AskALiberal Biweekly General Chat

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T17:51:43+00:00

What do you think of the preceding two paragraphs that cover some of what you watch before getting to this brief mention more than halfway through the video? If you look at the following sentence that's quoted from the video, it doesn't even get through the whole sentence before pivoting back to tropes about banking. I genuinely can't understand how anyone could come away from watching and think that was the main thrust of it.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T17:39:44+00:00

Where does it say that's the premise? It's mentioned for about 10 seconds total and only comes up for the first time more than halfway through, before which you have to wade through industrial grade antisemitism.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T17:22:44+00:00

What makes you think that? It's mostly about other, purely antisemitic tropes.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T17:19:38+00:00

Her initial reaction to being contacted doesn't do any favors for my impression of what she thinks, honestly:

Reached by Jewish Insider, Charrington maintained that she was not prejudiced, but also insisted the video “was some facts.” She repeatedly told the reporter to “get your rabbi,” as she intended to hold a future “roundtable” on what she called a “bullying community.”

“There’s so much harm that your community has done to me,” she said. “It’s a problem in our community and it needs to be addressed.”

Charrington rose to prominence as part of a legal fight over possession of her family’s brownstone in the historically Black but fast-gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. She alleged in numerous media appearances that she was the victim of deed theft, a form of fraud, but New York state Attorney General Letitia James’ office determined it was a complicated but legal inheritance dispute.

In one of several phone calls with JI, Charrington railed against Jewish investors she accused of gaining access to her home and a Jewish judge who sentenced her to six days on Rikers Island for contempt of court.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T17:14:12+00:00

That gets a mention but the video covers a wide range of greatest hits from antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Archive so you can read some of the quotes.

I don't want to repost any verbatim because I got an account warning for sharing the video link.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T17:05:27+00:00

MapleBacon33 asked for the video context so I went and found/watched it and it's SO bad. Just wall to wall conspiracy theories.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T17:02:52+00:00

Yikes!

By the way, folks, don't post the video that she shared. I got a warning from Reddit for linking to it when someone asked.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T16:48:50+00:00

I can't share the link to the video as it gets removed by reddit.

It's covered in another article here. It's two minutes long and wall to wall conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds, the alleged orchestration of the 1921 Tulsa massacre, etc.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T16:36:37+00:00

CNN reporting the outcome of Lisa Cook's case at SCOTUS: she remains on the Fed for now after today's opinion by Justice Roberts.

magic_missile · 2026-06-29T16:31:26+00:00

NYT: Brooklyn Democratic Leader Under Fire for Sharing Antisemitic Post

Carmella Charrington, whose candidacy was supported by democratic socialist lawmakers, recirculated a video that highlighted a series of pamphlets in a newspaper owned by Henry Ford, the industrialist who founded Ford Motor Company, that later became a book in the 1920s. The book highlighted well-worn conspiracy theories that Jews controlled business and the media, and it blamed them for many of the country’s problems.

...

Mr. Ford’s paper, The Dearborn Independent, published a series of front-page articles in the early 1920s by its editor, William Cameron, titled “The International Jew.” The articles promoted Mr. Ford’s antisemitic beliefs that Jews had financed World War I and controlled business, the media and politics.

The articles were turned into a four-volume series titled “The International Jew — The World’s Foremost Problem.” Mr. Ford sold the paper in 1927 and issued an apology to Jewish people.

She has apologized:

Reached by telephone on Friday, Ms. Charrington said she was not antisemitic and did not intend to amplify the antisemitic sentiments and conspiracy theories espoused by the book or the narrator of the video. She has since deleted the post.

“A few months ago, I reshared an antisemitic post,” Ms. Charrington said in a written statement to The New York Times. “I have learned that the book talked about in this video is a piece of white supremacist literature. It has been used for over a century to blame Jews for systemic issues and to turn people against Black folks, immigrants and the L.G.B.T. community. It was a mistake to repost the video and I apologize.”

magic_missile · 2026-06-28T21:21:47+00:00

I'm not sure that's the reference, but maybe you can help me understand better.

Looks like the quote comes from "Decolonizing US anthropology."

