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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On September 10 2016 05:10 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2016 05:00 Mohdoo wrote:On September 10 2016 04:52 zlefin wrote:
re: generically commenting on stuff from xdaunts post, not necessarily in reply to him though.
I wonder what's the state of big ideas and progress in thought in the liberal counterpart to that; and how they compare.
I wonder if the central tenets of conservatism are themselves flawed, or if some of them are. I'm not entirely sure what the tenets all are.
I prefer a pragmatic/scientific approach to governance. One of the central tenets of conservatism, or at least social conservatism, is a strict appeal to tradition. Throughout history, social conservatism has never once been on thr right side of history. It is practically defined as "never making a lasting impact, but making things take longer". Abortion, gay marrisge, blood transfusion, interracial marriage are all ideas essentially being flight against by the same people throughout history. Some stuff is playing god and some stuff is an erosion of culture. However they label it, they have never won. It's a timeless, ultimately lost battle they insist on playing over and over. That's only true if you selectively look at every liberal policy idea that ultimately won out. There were many, many more that died because the conservatives of the time were successful in quashing those policy ideas.
I agree and would add that, by and large, the conservatives were most successful in quashing the worst of the liberal policy ideas and cultural movements and least successful in quashing the ones that actually had merit (which is not to say they were most vocal about quashing the ones that needed quashing). The system (kind of) creaks along and works for the most part.
Conservativism is also not necessarily the party of "NO".
The 80s weren't the 70s culturally, and I think a lot of that was conservativism at work. And we're still not back in 70s territory culturally yet, and hopefully never will be-it was a public health nightmare.
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On September 10 2016 05:06 xDaunt wrote:
Chat with Igne if you want to hear about liberalism's shortcomings. He's been railing against them for a while now.
Or you could read Das Kapital for the same message, but better prose.
(Cheapshot, I know)
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United States43352 Posts
On September 10 2016 05:00 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2016 04:52 zlefin wrote:
re: generically commenting on stuff from xdaunts post, not necessarily in reply to him though.
I wonder what's the state of big ideas and progress in thought in the liberal counterpart to that; and how they compare.
I wonder if the central tenets of conservatism are themselves flawed, or if some of them are. I'm not entirely sure what the tenets all are.
I prefer a pragmatic/scientific approach to governance. One of the central tenets of conservatism, or at least social conservatism, is a strict appeal to tradition. Throughout history, social conservatism has never once been on thr right side of history. It is practically defined as "never making a lasting impact, but making things take longer". Abortion, gay marrisge, blood transfusion, interracial marriage are all ideas essentially being flight against by the same people throughout history. Some stuff is playing god and some stuff is an erosion of culture. However they label it, they have never won. It's a timeless, ultimately lost battle they insist on playing over and over.
They've won plenty of times. It's not been a steady stream of victories. The secular state Jefferson imagined (in contrast to Papist Europe and the Anglican theocracy of England) in which man is free and accountable only to himself, that's gone. Turns out that religion is a big unifier against the other and that people are super down for using it to empower the state to judge over man, particularly men they don't like. Which the founders of course knew, it's why they specifically tried to stop it because their experience of it was from the bottom. Same with rights to privacy and, for that matter, bearing arms. Same with the big state.
Liberalism is the natural side of the small state, social conservatism that of the big state. The fact that US politics has forced all political thought to pick one of two sides, neither of which embodies this divide, doesn't change that. "In God We Trust" replacing "E Pluribus Unum" is a victory for social conservatism, shamelessly correctly the founding fathers and chiding them for their deism. Just because conservatives will reliably pick the wrong side given two choices, even if you have not yet told them what either of them are, doesn't mean they never win. They've won a lot to build the world we have today.
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On September 10 2016 05:13 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +WikiLeaks release excludes evidence of €2 billion transfer from Syria to Russia
A trove of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks in 2012 excludes records of a €2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a government-owned Russian bank, according to leaked U.S. court documents obtained by the Daily Dot.
