[y66]

Quote

It may be that the ideal of freedom to choose ends without claiming eternal validity for them, and the pluralism of values connected with this, is only the late fruit of our declining capitalist civilisation: an ideal which remote ages and primitive societies have not recognised, and one which posterity will regard with curiosity, even sympathy, but little comprehension. This may be so; but no skeptical conclusions seem to me to follow. Principles are not less sacred because their duration cannot be guaranteed. Indeed, the very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past. 'To realise the relative validity of one's convictions', said an admirable writer of our time, 'and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian.’ To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow it to determine one's practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity. -- Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (1958)

There’s a lot of standing unflinchingly going on. And definitely some realization of convictions that claim to be based on the pursuit of freedom. The freedom to do what exactly? Perhaps this can be fleshed out in useful ways that move us closer to a more widely shared ideal.

[Winstonm]

The Whiner-in-Chief has again spoken:

Quote

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
7:48 AM - 19 Nov 2016

[jonottawa]

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Ok.

Ok.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Favouring affirmative action is a complex issue, and not prone to simple binary views, in which favouring it is seen as racial discrimination against whites or men.

It's actually a very simple issue. Racism is wrong. Sexism is wrong. Holding someone responsible for the (real or imagined) sins of their ancestors is wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right. Even if it was right at one time, 50 years is enough. We should repeal Affirmative Action.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Understanding the arguments for affirmative action requires more than knee-jerk name-calling.

Oh NOW we're opposed to knee-jerk name-calling, how serendipitous.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

The arguments that I would advance include:

Cultural values evolve slowly

50 years is long enough.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

role models are important

The president is black (or half-black, I'm not sure if it's more politically correct to acknowledge his white half or to ignore it, perhaps a PC expert can illuminate me.) Hillary would have won if she hadn't been such a uniquely unqualified candidate (and, perhaps most importantly, she got WAY more votes solely for having a vagina than she lost solely for the same reason.) Nobody questions whether or not a well-qualified woman could become president. The glass ceiling HAS been shattered, it's just waiting for someone worthy to step through. (My money is on Ivanka (she'd also be the first Jewish president.))

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

For virtually all of recorded history various forms of prejudice influence life in all cultures. I happen to have an interest in the history of science as well as the evolution of life in general and human life in particular, so I have read extensively, albeit as a layperson with no particular training.

Ok.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Read anything written 100 years ago...or 150...or....and you will see discrimination that forms part of the background to the story. It is so omnipresent that it seems that the writer and intended audience weren't even aware of the biases, in much the same fashion that allows Kaitlyn to repeatedly protest that she isn't at all racist.

I think they were well aware of their biases. It's just that in most (almost all?) cases they considered their racial beliefs to be self-evident. Most (educated) people are familiar with (everyone's favorite president) Lincoln's comments on race, for instance.

Read (or watch on CNN, NBC, CBS, CBC, MSNBC or ABC) (almost) any election coverage written in the last 6 months in the NYT or Washington Post (or countless other lesser rags/websites) and you will see discrimination that forms part of the background to the story. It is so omnipresent that it seems that the writer and intended audience weren't even aware of the biases, in much the same fashion that allows Mike to repeatedly claim that Hillary Clinton is a unicorn who farts rainbows who would have fixed all of society's ills if only we'd let her extend (a SLIGHTLY more corrupt version of) the Obama administration for 4 more years & amnesty 15 million+ non-citizens living in the US illegally. Except (in most cases) the writer (loosely described as a 'journalist') WAS aware of the biases and wrote the story that way anyway, even if much of the audience wasn't.

(So if I'm not being clear, I'm a lot more concerned with current media bias/groupthink/crybullying than with how people viewed the world back when scientists and educators weren't afraid (and were in fact encouraged) to follow the evidence wherever it led.)

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Thus how many female astronomers had doctorates 80 years ago? How many women were medical doctors in the 1950's. How many were lawyers?

