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[EuchreJack]

Being negative doesn't do anything but get you stressed.

Unless you mean something different than I do by "being negative"?  By that I mean - being opposed to something can be a positive attitude.  For instance, you can be opposed to sociopathic rent-seeking in a positive way.

Maybe..."don't be defeatist" is more specific than "don't be negative"?  Don't sit there and crumble!  Fight (hopefully nonviolently) back!  Don't let the sociopaths win!  You can't do that by relying on other sociopaths to do things for you.  You have to get in the game, get motivated, act!

Also I think your analogy is flawed - grabbing someone with a knife to stop them from inflicting further harm is not "negative" - it's forceful perhaps, but it's a positive action.  Negative is standing there going "oh they have a knife, it's terrible but we can't stop them, oh well I hope I'm not next."  Positive is "maybe they'll get me, but I'm going to give 'em hell if they try!"  Positive is definitely "Let's stop them so they can't do it again! If they happen to get me in the process, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to take, but there are more of us than them, let's get 'em!"

Which highlights a key: I posit that the way to combat these ills is with community, not with hyper-individualism, heros, or hoping "the right government" does it.  Maybe perhaps "the right government" would work - but that's a type of what I mean by "the community" - a government is just a community after all...

O yeah, "defeatist" makes everything make much more sense. Or as I've heard a recent word pop up, "doomerism".

New thread to discuss these concepts. I'd like to keep the AmeriPol thread to actual discussion of actual American Politics, and not theorycrafting methods of critique.

[McTraveller]

Interesting opposing statements here:

https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/8222-3

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/04/china-ambassador-op-ed-pelosi-taiwan-visit/


I'm too lazy to read the actual US legislation, UN treaties, or the like.  Anyone else done the homework?  I know all sides have two stories, and it's often difficult to know what the truth really is - probably something between the two sides?

[Starver]

It's so tricky, I'm just gonna say "Taiwan didn't split from China, it was China that split off". ROC gets tarred as rebel separatists by PRC, but in reality the more 'unbroken' historic government of China (well, from 1911 or so, when the Imperial system was overthrown) is the one now on Taiwan/whatever, and it's the rebellious communists of the mainland who (in 1949, four years after Potsdam, six years after Cairo, where then-Formosa was declared to be rightfully Chinese by the Allies) snatched much of the ROC's territories and left them with Taiwain.

So, really, any talk of 1,800 years of history and rightfulness is effectively scuppered by a whole lotta "things are different now". Really, there are many similarities (by different scales) to the "Ukraine belongs to Russia, it has always belonged to Russia" claims.


Not that there's absolutes to this, but any post-WW2 "Right, everybody stops invading anyone else right now, none of this new Empire Building shit" does not support One China.

Force and/or Popular Movements might, as it has supported other changes in the world map over the last 3/4 century or so... That's a different thing. Just don't appeal to the precedent you choose, because it's not the mike-drop you(=generic) might think/pretend it is.

[scriver]

Yeah, it's very important to notice. Both China -- officially "the People's Republic of China" -- and Taiwan -- officially "the Republic of China" -- are "China". They are two parts laying claim to be the same state. Any claim China has on Taiwan is also Taiwan's claim to the entirety of China. Any history of China is also the history of Taiwan. China cannot claim that Taiwan-the-island belongs to China-the-mainland-state because of "1800 years of ownage" because Taiwan-the-island already belongs to China-in-Taiwan.

I also don't know about those claims of the duration of ownage they give. Iirc Taiwan was colonised by China/the Han people during the 15th or 16th century or something. Maybe they claimed territory before that but didn't have a presence or something.

I sometimes wonder what the indigenous, pre-Han-colonisation, people of Taiwan thinks about the whole situation. If they still exist at all, I suppose.

[feelotraveller]

Oh, they still exist - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_indigenous_peoples - at least somewhat despite the large-scale appropriation by the KMT in the late 1940s.

Spoiler: humour warning (click to show/hide)

It's clear we're still missing the big play by the evil chinese.  Once they have the spiritual cultural linguistic homeland of Austronesia they will inherit claims on all of oceania (barring australia but it's inclusion is controversial) as well as large parts of east and southeast asia.

It's certainly tricky but I don't see how marshalling military forces on both sides helps the issue.

"I don't care who started it, both of you just knock it off."