WikiLeaks has become an ever-prominent force in the 2016 presidential election through its publishing of tens of thousands of emails, voicemails, and documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee by hackers that U.S. authorities and cybersecurity experts believe are linked to the Russian government. The transparency organization, which boasts of a commitment to use “cryptography to protect human rights” against repressive regimes, has faced criticism from supporters of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and praise from Republican opponent Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The court records, placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the Daily Dot through an anonymous source, show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government’s networks on the eve of the country’s civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions. In the spring of 2012, most of the emails found their way into a WikiLeaks database.
But one set of emails in particular didn’t make it into the cache of documents published by WikiLeaks in July 2012 as “The Syria Files,” despite the fact that the hackers themselves were ecstatic at their discovery. The correspondence, which WikiLeaks has denied withholding, describes “more than” €2 billion ($2.4 billion, at current exchange rates) moving from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia’s VTB Bank.
SourceNow Assange couldn't possible have an agenda right? /s Putin's hand is so far us Assange's ass he's working his mouth.
So they keep the credit card information of elementary school teachers, but leave out massive transactions between Syria and Russia. Huh.
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On September 10 2016 05:25 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2016 05:13 ticklishmusic wrote:WikiLeaks release excludes evidence of €2 billion transfer from Syria to Russia
A trove of hacked emails published by WikiLeaks in 2012 excludes records of a €2 billion transaction between the Syrian regime and a government-owned Russian bank, according to leaked U.S. court documents obtained by the Daily Dot.
WikiLeaks has become an ever-prominent force in the 2016 presidential election through its publishing of tens of thousands of emails, voicemails, and documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee by hackers that U.S. authorities and cybersecurity experts believe are linked to the Russian government. The transparency organization, which boasts of a commitment to use “cryptography to protect human rights” against repressive regimes, has faced criticism from supporters of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and praise from Republican opponent Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The court records, placed under seal by a Manhattan federal court and obtained by the Daily Dot through an anonymous source, show in detail how a group of hacktivists breached the Syrian government’s networks on the eve of the country’s civil war and extracted emails about major bank transactions the Syrian regime was hurriedly making amid a host of economic sanctions. In the spring of 2012, most of the emails found their way into a WikiLeaks database.
But one set of emails in particular didn’t make it into the cache of documents published by WikiLeaks in July 2012 as “The Syria Files,” despite the fact that the hackers themselves were ecstatic at their discovery. The correspondence, which WikiLeaks has denied withholding, describes “more than” €2 billion ($2.4 billion, at current exchange rates) moving from the Central Bank of Syria to Russia’s VTB Bank.
SourceNow Assange couldn't possible have an agenda right? /s Putin's hand is so far us Assange's ass he's working his mouth. So they keep the credit card information of elementary school teachers, but leave out massive transactions between Syria and Russia. Huh.
Its about releasing all information to the public and making sure all data is available. Expect the stuff that might hurt their benefactors. But Putin is a strong leader.
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Wells Fargo just proved, again, that no scam is beneath America’s financial institutions. And no institution is above being watched by a federal agency.
On Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ― the watchdog group proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D. Mass.) in the aftermath of the financial crisis ― announced that Wells Fargo would pony up a total of $185 million for perpetrating a huge scam on its customers.
Over at least the past five years, Wells Fargo employees created more than 1.5 million sham checking accounts and applied for 565,000 credit cards, using customer names and money. Customers were charged unnecessary fees, saw their credit scores fall or were simply confused when debit and credit cards they never asked for showed up in the mail.
“Was the Great Financial Crisis so long ago that all chasteness and propriety are already out the window? This scam has been apparently going on for five years,” writes Josh Brown, a financial blogger. “These people are fearless.”
The CFPB has come under intense criticism from Republicans, who say it’s a drag on business. Many ― including presidential hopeful Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence ― have said they would like to see the agency abolished as part of their intended dismantling of the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation passed to prevent another economic meltdown.