I don't know. Nor do I particularly care. I'd be mildly interested in knowing (if such a thing were knowable) how many unfortunate women who LONGED to do this or that but were prevented from doing so solely because of their gender there were. I do know that nowadays any woman with the ambition, drive & ability to become an astronomer or a medical doctor or a lawyer (though Lord knows why anybody would want to) can do so as readily as a man.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Ask the same question about blacks, or latinos. Look back at history and find when the first Jewish member of Parliament was elected in the UK. Heck, I belong to a club here in Victoria that only voted to admit women some 20 years ago....fwiw, I refused invitations to join until that was rescinded.

Again, I don't know or particularly care. I would imagine there were quite a few Latino astronomers, doctors and lawyers in Mexico 80 years ago. How many Christian politicians are there in Japan? Or in Iran? Or in Pakistan? Or in China? Or in South Korea? I would guess none, but surely at least not more than a handful. I know there are female-only health clubs in Ottawa today. I see no reason why there shouldn't be male-only private clubs. I believe in freedom of association (and in intellectual consistency.)

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

When I was in Engineering, more than 40 years ago, there were no more than one or two women, and the undergraduate society was openly sexist: at one 'smoker' the class president screwed a hired hooker on stage.

It was openly degenerate, but I don't see how a consensual sex act is sexist. Would it have been sexist if the class president was female and had screwed a hired Chippendale's dancer? As for how many women were in Engineering with you ... again … so what? Was it because they were forbidden to apply or because they were held to a higher standard? I doubt it. I strongly suspect it was due to a lack of interest in the field by the vast majority of young women.

Nursing is dominated by women, does that mean that men who apply to nursing school should be held to a lower standard?

Social work is dominated by women, same question.

If a guy wants to run a daycare, should he be able to sue successfully when people prefer to leave their children with a woman?

Should I be able to sue my government successfully because a woman will on average collect an old age pension for at least 5 years longer than I will? Or should I sue my doctor for keeping women alive longer than they keep men alive (I'm pretty sure it's a conspiracy fueled by discrimination & oppression, amirite?)

Maybe I should sue the police for arresting, charging & incarcerating men in such disproportional numbers to the number of women who are arrested. Or sue my government for 'reparations' for all the men who fought & died in wartime compared to the paltry number of women who did.

I think it's an outrage that such a high proportion of homeless people are men, & yet that they have shelters SPECIFICALLY for homeless women, don't you? I feel so victimized. Who should I sue? Let me sue all the things!

I was shopping at the local drug store & they asked me at checkout if I wanted to donate money for women's health. Can you imagine? Don't they know it's 2016?!

Should I be able to sue successfully because I've been to bars DOZENS of times in my life and NOT ONCE has a strange woman approached me and offered to buy ME a drink?

Do you not see what nonsense this all is? Leave past injustices (real and imagined) in the past. And stop trying to create discrimination & oppression out of thin air. Focus on pragmatic, cost-effective solutions to today's problems, or at LEAST on ending policies that exacerbate today's problems. Stop punishing today's youth for the (real & imaginary) sins of their great-grandfathers. And stop perpetuating a culture of victimhood, injustice, dependency, degeneracy, dishonesty, groupthink and defeatism.

[jonottawa]

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

So as a young woman, back in the 1950s or 60s or earlier, when deciding what career to choose...it took a lot of independence even to think of a career other than finding a husband.

Ok. (I'll pretend it doesn't sound like you're bashing motherhood and the monumentally vital role that women have historically played as homemakers and raising healthy and well-adjusted children.) I would imagine it took a lot of independence for countless historical figures to do what they did. I guess they had a lot of independence, some might have even had so much that they declared it!

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

As a young black, whether male or female, but of course twice as difficult for a female, what career could one look towards?

I suppose it would depend on one's abilities, ambition, self-discipline and interests. I don't see how 'of course' it's twice as difficult for anyone. I would imagine there would have been TONS of opportunities for highly intelligent, ambitious & well-educated African Americans once the 60's rolled around & employers were looking to virtue signal & comply with the law. And let's not forget, you're talking about 50+ years ago. Remember the Cosby (that guy who sexually assaulted all those women after drugging them) Show with the successful Doctor & Lawyer & the adorable family? That was 30 YEARS AGO!

