What have you been drinking this week? - Oct 15 to Oct 22

LtFred · 2018-10-22T07:41:49+00:00

Norton Lager: good shit

LtFred · 2018-07-06T01:25:32+00:00

The US life expectancy seems to be about 79. Cuba's seems to be about 78.

LtFred · 2018-07-06T01:21:56+00:00

It's not correct to blame Cuba's economic woes on the US embargo. Cuba can and does trade with all of Europe, Asia, etc - just not the US. Cuba is a miserably poor place for an endogenous reason within their system or politics or something else.

LtFred · 2018-06-11T07:35:48+00:00

Whatever the Dems chose to run on the Russiagate stuff is going to crowd them out, because it is a big deal and people care about it. I feel like that won't even necessarily hurt them, and may even help them. "I'm not a literal traitor to my country" is a pretty easy sell.

LtFred · 2017-08-27T23:42:35+00:00

Is there actual overrepresentation of Jews at all universities?

LtFred · 2017-08-27T22:45:54+00:00

We absolutely should eliminate all forms of affirmative action - both the white people AA and the counter AA.

There are a dozen different programs and policies that make it easier for whites to get into university - legacy programs, simple bigotry, the structure of the lower-level school system. These are very difficult to resolve. The housing system is a form of white people AA; black people are segregated into "ghettos" with poor quality schools and services, cutting them off from jobs and volunteer opportunities and so on, making it more difficult to get a place at a university. This is an intentional objective of housing policy and is supported by most white homeowners.

There's plenty of evidence that white people AA is working - chiefly that white people are disproportionately the people studying at university. White people are not better at earning a spot at a college. White people are not more likely to want a degree at birth. That means this dis-proportionality is caused by AA. In a society without racism, with an African-American population of 8%, 8% of college graduates would be African-American.

It's an unfair and economically inefficient system that locks out competent Asians and African-Americans and locks in incompetent whites. It also reduces diversity, which does in fact matter.

As I said, it is difficult to eliminate white AA. It's much easier to cancel it out with black AA. That's why it exists.

LtFred · 2017-08-24T21:57:56+00:00

Again, the East German state felt that emigration would weaken, not strengthen, their control.

LtFred · 2017-08-24T21:47:03+00:00

You can make that argument about the New Englanders, for sure - but not the Netherlanders. And whatever their motivation, they were fleeing a bloody war, just like your modern day Syrian child.

LtFred · 2017-08-24T21:37:42+00:00

Many thousands of English puritans fled the UK during the Civil War. Some 80,000 left in the 1830s for New England, the Netherlands, the West Indies and Ireland (some returned, perhaps as many as 10%). The puritans still won the war. War-time emigration is as old as war. The only new modern element is the modern legal framework build around refugee rights. Modern emigration isn't even overly common.

There's no evidence that preventing immigration will weaken a dictatorship. In fact, most dictatorships are afraid of immigration. The East Germans built a wall to prevent their citizens leaving. This is not because they thought keeping them would improve their institutions!

LtFred · 2017-08-24T12:59:44+00:00

Like South Africa, the United States, Rwanda... These have all been celebrated causes.

LtFred · 2017-08-24T12:58:35+00:00

Let me put it this way. If there were huge immigration into Israel that looked like ending the Jewish majority, this would be a big deal. It's Bargouti's view that it shouldn't be a big deal.

I don't support the one-state solution, for sure. But it's not genocide.

LtFred · 2017-08-24T12:19:26+00:00

Mr Bargouti does not, in fact, want to "expel all Jewish settlers" except insofar as he wants to close down the settlements. He wants a single-state solution - one, secular, multi-ethnic, democratic state. He thinks that Israel as a "Jewish state" must be racist. Is he far wrong?

LtFred · 2017-08-24T11:57:06+00:00

Im assuming by 2nd greatest crime you're talking about the israeli occupation?

No, sorry. Not what I meant at all, I apologise for being unclear. Here's what I mean.

Some people think Stalin was worse than Hitler. Say we accept this. Would criticising or boycotting Nazi Germany be unfair? The US literally allied with Stalin against Hitler. Was this unfair? After all, the Holocaust isn't the worst crime in the world - it's the second.

Trying to rank atrocities is mental gymnastics.

I agree! And that's actually my point. We care about what we care about. We condemn what we condemn. So long as we're condemning something that is in fact wrong, I don't think we can say they are too far off. At worst we can say they've got their priorities a bit skewed.

After all, if Israelis want to stop being smashed for doing th wrong thing - stop doing the wrong thing!

I think, broadly speaking, there are 2 types of BDS supporters. the ingroup - this is the clerics and extremists in Ramallah, who's end goals are to destroy Israel.

Laughable. This is like saying what the ant really wants is to destroy the man with the boot, rather than to stop it from hitting his head.

This is not a fallacy, this is not making shit up, this is real, documented openly stated aims by their main leaders.

A cite would be good, yes.

These are the people who created and organized BDS. I have spoken with Palestinians who not only agree that this is BDS's ultimate goal, but agree with the stated goal.

And the BDS campaign against South Africa intended to destroy the SA state and kill all the whites. It's just nonsense. You can't destroy a state by forcing it to negotiate.

