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Messages - Dostoevsky

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631
General Discussion / Re: The Abusive Policing Thread: Beyond Brown, No Justice
« on: October 01, 2020, 12:09:19 pm »
Except when it comes to Mexicans. Or Chinese people. Or, well, any foreigners. Or the government. Or inner cities. Or...

[Yes, I realize you were joking, I just found it amusing to contemplate all the things certain Americans are afraid of.]

632
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: October 01, 2020, 02:21:54 am »
Quote from: Rolan7 on October 01, 2020, 01:09:54 am
And besides that, downballot votes fucking matter!  I am sorry but I am incensed at the earlier talk of "blue states" and "red states" - most states do not go straight-party for president/senators/representatives/governor, because there is more at stake than just the electoral college votes.

For fuck's sake, people, please vote for your local representatives. 

Edit:  A friend recently asked me if I'd rather he vote for Trump than not vote at all.  It was a good question.
I absolutely respect someone who selects their votes a-la-carte more than someone who votes a straight ballot.

The option to conveniently vote a straight ballot makes me very upset, and is on par with all the modern-day fascism.

Yes, this is a very good point and I feel bad for neglecting to mention it. Don't just vote for local reps, read up on the various ballot questions you may be facing too. This stuff matters, and the wording in the ballot question can't always be trusted (or even be entirely sensible, in my experience). This is unfortunately however an area where local reporting can help a lot, yet not everywhere has enough of that these days.

633
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 30, 2020, 10:33:23 pm »
I think you are right that the perception of the TPP, in part as a stand-in for general offshoring and other economic ills, was and is still pretty relevant for a significant number of voters.

Edit: I should add that I think your other points have a lot of merit, but more as a framing of what people perceive things to be -- I strongly object to how factual a lot of them are, but these days that's often not terribly relevant.

634
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 30, 2020, 09:42:06 pm »
Quote from: Zanzetkuken The Great on September 30, 2020, 07:49:41 pm
Simple.  There was basically zero difference in terms of their overall policies, so the voters leaned for who they thought would beat Trump.

And then they selected the guy from the administration Trump was a direct, hand grenade response to, particularly in the forms of establishment, agreements like the Transpacific Partnership that ended up sending more jobs out than keeping them and causing a collapse of more rural economies, illegal immigrants in the US being over 10 million for the entirety of Obama's term in spite of multiple amnesty programs he put into place that would have lowered the numbers (ones done by executive order rather than congress, which feeds back into establishment via concerns of overreach), and intervention in the middle east.  Mix a bit of American nationalism* (follow the asterisk) and there you get his base.

And if you look over his presidency, when did he take hits to his rating?  Year 1, when he was working with the establishment he was voted to be a hand grenade to.  When there was a threat to go into Syria and more direct interference in the middle east with our troops.  The economic slowdown of Covid-19.  First two took until the start of when Covid hit to recover (spike was due to the weekly addresses), and the third was always going to be temporary because it was a virus-derived thing done from little info and currently it is not him holding the country still in lockdown, but the opposition party where they have control, so he's already back to pre-Covid numbers.

[And other stuff]

I have, er, objections to numerous parts of this, but in the interest of time I mainly just wanted to note that it'd be hard for the Trans-Pacific Partnership to send out millions of jobs during the Obama administration because it was never ratified and never went into force. I'm not a fan of the agreement either (in part for its lacking environmental provisions), but the only thing it 'did' was make the US less relevant in Asia when everybody but the US agreed to an amended 'OK forget them' version after we bowed out. (Granted, that's not necessarily a bad thing for the world.)

There are a few other trade agreements from his tenure, but they were smaller in scope (though not necessarily tiny) and Bush-era negotiations that he fiddled with as opposed to being Obama originals (though that's more of a technical quibble than anything else).

635
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 30, 2020, 01:31:18 pm »
Yeah, that's also true. Nonvoters include both the uninformed as well as the 'too informed', so to speak.

There are a few states (only two, maybe?) that apportion their electoral college votes by proportion instead of winner-take-all. In my opinion would be one of many good reforms to the electoral college system.

