Lurker > Antifar

s0nicfan posted...

WaPo really needs to be treated the same way Breitbart is if this is their standard for journalism.

This is an opinion piece and clearly labeled as such.
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People who think it's more likely for the universe to be wrong than themselves.
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/senate-democrats-drop-daca-from-budget-negotiations.html

In the immediate wake of Senate Democrats ending their weekend shutdown, a furious debate raged online this week over whether the party had caved in giving up critical leverage for a promise from Mitch McConnell to take up immigration legislation by Feb. 8. Arguments that they had not caved relied largely on the assumption that Democrats would surely continue to demand that a DACA fix accompany any long-term spending agreement, as they have for months. This assumption was wrong.

From Politico:

Senate Democrats are willing to drop their demand that relief for Dreamers be tied to any long-term budget agreement a potential boost for spending talks, but one that could face opposition from their House counterparts.

The shift comes in response to the deal struck between Senate leaders Monday to reopen the government and begin debate on an immigration bill next month. Meanwhile, budget negotiators are expressing optimism that a two-year agreement to lift stiff caps on defense and domestic spending is increasingly within reach.

Were viewing [immigration and spending] on separate terms because they are on separate paths, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday.

If Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals really is dropped from budget negotiations, Democrats and Dreamers will be riding entirely on the idea that Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans would be ashamed and embarrassed if they went back on their word. And, additionally, that House Republicans would take up a contentious immigration bill with no material incentive to do so.

These seem like questionable premises to House Democrats, who have balked at the news. We are insisting that these things be in the same negotiation, a Democratic aide told Politico. So, too, are liberal activists. Heartbreaking that theyre doing this in the Senate, Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin tweeted. Hope @NancyPelosi fights for Dreamers in the House.

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https://gizmodo.com/kris-kobach-s-office-leaks-last-4-social-security-digit-1822415622

Prior to receiving notice from Gizmodo this morning, Kris Kobachs office was leaking sensitive information belonging to thousands of state employees, including himself and nearly every member of the Kansas state legislature.

Among a bevy of personal information that, according to a statement on the website, was intended to be public, the Kansas Secretary of States website was exposing the last four digits of Social Security numbers (known as SSN4) of thousands of current and former candidates for office, as well as thousands, or potentially tens of thousands, of high-ranking state employees at apparently ever Kansas government agency.

The combination of a persons name and SSN4 creates whats commonly called personally identifiable information, the unauthorized disclosure of which is unlawful under numerous state and federal laws. Putting these statements of substantial interest online without redacting the SSN4 information is beyond reckless; its stupid.

While scanning the records on the public website, Gizmodo found SSN4 information for employees at the Kansas Departments of State, Transportation, Education, Labor, Health and Environment, and Aging and Disability Services; staff members at Kansas State University, Wichita State University, Pittsburg State University, and the University of Kansas; serving members of the Coordinating Council on Early Childhood Development, the Human Rights Commission, the Board of Veterinary Examiners, and the Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board; as well as district attorneys, correctional officers, and other law enforcement officialsjust to name a few.

Gizmodo notified the Kansas Secretary of States office of the exposure on Thursday morning, and the site was taken down within roughly an hour. A request for comment was not returned.

The forms, known as statements of substantial interests, are required for every state employee of notelegislators, state officers, and members of boards, councils and commissionsand various candidates for office. Under Kansas state law, these individuals are required to disclose any substantial financial interests they have in any businesses or interests held by their spouses.

In the interest of accountability, the information added to those forms is supposed to be public record. But the form itself also includes an optional field that asks for the last four digits of the employees Social Security number, explicitly for one purpose: to aid the state in properly identifying individuals whose full names may be shared by other state employees.

Gizmodo identified 106,834 such forms on the Kansas government website, though its not immediately clear how many contained SSN4 information. A single individual might have multiple forms; some only had one, others had eight. But at least several thousand Kansans are exposed, including Kobach himself and Bryan Caskey, the Kansas director of elections, as well as Derek Schmidt, the director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigations.

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The Admiral posted...

That article (as quoted) is completely incoherent.

