The Left: Robespierre did nothing wrong

Discussion in 'The Mainboard' started by bricktop, Jan 17, 2017.

  1. Can I Spliff it

    Can I Spliff it Is Butterbean okay?
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    Neat talk, though the initial part clowning on transhumanism~religion is a bit trite I think
     
  2. Can I Spliff it

    Can I Spliff it Is Butterbean okay?
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    unfettered capitalism rules
     
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  3. Joe_Pesci

    Joe_Pesci lying dog-faced pony soldier
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  4. Bruce Wayne

    Bruce Wayne Billionaire Playboy
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    Can someone post some cartoons that are stereotypically racist against white people? I need to get the taste of white guilt from the Republican thread out of my mouth
     
    #11804 Bruce Wayne, Jan 5, 2018
    Last edited: Jan 5, 2018
  5. Anison

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    I got you, fam.

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  7. Randy Bobandi

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    Doesn’t the state own and operate the trains in China?
     
  8. Name P. Redacted

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    I feel like Dave Thomas would not be happy with that tomato move.
     
  9. bwi2

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    I'm guessing it's part of their implementation of Social Credit scores
     
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  10. Randy Bobandi

    Randy Bobandi Well-Known Member
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    I’m just not seeing how that’s unfettered capitalism. The social credit and the trains are run by the state.
     
  11. Mister Me Too

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  12. J.R. Bob Dobbs

    J.R. Bob Dobbs Fan of: Firing Coaches, Cutting Players

  13. Prospector

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    Paul Krugman: If Trump Falls, The Entire Republican Party Falls With Him

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    By Dartagnan
    Saturday Jan 06, 2018 · 8:38 AM CST
    2018/01/06 · 08:38

    461 Comments (461 New)
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    He'll take the entire GOP down with him.

    By now it should be obvious to everyone not morbidly addicted to Fox News that the entire Republican Party, from the Senate to the House, to the state legislatures, has cast its lot with the fortunes of Donald Trump, for better, or, more likely, for worse, without regard to what happens to this country as a result.

    The shocking decision of Republican Senators Graham and Grassley to issue a criminal referral not to any member of the Trump Administration but rather to the man who compiled the damning dossier on the actions of Trump and his campaign; the non-stop efforts by House Republicans to sabotage and re-direct the Democrats’ inquiries into Trump’s potentially treasonous collusion withe the Russian Federation; the slanderous attempts to discredit the Special Counsel charged with uncovering the facts about that collusion—these are all signs of a Party that has made a conscious, collective decision to abandon the rule of law, if that law imperils the Presidency of Donald Trump.

    To those of us who remember a country where respect for the law, as well as respect for the office of the Presidency, was ingrained in both our national consciousness and national identity, the total abandonment of all principles of decency by the Republicans and their embrace and tolerance of the staggering incompetence and almost certain criminality of Donald Trump has been disheartening to say the least. Paul Krugman of the New York Times , however, argues that it was just a matter of time before the GOP revealed its true self to the nation:



    The answer, I think, is that the cynical bargain that has been the basis of Republican strategy since Reagan has now turned into a moral trap. And as far as we can tell, no elected Republican – not one – has the strength of character to even attempt an escape.

    The cynical bargain I’m talking about, of course, was the decision to exploit racism to advance a right-wing economic agenda. Talk about welfare queens driving Cadillacs, then slash income taxes. Do Willie Horton, then undermine antitrust. Tout your law and order credentials, then block health care.

    Racism has been the central component of the Republican Party’s electoral strategy since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Up until the election of Donald Trump, who based his entire campaign on the explicit demonization of non-white Americans, the GOP managed to sugarcoat that strategy by selling it as something with a less offensive name (“state’s rights,” “welfare reform”) because they felt constrained by the sensibilities of the American public:

    For more than a generation, the Republican establishment was able to keep this bait-and-switch under control: racism was deployed to win elections, then was muted afterwards, partly to preserve plausible deniability, partly to focus on the real priority of enriching the one percent. But with Trump they lost control: the base wanted someone who was blatantly racist and wouldn’t pretend to be anything else. And that’s what they got, with corruption, incompetence, and treason on the side.

    And finding that their overriding political goal of enriching the tiny donor base that keeps them in power (for that sole purpose) tied to the fortunes of someone who in addition to his gross incompetence and criminal contempt for American institutions was also an unabashed racist, the Republicans, Krugman argues, had very little choice except to embrace Trump for their own survival:

    [T]hey’re stuck. They knowingly made a deal with the devil, and can’t back out.

