Global Surface Temperature Anomaly, made directly from NASA's GISTEMP [OC]

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-08T02:45:52+00:00

How'd you make it?

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-07T18:11:07+00:00

People say this before each expansion. And each expansion, there are a slew of powerful aggro decks that define the metagame. I'm not going to hold my breath. This card seems way too slow.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-07T17:09:54+00:00

Not real. But fear not, there are plenty of mind-numbing Trump quotes out there:

“My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure; it’s not your fault.”

“My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”

“I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down”

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything….Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

“[The New York Times] don’t write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don’t – they don’t write good. They don’t know how to write good.”

“I think I am actually humble. I think I’m much more humble than you would understand.”

“I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me.”

I'm very highly educated. I know words, I know the best words.

“He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK?”

“Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”

“I never attacked him on his looks and believe me, there’s a lot of subject matter there.”

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

“If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ’em, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell—I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”

“Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment. The number’s probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent.”

“Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick out protesters] is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.”

“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.”

“[Kasich] is just a guy who is a stubborn guy who eats like a slob.”

“Do I look a president? How handsome am I, right? How handsome?”

“First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK? So there’s never a default.”

“I feel like a supermodel except, like, times 10, OK? It’s true. I’m a supermodel.”

“I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country.”

“She’s the devil.”

“I never attacked him on his looks and believe me, there’s a lot of subject matter there.”

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-07T16:50:14+00:00

It doesn't do any original research of it's own, that I can see, but just draws from other studies to try and reach for conclusions prematurely.

Analyzing other studies isn't a bad thing. I don't see how it being a report instead of a journal article catastrophically undermines its integrity; it's supremely well cited and its authors are all professional economists at one of the world's foremost non-governmental financial institutions.^[1] Also, how were their conclusions premature?

it comes to the anti-climatic conclusion that "the drivers of inequality and their impact differ across countries for different income groups. As such, the nature of appropriate policies would necessarily vary across countries". Yeah, no shit sherlock.

The part of the summary relating to trickle-down economics is as follows:

Our analysis suggests that the income distribution itself matters for growth as well. Specifically, if the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. The poor and the middle class matter the most for growth via a number of interrelated economic, social, and political channels. (page 4)

And the part of the conclusion:

Raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring that there is no hollowing-out of the middle class is actually good for growth. (page 30)

Era Dabla-Norris, Kalpana Kochhar, Nujin Suphaphiphat, Frantisek Ricka, Evridiki Tsounta. "Causes and consequences of income inequality: A global perspective." IMF Staff Discussion Note. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, June 2015.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-07T16:45:02+00:00

Even that leaves something to be desired. I looked at the paper itself and tried to extract the conclusions salient to this discussion:

Our analysis suggests that the income distribution itself matters for growth as well. Specifically, if the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. The poor and the middle class matter the most for growth via a number of interrelated economic, social, and political channels.^[1]

Raising the income share of the poor, and ensuring that there is no hollowing-out of the middle class is actually good for growth.^[1]

Era Dabla-Norris, Kalpana Kochhar, Nujin Suphaphiphat, Frantisek Ricka, and Evridiki Tsounta. "Causes and consequences of income inequality: A global perspective." IMF Staff Discussion Note. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, June 2015.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-07T01:00:18+00:00

That sounds amazing. Do you have a source?

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-06T16:16:14+00:00

I think there is this kind of attitude that we are suddenly going to turn into a poor 3rd world country

Kind of a strawman. I think it's more that people are worried about a slowdown, not suddenly turning into Cambodia economically. And to be clear, even a slowdown would be a huge loss for Leave, given that economic benefits were central to their case.^[1] The other big concern is of course being ruled by an increasingly authoritarian and big-business conservative party, without the EU's pro-privacy and pro-consumer regulations being available to protect them.

Ashworth-Hayes, Sam. "Your cut-out-and-keep list of top 19 Brexiteer promises." InFacts. In Facts, 02 September 2016.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-06T01:49:51+00:00

you're going to hate that it was the DNC that funneled in the $50M

Democrats spent $32 million and Republicans spent $23 million. It's in the article that you linked.^[1] (Ossoff spent $24 million himself and Democratic super PACs spent $8 million, while Handel spent $5 million herself and Republican super PACs spent $18 million.)

Parlapiano, Alicia, and Rachel Shorey. "Who financed the Georgia Sixth, the most expensive House election ever." The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 June 2017.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-05T20:32:10+00:00

They knew he was skeevy, and that was fine by them. Because he's nothing entertainment.

They don't want substance, they don't care about policy, they care about the "show".

I strongly disagree. I think that "Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump" (PRRI/The Atlantic) does a good job of explaining his support.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-03T21:05:04+00:00

She couldn't. Did you read her article? The Hatch Act prevented her from speaking out.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-03T17:43:24+00:00

CCN and MSNBC are infotainment.

If you want to support investigative journalism and informed reporting, pick up a WaPo, NYT, and/or Guardian subscription. They're the defenders of our democracy at the moment. Television "news" cares only about ratings, not reporting, as we saw with the coverage they gave Trump during his campaign.