636
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 30, 2020, 01:03:50 pm »
I don't have hard numbers off-hand either, but from materials I've seen the uninformed voter block is not huge but larger than one might think. These are people are are too busy working multiple jobs / not starving / whatever to spend much time paying attention to the news at all. They get a steady drip of news-like blurbs from their facebook feed or other social media, but are not really informed.

That said, there's also a very sizable group of people who don't vote, and there may be quite a bit of overlap between those two groups.

637
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 29, 2020, 10:45:02 am »
Yeah, my point was just a technical quibble. Don't disagree on the overall issue.

638
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 29, 2020, 10:00:14 am »
If I recall correctly, Ivanka (and other family members) aren't getting paid a salary. This is mainly because legally family members are barred from such service in the White House, on penalty of... not getting paid, so the 'no salary' thing is just taking advantage of a loophole.

(The statute was passed in the 60s in response to some Kennedy family stuff.)

639
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 29, 2020, 12:09:48 am »
Quote from: sluissa on September 28, 2020, 04:33:56 pm
[White House budget stuff]

The White House is one of the various Titles of the Financial Services & General Government yearly appropriations bill; skip to page 129 of this pdf for the FY2020 appropriations levels. Or, for chart form, page 667 of this pdf (rotate 90 degree clockwise, too).

Looks like about $14 million for residence expenses (that includes $750k for restoration), $55 million for "salaries and expenses" (I'm assuming this is more for executive office staff and not e.g. scullery maids), and another $4.5 million for the VP's residence. And much more for official offices linked to the Executive Office like the Office of Management and Budget (the most important agency you've never heard of).

Considering that it perfectly matches the formal budget request, should be safe to go here for more details if you really want to see a breakdown of what the White House wants to spend it on. Start on page 19, I guess, though there isn't too much to see.

Anyhoo, that's a decent amount of money appropriated from taxpayer funds - a lot more than $50k - though I couldn't say if it's sufficient.

Edit: Note that the Secret Service is funded from a separate bill (though same two pdfs as above thanks to omnibuses), to the tune of about $2.4 billion. I think that the milking of government funds that Trump has been doing is mainly from their funding? Honestly not sure, though.

640
Other Games / Re: How did you last die?
« on: September 28, 2020, 09:09:11 pm »
If I recall the superheavies you face in Roguetech are more likely to be custom jobs (with their own special mission types) than official. They also have some kitbash ones, like a 150 ton pirate cattlemaster (slow, awkward, but don't let it get within punching range).

As for me... not a game-ender, but close enough to count. Learning that Romance mode really is romance mode, and not a place for weak commanders.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

641
General Discussion / Re: [NSFW] Dwarven Porn
« on: September 28, 2020, 02:27:17 pm »
In trying to find more pictures I think I came across a dwarven porn gallery.

Given that it's a "since 1997" website that looks like it got its last design refresh not too long after that I'll refrain from direct linking pictures, but... goodness, do take a look. Each of the galleries (e.g. here for silver) are pretty darn neat.

Some others...

Spoiler: Ammonite. Is it cheating if it's organic? (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Fluorite (click to show/hide)

642
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 28, 2020, 11:25:41 am »
And I guess since they're likely giving money to his campaign in the first place, they don't object to his taking of the money they paid into taxes.

(Though realistically I realize it'd work out to something like fractions of cents from the average individual taxpayer.)

643
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 25, 2020, 10:55:49 pm »
Abolishing minority groups (I'm assuming the concept, not, er, abolishing the literal people) would certainly be a nice thing in theory.

644
General Discussion / Re: AmeriPol thread
« on: September 25, 2020, 09:22:59 pm »
While unpopular in law schools these days, there's a theory of legal analysis that looks as much as the human processes of law as the stuff written on the page. Part of that is looking at community systems of reputation, action, etc. that are not technically legal but can still work just as well (or even better) than the formal legal structure in the area. Can work very well for local day-to-day disputes, but doesn't scale up that well.

Obviously this would not work very well at protecting against widespread prejudice against minority groups, however.

645
General Discussion / Re: [NSFW] Dwarven Porn
« on: September 25, 2020, 09:16:19 pm »
Spoiler: It's just selenite, but... (click to show/hide)

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