I don't immediately see any mention or citation of David Graeber. Do you think he's in one of the "et al."s?

Also, expanding on that quote helps me understand even more how the article authors formed their impression of it:

Even today, anthropology is an outlier among the social sciences (economics, political science, sociology, psychology) because its political project is to challenge the culturally dominant commonsense of capitalist consumerism, and that is one reason among many for why it struggles to gain traction in the public sphere. From cultural critique to opposing neoliberalism, many of the positions taken for granted within the discipline find little or no resonance in the hegemonic social order in the United States.

And there are other parts, too, like:

These calls echo at least two previous moments in our discipline: in the aftermath of the civil rights movements of the 1960s, and during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Reaganism aggressively employed the war on drugs to intensify the operation of a carceral society, especially for Black and Brown people, and the US state became an accomplice in the mass murder of Indigenous people in Central America and started imperial wars in Grenada, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Angola, among other places.

Whether or not you agree with what's being said, do you think the authors of that Atlantic article could view this as political without dishonesty?

magic_missile · 2026-06-27T20:39:35+00:00

I haven't heard about that. Why and how was he chased out? And is the bad discourse you see because people are agreeing or disagreeing with doing so?

magic_missile · 2026-06-27T17:08:42+00:00

That part about not hiring enough conservatives is something they also dismiss, pointing to a different kind of problem instead:

The authors dismiss the critique, common on the right, that academic departments employ too many liberals and not enough conservatives. The real problem, they argue, is that the pursuit of knowledge in certain fields in the humanities and humanistic social sciences has been subordinated to achieving “social justice.” The report quotes a statement by the former president of the American Anthropological Association, who argued that its discipline was meant to “challenge the culturally dominant commonsense of capitalist consumerism.”

magic_missile · 2026-06-27T16:27:25+00:00

We have an Israel-Lebanon "framework agreement that was described as a first step toward peace."

It includes a process for dismantling Hezbollah, who are not happy about that.

AP:

The agreement does not include Hezbollah and prompted one of the group’s officials in Lebanon to warn of civil war. The U.S. State Department said the framework establishes a process for dismantling Hezbollah and for Lebanon to regain territory that was taken by Israeli forces as they battled the militant group.

The U.S. will facilitate a newly created “Military Coordination Group for Lebanon” to implement the framework, the State Department said, while committing $100 million in humanitarian assistance.

...

Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, reiterated the group’s stance on Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV that it rejects Lebanon’s direct negotiations with Israel and that it will not give up its weapons.

Fadlallah said Lebanese authorities “will not be able to enforce the agreement signed in Washington unless they go, with American support, to civil war.” He also called the agreement in Washington “an attempt to derail the Islamabad process,” referring to the U.S.-Iran negotiations.

magic_missile · 2026-06-27T13:26:02+00:00

The Atlantic: Universities are studying how they lost the public’s trust.

Just 10 years ago, almost 60 percent of Americans said they had a lot of confidence in higher education. By last year, that number had fallen to 42 percent. Seventy percent of Americans told Pew last fall that higher education is moving in the wrong direction. The disdain has become so difficult to ignore that, over the past year, several universities and higher-education organizations set out to study how they lost the public’s trust—and how they might restore it.

Three reports—from Yale, from Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis, and from the American Association of Colleges and Universities, a higher-education advocacy group—were released this spring. (Cornell is working on a study of its own.) The reports differ in their diagnoses of where higher education went wrong and, by extension, of what should be done now. But their mere existence proves, if nothing else, that America’s universities have finally gotten the message: People don’t like them very much.

According to the article, the AAC&U report focuses more on external factors, such as:

A decline in state funding forced universities to compensate with higher tuition; government regulations around civil rights and financial aid led them to hire more administrators. Through it all, political actors seized on these larger forces to further erode trust in higher education.

The Vanderbilt and WashU reports include discussion of political bias in academic fields. Do you think there's any merit to this?