    More specifically, Trump’s very awfulness means that if he falls, the whole party will fall with him. Republicans could conceivably distance themselves from a president who turned out to be a bad manager, or even one who turned out to have engaged in small-time corruption. But when the corruption is big time, and it’s combined with obstruction of justice and collaboration with Putin, nobody will notice which Republicans were a bit less involved, a bit less obsequious, than others. If Trump sinks, he’ll create a vortex that sucks down everyone involved.

    That’s why we are seeing this stunning embrace by nearly all Republicans in the House and Senate of what is proving to be wholesale criminality and probable Treason. They’ve made the cold calculation that undermining the entire fabric of the country is less important than saving their own skins. They won’t respond to arguments or appeals based on morality, legality, or decency. They’re far beyond that point now. As Krugman points out, there’s only one way to stop such a menace from destroying our country:

    Massive electoral defeat – massive enough to overwhelm gerrymandering and other structural advantages of the right – is the only way out.

    The process of removing Trump and the Republicans who are enabling him starts here.
     

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  14. BellottiBold

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    Fuck you, Jerry

     
  15. BellottiBold

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    :laugh:
     
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  16. herb.burdette

    herb.burdette Meet me at the corner of 8th and Worthington
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    Bootstraps
     
  17. Mister Me Too

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    A true rags to riches story of a self made billionaire, see kids anyone can make it if you have parents that can lend you a couple hundred grands.
     
  18. Joe_Pesci

    Joe_Pesci lying dog-faced pony soldier
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    it's no small one million dollar loan, sir, but it checks out
     
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  19. Prospector

    Prospector I am not a new member
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    Trump-supporting pundits have been attempting to make the case that when Donald Trump referred to Haiti and to African countries as "shithole" nations he was not being racist but referring to economically or educationally poor countries.

    At the same time, staffers inside the White House believes his reference to "shithole countries" will "resonate" with his base, based on an another recent example:



    So while Republican pundits are frantically attempting to Trumpsplain his latest outburst, those unnamed White House staffers are themselves comparing this event to Trump's persistent attacks on black NFL players—which, they say, went over well with their base.

    This should clarify both how Trump intended the remarks, and what the White House itself considers to be Trump's "base." Yes, Trump intended it as racial; yes, the White House is counting on their base of degenerates to see it the same way.
     
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  20. Can I Spliff it

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  21. Name P. Redacted

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    the more i listen to shit like chapo the more insufferable the pod save <xx> shows are
     
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  22. brolift

    brolift 2sweet
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    If you're not listening to Citations Needed podcast you should.
     
  23. Prospector

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    The ink has barely dried on Donald Trump’s tax scam and Republicans are coming back for more for their special-interest donors.

    In an attempt to woo conservative lawmakers to pass a short-term spending bill and avoid a government shutdown, Paul Ryan and House Republicans have included a delay in two key Affordable Care Act (ACA) taxes that will save healthcare corporations $17 billion. [1]

    The two-year delay on the medical device tax ($4 billion tax cut) and the one-year delay on the health insurers tax ($13 billion tax cut) are just more giveaways to wealthy corporations. Meanwhile, because of the Trump tax giveaway 13 million Americans will start to lose their health coverage and insurance premiums will spike about 10% for many individual private insurance plans.

    Sign the petition to the U.S. House and tell every representative to reject a short-term spending bill that gives new tax breaks to greedy healthcare corporations.

    Trump's tax scam―passed last month and signed by the president―continues to receive poor marks from voters. A recent Gallup poll indicates that just 33% of Americans support the law, compared with 55% who disapprove. And yet, Republicans just can’t help themselves.

    The reason for the low marks―the lowest for a tax bill in over 30 years―is that the American people understand who this law benefits. With most of the tax breaks going to the richest 1% and wealthy corporations, Republican policies continue to leave working families behind.

    Stand with Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund and tell Congress to reject a short-term spending bill that includes additional tax-giveaways to the medical device industry and health insurance corporations.

    Together, we’re demanding a tax system and a healthcare system that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few.

    Thank you,

    Frank Clemente

    Executive Director
    Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund

    [1] Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Jan. 17, 2018
     
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  24. Joe_Pesci

    Joe_Pesci lying dog-faced pony soldier
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    i like pod save the world. there are interesting guests on there.
     
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  25. Prospector

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    Yesterday's Fresh Air has been posted. Really good show.

    A Former Neo-Nazi Explains Why Hate Drew Him In — And How He Got Out
    43:53
    January 18, 20181:34 PM ET
    Heard on Fresh Air
    Dave Davies

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    "It brings back a lot of shame," Christian Picciolini says of his time fronting a white power punk band. He has since disavowed the white supremacist movement and works to help others disengage from it too.

    Dennis Sevilla/Hachette Book Group
    Christian Picciolini was 14 years old when he attended the first gathering of what would become the Hammerskin Nation, a violent, white-power skinhead group. Looking back, he describes his introduction to the group as receiving a "lifeline of acceptance."