What don't you understand here?
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-promised-to-unite-americans-his-policies -leave-us-more-alone-than-ever/2018/01/25/d9b60e62-0155-11e8-bb03-722769454f82_story.html

...Yet, Trumps administration has ushered in a virulently antisocial politics that dissolves the most basic bonds and leaves individuals powerless against both market and state. Trump, like many populists of the right, gained a foothold by promising that a resurgent nationalism could make people feel cohesive, trusting and strong again. But like his right-leaning populist predecessors, he has offered only the imaginary bonds of nationalism the illusion of fellow-feeling and homogeneity even as his policies destroy the real and foundational bonds of family and community in the arenas of health care, immigration, labor and more.

Trumps administration altered regulations this year to allow states to withhold health care from some Medicaid-qualified individuals if they dont meet work requirements. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announcement, the change is aimed at incentivizing community engagement among able-bodied, working-age Medicaid beneficiaries. This has long been the stated goal of workfare programs: By requiring and promoting work, professor Lawrence Mead, a leading advocate of welfare reform, argued before a House subcommittee in 2013, workfare integrated [poor people] into mainstream American life as never before.

But the talk of community engagement and integration is absurd. What workfare does is force recipients to choose between important benefits and familial obligations. By Meads own account, the major accomplishment of workfare was that the share of welfare mothers engaged in work activities doubled to about a third, and work levels also rose sharply for poor single mothers outside welfare. Day-care shortages ensued; women without enough money to support their families were forced to pay for child care. If they couldnt afford it, they lost their benefits which would mean, in the case of Medicaid, sacrificing their health.

The same disregard if not outright hostility toward familial bonds is on display in the Trump administrations assaults on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and what it calls chain migration, otherwise known as family reunification. In a September statement, Trump said ending the program was all about protecting Americans and their jobs; presumably this was the loyalty to country he spoke of at his inauguration, meant to illuminate Americans loyalty to one another. But what the destruction of DACA really means is that parents will be torn away from children, and children will be essentially orphaned for no real reason. What Trumps campaign against family reunification means is that families will be forced to either remain separated from loved ones permanently or surrender their livelihoods, jobs and communities to rejoin them.

Laws tell us what to do and what not to do, but they also contain information about what the state theoretically the sum of our popular will believes to be morally sound. Trumps laws imply that family bonds are disposable and that the state has complete moral authority to destroy them in its pursuit of American greatness.
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What unites workfare, the annihilation of DACA and the war on unions is a totalizing individualism the belief that people are essentially isolated individuals. That we are alone before we are together. That we are more and not less ourselves in total isolation. From that view flow policies that disregard or deny that people are, in fact, embedded in families, communities and industries, and that their bonds and obligations are powerful and ought to be respected and protected by the state. No politics issuing from that view can ever cultivate unity.

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clearaflagrantj posted...

You'd think feminists wouldn't see transwomen as a threat but simply another group fighting for equal treatment. Isn't that the ultimate goal? Provide equal opportunity and treatment to all human beings?

I think most feminists agree with this! TERFs are a minority in the movement.
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It is very useful
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Vertania posted...

"Trans ideology is homophobic"

Uh... what?

TERFs, man.
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https://nypost.com/2018/01/20/disturbing-photo-shows-accused-ivy-league-killer-pretending-to-crush-friends-skull/

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Multiple sources say Woodward created the now-deleted iFunny account under the handle Saboteur and used it to spread white-supremacist and Neo-Nazi screeds.

Indeed, the photo appears to recreate the gruesome curb stomp attack depicted in 1998s American History X, in which Edward Norton stars as a neo-Nazi skinhead.

The newly revealed online persona could shed new light on a possible motive in Woodwards alleged murder of 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania pre-med student Blaze Bernstein, who was found stabbed 20 times in a shallow grave in an Orange County, Calif., park on Jan. 9. Bernstein was Jewish.

Speculation on a motive has so far centered on Woodwards sworn statement saying he flew into a rage after Bernstein tried to give him an unwanted kiss. In the reported police affidavit, Woodward allegedly said he had wanted to call his former high school classmate a [anti-gay slur].

Police have not ruled out a hate crime.

Saboteur was one hundred percent a White Nationalist from his comments that I personally saw, said an iFunny app user who wanted to be identified only as Daniel W.

Saboteur over the years had posted purported photos and videos of himself, and a former teacher and multiple iFunny users confirmed those images were of Woodward.