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

It wasn't and isn't merely the resistance that some professions put in the way. It is also about the examples in one's life.

There are tons of examples today. It wouldn't be a valid justification even if there weren't. But there are. (Besides, that didn't stop lots of (non-white) immigrants from all around the world from thriving in America.)

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

I do a lot of work that involves the assessment of possible career paths that would have been followed by young people who have now been disabled by accidents. So I deal with experts in this area all the time, and myy understanding is that children generally, though by now means always, tend towards careers similar to thise followed by older family members. I stress that this is only a generalization and by no means even close to being 'more likely than not'.

However, I know many lawyers who have at least one parent as a lawyer, and the same for doctors, accountants, carpenters, electrcians and so on.

We rely on role models.

Again, there are tons of role models out there. Neither of my parents went to university. Both my older sister and I got our Bachelor's degrees and went on to post-graduate school. She's a prosecutor. This is just not a valid excuse anymore, if it ever was, even a little. Such a flimsy excuse certainly doesn't justify the indefinite perpetuation of a RACIST governmental policy.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

So imagine that as a society we have decided that the prejudices of the past are unfair, and we want or professions to more accurately reflect a fair and just society?

I see what you did there. So now we make a huge non-sequitur where you no longer try to rationally justify your claims, you just 'imagine a society where we have decided that MikeH is right about everything.'

Who are you to decide what's fair and just? To me, a meritocracy that emphasizes equality of opportunity is fair and just. To you, racial discrimination is fair and just. To me racial/gender quotas are abhorrent. They not only deprive more qualified people (perhaps even with epic, gut-wrenching sob stories of their own) of getting the jobs/education they've worked hard to earn, they also taint the reputation/stature of minorities/women who EARNED their place at the table but who might be suspected of being token Affirmative Action hires/selections.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

We could take the long road and not touch the old boys prejudices....let the old boys die off, and hope that as the generations pass, we see a slow increase in the participation of women or blacks or...

Or we could say 50 years IS the long road, and definitely long enough. There are lots of role models now. No young girl or black or black girl today wonders if she's going to be 'allowed' to pursue her dreams. Let's try to make our society as gender/race-blind as possible and end the divisiveness, racism & misandry we (and by we, I mean you)'ve created. Let's acknowledge that women who choose NOT to enter the workforce, but to raise a family instead (while their husbands work & provide, as men have done for generations,) should be praised, not scorned or derided and that silly arbitrary participation rate statistics are NOT the measure of a functional or moral or just society.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Or we could say: one good way to make young people realize that they can in fact hope to become a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer, is to confer advantages on those people, until such time as it becomes as easy for a woman or for a black man to aspire to become a lawyer, etc as it has been for a white.

Uhhh, no. But it should be (and is and will be after Affirmative Action is abolished) as easy for an equally QUALIFIED woman or black man to aspire to become a lawyer, doctor or engineer as it is for a white man.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Bear in mind that the oppressed (and I know that term will drive jon nuts), continue, usually, to suffer from ongoing discrimination. Affirmative action isn't imposed on a level playing field. Were it to be so imposed, then I would be opposed to it. It would be unjustifiable.

Doesn't drive me nuts (nothing drives me nuts today, because when I start to get vexed I just say 2 words to myself: President Trump.) It's just emotionally laden rhetoric designed to substitute for a valid argument. But your last sentence is certainly correct. It would be and IS unjustifiable.

