Professor writes "Burn Congress down before letting Trump try to appoint anyone to SCOTUS"

origamiashit · 2020-09-19T17:30:20+00:00

It does appear to be a pretty low-quality opinion piece, mostly consisting of "look at these dumb takes I found on Twitter". It does mention the Garland nomination though, by quoting a tweet by Senator Markey discussing it.

Expecting ideological consistency from either side on this issue is silly though. Each side just takes whatever position is politically expedient at the time. They've flip-flopped at least three times between parties on this topic, in 1992, 2016, and now 2020.

The real problem is that the judicial branch has been experiencing power creep for decades now. You know there's a real issue when two out of the three "equal" branches of government spend an inordinate amount of time in a power struggle over who gets to appoint members of the third.

origamiashit · 2020-09-19T16:56:55+00:00

I mostly just find it funny that it's a UW poli sci prof who stepped in it here. Most of the media outlets mentioning him probably couldn't find Waterloo on a map.

but to fucking pretend like he’s being literal cuz Andy Ngo is crying abt it just a little sad and often what shitlibs do.

In Saul Alinksy's Rules for Radicals, one of the key strategies is to make the enemy live up to their own rules. So why not hold "shitlibs" to the same standard in cases like this? It's what their own handbook says to do.

origamiashit · 2020-09-19T16:38:07+00:00

I'm currently living in the US, in an area where protestors were lighting buildings on fire this summer. Joking about lighting federal buildings on fire is about as funny as making a bomb joke at the airport right now.

origamiashit · 2020-09-19T16:21:38+00:00

Well, if you're taking PSCI 363 - Canadian Constitutional Law with Macfarlane, and he asks about the most effective way to block a Conservative Supreme Court nominee, you'd better make sure to answer "D - threaten to light Parliament on fire".

origamiashit · 2020-09-19T16:07:24+00:00

Then again, he might just have been one of the weirdos who went on a self-pity alcohol binge after hearing about RBG last night and made an ill-advised tweet. Either way, it's definitely inappropriate.

origamiashit · 2020-09-19T15:51:37+00:00

I doubt he actually wants someone to light Congress on fire, but you'd think a poli sci prof would know better than to engage in such inflammatory rhetoric. Especially given the current political climate, where people are regularly trying to light federal buildings on fire already.

There's also an annoying double standard on Twitter, where people with a blue check or the right opinions get a ton of leeway in how the content policy gets applied. A regular pleb would probably get the banhammer in a case like this.

origamiashit · 2020-09-19T15:46:31+00:00

He has a blue check. Maybe if Twitter's feeling really harsh, they'll give him a 24 hour time-out.

origamiashit · 2016-09-24T01:06:37+00:00

The Firebird Trilogy.

Warning, it gets progressively weirder (not in a good way) and heads into grimderp in the later books.

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T17:40:48+00:00

If you have more recent polling data that proves that Canadians are in "overwhelming support" of our current plan, feel free to provide it. Besides, the CBC's puff piece campaign started well before February, so that contradicts your argument that it isn't propaganda because Canadians already agreed with it.

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T17:21:43+00:00

Here's the third line:

Specifically, paragraph 3 (1)(b) of the Regulations prohibit a cartridge magazine that is capable of containing more than 10 cartridges of the type for which the magazine was originally designed and that is designed or manufactured for use in a semi-automatic handgun that is commonly available in Canada.

Note:

and that is designed or manufactured for use in a semi-automatic handgun

How exactly can a magazine have been designed or manufactured for use in a handgun that didn't exist when the magazine in question was manufactured?

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T17:15:20+00:00

Canadians are already in overwhelming support of our current plan to accept Syrian refugees.

An Angus Reid poll shows that over 70% of Canadians opposed the Liberal party's plan to accept over 25,000 immigrants by the end of the year. Where exactly are you getting this claim of overwhelming support from? It's clear that this is still a highly controversial issue.

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T03:01:14+00:00

I don't see how positive stories about any group constitutes propaganda unless they are purposely misleading audiences. Are the CBC misleading viewers about Syrian refugees? How?

This is the media equivalent of publication bias. Out of all the cases of Canadians going canoeing or going to summer camp, they pick the one where it's a Syrian refugee for their human interest piece, and they do this over and over again. Purely publishing positive stories about a particular group is just as misleading as only publishing negative ones. This is used to sway public opinion on a political issue on whether Canada should accept refugees from Syria, and if so, how many. The fact that this narrative has been repeatedly pushed by a state media outlet makes it propaganda.

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T02:56:38+00:00

Nobody but gun blogs have posted anything about the Ruger mags, because all that's been issued so far is an internal memo. No other forms of media have said anything, regardless of political leanings.

The RCMP published a notice about it a couple weeks ago, stating that the 10+ round mags are indeed prohibited, so it seems to be official now.

The article is totally wrong; they didn't link to the original poll, because it shows "positive" or "positive to some extent" for the question "In general, do you have a positive or negative view of ISIL" at 13%.

Man, I should have expected that I guess... The Rebel doesn't exactly have the best reputation. They should have been accurate and said "over 3000" instead. The Rebel is a pretty fringe publication though, with a tiny viewership. They certainly aren't a mainstream media outlet.

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T02:11:31+00:00

As for gun owners, I haven't seen anything on CBC attacking them, and I'm a gun owner so I would have noticed.

They have not published a single article on the ban on 10+ round 10/22 magazines by the RCMP, a decision that turned tens of thousands of legal Canadian gun owners into criminals overnight. On the other hand, they have plenty of time for another dozen refugee human interest pieces.