    "I felt a sort of energy flow through me that I had never felt before — as if I was a part of something greater than myself," he says.

    Picciolini embraced the white supremacist message he heard that day and went on to front a white-power punk band, White American Youth, writing and performing songs that inspired others to commit racist acts of violence.


    A Reformed White Nationalist Speaks Out On Charlottesville
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    StoryCorps
    The Man Who Helped Change A Neo-Nazi's Mind

    But after eight years as a neo-Nazi, Picciolini began to question the hateful ideology he espoused. He remembers a specific incident in which he was beating a young black man. His eyes locked with his victim, and he felt a surprising empathy.

    It was a turning point. He withdrew from the movement and in 2011 co-founded Life After Hate, a nonprofit that counsels members of hate groups and helps them disengage.

    "Over the last 14 years I have actually helped over 100 people disengage from the same movement that I was a part of," he says. "[Neo-Nazis] know that I'm a danger to them because I understand what they understand — but I also understand the truth."

    Picciolini's new memoir is called White American Youth.

    Interview Highlights
    On how he was recruited into believing the white supremacist ideology

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    White American Youth
    My Descent into America's Most Violent Hate Movement-And How I Got Out

    by Christian Picciolini

    Paperback, 275 pages

    It started out with Clark [Martell, the former leader of Chicago Area Skinheads] and several of the older skinheads in this group appealing to my sense of pride, of being European, of being Italian. And then it would move on to instilling fear that I would lose that pride and that somebody would take that away from me if I wasn't careful. Then it went on to name specific groups through conspiracy theories that were bent on taking that pride or that privilege away from me.

    So it was the fear rhetoric. ... I can tell you that every single person that I recruited or that was recruited around the same time that I did, up to now, up to what we're seeing today, is recruited through vulnerabilities and not through ideology.

    On the role white power music plays in the movement

    I had already been a part of the punk-rock subculture, so I was already searching for something to express my anger. And when I heard Skrewdriver [a white supremacist rock band] and when I heard this music that was coming over from England at the time, it allowed me to be angry, because the lyrics gave me license to do that.

    I very effectively then used lyrics myself when I started one of America's first white-power bands to both recruit young people, encourage them into acts of violence and speak to the vulnerabilities and the grievances they were feeling so that I could draw them in with promises of paradise even through my lyrics.

    On his band, White American Youth (W.A.Y.), and the way music was and still is used as propaganda

    It brings back a lot of shame, because I know that I put words out into the world that still today are affecting people and hurting people. I learned just a few months ago that Dylann Roof had heard one of my songs a few months before he committed the tragedy in Charleston and he was on a white supremacist Web forum asking who the band was, and somebody had shown me that post just recently and I read through the lyrics and it didn't dawn on me instantly that those were my lyrics. But when I finished, I felt sick.

    Music was the vehicle for propaganda. It was the incitement to encourage people to commit acts of violence and it was a social movement. ... Still today, I believe that music is a very powerful tool that the movement uses to inspire vulnerable young people into a very hateful social movement.

    On how the white supremacists of the '80s and '90s strategized to make their movement more mainstream

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    Analysis
    Trump's Charlottesville Remarks Follow A History Of Ambiguity On White Nationalism

    I do think that there were a lot of concerted strategies in the '80s and '90s that we're seeing take hold today. We recognized in the mid-'80s that our edginess, our look, even our language, was turning away the average American white racist — people we wanted to recruit. So we decided then to grow our hair out, to stop getting tattoos that would identify us, to trade in our boots for suits and to go to college campuses and recruit there and enroll, to get jobs in law enforcement, to go to the military and get training and to even run for office. And here we are, 30 years later, and we're using terms like "white nationalist" and "alt-right" — terms that [the white supremacists] came up with, by the way. They sat around and said, "How can we identify ourselves to make us seem less hateful?" ...

    Here we are in 2018 and we have a lot of hallmarks coming from political figures, the administration and policies that are very similar to what we espoused 30 years ago. ... It is a white supremacist culture that is being pushed.

    Christian Picciolini

    Here we are in 2018 and we have a lot of hallmarks coming from political figures, the administration and policies that are very similar to what we espoused 30 years ago. The language may be a little bit more palatable. Dog whistles may be used, but it is still the same underlying theme. It is a white supremacist culture that is being pushed.

    On how music led him out of the neo-Nazi movement

    What it came down to was receiving compassion from the people that I least deserved it [from], when I least deserved it. Just before I left the movement, I opened a record store to sell white-power music that I was importing from all over the world. In fact, I was one of the only stores in the United States that was selling this music. And I also knew that to stay in the community and get their support I would have to sell other music. So I started to sell punk-rock music and heavy metal and hip-hop and when the customers came in to buy that music, who were often African-American, or Jewish, or gay, at first I was very standoffish, but they kept coming back.