But every time the agency exposes wrongdoing in consumer banking ― as it did on Thursday ― the CFPB offers a strong counterpoint to those arguments.
The job of the CFPB, now headed by Richard Cordray, isn’t to regulate the hot new derivative investment banks are peddling to hedge funds. It’s to protect ordinary people from the kind of everyday scams that financial institutions have shown again and again that they will commit if no one is watching. The agency oversees a myriad of businesses like consumer banking, debt collection and payday loans that hundreds of millions of Americans use every day.
It’s had an impact. Last year, the CFPB fined Citibank for illegal credit card practices after the bank was found to be charging customers for benefits they didn’t receive. It’s uncovered student loan fraud and financial products that take advantage of the elderly, and is looking to crack down on the payday loan industry.
Though it’s obviously a huge blow to the bank’s reputation, the Wells Fargo fraud wasn’t even that profitable ― scamming thousands and thousands of customers out of a total of $2.6 million in surprise fees over five years doesn’t provide much financial boost to a bank that made $86.1 billion in revenue and $22.9 billion in profit last year alone.
The scam also wasn’t really that profitable to the rank-and-file employees who carried it out. Retail bank employees inhabit the lowest rung of the finance industry. They make an industry average of around $10 an hour, and turnover is incredibly high.
The fine the CFPB levied in response to the fraud is the largest the agency has ever imposed. The remaining millions will go to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the city and county of Los Angeles, which helped to uncover the scam.
The bank also must refund all fees to customers ― about $2.6 million ― including overdraft charges and penalties for falling below minimum balances on sham accounts.
Source
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Today, while speaking with Sean Hannity on his radio program, [Newt Gingrich] delivered a conspiracy story about Hillary Clinton's health after she coughed intermittently during a Labor Day rally in Ohio.
"This coughing stuff, I hope [Hillary's] all right," Gingrich said. "It's a little disturbing."
"It lasted for four minutes and 20 seconds this weekend," Hannity added. "I think we need to know if she's healthy."
And then, Gingrich coughed. Oh, the irony.
[...]
"A three-second cough does not equate to a four-minute-and-20-second cough," Hannity agreed.
"That's true," Gingrich said, while adding that he travels so much and speaks so much that his "throat dries out."
Esquire
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United States43352 Posts
Not the best theory about Hillary's 4:20 cough they could have gone with.
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On September 10 2016 04:34 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2016 04:07 Danglars wrote:On September 10 2016 01:46 xDaunt wrote:On September 09 2016 13:53 Danglars wrote:
Cruz, for one, wasn't there to "show up and lose." He was the most outspoken member of the Senate to pound immigration and conservative positions on the military and foreign policy. Trade policy is so wild with Trump in the mix that my only comment on him versus others is the author's "worse than imperfect." Trade policy should be America first, but the primary way to ensure that is to open free trade and work hard on labor laws and tax laws to not artificially hurt the competitiveness of the American worker and force American employers to keep money overseas for fear of the penalties for bringing it back home. He simply sweeps up many truths (insanity of nevertrump, hopeless optimism, intellectual conservative complacency with the status quo of losing--easily seen in national review & weekly standard) and imputes them to apply to every other candidate. Let's say that we had a President Cruz. What part of his platform would alter the course of the country on issues such as persistent trade imbalances, increasing wealth/income inequality, and a foreign policy that strikes precisely the wrong balance between intervention and isolation? Push for military action on ISIS and a tougher line on Iran and the same style of tax plan Trump plans (they're both good and would spur growth). Trade imbalance as a topic in itself is the wrong approach. He'd work in reversing bad labor laws and policies that keep corporate earnings abroad (is it up to one or two trillion dollars now?) You're asking me to contradict my own point and the author's: one presidency and one platform is insufficient to alter the course of the country. The current policies were built over very many years and through many exchanges in which capital letter do most congressional representatives ally behind. You're charging the cockpit now not even assured you won't die anyway. When the choice is Trump or Clinton, the choice is Trump. In the primary, the better pilot to get back in control of the plane is Cruz. Around 38% of primary voters thought it was Trump (counting up until Indiana) What I'm asking you to do is to take a good, hard look at the current state of conservatism. Where are the big ideas? Where is the progress in thought? Where are the solutions to the truly big problems? As the author states in the article: Show nested quote +If your answer—Continetti’s, Douthat’s, Salam’s, and so many others’—is for conservatism to keep doing what it’s been doing—another policy journal, another article about welfare reform, another half-day seminar on limited government, another tax credit proposal—even though we’ve been losing ground for at least a century, then you’ve implicitly accepted that your supposed political philosophy doesn’t matter and that civilization will carry on just fine under leftist tenets. Indeed, that leftism is truer than conservatism and superior to it. Your recitation of the President Cruz platform fits neatly within this description. Do you not see the problem with this? Or do you fall into the category of conservatives who, as the author argues, do not even think that there is a problem?