You're right about one other thing (but for the wrong reasons,) many (most?) African Americans living in America today ARE oppressed: They're oppressed in the sense that many of them are brought up (often in a single parent household, with no strong/moral male role model) in a (regressive left) culture that promotes degeneracy, illegitimacy, law-breaking, violence, promiscuity, victimhood, drug use & dependency & scorns old fashioned values like honesty, hard-work, common courtesy, educational achievement, thrift, sacrifice, family, marriage, monogamy, etc. They have to compete for unskilled jobs with millions of non citizens living in the US illegally, artificially (and drastically) lowering their job prospects & potential wages. Untold gobs of money are spent trying to educate them, but in most cases the negative cultural influence is too strong. They're oppressed because the regressive left has rigged the system & set them up to fail, then told them that they are failing because of Whitey.

Affirmative Action doesn't do anything to fix that oppression and simply adds another victim (the innocent white boy (who also might have grown up in poverty in this degenerate culture) who didn't get the job or educational opportunity he earned) while depriving society of the lost marginal utility between the two candidates.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

But despite the mistaken beliefs earlier espoused by Kaitlyn, discrimination is rampant, and so too are the effects of socio-economic disparities, that are themselves both causes and results of generations of systemic discrimination.

Sorry, but just you saying it and wanting to believe it doesn't make it true. Welfare & a culture of degeneracy have destroyed (formerly strong and proud) black communities, not some 'discrimination' bogeyman. Though if you advocated (mild) Affirmative Action (speaking of generations of systemic discrimination) SOLELY ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC GROUNDS then you'd at least have ONE (albeit wobbly) leg to stand on.

[jonottawa]

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

The playing field remains tilted against those favoured by affirmative action, so the discrimination created by affirmative action serves to offset, and only partially offset, the background bias.

Yeah, no. If you mean that a 17-year old gangbanger who can barely read or do math at a 6th grade level needs Affirmative Action to get him into university or else society is full of racist crackers, you're bonkers (I believe that's the medical term.) There is no (significant) racism problem. There is a culture problem. There is an illegitimacy problem. There is a dependency problem. There is an unenforced border problem. There is an Orwellian media problem. There is a river in Egypt problem.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Affirmative action is a form of discrimination as a response to a problem, and not a goal of its own. That is the difference between supporting affirmative action on the one hand, and engaging in voter suppression (as did many Republican States) on the other, or of electing only white males to office.

Affirmative action IS the problem. It's racist. It's fundamentally unfair. And the only people who are exempt from it are the (marginally qualified for their professions) old fogeys who actually DID benefit from a somewhat racist society back in the olden days. At least you acknowledge that it is a form of discrimination. Hooray for words meaning things on a semi-consistent basis!

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Btw, for anyone interested in how racial prejudice impacts bright African-americans, read Neil deGrasse Tyson's stories about the obstacles he had to overcome to be an astrophysicist.

No, that would be for anyone interested in how racial prejudice may have impacted one bright African American ~30 years ago (if you ignore the bits about how racial preferences benefited him.)

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

I don't 'support' La Raza, altho the limited information I have on that suggests that it is not engaged in promoting race divisions or hatreds. Whether I would endorse amy of it aims would depend on what they were. BLM: from what I have heard, it seems to have some fairly cogent things to say about the state of race relations in the US. I don't know much about it, and it may or may not be that I would approve some, all or none of its stated agenda.

I'm kinda 'do research for these people'd out. I think it's abundantly clear that if a bunch of white people formed a group called “The Race” which promoted white unity/teamwork/collaboration & opportunities for white folks that you'd say they were racist (at a minimum) & probably call them White Supremacists (I know, I had you at “The Race.”) If you think it's cogent to raise hell about 2 or 3 cases nationwide of 'Cop gone bad' each year when hundreds of young people are murdering each other in the ghetto to the sound of crickets, we have different ideas of what 'cogent' means. (Maybe cogent means nucking futs in the world where bigotry doesn't mean intolerance for people who don't share one's views?)

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

Do I think that there is compelling evidence that blacks are disproportionally wrongly shot by police in the US? Yes, I do.

Do I also accept that the proportion of citizen-police interactions that result in the police killing an unarmed or surrendering or fleeing suspect is roughly the same for whites and blacks? I am uncertain because I haven't read the paper that apparently suggests this to be the case, and I know, from having looked into internet references to 'sources' that not all sources are reliable and not all papers are valid. However, I am willing to entertain the notion, while still noting that blacks are proportionately far more likely to be confronted by armed police than are whites, thus generating a far higher per capita rate of shootings.