A disturbing racist, sexually charged caption accompanied one photo Woodward purportedly posted of himself, wearing a commencement gown, and posing with a young female teacher of Indian or Middle Eastern descent.

I would vigorously bone the living hell out of my English teacher, like holy fuck. I dont care if its miscegenation [interbreeding], That babe would be pregnant as fuck year after year, around the clock, acting as a hub of genetic imperialism and giving life to half arab Saboteur-offspring to further my conquest and aims, it said. The high school would not comment on the twisted boast.

During debates on the phone app, Woodward consistently spouted defenses of white nationalism and support of Nazi ideas, said Daniel W.

Anti-Semitism and homophobia were certainly aspects of his ideology, said another iFunny user who claimed to be close to Woodward.

The iFunny app is designed for users to upload funny memes, photos and videos to their accounts for other users to comment and re-share.

But sources claim Woodward mostly posted diatribes in the iPolitics group.

Sam was a radical National Socialist. He dedicated his account to radical nationalist movements throughout history and worked towards spreading his ideology, the source close to Woodward wrote.

Woodwards posts grew more disturbing over time, according to the source.

He went from a man interested in right-wing ideology to a much more concerning and dangerous belief system, the source said, including espousing white revolution. Another source said he expressed hate for refugees.

Such an evolution isnt unusual, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Meme culture has been embraced by white supremacists, who are very active online and increasingly seek to employ irony and humor to spread their hateful messages, said Oren Segal, director of ADLs Center on Extremism.

Despite Woodwards rhetoric, he was also regarded as one of the smartest and most sane nationalists on the app, the source said.

Still struggling with the fact that him and his victim were named Woodward and Bernstein.
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This topic is all sorts of bad. TERFs aren't new, and neither is activists being pissed at the Democratic Party's spineless bullshit.
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The wolf shit ruined Twilight Princess for me, in that it made me nauseous
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Amazon would know
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Marxism has shaped the capitalism we have today. The gains made by the working classes over the past 150 years are in large part due to class struggle, and the efforts by people who would have been familiar with his work or ideas, if they weren't out and out socialists themselves. The eight-hour workday, the weekend, those are the products of class struggle.
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I take it people aren't crazy about FFXV to begin with

but man it did nothing for me.
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gatorsPENSbucs posted...

The crazy thing is she made up some fake story about Dave Navarro 10 years ago but nobody cares that shes done this in the past cause it has to do with Trump.

The story that Trump paid $130k to her isn't coming from her, though.
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KronoCloud posted...

Who the fuck did JFK kill???

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0AbsoluteZero0 posted...

Former executive for big pharma now heading up the HHS. Yup

And it's like, okay, I can understand these red staters being more conservative on guns or abortion.

But you won't convince me the people of Missouri and Alabama are just clamoring for Wall Street and pharma execs.
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https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/956261335259639808
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dave_is_slick posted...

If people aren't even talking about what it's selling, if failed.

People don't talk about most commercials, period.
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TheAnthraxBunny posted...

What's interesting about this one is that they're not just anti-men, but they're anti-trans too which is definitely outside the normal for these insane activist Tumblr blogs.

Oooh wow, a real live TERF!

I take my previous post back; those people are legitimately nuts.
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Not to get all cynical, but getting people to think about a commercial beyond the 30 seconds it airs is the whole point. By this standard, it's an effective commercial.
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D-Lo_BrownTown posted...

Why is cheating suddenly an issue now, though?

Paying her to stay silent the month before the election (and possibly with campaign funds) is the interesting part.
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nicklebro posted...

Kennedy had someone killed over this kinda behavior.

wait wait wait

this is news to me
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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/politician-converts-islam-quits-afd-party-180124124119851.html

A leading politician from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has converted to Islam and resigned from his position with the anti-Muslim party, the party has confirmed.

Arthur Wagner, a leading member of the far-right party in Germany's eastern German state of Brandenburg, stepped down for "personal reasons", a party spokesperson confirmed, according to state broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Wagner, who has been a member of the party since 2015, refused to comment to Tagesspiegel, the daily newspaper that first broke the news of his conversion.

"That's my private business," he told the daily.

On the party's Brandenburg state committee, Wagner's work focused on churches and faith communities, according to Deutsche Welle.