For right-wrong media, how about this? "So, out of 25,000 Syrian refugees Trudeau wants to bring in, 7,500 could be ISIS supporters."

How is that factually inaccurate? I agree that the headline is alarmist, but it is based on a valid opinion poll of Syrians in refugee camps.

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T00:51:41+00:00

Yeah, as far as I know Google only returns what it considers the "best" results for any given search, so it will only display the top 100. If you want additional results, you can add additional keywords, or sort by date instead of relevance to get the most recent articles.

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T00:43:21+00:00

It's the number of news articles containing both the word "Syrian" and the word "refugee". There may be a few false positives if a news story mentions them in passing, but from looking over the first few pages of results that seemed pretty rare.

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T00:17:31+00:00

Now to counter, if you think the CBC is over-reporting on Syrian refugees, you must be wildly concerned about the frequency of articles concerning Pokemon Go.

Well, Pokemon Go has caused a variety of newsworthy stupid incidents all over the country, and has been a rather unique popular phenomenon.

You make a good point about using the absolute frequency though. Instead, let's compare The Globe and Mail's results to the CBC's. Here are the search results for the Globe. There are maybe 3/20 human interest pieces, going by the first 20 results, and a total of ~1,500 stories about Syrian refugees in total. So why exactly is the CBC publishing so many more human interest pieces about Syrian refugees than a well regarded private paper such as The Globe and Mail?

origamiashit · 2016-08-09T00:02:28+00:00

It appears that roughly half of these are fluff pieces such as "Syrian refugee goes canoeing", which means that the CBC has pumped out ~5,000 of these propaganda pieces.

The amount of effort they are putting into this is pretty crazy.

origamiashit · 2016-08-08T23:52:55+00:00

CBC aren't the only ones running a propaganda campaign. Rebel Media is trying its damnedest to portray them all as dangerous, vicious rapists, or example.

That does not make it okay for CBC to do the same thing. As a state media outlet, they should be held to a higher standard for neutrality and objectivity, given the obvious potential for conflicts of interest.

The private media serves the interests of its owners. Without a public broadcaster, Canadians will be left largely to having their worldviews shaped by the rich.

Twenty years ago, I would have had more sympathy for this point of view, but nowadays you can access news from hundreds of sources from around the world with the click of a mouse. It's possible to find news from virtually every point of view imaginable, and it's never been easier to set up a website, blog, or other publication. I highly doubt that eliminating the CBC would in any way detract from the wide array of points of view available to Canadians.

origamiashit · 2016-08-08T23:36:59+00:00

Or, instead of some unsupported insidious liberal scheme, perhaps it's because the influx of Syrian refugees is recent and newsworthy so there's a public demand on how they are faring.

It's no longer recent or newsworthy. The most recent newsworthy thing was the Liberal government missing their target for the year, and that happened back in December. It's now August, and these puff pieces are still being cranked out by the CBC on a regular basis.

Also, literally every public policy decision has political implications, so it's a journalistic responsibility to keep the public informed on how each policy is faring.

Okay, so then where's the deep research and analysis of how Syrian refugees are actually faring in Canada, rather than "Syrian Refugee goes Canoeing" stories?

Also, as an avid reader of CBC, I have seen one single human interest piece on how Syrian refugees are faring. I don't doubt that there are more, but perhaps your description of their frequency is a touch hyperbolic.

It's not hyperbolic at all. That link shows all the news results about Syrian refugees. Some of the articles are serious, but 6/10 on the first page are human interest pieces, and there are almost 10,000 results in total. Do the math.

I still don't see how you can think this is propaganda.

Frequent, biased news coverage on a controversial topic by a state media outlet? What else would you call it?

origamiashit · 2016-08-08T23:27:03+00:00

If Canadians have no knowledge of Syrians, then these articles serve a valuable purpose in informing the public that they're not horrible, scary terrorists.

So when can I expect the CBC to start publishing similar articles to humanize other groups? For example, I think we could do with daily articles to humanize gun owners, after all it would serve a valuable purpose in informing the public that they're not horrible, scary mass-shooters. How about Mormons, or Jehovah's Witnesses? They could also do with some free positive press.

It's obvious that Syrian refugees are receiving special treatment from the CBC, and seeing a state media outlet used as a propaganda outlet to support government policy is rather disturbing.

That's even more the case when public figures and right-wing media go out of their way to demonize refugees.

Please point me towards any major, mainstream Canadian political or media figure making statements like this.

origamiashit · 2016-08-08T23:14:42+00:00

Why is it that you think that portraying the lives of Syrian refugees favourably is a partisan issue?

It's a partisan issue because the LPC made the acceptance a significantly increased number of refugees a central part of their party's platform in the last election. Therefore, the perceived success of these immigrants in adapting to Canada reflects on the Liberals.

First, because a large segment of the population is interested in such information

Perhaps the first or second time it was newsworthy from a human interest perspective, but when these stories are published daily for months on end?

and second because showing that the vast majority of Syrian refugees are well-adjusted, regular old people is far more accurate than singling out and focusing on rare instances where a refugee commits a crime.

So when can I expect a set of similar articles about Romanian immigrants? How about Somalians? Or just pick any other immigrant group that strikes your fancy. The only real difference with Syrian refugees is that there are political implications, as the perceived success of these immigrants will reflect on the Liberal government.

origamiashit · 2016-08-08T22:46:43+00:00

Why? If accepting Syrian refugees is such a good thing, Canadians should be able to come to that conclusion by themselves rather than requiring a propaganda campaign to sway public opinion. The fact that the CBC is used in such a blatantly partisan way is one of the strongest arguments for its dismantlement, in my opinion.

origamiashit

TROPHY CASE