So you think that blacks commit crimes at the same rate as whites but police only tend to respond when the crime is committed by a black person in order to manipulate the crime statistics? I'm trying to get your 'logic' here. Or is it that you think police should keep an Affirmative Action ledger and when they get a call they should ascertain the race of the suspect before they decide whether or not to respond? “I'm sorry ma'am, we've already reached our quota of sexual assaults by black men this month. We won't be able to assist you or else our 'armed confrontation' statistics will be all messed up.”

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

The problem, iow, isn't that police kill blacks who they have stopped far more frequently than they kill whites they have stopped. It is that they stop, and thus create high risk encounters, blacks far more often than whites, based on population statistics.

And they also stop males of all races between the age of 15-40 more than they stop other demographic groups. Should they start randomly pulling over old ladies to balance out the statistics for you? Let's be serious.

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

As for the Muslim Brotherhood: again I have limited knowledge. I do not 'support' entities whose beliefs or practices are unknown to me. If they advocate, for example, the peaceful interaction of peoples without regard to religion, then I'd likely support them, but I have a sneaking hunch that at least some of the members don't think that way. In addition, and as a general but nout universal bias, I think that anyone whose prime identifier is their religious belief is delusional. Organized religion, in my opinion, is on balance, a terrible force for evil. There are notable exceptions: Mycroft, as one example, and I have profound differences about religion but I have great admiration for what I know of Mycroft's character. So, I suspect I would not support the MB were I to be bothered to learn more about it.

That's funny, my very regressive SJW leftist birth mother, who also lives in Victoria, draws the line at niqabs too. (It sounds like you do, anyway. There might be some hope for you yet.)

mikeh, on 2016-November-18, 16:46, said:

I have already addressed the silly points about my lack of advocacy on issues arising in and affecting other areas of the world. I tend to form and express opinions about subjects where I have some understanding of the issues. Unlike many right wingers, I am very comfortable with acknowledging that opinions should be based on evidence, not belief. Belief flows from considering the facts. The facts are not the result of the belief. Had Kaitlyn understood that, many of her more offensive posts would not have been written.

I don't see why it's silly to ask your opinion (I assume you have an opinion on this that you don't wish to explicitly/publicly share) on whether 'diversity' is a universal good or ONLY in all countries that when you were born had 90%+ white populations. Surely after decades of listening to CBC you have some opinion on & understanding of the subject of 'diversity.' But I'll take that as a 'not a universal good, duh.'

I don't see how someone who is an adherent of a faith-based religion like regressive leftism, despite having grown up in the glory days (albeit not perfect, but as close as we've come so far) of western civilization, with today's reality screaming at him that he's wrong, that the 'solutions' he's clung to for decades aren't working (and are in fact making things worse) and that we're on the wrong track, can claim that his beliefs are solely based on facts. If your lying eyes and memory can't convince you that at least some of your presuppositions are mistaken, I sure as hell won't be able to.

There are other examples of things that I'm confident you believe in that meet your definition of racism (though it seems to me we've already agreed that Affirmative Action does.) For instance, I'm confident that you support race-based scholarships for some races and not others. I'm confident that you support student groups for Asians, Latinos, African Americans & Muslims, but not for whites. I'm confident that you support the right of people to celebrate Black pride, Gay pride & Asian pride, but not White pride.

I'm confident that most of your fellow Kaitlyn-bashers (though probably not you) think it's fair that a private bakery owned by devout Christians be forced at gunpoint to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, but that it wouldn't be fair for a private bakery owned by devout Muslims to be forced at gunpoint to bake a cake with a picture of Mohammed on it (or to bake the same-sex wedding cake, for that matter.) (Okay, the last one technically isn't racism, just a textbook example of the regressive left's war on Christianity.)