    The community, even though it's Chicago, everybody knew what I was doing, everybody knew how hateful I was and how violent I was, but these customers came in despite that. And over time I started to have meaningful interactions with them, for the first time in my life.

    In fact, I had never in my life engaged in a meaningful dialogue with the people that I thought I hated, and it was these folks who showed me empathy when I least deserved it, and they were the ones that I least deserved it from. I started to recognize that I had more in common with them than the people I had surrounded myself for eight years with — that these people, that I thought I hated, took it upon themselves to see something inside of me that I didn't even see myself, and it was because of that connection that I was able to humanize them and that destroyed the demonization and the prejudice that was happening inside of me. Music brought me in, but in many ways it also brought me out.

    Amy Salit and Seth Kelley produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper adapted it for the Web.
     
  26. Can I Spliff it

    Can I Spliff it Is Butterbean okay?
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    http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/1/eaao5580.full


    Abstract
    Algorithms for predicting recidivism are commonly used to assess a criminal defendant’s likelihood of committing a crime. These predictions are used in pretrial, parole, and sentencing decisions. Proponents of these systems argue that big data and advanced machine learning make these analyses more accurate and less biased than humans. We show, however, that the widely used commercial risk assessment software COMPAS is no more accurate or fair than predictions made by people with little or no criminal justice expertise. We further show that a simple linear predictor provided with only two features is nearly equivalent to COMPAS with its 137 features.
     
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  27. Taques

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    The Real Movement

  28. Taques

    Taques sometimes maybe good sometimes maybe shit
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    first post on this page was 21 days ago, RIP topic
     
  29. Can I Spliff it

    Can I Spliff it Is Butterbean okay?
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  30. brolift

    brolift 2sweet
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    I read the Unabomber's manifesto and agreed with some of it and I didn't like how that made me feel.
     
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  31. LuPoor

    LuPoor Cuddle with the homies watching Stand By Me
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    Guy just needed an editor, really
     
  32. Merica

    Merica Devine pls stop pointing out my demise. :(
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    brolift and i am a bammer like this.
  33. Mister Me Too

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  34. Name P. Redacted

    Name P. Redacted I have no money and I'm also gay
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    Wife said she's in the center because she "can see the points on each side"

    Told her that doesn't make her a centrist and that I am for fully automated gay luxury space communism. She laughed like I had made a joke.

    :comicbookguy:
     
  35. NCHusker

    NCHusker We named our yam Pam. It rhymed.
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    Time for an ultimatum iyam - get woke or divorce
     
  36. Name P. Redacted

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    She is woke af if you look at the delta between her and where she grew up.
     
  37. Prospector

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    Man outraged by 11th school shooting this year posts: ‘This is Bailey Holt—GOD DAMMIT LOOK AT HER!’

    The title explains much—but Steven Cohn’s facebook post about the obscene American atrocity of gun violence and the latest Kentucky school shooting—says it all.

    Steven Cohn

    This is Bailey Holt. Yesterday, she went to high school for a normal day and was gunned down. Look at her....GOD DAMMIT LOOK AT HER! Her name was Bailey Holt.

    Stare at this fucking picture of a perfectly innocent, perfectly great 15 year old who was doing everything right and was murdered for no reason...when you are done, when you can’t take any more, reply to this post and tell me that there is nothing that we can do to stop the gun violence in our country. Please tell me. Because this enrages me. This could be your daughter. Your sister.

    A 15-year old, white male (and yes most mass shootings are done by white males) killed 2 and wounded 19 yesterday.

    There have been 11 school shootings in 2018. Fucking 11 shootings at a school in 23 days. That is way beyond unacceptable. That is a national crisis. The assholes in Washington are playing political games over a stupid fucking budget and our babies are being murdered. This is an outrage. Look at that picture!! Her name was Bailey Holt.

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    Bailey Nicole Holt/Facebook


    Bailey died at the scene. The other child that was murdered, Preston Ryan Cope, died at Vanderbilt hospital in Nashville. Currently two dead, 18 wounded with five in critical condition.

    Donald Trump’s ridiculous response:


    We are with you? Who’s “we” you moronic bastard? Do you mean all your Republican NRA ass-kissing lawmaking buddies who continue to block legislation that would attentuate gun violence and save innocent lives?

    Thank you, Steven Cohn for riling me up right now, while also reminding many of us that the blood of these precious children in our schools—or anywhere, remains upon the hands of those who enable.

    My love, sorrow, thoughts and prayers go out to the children who’ve died, the children injured and all those affected and suffering from another senseless tragedy.