EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 5189
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Now that we have a new thread, 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 complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
KwarK
United States44181 Posts
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EnDeR_
Spain2925 Posts
On August 30 2025 00:55 Godwrath wrote: Can't answer the question ? I know, it's obvious what your point is, and that is by taking for granted that no violence is better than violence when It comes to dealing with fascists. Only took 40 years to get rid of Franco, and It was because of natural causes, while the damage he did perdures. We have notable figures such Esperanza Aguirre from the PP nowadays claiming that the coup detat of the second republic was for the better, and that' the "mainstream right". So again, did you think the second republic should had surrendered because they could lose ? If you have a coup, then yeah, I would much rather my side fight it out. We are talking about hopefully not getting to that point or at least not pouring more fuel into the fire to get into that situation. A second civil war would've been infinitely worse, do you not agree? | ||
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Godwrath
Spain10152 Posts
On August 30 2025 05:34 EnDeR_ wrote: If you have a coup, then yeah, I would much rather my side fight it out. We are talking about hopefully not getting to that point or at least not pouring more fuel into the fire to get into that situation. A second civil war would've been infinitely worse, do you not agree? Do you mean the transition ? Sure It was better than a second civil war, but probably would had been much better if the world fighted fascism more vehemently (and violently) when It was rising rather than watch the show from the sidelines hoping that the shit would not get to them. Now back to US politics, they already had their coup attempt, but more importantly, now the fascists are already into power, and won't take long until they are entrenched enough where It will be imposible to dislodge them without violence. I guess this where we disagree, we are on different realities. It's like argueing two years ago with people about Israel ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, now they shut the hell up about not being ethnic cleansing, but the goalpost has moved from not happening, not being genocide to it's too late to change it. Hopefully i am wrong on this. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18356 Posts
On August 28 2025 19:01 oBlade wrote: This is right, but it's also mostly wrong. But it's right in a way that is interesting and I didn't realize why people keep posting this conception of what gerrymandering is until now. Barely winning is not ideal. Crushing everything is ideal. One view of an ideal might be an infinitesimal margin above 50% in some districts only if you somehow have the ability to district a state that you are overall behind in. Then you can corral your opponents into a for-granted district and then claim all the rest by an arbitrarily small margin. By graph theory it's usually possible. Real world restrictions also come into play vis-a-vis maintenance of the semblance of fairness. Otherwise "wastedness" is not a binary condition. If you have 3 districts, that are 60/40, 60/40, and 10/90, the votes above 50 in the first two districts are being "wasted" in an abstract sense. But there isn't a solution where you can make them more efficient. If you take them out of the 60/40 districts to make it closer to 51/49, you are not advancing your position. You are moving them to the 10/90 district where they are far more wasted. If anything it's the 10 you want to go to 0 and strengthen your two wins. So here is the thing with redistricting. The number of districts is fixed. If you win 4 out of 5 districts at some margin, it's not more ideal to reduce your margin in the ones you win. By reducing the margin, you don't conjure the existence of more districts. (That would be a different problem, also interesting, for graph theory.) You have to look at the overall margin you already have. That's the base. The base is not 50/50. The base is your margin in the whole state. If you have a state where you're 60/40, and one district you're 55/45 and one where you're 65/35, the 65/35 is the one that's inefficient because the extra above 60 is making the 55/45 district weak. You want to decrease the 65 and transfer it to the 55, not decrease the 55 also and get it closer to 50 because muh FPTP. If you lead a state for example 60/40, not only would it be a bad idea to give your opponents some "set" districts they lead, while cutting all your winning districts to 51%, it's physically impossible. If you lead the state 60/40 that margin has to actually exist somewhere. If you led a state 60/40, the ideal would be districting so you win every district by 60/40 with a +20 margin. Take a pizza analog. You could cover 40% of a pizza with pepperoni. If that pepperoni is in a giant circle in the middle of the pizza. you don't want to cut a circle around that and give it to your enemy, you want to cut it like a normal pizza into 8~10 slices where each slice is 60% cheese and 40% pepperoni thereby beating the socks off your opponent in every single contest. Which again is usually possible by graph theory but slightly harder to do on a real world map within the realm of reason - gerrymandering historically meant like well beyond plausible salamander shaped and noncontiguous districts, not just districting with some murky perceived advantage. It's interesting that you expend so many words to claim gerrymandering isn't possible to end your post saying it is possible but it means something different. It isn't redistricting to favour yourself, it's only gerrymandering if the map is redrawn in a ridiculous manner. After you just spent some time arguing that that was pointless. If you're winning