I'm not sure why this jpg seems appropriate. But somehow it does.

[y66]

The estimate of counter productivity in the bullsh*t quote misses the point that some people's time is worth more than others'. If you factor that in, it's probably several orders of magnitude.

[andrei]

Winstonm, on 2016-November-19, 12:01, said:

The Whiner-in-Chief has again spoken:

Pay attention to your spelling.
Correct is: WINNER

[andrei]

cherdano, on 2016-November-18, 15:01, said:

Still waiting for a reply to this one. If you are unable to use Google to find the quotes, I am happy to provide them.

Please provide the "KKK" quote.
Larry David would be proud.

[jonottawa]

andrei, on 2016-November-19, 13:02, said:

Pay attention to your spelling.
Correct is: WINNER

[PassedOut]

Winstonm, on 2016-November-19, 12:01, said:

The Whiner-in-Chief has again spoken:

Quote

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing. This should not happen!
7:48 AM - 19 Nov 2016

Yes, it's so important to have safe spaces where you don't have to hear things that make you upset!

Quote

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The Theater must always be a safe and special place. The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!
5:56 AM - 19 Nov 2016

After a couple days I expect that Mike will recover enough to ease back into work, but he and Donald might be scarred emotionally for a long time.

[Winstonm]

andrei, on 2016-November-19, 13:02, said:

Pay attention to your spelling.
Correct is: WINNER

You are right. I should have acknowledged the win: the Whiner-in-chief who Wah! Wah! Wahed! his way to an electoral college win spoke again:

Quote

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
7:48 AM - 19 Nov 2016

Wah! Wah! Wah! The blue meanies are after the Orange Submarine!

[Al_U_Card]

PassedOut, on 2016-November-19, 11:20, said:

For foreign diplomats, Trump hotel is place to be


Pay to play, at the highest level.

But they are easily visible and identifiable? Almost as brazen as Hil-Billy but not quite as profitable....

[PassedOut]

No matter what happens, someone predicted it: 'Something will crack': supposed prophecy of Donald Trump goes viral

Quote

But as democratic institutions began to fail, workers would begin to realize that governments were “not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or jobs from being exported”, Rorty wrote. They would also realize that the middle classes – themselves desperately afraid of being downsized – would not come to their rescue.

“At that point,” Rorty wrote, “something will crack.”

“The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for – someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots.”

Rorty said “nobody can predict” what such a strongman would do in office, but painted a bleak picture for minorities and liberal causes. “One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out,” he wrote. “Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion.”

Intolerance and “sadism” would “come flooding back”, he continued. “All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”

And, lo, it came to pass.

[mikeh]

jonottawa, on 2016-November-19, 12:09, said:

Yeah, no. If you mean that a 17-year old gangbanger who can barely read or do math at a 6th grade level needs Affirmative Action to get him into university or else society is full of racist crackers, you're bonkers (I believe that's the medical term.) There is no (significant) racism problem. There is a culture problem. There is an illegitimacy problem. There is a dependency problem. There is an unenforced border problem. There is an Orwellian media problem. There is a river in Egypt problem.



Affirmative action IS the problem. It's racist. It's fundamentally unfair. And the only people who are exempt from it are the (marginally qualified for their professions) old fogeys who actually DID benefit from a somewhat racist society back in the olden days. At least you acknowledge that it is a form of discrimination. Hooray for words meaning things on a semi-consistent basis!



No, that would be for anyone interested in how racial prejudice may have impacted one bright African American ~30 years ago (if you ignore the bits about how racial preferences benefited him.)



I'm kinda 'do research for these people'd out. I think it's abundantly clear that if a bunch of white people formed a group called “The Race” which promoted white unity/teamwork/collaboration & opportunities for white folks that you'd say they were racist (at a minimum) & probably call them White Supremacists (I know, I had you at “The Race.”) If you think it's cogent to raise hell about 2 or 3 cases nationwide of 'Cop gone bad' each year when hundreds of young people are murdering each other in the ghetto to the sound of crickets, we have different ideas of what 'cogent' means. (Maybe cogent means nucking futs in the world where bigotry doesn't mean intolerance for people who don't share one's views?)