The AfD has campaigned against refugees and migrants and made history when it won 12.6 percent of the vote in federal elections in September 2017, entering the Bundestag for the first time.

The party became the third largest party in the Bundestag.

The news sparked derision on social media, with many Twitter users pointing to the irony of Wagner converting to Islam after being a high-ranking member of a party that has railed against the presence of Muslims in Germany.

Emily Dische-Becker said: "Creeping Sharia picks up speed as politician from Germany's islamophobic AfD converts to Islam."

Mark Berry said: "I really don't understand Nazis."

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Men
Are
Gonna
Adulterate
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It is a commercial
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I'm not convinced they do.

Consider: why would the person screencapping and sharing this block out the person's user name? Are they really looking to shield that person from whatever negative attention they might receive? Or, alternatively, might they be hiding the username because a brief glance at the actual account would reveal that it's satire?

For what it's worth, I searched Tumblr (this looks like Tumblr, it could be Instagram maybe?) for a couple choice segments from this supposed post and couldn't find it. Maybe it's been deleted, maybe it's old, maybe it was created out of wholecloth for this image to be spread around.

95% of these unsourced screenshots are bullshit; how do we still have to teach the "don't believe everything you see online" lesson in 2018?
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Podcasts are good.
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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/exclusive-full-secret-society-text-fbi-agents-meant/story?id=52592241

For the past 24 hours, a number of Republican lawmakers have been suggesting that a months-old text message between two FBI officials reveals a "secret society" of federal law enforcement officials clandestinely plotting against President Donald Trump.

Lawmakers have refused to publicly release the full text message, sent the day after Trump won the 2016 presidential election. But ABC News has obtained a copy of the one message that Republicans appear to be citing, and it's unclear if the message's reference to a secret society may have been made in jest.

"Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society," FBI lawyer Lisa Page wrote to senior FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was working on the FBIs probe of Russian meddling in the presidential election and would later join Page for a brief period on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.

That text stands alone in the series of messages obtained by ABC News with no apparent tie to other messages sent before or after it.

People gonna go full pizzagate over this because there's no context
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Set aside whether you care about Trump's lies personally, if you are genuinely interested in his agenda you should be upset about the fact that his lies reduce trust in him and his leadership.

No one wants to make deals with someone they believe to be a con artist.
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Dems performed pretty well for themselves in 2017 though.

Not that John Kerry or Joe Biden would do well, but I think you meant 2016
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Leanaunfurled posted...

Live elements makes me think that they're perhaps talking about immersion, maybe? More realistic NPCs, weather, more interactive world, etc.? I don't know otherwise.

My hunch is regularly adding timed quests to the game, the way Ass Creed Origins does
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I got to some desert place about 15 hours in and lost interest I guess? I remember enjoying the class system and all but not being entirely sure what I was doing plot wise
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I think there are times when he's obviously just trying to stir shit up rather than make a genuine point. But that's hardly unique to him, he's just better at it.
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The Admiral posted...

But that's how politics work.

Just from a math perspective, Trump almost certainly has to win more voters than he did in 2016 to win again in 2020
- The old voters who die during this four years are disproportionately Republican
- The young voters who age into the voting population are disproportionately anti-Trump
- The Democratic nominee will not be Hillary Clinton

Resting on his laurels and
- assuming all his 2016 voters will turn out again for him
- This is all he needs

Is awful, losing politics. It's little better Hillary assuming she'd get every Obama voter to show up by default.
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The Admiral posted...

Which is exactly how he said he's behave when he ran, yet folks are the left are constantly shocked and upset.

Saying you're an asshole ahead of time doesn't mean people can't groan at your asshole bit.
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OpheliaAdenade posted...

don't do the crime if you cant do the time :u

Should "time" entail rape?
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The low-key racism of CBS sitcoms is bad too.
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https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/17/us/larry-nassar-judge-sentencing/index.html

"Our Constitution does not allow for cruel and unusual punishment," she said. "If it did, I have to say, I might allow what he did to all of these beautiful souls -- these young women in their childhood -- I would allow someone or many people to do to him what he did to others."

