That’s a valuable attribute in today’s world. I’m sure she was a wonderful mother to Jett and my thoughts are with her and her family after their terrible loss.