So you think that blacks commit crimes at the same rate as whites but police only tend to respond when the crime is committed by a black person in order to manipulate the crime statistics? I'm trying to get your 'logic' here. Or is it that you think police should keep an Affirmative Action ledger and when they get a call they should ascertain the race of the suspect before they decide whether or not to respond? “I'm sorry ma'am, we've already reached our quota of sexual assaults by black men this month. We won't be able to assist you or else our 'armed confrontation' statistics will be all messed up.”



And they also stop males of all races between the age of 15-40 more than they stop other demographic groups. Should they start randomly pulling over old ladies to balance out the statistics for you? Let's be serious.



That's funny, my very regressive SJW leftist birth mother, who also lives in Victoria, draws the line at niqabs too. (It sounds like you do, anyway. There might be some hope for you yet.)



I don't see why it's silly to ask your opinion (I assume you have an opinion on this that you don't wish to explicitly/publicly share) on whether 'diversity' is a universal good or ONLY in all countries that when you were born had 90%+ white populations. Surely after decades of listening to CBC you have some opinion on & understanding of the subject of 'diversity.' But I'll take that as a 'not a universal good, duh.'

I don't see how someone who is an adherent of a faith-based religion like regressive leftism, despite having grown up in the glory days (albeit not perfect, but as close as we've come so far) of western civilization, with today's reality screaming at him that he's wrong, that the 'solutions' he's clung to for decades aren't working (and are in fact making things worse) and that we're on the wrong track, can claim that his beliefs are solely based on facts. If your lying eyes and memory can't convince you that at least some of your presuppositions are mistaken, I sure as hell won't be able to.

There are other examples of things that I'm confident you believe in that meet your definition of racism (though it seems to me we've already agreed that Affirmative Action does.) For instance, I'm confident that you support race-based scholarships for some races and not others. I'm confident that you support student groups for Asians, Latinos, African Americans & Muslims, but not for whites. I'm confident that you support the right of people to celebrate Black pride, Gay pride & Asian pride, but not White pride.

I'm confident that most of your fellow Kaitlyn-bashers (though probably not you) think it's fair that a private bakery owned by devout Christians be forced at gunpoint to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, but that it wouldn't be fair for a private bakery owned by devout Muslims to be forced at gunpoint to bake a cake with a picture of Mohammed on it (or to bake the same-sex wedding cake, for that matter.) (Okay, the last one technically isn't racism, just a textbook example of the regressive left's war on Christianity.)

I'm not sure why this jpg seems appropriate. But somehow it does.

You do know that you are the laughing stock of the WC, don't you?

[rmnka447]

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-16, 22:49, said:

The easier way is to get enough states to agree to send their delegates based on the popular vote. If states totaling 270 or more electoral votes do this, future elections will be based on popular vote.

Yes, the closest you could come to a pure popular vote without amending the Constitution would be for each state to enact proportional distribution of its electoral college votes. As I recall, the electoral college votes each state has is equal to the numbers of elected members of Congress they have. So the electoral college isn't perfectly proportional to population.

The Constitution lays out the electoral college as the means of electing the President and the process in which they do so. But the out is that they delegate how the electors are chosen to the individual states. So a couple states, Nebraska and Maine come to mind, already do this.

There are a few sticking points:

1) There's no way to split the electoral votes in the same exact proportionality as the popular vote,

2) There could be a holdout from adopting proportional distribution of electoral college votes that might skew future elections. Say, Texas decided to stay "winner take all" while all 49 other states did so. It might then ensure that a Republican was always elected. Conversely, same scenario but California decided to be the holdout, then a Democrat would always be elected, and,

3) If a third party candidate got enough votes to draw electoral college votes away from the two major candidates, no one might get enough electoral college votes to become President. But it isn't a problem as the Constitutional would then leave the election of the President up to the House of Representatives.