the whole state 60/40 you're right! And in that case you probably don't try to gerrymander one district to be a lower percentage win than 60/40. You'll probably want EVERY district to be 60/40, including downtown Austin. So you redistrict downtown Austin, which would otherwise be 60/40 for the Democrats, and chop it into two bits. And you mix it with some rural towns which would normally be a 70/30 mix for Republicans. Instead of having 3 districts in which one was won 60/40 by D and two were won 70/30 by R, you instead gave 3, which follow the state average fairly neatly (at least in your polling) of 60/40. That's the obvious wins of gerrymandering. But what if the state is 50/50? Do you just throw your hands in the air and give up? No way to beat statewide odds, right? Just gotta accept you'll only get 50% of the districts. Of course not, this is where redistricting the way I mentioned above came in. Let's say there are 10 districts of 100 people each, all perfectly representative of the state average, but each with notable R and D areas within their ranges. So what do you do? Well, exactly what I said above. You designate one district the blue zone. You try to squash as much obviously blue areas into it. It looks like an unfinished jigsaw puzzle crisscrossing the state, and the D wins there by a landslide 90%. But this means you've taken roughly 40 people, who would otherwise have voted D in other districts and replaced them with people who voted R! That means the other 9 districts now have a 54-46 swing for R. Instead of taking 50% of the districts, you now take 90%, despite only getting 50% of the vote! | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17682 Posts
more appeals on the way while the tariffs remain in place. The biggest BS statement out of the Trump regime had to be the "fentanyl coming from Canada is killing Americans". The fentanyl is coming from Mexico... not Canada. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22452 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17682 Posts
Canada has been dragging its feet on negotiating a trade deal with the USA. The Trump regime has to know their tariffs are now "on the clock". With both sides feeling pressure, hopefully now, a deal can get made. Personally, I'm cheering for Canada's PM, Mark Carney, all the way. I like that Trump is trying to minimize or lower income tax. That is great, however, the war machine needs money and it must get it from somewhere. If not tariffs then I suggest a national sales tax. It can be targeted to as a sin tax on fast food, tobacco, luxury sports cars, tickets for sports events, streaming and cable TV subscriptions ,VIDEO GAMES etc etc. This kind of sales tax must not be applied to groceries or rent. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5837 Posts
On August 30 2025 14:59 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Will the countries that signed trade deals under illegal tariff duress be able to get out of those deals? They should be able to do so. Canada has been dragging its feet on negotiating a trade deal with the USA. The Trump regime has to know their tariffs are now "on the clock". With both sides feeling pressure, hopefully now, a deal can get made. Personally, I'm cheering for Canada's PM, Mark Carney, all the way. I like that Trump is trying to minimize or lower income tax. That is great, however, the war machine needs money and it must get it from somewhere. If not tariffs then I suggest a national sales tax. It can be targeted to as a sin tax on fast food, tobacco, luxury sports cars, tickets for sports events, streaming and cable TV subscriptions ,VIDEO GAMES etc etc. This kind of sales tax must not be applied to groceries or rent. You think anyone will buy that after you've been cheering for Trump throughout this whole debacle? | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18356 Posts
On August 30 2025 14:59 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Will the countries that signed trade deals under illegal tariff duress be able to get out of those deals? They should be able to do so. Canada has been dragging its feet on negotiating a trade deal with the USA. The Trump regime has to know their tariffs are now "on the clock". With both sides feeling pressure, hopefully now, a deal can get made. Personally, I'm cheering for Canada's PM, Mark Carney, all the way. I like that Trump is trying to minimize or lower income tax. That is great, however, the war machine needs money and it must get it from somewhere. If not tariffs then I suggest a national sales tax. It can be targeted to as a sin tax on fast food, tobacco, luxury sports cars, tickets for sports events, streaming and cable TV subscriptions ,VIDEO GAMES etc etc. This kind of sales tax must not be applied to groceries or rent. You can always get out of a trade deal. There is no higher authority than national sovereignty. You can choose to uphold the deal or you can choose not to. Usually countries uphold deals they made, because the reputational damage of going back on your word is generally worse than whatever deal you made, plus there's diplomatic considerations with whoever you made the deal with. Whether to uphold the deal or not is always up to the parties involved. Obviously the calculus on whether the deal is worth upholding would change (don't count your chickens before they hatch) if the SC upholds this ruling. But it'll still all be up to the involved parties. | ||
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KT_Elwood
Germany1161 Posts
On August 30 2025 04:52 KwarK wrote: Eh, not sure that’s right. The secretly part. I mean in all formality officials would be "shocked and sad about this tragedy". | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5837 Posts
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LightSpectra
United States2839 Posts