How many conservatives made it to the big stage? How many won election in the fifty year timespan? We got very close to running a conservative against Hillary and that would've been a huge victory for the movement. I knew you were getting off subject to ask how his platform would change things. That's the same policy questions that isn't the point of the article. "Another policy journal, article about welfare reform ...", another president ... oh wait it hasn't been tried and it nearly was the reality. Let me be very clear: in all the ineffective actions he truthfully criticizes, the effective action was a Tea Party conservative making it this far AND matching the eventual winner on conservative positions on immigration and taxation. I say you can't add that to the pile of Publius's critique since he makes it very clear he's operating in Trump or Clinton dichotomy and addresses it towards never Trumpers that might help Hillary win by not voting for Trump. Not Republican primary voters that had a better choice and chose otherwise, in my opinion. If hypothetically Jeb Bush (or Kasich) & Trump stood at 50%-50% at the tail end of primaries, that would be a legitimate failure to put in the heap. The Trump populism & protectionism (economic nationalism?) co-opted typically conservative topics on immigration, taxation, political taxonomy to gain a nomination. That's big ideas and progress, and absent Trump, a solution to very big problems.
If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff. An argument for voting for Trump instead of Clinton now that it's that choice, not the former.
If your answer—Continetti’s, Douthat’s, Salam’s, and so many others’—is for conservatism to keep doing what it’s been doing—another policy journal, another article about welfare reform, another half-day seminar on limited government, another tax credit proposal—even though we’ve been losing ground for at least a century, then you’ve implicitly accepted that your supposed political philosophy doesn’t matter and that civilization will carry on just fine under leftist tenets. Indeed, that leftism is truer than conservatism and superior to it.
Yes to conservatives must make due with Trump to at least disrupt an agenda that's been advanced at executive level on down to avoid "[heading] off a cliff"
Yes this is a good indictment of conservative intellectuals and getting the message out to young people and I have a lot to dislike against the national reviews and weekly standards. If you can't help create a culture to beat the self-destructive one, it is a walking-dead failure. They can't even get a movement to unite free trade to the best outcomes for the poorest Americans.
No this isn't a reason to forfeit demanding more from candidates in the primary process (as you well know Trump is no conservative) because any loudmouth is effective at grabbing attention. I disliked Cruz's mild so-con tone and he did poorly focusing on one message and one topic in speeches and decided on laundry list of a million conservative positions with little time spent on each. Maybe he learns his lesson this time around; I remember the enthusiasm with his rounding lawyer-like denouncement of the MSNBC debate and you do too. Call it a Reagan-like Time for Choosing without as much political capital spent on the Cold War, that hasn't been tried and we got very close to trying it.