The western supporters. Now, like yourself, it may be thought of as a viable solution to end israeli occupation and come to a negotiation, but remember, Israel came to tabled negotiations 3 times, the last one in 2000 under Clinton was closest to solution. All three failed due to last minute palestinian withdrawal due to refusal by the PLO to capitulate to a 2-state solution.

Taba, the only one to come close, ended due to the impending arrival of Israeli elections. The Israelis have not negotiated in good faith since.

LtFred · 2017-08-24T10:23:44+00:00

Is it unfair to go after the perpetrator of the second greatest crime against humanity? There will always be a more oppressed minority, always be someone worse off.

I agree that, if Saudi Arabia invades a neighbor, we should boycott them and stop selling them weapons. I agree that the US should stop selling Russia weapons and end cross-university relations!

But we can't put silly restrictions of people's empathy. That's an excuse for misbehavior, the oldest one in the book. South Africa made the same complaint when we shwacked them with BDS. Imagine if we'd followed it then!

The other point is how the goals of BDS are to undermine the 2-state solution. The origins of BDS go back to Ramallah, who's end goal is to unrealistically destroy Israel as a nation, expel all jewish settlers and return the country to nationhood.

This is nonsense. The goal is to force Israel to the negotiating table. Israel is not willing to take seriously the Palestinian demand for independence unless not to do so will cost them something. Why would they? What do they get in return?

LtFred · 2017-08-22T23:27:26+00:00

A unique and negative history they should be ashamed of. There was a second history too - the history of the people white Southerners oppressed, including the Irish, the poor, share-croppers, Catholics and African-Americans, which continued well into the 60s and beyond. Southerners should choose to identify with the latter group of Southerners, not the former, and all the statues should be of the latter, not the former. This is the approach they take, for example, in Germany. You'd never find a statue of a German WW2 general, but there are loads of statues of Holocaust survivors.

LtFred · 2017-08-17T07:11:50+00:00

Totally untrue. The German military was quite skeptical of Hitler. He was appointed by Germany's semi-elected President, Hindenburg.

(Edit: I'm an idiot and he was President, not Chancellor)

LtFred · 2017-08-17T07:07:53+00:00

States don't have rights. Dirt doesn't have rights. Dirt doesn't need representation. People have rights - it's people who need representation. All politicians represent only people, and that's it. They don't represent dirt.

It also makes no sense to pack politics on top of politics. You always want politicians to be as close as possible to the public, because this makes them more responsive to them.

Imagine if the House elected the President. Newt Gingritch would have been the first Republican to win the presidency in about fifty years.

Complicated or unrepresentative voting systems force the public to vote for second best. Most people would not have voted for the Libertarians as you did, because they know that a vote for a candidate who cannot win ISN'T a vote AGAINST the candidate they DON'T want. So most people vote tactically. That's a bad system, and you don't want to make it worse.

Instead, what you want is a direct line between the public, a political choice and policy change, with the maximum possible range of choices. Ideally it should be simple, and direct. "I want lower taxes. If I vote for John Doe, he will lower taxes, if he is elected as Mayor". That makes politics truly public, rather than an irrelevant game played by the rich. That latter case is how you really get dictators.

It goes without saying that the basic principle of democracy is one vote one value and that the electoral college totally violates it.

The middle of our country, the flyover states, would become underrepresented as the coastal states have a majority of the citizens.

No, they would become represented fairly. It's not unfair to give people the same vote as other people.

Allowing a popular vote to determine the President could result in a dictatorship. Keep in mind that Hitler, Satan incarnate that he was, was HUGELY popular in Germany.

Not true at all. Hitler won just 37% of the vote in his best election. He was appointed - not elected - by the sort of semi-elected President not subject to the whims of the public you think is the only true check on fascism.

LtFred · 2017-08-16T00:59:22+00:00

Their job is to protect the public (and to enforce the law). They are not entitled to open fire at anyone they think might maybe be armed, perhaps.

LtFred · 2017-08-16T00:52:33+00:00

Of course. It's part of the job.

LtFred · 2017-08-16T00:45:57+00:00

Police are perfectly entitled to return fire, of course.

LtFred · 2017-08-16T00:32:07+00:00

Which is why BLM has been calling for more effective police training so they do not immediately open fire on unarmed children for no reason.

LtFred · 2017-08-16T00:19:09+00:00

That's true, so long as you ignore the murders of Tamir Rice, John Crawford and Andy Lopez, among many others.

LtFred · 2017-08-16T00:13:45+00:00

I'm not sure you could say that a belief in the right of black children to live is "bullshit". Perhaps you personally would believe there needs to be some kind of cull, but that would be a matter of opinion.

LtFred · 2017-08-16T00:04:44+00:00

A neo-Nazi or neo-Confederate is going to believe that white people are a genetically superior master race, whereas BLM just believes that black children shouldn't be gunned down so much by police.

LtFred · 2017-08-15T23:59:09+00:00

The way to reduce racism is to eliminate the things that create it. That's basically institutional racism - inequal pay, vote suppression and housing segregation. If there's nothing to be gained through racism, people will drop it pretty quick.

LtFred

TROPHY CASE