And they’ve been neglecting that. There are a couple of street names that they have wrong, and I’ve been using the edit feature fruitlessly for over 8 years. I’ve included links to local business web sites with the new name of one, links to municipal web sites with the new name, geo-tagged photos of the street signs, and even links to the municipal ordinance that changed the names in 2003. It all goes into the same black hole.
Also, it’s not even the same corporation or factories behind them. It’s just a brand name at this point, and the product has nothing in common with the old, good one. For example, Maytag bought Amana, and then Whirlpool bought Maytag. (It’s enlightening to read the list of Whirlpool-owned brands.)
Oof, yes, we need opponents for this guy who understand the fundamentals of how he and his rhetoric work. The better way to deal with him is to flip the frame. Specifically, in the opening statement, Biden needed to call out very explicitly that Trump was going to lie constantly, and furthermore, point out that you can recognize his lies when he says “best, strongest, biggest, greatest.” That little bit of verbal jiu jitsu would’ve ensured that it was no longer Biden calling out the lies, but the viewers’ own ears, and by bringing them to conscious attention, draining the power of those statements. (Trump spews lies and nonsense that don’t parse analytically, like that alphabet-soup closing statement, but he’s really aiming his words at the subconscious mind.)
Travel to those countries? The precedent here is that China has the right to extradite me for supporting democracy in Hong Kong from here in the U.S., never once even leaving my house. Assange was not a U.S. citizen, and located outside of U.S. territory.
Of course, the U.S. won’t cooperate with the extradition request, but that’s just a matter of power relationships, not principles. The principle is that everybody in the world is subject to every country’s laws. Or, every person in the world is subject to the laws of the U.S., which fundamentally breaks the rule of law.
It’s scary how many people out there are okay with that.
So your decision is to feign helplessness. I can only point this out, but it is your life and your decision to make.
Do you understand? Do you own that decision as your personal choice? I ask because posts like this one indicate otherwise.
Yikes! This reply validates my concern 100%.
Other sovereign nations get to make their own laws and legal systems without our control. They can make bullshit laws if they want to, like conflating journalism with spying. Then they can charge journalists in another country with a crime and extradite them to face charges. But, spying or journalism or criticizing their king, the details didn’t really matter, they could charge anybody anybody, anywhere in the world with any crime they want. And since it’s another country, we have no assurances of due process there.
That’s scary shit.
Another harsh truth that I learned from existentialist writers, especially Albert Camus, is that we are cursed with freedom. How we choose to deal with what the world gives us is entirely up to us, and refusing to choose is also a choice. If we choose not to try to be somebody worth having as a partner, well, that is a choice.
I also understand depression, and that making that effort may not be possible. Then, healthy alternative is to affirmatively make the choice not to try, and to own it. Sometimes, people call this, “owning your shit .” Paradoxically, it helps a lot by putting you back in control of your own life, instead of feeling like the universe’s chew toy.
So, listen to me or not. It’s your choice.
Harsh truth: No, it’s not enough. You have to convince somebody that their life will be better with you in it. Loyalty and respect are requisites for a good romantic relationship, not the reasons to get into one.
Wat? Are you thinking of Snowden?
Worse, it validates the precedent that non-U.S.-citizens can be prosecuted for breaking U.S. law over things they did outside of the U.S.
Really happy that Assange gets to go home, since he’s suffered enough personally, but I really don’t like the precedent that I can be prosecuted in, say, Israel under Israeli law for things that I did in Wisconsin (e.g. boycotting).
Not quite. The Santa Clara decision gave corporations equal protection under the 14th Amendment, is law in the same sense that Citizens United is, and has been applied many, many times. The 2010 decision held that 1st Amendment protections apply to corporations.
It’s a 19th century idea that appeared in the published decision of the Supreme Court in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.
Only—get this—it wasn’t even what the Court decided. Instead, it was the guy in charge of recording the decision for publication who declared “corporate personhood” in the headnote (summary) of the case. And would it surprise you to learn that the guy was the former president of a railroad company? We just sort of went along with this not-precedent until the Citizens United case.
None of these were serious policy proposals, but intentionally glib, tossed-off ideas. The idea is that most non-political-nerds (I am one, no insult intended) don’t pay attention to policy details. Tossing out hollow policy proposals that nevertheless excite people is only one possible tactic to address the important truth: Democrats need to get better at big-picture messaging, because they’re failing to inspire people.
I’ll note that in 2016 the U.S. elected a petulant 5-year-old pretending to have a magic wand, so…
Honesty, I don’t think that there is a Great Filter. The Fermi Paradox strikes me as not very well-reasoned. A whole hell of a lot of things would have to go exactly right for civilizations to make contact, rather than it being the default assumption. There are lots of filters, not just one Great one.
But the closest to a Great Filter is that space is really, really. stupendously big. The chances of even detecting each other across such distances is vanishingly small, much less traversing them. Add in the difficulty of jumping the metabolic energy gap to become complex life, and that could reduce the density of civilizations down to a level that they’re just not close enough to each other in spacetime to admit even the possibility of contact. And we’re hanging our hat on some highly-speculative concepts like alien mega-structures harnessing whole solar systems to allow detection.
I think a lot of persnickety, smaller filters combine to make interstellar contact between civilizations against long odds. Perhaps the best we’ll get is spectral signatures from distant planets that are almost-conclusive proof of some sort of life.
Details, schmetails. The post is a complaint by Robert Reich that voters aren’t paying attention to details. And ITT, plenty of Lemmings pointing out that Biden can’t pass very many policy proposals, anyway. The idea is to sell the perception that Democrats understand and care about issues facing Americans.
The big picture comes first to get Democrats elected, then get down to the details.
How? Or, why does it matter? It’s not going to pass the House.
This is why Democrats struggle so badly, so I’ll say it straight up: It’s about sales. Reich is complaining that the public doesn’t lose its shit over arcane policy details. Yeah, sit down for this truth bomb (/s): That’s human nature. It’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s not good. It’s just the way it is. Complaining about it won’t help, or change the content of headlines.
So somebody asks for examples of what can Biden do when he’s blocked by Congress? I say: Sell, sell, sell. Get in the PR game. Put on a show that the people in the cheap seats can enjoy. (That is a metaphor for a rhetorical spectacle that even politically unengaged citizens will hear about.) Show everybody that the problem is in Congress.
What do the details matter? The headline is all that people will hear, and Republicans will block it, anyway. He needs to sell the perception that Democrats are trying. The details can come later, after they get the votes.
Bernie Sanders is a centrist by UK standards, though. At least one analysis of the vote totals found that he would’ve won the electoral college count, at least based on the voters who say they would’ve voted for him or Trump.