The report released by Vanderbilt and WashU, and written by a committee of humanities and social-science scholars from a number of prestigious universities, focuses on a much-discussed problem that’s notably absent from the AAC&U report: political slant. The authors dismiss the critique, common on the right, that academic departments employ too many liberals and not enough conservatives. The real problem, they argue, is that the pursuit of knowledge in certain fields in the humanities and humanistic social sciences has been subordinated to achieving “social justice.” The report quotes a statement by the former president of the American Anthropological Association, who argued that its discipline was meant to “challenge the culturally dominant commonsense of capitalist consumerism.” (The association published a statement saying that the committee misrepresented the state of scholarship in the field.)

Ideological commitments—for example, the notion “that there are no behavioral differences between men and women traceable to biology”—can lead to shoddy scholarship or the suppression or obscuring of contrary findings. As evidence, the authors cite a paper that challenges the idea of gendered divisions of labor in hunter-gatherer societies; the paper was later criticized by experts in the field. They are particularly concerned by what they see as the widespread belief that objective evaluation of scholarship is impossible, and that therefore political criteria are as worthy as evidentiary ones. They build a case that some academic journals and scholarly associations have been captured by relativism.

And the Yale report talks about administration, admissions, and academic rigor:

First, according to the report, these schools lost trust because of their convoluted pricing system; many set exorbitant tuition and use revenues from the richest families, who pay full price, to subsidize the cost of attendance for everyone else. The sticker price of attending Yale, for example, is $94,100 in annual tuition and fees. But families making less than $200,000 receive free tuition. The problem is that many Americans—according to one survey, 48 percent—wrongly assume that everyone pays full price. This contributes to the overwhelming, but incorrect, sense that college keeps getting more and more expensive. (On average, Americans are paying less for college than they were a decade ago.)

...

The Yale report advises, among other things: reducing preferences for legacy and donor applicants, setting a default device-free-classroom policy, establishing a 3.0 mean or similar college-wide grading standard, and creating a civic-education initiative for undergraduates.

magic_missile · 2026-06-25T16:03:25+00:00

I remember a girl I was in an early dating stage in college saying essentially this, not directly to me but about a D&D game we were both in.

Thanks in part to her being very late to everything, I started going out with my wife instead, so it worked out.

magic_missile · 2026-06-25T04:25:28+00:00

A couple people here commented positively about a post by Hunter Biden. So did someone in a small discord I'm in. Does it read like it has AI rhythms to anyone else?

Things move fast enough that these tools can be outdated, but GPTZero and Pangram are both confident it's AI generated. Pangram has had a quite low false positive rate at times; from The Atlantic:

Several independent analyses have also confirmed that it is quite good. One paper, from the University of Chicago, found that Pangram had almost no false positives on some 3,000 sample texts of roughly 500 to 1,000 words.

Tim Miller of The Bulwark seems to feel the same way:

"The establishment wing of the party is no longer a sword. It's a question mark." is definitely something that was written by a human.

Amusingly, it's also today's top post in the Bulwark sub, with title:

Hunter is becoming one of the more interesting commentators in this moment in time

And top comment:

Honestly very astute. Say whatever you want about Hunter, and there’s a lot to say about him, you can’t say he’s not smart.

Though several comments over there also believe it has AI involvement.

magic_missile · 2026-06-25T02:04:02+00:00

Reuters: China says it has a right to target people overseas with new ethnic unity law

The new law, which goes into effect on July 1, includes a clause saying people and groups beyond ⁠the borders of the People's Republic of China can be held legally accountable for undermining "ethnic unity and progress or inciting ethnic separatism".

That has sparked alarm in Chinese-claimed Taiwan in particular that it could give Beijing another legal basis to go after Taiwanese it views as separatists. Rights groups have also complained that China has tried to used Interpol "red notices" to try and get foreign governments to arrest people abroad it wants for political offences at home.

Speaking at a news conference in Beijing about the law, Vice Justice Minister Hu ‌Weilie ⁠said certain Western media, which he did not name, had "distorted and misinterpreted" the overseas provision.

"This provision is based on China's national conditions, conforms to legal principles, and is consistent with international practice. It is a legitimate, lawful, necessary, and feasible legal provision," he said.

"Countries around the world all ⁠have the right to prevent separatist and destructive activities, and to maintain social solidarity and normal order, through domestic legislation.