If you want to chuck the Electoral college completely and use the popular vote directly, you'd have to amend the Constitution to remove the Electoral college and substitute in direct election.

[hrothgar]

rmnka447, on 2016-November-19, 17:35, said:

If you want to chuck the Electoral college completely and use the popular vote directly, you'd have to amend the Constitution to remove the Electoral college and substitute in direct election.

There is an effort underway to create something called the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact"

The basic idea is the following

1. States get to use whatever method they want to chose electors (this is why some states award electors proportionally and others are winner take all)
2. A group of states have passed legislation committing those states to award their electors to whatever candidate wins the nation wide popular vote (regardless of whether said candidate won "their" state)
3. Said regulation only kicks in once enough states have passed this law to total 278 electoral votes (right now, it has passed in states totaling 110 votes)

In theory, if this worked, you could effectively neuter the electoral college without the need to have a constitutional amendment.

Personally, I think that this is a clever idea, however, I think that it would be nightmare the first time that a state tried to award all its electors to a candidate who failed to win the state.

I don't see how one could compel a state to follow through on its pledge.

[jonottawa]

rmnka447, on 2016-November-19, 17:35, said:

Yes, the closest you could come to a pure popular vote without amending the Constitution would be for each state to enact proportional distribution of its electoral college votes. As I recall, the electoral college votes each state has is equal to the numbers of elected members of Congress they have. So the electoral college isn't perfectly proportional to population.

No, I'm pretty sure she's talking about this.

And it's not proportional distribution, it's whoever wins the national popular vote gets ALL of the electoral votes from the states who have signed up. And it doesn't require amending the Constitution. But it does require that states totaling at least 270 Electoral Votes sign up, which hasn't happened yet.

[barmar]

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-18, 18:31, said:

I don't believe that Archie ever used the word "nigg*r" in All In The Family.

I know, but that's how he thought of them.

He also never told his leftie son-in-law to STFU, but I'm sure he wished he could (and vice versa -- in real life those two characters would be cursing each other out like truck drivers). The language he used was limited by TV standards. He did use the other racial epithets, because they didn't violate TV taboos at the time.

[barmar]

jonottawa, on 2016-November-19, 12:09, said:

So you think that blacks commit crimes at the same rate as whites but police only tend to respond when the crime is committed by a black person in order to manipulate the crime statistics?

I'm willing to believe that blacks commit more crime than whites, mainly because they're more likely to be poor and live in inner cities where crime, gangs, drug abuse and violence are rampant.

But it's also my understanding that the proportion of blacks in prison is far higher than just the proportion of crimes they commit. Blacks are far more likely to be convicted than whites for the same crimes. In many cases this is simply because white defendants tend to be more affluent and can afford better defense. Studies have also found unconscious bias among judges and juries -- when researchers control for all the other effects, they still find that blacks are more likely to be found guilty than whites.

A black crack addict is likely to be sent to prison, a white cocaine abuser will get sent to rehab.

[rmnka447]

hrothgar, on 2016-November-19, 17:58, said:

There is an effort underway to create something called the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact"

The basic idea is the following

1. States get to use whatever method they want to chose electors (this is why some states award electors proportionally and others are winner take all)
2. A group of states have passed legislation committing those states to award their electors to whatever candidate wins the nation wide popular vote (regardless of whether said candidate won "their" state)
3. Said regulation only kicks in once enough states have passed this law to total 278 electoral votes (right now, it has passed in states totaling 110 votes)

In theory, if this worked, you could effectively neuter the electoral college without the need to have a constitutional amendment.

Personally, I think that this is a clever idea, however, I think that it would be nightmare the first time that a state tried to award all its electors to a candidate who failed to win the state.

I don't see how one could compel a state to follow through on its pledge.

I'd guess that someone in a state that voted differently than the popular vote would issue a court challenge to such an agreement. Who knows what would happen after that?

I think we should all remember that no matter how many votes "our" candidate got neither candidate got more than about 26-27% of all the citizens to vote for them.