Obviously Nassar is horrible, just the absolute worst sort of abuser, and I won't shed tears for him. But I think the casualness with which we treat prison rape is something that needs to be examined, because the vast majority of its victims are not Larry Nassar
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I'll save some people the trouble:


Let's just skip to the part where we debate whether this Joe Biden remark is better/worse/comparable to Trump's reported behavior.
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If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Trump was insensitive towards groups other than his own.
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You're deflecting now; credit card debt is not a reflection on whether unconditional cash payments would go towards needs rather than your choice examples of handbags and shoes.

Here's another more recent U.S. example:

https://www.wired.com/story/free-money-the-surprising-effects-of-a-basic-income-supplied-by-government/

Costello wanted to find out about the need for mental health and psychiatric services for children in rural America, and in 1993 the researchers began studying 1,420 children, 350 of whom were members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. They divided the group into three age cohorts9-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and 13-year-oldsand gave their parents thick, detailed personality surveys called the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment, which were completed every year until the kids turned 16 and then again every few years until they turned 30. Looking for indicators of behavioral or emotional troubles, the researchers asked questions about whether the children ever engaged in physical fights and whether they had trouble being away from home.

Costello and her team also recorded household data like parents occupations, history of domestic violence, and, crucially, income. When the study began, about 67 percent of the American Indian kids were living below the poverty line. It wasnt until after the casino opened that Costello began to notice that household income among the Cherokee families was going up. It was subtle at first, but the trend turned sharply upward as time went on, eventually lifting 14 percent of the Cherokee children in the study above the poverty line. Household income for those families who were not Cherokee, meanwhile, grew at a slower rate.
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Before the casino opened, Costello found that poor children scored twice as high as those who were not poor for symptoms of psychiatric disorders. But after the casino opened, the children whose families income rose above the poverty rate showed a 40 percent decrease in behavioral problems. Just four years after the casino opened, they were, behaviorally at least, no different from the kids who had never been poor at all. By the time the youngest cohort of children was at least 21, she found something else: The younger the Cherokee children were when the casino opened, the better they fared compared to the older Cherokee children and to rural whites. This was true for emotional and behavioral problems as well as drug and alcohol addiction.

Other researchers have used Costellos data to look at different effects of the casino payments. One fear about basic income is that people will be content living on their subsidies and stop working. But a 2010 analysis of the data, led by Randall Akee, who researches public policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, found no impact on overall labor participation.
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Akee also looked at the effects of the money on education and found that more money in the household meant children stayed in school longer. The impact on crime was just as profound: A $4,000 increase in household income reduced the poorest kids chances of committing a minor crime by 22 percent.

All of this amounted to substantial financial benefits for the community as a whole. This translates to fewer kids in jail, fewer kids in in-patient care, Costello says. Then there are the other costs you cant calculate. The cost of people not killing themselves? Thats a hard one.

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GreatEvilEmpire posted...

This is the United States, not Africa

This is the United States

Antifar posted...

The United States, for its part, tried an unconditional cash-transfer program 40 years ago and found it worked, too. The negative income tax provided cash to low-income recipients across five states in four different experiments between 1968 and 1980. As in the developing world, the payments were associated with reduced child malnutrition, improved school attendance, and growth in household assets. The transfers also had significant effects on childrens test scores.

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Just one, way back in middle school.

I also had a cute therapist.
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Balrog0 posted...

it is the 23rd most populous city

That's pretty far down the list, dude.

Anyways, to the subject at hand, basically any study will tell you that these sorts of event venues are not worth public money spent on them, but...
- I'm not sure if that logic still holds for a place of this size
- Was public money spent on this project? It's unclear from what you've pasted and I can't seem to figure out how to navigate that BBC layout
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Balrog0 posted...

Today, it is not uncommon to see condemnations of postmodernism and pleas for a return to Enlightenment rationality in the pages of Jacobin.

I don't read Jacobin too regularly these days, but a couple searches found...
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/jason-reza-jorjani-stony-brook-alt-right-arktos-continental-philosophy-modernity-enlightenment/

Alt-right conspiracy theorists have embraced postmodern philosophy. The Left should return to the Enlightenment to oppose their irrational and hateful politics.

https://jacobinmag.com/2017/05/radical-enlightenment-philosophy-spinoza-materialism-marxism

The socialist project isn't to rebel against the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity, but to show how capitalism is incapable of fulfilling them.

FWIW, both of those pieces come from the same authors, so
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