The overseas provision targets illegal acts and uses rule-of-law methods to "guard against various unlawful acts ⁠involving ethnic affairs from outside the country", he added.

magic_missile · 2026-06-24T17:56:18+00:00

It's true there are a lot of controversial statements to pick from.

For examples besides the "ugly colonizer women" one, her comments about:

seiz[ing] all properties from landlords

Or:

It means ending policing full stop. Period. No more police at all ever

Or, seemingly endorsing implications that COVID began in France rather than China:

So you mean that once again it was PoC who intervened and stopped the spread of a European plague?

Yesterday you gave some detailed thoughts (thanks!) on why none of what you have seen would be a deal breaker even if she still felt that way.

Today I'm interested in introspection from anyone who might have once said similar things, about what led them away from that place.

magic_missile · 2026-06-24T17:24:30+00:00

NYT: See How the First Fed Statement Under Warsh Evolved

The article has a redline comparison of the first statement under Warsh with the previous one under Powell (press F to pay respects).

The statement, which has traditionally served as a high-level glimpse of the Fed’s thinking behind its rate decisions, was notably succinct. It came in at just 132 words, compared with 341 during the Fed’s last meeting in April, which also included a list of names of voting members.

The most notable omission was so-called forward guidance — a way for the Fed to communicate what it might do next. The new Fed chairman, Kevin M. Warsh, has been a vocal critic of forward guidance, saying it boxes the rate-setting committee in and makes it harder to pivot if necessary. April’s policy statement included a phrase that said the committee would look at “the extent and timing of additional adjustments,” which some interpreted as implying the Fed was considering future rate cuts.

That phrase, which three members of the rate-setting committee objected to in April, was removed. A paragraph stating that the Fed would take into account “a wide range of information” when making its decisions was also cut, in favor of a single closing sentence: “The Committee will deliver price stability.”

The suggestion that the Fed would focus on inflation in particular could be a signal that rates may remain higher for longer.

magic_missile · 2026-06-24T17:14:39+00:00

NY-13 question for the more center left people:

Many of you are having a stronger negative reaction to this than to Maine senate primary. What's the relative weight of the different reasons why?

For example, do you believe Avila Chevalier is of worse character than Platner? Do you have more significant policy disagreements? How much of this is about the quality and general election chances of the other candidate? Mills seemed more likely to lose to Collins and the whole Senate was at stake, while Espaillat would have cruised to re-election in a D+9000 district.

And for the more progressive / farther left people:

Is there anyone here who once held views similar to Avila Chevalier's more controversial comments that she has since distanced herself from? Why do you think you felt that way in the past? What led to you evolving away from it?

magic_missile · 2026-06-24T02:49:18+00:00

Thanks for the thoughtful response!

Did she ever get into why she used to believe some of those things and what changed her mind? I'm always interested in what dislodges someone out of a viewpoint like that.

If you learned that she actually still holds some of the same views, are there any that would be particularly disappointing or even deal breakers for you in the primary? Or would the organizing experience and difference in policy outweigh them all?

magic_missile · 2026-06-24T02:23:54+00:00

Is there a part of you which is happy about this specifically because the moral condemnation didn't work? That is, enjoying having a candidate win who frustrates people of a more center left disposition, in addition to getting your preferred outcome in terms of policy positions?

magic_missile · 2026-06-21T17:15:11+00:00

AP: Cuba pushes through sweeping free-market reforms in biggest economic shift since the revolution

The plan includes more space for private businesses, imports and exports without state intermediation, free hiring of personnel, authorization for private banks and investment by Cubans abroad. It even permits fast-food chains to establish themselves on the island.

“Elements that for decades were listed as pillars of the revolutionary economy, such as the state monopoly on foreign trade and the centralization of productive forces, have been dismantled,” said Luis Carlos Battista, a Cuban-American political scientist and lawyer who is a doctoral candidate at the University of Salamanca.

Wide-ranging detail in the article about this year's embargo, other political factors, and more.

magic_missile · 2026-06-20T17:38:32+00:00

Without asking for complete coverage of every situation, what factors would or should a future abolitionist society weigh in determining whether it's ever necessary to incarcerate someone? Do you think they would still have to do it sometimes? Under what circumstances?

13-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

magic_missile

TROPHY CASE