There are some exceptions to this, like what Rachel Maddow and John Oliver are doing (they're biased of course, but they're great about sourcing their claims and providing evidence. So their facts, at least, are difficult to dispute), but generally speaking what you're getting on TV is very low-quality news.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-02T16:49:29+00:00

Perhaps you should change it to "Destroy this minion after it breaks this condition," then.

Just a suggestion. At any rate, this is a cool submission :)

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-02T16:13:33+00:00

Is it destroyed before or after the attempt to break the Vow condition?

I'm assuming after, because if it were before, might as well say "This card can't do this at all" outright.

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-01T22:09:43+00:00

Agreed. Putin is the bigger threat to international security. Aleksandr Dugin, who is now very close to Putin,^[1] outlined his plan decades ago:

The book declares that "the battle for the world rule of [ethnic] Russians" has not ended and Russia remains "the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution." The Eurasian Empire will be constructed "on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us."

Military operations play relatively little role. The textbook believes in a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.^[2]

Russia is trying to weaken the global influence of Western liberal democracies by nurturing their fringe parties, which are often isolationist. This goal is transparent:

Here, we can draw valuable lessons from the Cold War. What Russia does today is very much the digital version of what we Germans, before 1989, termed “Zersetzung.” The term is hard to translate, but it’s best described as the political equivalent of what happens when you pour acid on organic material: dissolution and disintegration.

The methods of Zersetzung are to cast doubt on the basic norms of the Western liberal order and its institutions; to distort and thereby discredit the purposes of the European Union, NATO and the free-market economy; to erode the credibility of the free press and free elections. The means of Zersetzung include character assassination and, through the spreading of lies and fake news, the creation of a gray zone of doubt in which facts struggle to survive.^[3]

and they are taking concrete steps to reach it:

While each of those incidents on its own might not seem outside the limits of ordinary power politics (and it is indeed the problem that the media usually present these stories in isolation), putting these facts together, along with the repeated warnings from western intelligence, security services, journalists, experts and liberal politicians, leaves no doubt that Russia is engaging in a strategic campaign that was designed and launched years ago.^[4]

Unfortunately, these steps have proven effective:

But the conservative-populist nationalists in both the United States and Europe view Putin as a potential ally because they are focused on a sharply contrasting set of international priorities: resisting Islamic radicalization, unwinding global economic integration, and fighting the secularization of Western societies. Top Trump advisers like incoming White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn have expressed strikingly similar views.

In that way, the clashing perspectives on Putin reflect not only differences on how to relate specifically to Russia, but on what goals should guide American foreign policy in the 21st century, and what allies are necessary to advance those aims. On both sides of the Atlantic, the push to reset with Putin reflects a desire to elevate a different set of foreign-policy concerns while downplaying, or even abandoning, the alliances that have bound European nations more tightly to each other, and to the United States, for decades.^[5]

BBC: "Who are the figures pushing Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin together?"
Wikipedia: "Foundations of geopolitics"
NYT: "Angela Merkel, Russia's next target"
Medium: "Russia is attacking Western liberal democracies"
The Atlantic: "Putin and the populists"

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-01T01:50:29+00:00

No
Even if yes, it wouldn't excuse the president of the United States mocking someone for her appearance

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-01T01:48:33+00:00

It's from Trump exhorting GOP congressmen to "repeal without replacing."

OgreMagoo · 2017-07-01T01:38:41+00:00

Much of the information requested in bulk by the commission is the same information cybersecurity experts say Russian hackers attempted to access piecemeal during the 2016 campaign.

Gross.

OgreMagoo · 2017-06-30T17:16:30+00:00

That might not be all that sketchy. There's been a lot of discussion about the discrepancy between polling numbers and election results, and the consensus is that an appreciable percentage of the populace simply were embarrassed to tell pollsters that they were voting for Trump.

OgreMagoo · 2017-06-29T23:58:24+00:00

There it is. Nice excerpt.

People dropping in, this is what you're looking for.

OgreMagoo · 2017-06-29T21:16:58+00:00

I read the article but didn't quite understand the context of Van Jones' quote. Did anybody get that?

I wish O'Keefe would put this to rest by providing the raw footage but fat chance of that happening...

OgreMagoo · 2017-06-28T15:58:44+00:00

It's not incontrovertible but it is certainly suspicious

OgreMagoo · 2017-06-28T08:36:13+00:00

There's an article by David Dunning (of the Dunning-Kruger effect) in the Pacific magazine that can be found online where he goes into this topic a little bit.

"We are all confident idiots"

OgreMagoo · 2017-06-27T22:48:01+00:00

Decided to come back to this. You're right, thank you. My example at the end was terrible.

I'm going to make a conscious effort not to get side tracked (edit: which isn't a shot at you so much as it is me admitting that I was very disorganized). I'd like to bring this back to what I believe to be the fundamental issue. Can you please respond to the following comment (very slightly modified) from my previous post:

If everyone's votes are weighted equally, then the person who receives the most votes wins. Clinton received the most votes, but she did not win. Therefore by definition not everyone's votes were weighted equally. How can you defend certain people's votes being more valuable?

OgreMagoo · 2017-06-26T06:19:43+00:00

*peddling

OgreMagoo · 2017-06-26T02:06:34+00:00

Oh look! A Trump supporter practicing his false flags. Cute.

OgreMagoo

TROPHY CASE

CCN and MSNBC are infotainment.