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Bunch of stuff from the Value Voters Summit on cspan. Seen some bits and pieces of it over the day; not surprising, but always annoyed at the sometimes used unsound statements and speeches. But, my tolerance of them is growing.
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On September 10 2016 04:52 zlefin wrote:
re: generically commenting on stuff from xdaunts post, not necessarily in reply to him though.
I wonder what's the state of big ideas and progress in thought in the liberal counterpart to that; and how they compare.
I wonder if the central tenets of conservatism are themselves flawed, or if some of them are. I'm not entirely sure what the tenets all are.
I prefer a pragmatic/scientific approach to governance.
Trump doing a speech right now; it's on in the background cuz I was watching cnn. I don't like what I'm hearing, but that's no surprise given his target audience; and some questionable claims of facts are nothing of surprise.
i have no idea what you mean by a "pragmatic/scientific" approach to governance. you mean pragmatic ala charles peirce? some kind of empty euphemism for utility-maximizing ala bentham? or maybe some kind of platonic philosopher king?
i'm pretty tired of all the jefferson valorization that goes on. the man was a dogmatic hyopcrite
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igne -> I mean exactly what I said; one focused on pragmatism and rigorous analysis, rather than ideology.
i'm not familar enough with yoru examples ot say how apt they are.
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On September 10 2016 07:18 Danglars wrote:
I disliked Cruz's mild so-con tone and he did poorly focusing on one message and one topic in speeches and decided on laundry list of a million conservative positions with little time spent on each.
I feel like the Cruz campaign was constantly caught between trying to sell two different faces of itself. On the one hand he tried to sell himself to the voters as being the anti-establishment candidate who for years criticized the Republican elite for not sticking to true conservative values. But at the same time he was also trying to sell himself to said elite on being more of a proper Republican than Trump.
He might have had a better chance of honing his message if he wasn't caught between two sides of the party and trying to appease them both.
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On September 10 2016 08:55 zlefin wrote:
Bunch of stuff from the Value Voters Summit on cspan. Seen some bits and pieces of it over the day; not surprising, but always annoyed at the sometimes used unsound statements and speeches. But, my tolerance of them is growing.
It's one of those things that it's not really a good thing to get used to. Though US politics offer little alternative.
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On September 10 2016 09:40 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2016 08:55 zlefin wrote:
Bunch of stuff from the Value Voters Summit on cspan. Seen some bits and pieces of it over the day; not surprising, but always annoyed at the sometimes used unsound statements and speeches. But, my tolerance of them is growing. It's one of those things that it's not really a good thing to get used to. Though US politics offer little alternative.
I disagree on the value of it; as a would-be politician, I need to be able to tolerate a lot of people; gotta tolerate all your constituents after all. Sadly it's not one of my strong points; but it's not like I was gonna make it far in politics anyways.
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On September 10 2016 09:40 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2016 07:18 Danglars wrote:
I disliked Cruz's mild so-con tone and he did poorly focusing on one message and one topic in speeches and decided on laundry list of a million conservative positions with little time spent on each. I feel like the Cruz campaign was constantly caught between trying to sell two different faces of itself. On the one hand he tried to sell himself to the voters as being the anti-establishment candidate who for years criticized the Republican elite for not sticking to true conservative values. But at the same time he was also trying to sell himself to said elite on being more of a proper Republican than Trump. He might have had a better chance of honing his message if he wasn't caught between two sides of the party and trying to appease them both.
He might have also had a better chance had he not been almost as hated as Trump purely due to his own actions. In fact, I think he's still more disliked by Mcconnell and company than Trump is.
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Who the hell goes on Russian state owned TV channel as a candidate?
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On September 10 2016 10:04 Doodsmack wrote:
Who the hell goes on Russian state owned TV channel as a candidate?
Trump?
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Can someone explain why the birther thing all of a sudden came back now? I feel like it was kind of forgotten for a while and out of nowhere the media is all over it. Is it because the polls are tightening? or was there an actual trigger recently
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EPT