On August 30 2025 14:59 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I like that Trump is trying to minimize or lower income tax. That is great, however, the war machine needs money and it must get it from somewhere. If not tariffs then I suggest a national sales tax. It can be targeted to as a sin tax on fast food, tobacco, luxury sports cars, tickets for sports events, streaming and cable TV subscriptions ,VIDEO GAMES etc etc. This kind of sales tax must not be applied to groceries or rent. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be sarcastic, regardless it is genuinely stupid or insane to prefer VATs to income/wealth taxes as a general principle. That shifts the tax burden to the working class from the luxury class. We're already living in such vast wealth inequality that it makes pre-revolutionary France and Russia look like paradise incomparison. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium5185 Posts
On August 30 2025 18:30 KT_Elwood wrote: I mean in all formality officials would be "shocked and sad about this tragedy". Just like in this forum, it would have a big fat /s at the end. Perhaps implied, perhaps extremely explicit. It would be funny to see who is going to be less subtle about it. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18356 Posts
On August 30 2025 19:18 Uldridge wrote: Just like in this forum, it would have a big fat /s at the end. Perhaps implied, perhaps extremely explicit. It would be funny to see who is going to be less subtle about it. Probably gonna be between Lula and Sanchez. My money's on Lula. I normally wouldn't rule out Claudia Sheinbaum, but she'd probably hope a more sincere diplomatic approach improves relations. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17682 Posts
On August 30 2025 16:32 maybenexttime wrote: You think anyone will buy that after you've been cheering for Trump throughout this whole debacle? When have i said the "fentanyl emergency" was legit? How many times have i posted i know for a fact it is BS. 10? Overall, I'd still vote for Trump. Canada's greatest PM beat his wife repeatedly and his wife discussed it publicly. He is still Canada's greatest PM. He just has a temper problem. Canada's former PM painted did the black face thing so many times he can't recall the #. meh. Some people with great abilities in specific areas have big flaws. I don't want to imply that Trump is great though. I'd say Trump is an average to above average President. If the USA experiences the kind of economic growth it did under Reagan or Clinton I'll change my position on Trump. If, OTOH, Russia nukes Israel, the Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia starting WW3 then I'll change my opinion of Trump as well. Its all about performance. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5837 Posts
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Magic Powers
Austria4478 Posts
On August 30 2025 22:44 JimmyJRaynor wrote: When have i said the "fentanyl emergency" was legit? How many times have i posted i know for a fact it is BS. 10? Overall, I'd still vote for Trump. Canada's greatest PM beat his wife repeatedly and his wife discussed it publicly. He is still Canada's greatest PM. He just has a temper problem. Canada's former PM painted did the black face thing so many times he can't recall the #. meh. Some people with great abilities in specific areas have big flaws. I don't want to imply that Trump is great though. I'd say Trump is an average to above average President. If the USA experiences the kind of economic growth it did under Reagan or Clinton I'll change my position on Trump. If, OTOH, Russia nukes Israel, the Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia starting WW3 then I'll change my opinion of Trump as well. Its all about performance. Ah yes, the infamous unprecedented economic growth under Reagan, which benefitted literally everyone - except for people not in the top 1% income bracket. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States46203 Posts
On August 30 2025 22:44 JimmyJRaynor wrote: When have i said the "fentanyl emergency" was legit? How many times have i posted i know for a fact it is BS. 10? Overall, I'd still vote for Trump. Canada's greatest PM beat his wife repeatedly and his wife discussed it publicly. He is still Canada's greatest PM. He just has a temper problem. Canada's former PM painted did the black face thing so many times he can't recall the #. meh. Some people with great abilities in specific areas have big flaws. I don't want to imply that Trump is great though. I'd say Trump is an average to above average President. If the USA experiences the kind of economic growth it did under Reagan or Clinton I'll change my position on Trump. If, OTOH, Russia nukes Israel, the Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia starting WW3 then I'll change my opinion of Trump as well. Its all about performance. Why? Even if you could list a few things in the positive column, how on Earth could those outweigh the endless list of negatives? Even ranking him as average would be going against the consensus of scholar surveys, where historians and other experts consistently rank him as one of the worst presidents of all time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States46203 Posts
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-playing-golf-baseless-viral-death-rumors-2122068 | ||
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LightSpectra
United States2839 Posts
On August 31 2025 05:16 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: People were wondering if Trump was sick/dead because he hadn't been seen in a while. Nope. Just playing golf. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-playing-golf-baseless-viral-death-rumors-2122068 People do this exact kind of stuff every time Putin coughs, so it's good to be skeptical. Having said that, it was a little eerie how Vance said in a recent interview he's ready to take over as President if Trump dies, around the same time Trump said he was anxious about going to Hell. | ||
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