[McTraveller]

So how is this bill that squeaked by the Senate and is going to make it through the partisan House going to actually do things like "make health care more affordable"?

I can't find anything meaningful; I don't trust the rhetoric in the mainstream media.  Does it actually do anything like provide incentives for having more health care providers, and I mean real individuals that are equipped to perform the task, rather than just subsidizing giant healthcare conglomerates (by taxing some to pay bills, without actually reducing the underlying costs)?

The EV subsidies are ... well I think they're a little misplaced. They reek of protectionism instead of actually improving capacity.  Maybe I'm just too cynical?

I think the tax stuff is largely just noise; mostly I think it's just annoying that they put arbitrary thresholds on it like "tax companies with $1B in annual revenue" or whatever.

[Dostoevsky]

The EV subsidies are largely a Manchin compromise; he hates EVs and wanted them out entirely, and they ended up reaching this compromise that is as much about attempted to push domestic critical mineral production as it is about actual EVs.

I haven't worked on the healthcare side, so can't comment, but what survived out of the parliamentarian and the vote-a-rama is largely Medicare-focused - i.e. old folks. Not so much those with private insurance.

Corporate tax stuff got watered down thanks to Sinema, but there is something of substance in there... though again, I didn't work that too much.

Technically it's the largest climate investment we've ever had, but a large percentage of that is in tax incentives which people may have different feelings about. Our modeling is pretty bullish about its potential benefits through 2030, but modeling is modeling.

[McTraveller]

Part of my ire with the EV subsidies is I don't really like any of the US-produced EVs.  So the strings that favor US content don't make me happy from a consumer standpoint. 

I guess from a "well maybe it will help the local workforce and environment" standpoint it's tolerable.

I appreciate the need for short-term spending to shore up immediate needs, but I do question how well the programs will pan out in terms of actual meaningful long-term investment.

[Frumple]

Eh, probably better than not having them, or whatever hell monstrosity a GOP lead proposal would entail, for what that's worth. "Good enough" isn't quite the right phrase for it, but the concept is somewhere in that general area.

Fucked up as our political system is, to a degree there's only so much point wondering about optimization or maximal efficiency if you can get something through. How well it pans out is kinda' an unhelpful question so long as it's at least some sort of improvement, given the difficulties involved in getting anything that tops that

[Dostoevsky]

I appreciate the need for short-term spending to shore up immediate needs, but I do question how well the programs will pan out in terms of actual meaningful long-term investment.

Implementation is an even bigger challenge than passing the bill in the first place, yeah. Even when everyone is aligned in roughly the same direction it's hard to get things moving quickly. ARRA back in the post-2008 days was way too slow... ARP (the early 2021 covid relief bill) may have been a little too fast at times, hah. IIJA (the bipartisan infrastructure bill) is going a little slower than desired, but not as bad as ARRA so far.

Will be interesting to see if agencies can roll out IRA (terrible acronym, I know) at the same time they're continuing to roll out IIJA.

[MaxTheFox]

Good fucking riddance for Alex Jones.

And yeah, doomerism is worthless at best and a self-fulfilling prophecy at worst.

[TamerVirus]

Lightning struck a tree in front of the white house a couple days ago and killed three people.
Maybe this is some sort of metaphor for something, I dunno.

[Enemy post]

The FBI conducted an unannounced raid on Mar-A-Lago today.

[nenjin]

Conservatives are taking it well, I think.

https://twitter.com/anthonysabatini/status/1556805568207196160

It’s time for us in the Florida Legislature to call an emergency legislative session & amend our laws regarding federal agencies

Sever all ties with DOJ immediately

Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1556840953511550976

1/x The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented.

It is corrupt & an abuse of power.

What Nixon tried to do, Biden has now implemented: The Biden Admin has fully weaponized DOJ & FBI to target their political enemies.

And with 87K new IRS agents, they’re coming for YOU too.

https://twitter.com/BasedByAccident/status/1556816164923346944?t=QuHdzqQl329o_etGeNqydw&s=19

DEFUND THE FBI!

https://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1556791214875328515?t=A4oRdhO9Jfsmh62aOhxVew&s=33

If they can do it to a former President, imagine what they can do to you.

Imagine this. You're told by your staff in April of this year that the FBI has questioned them about presidential document handling. And you do nothing. And then in June, the DoJ comes to the property, speaks with your lawyers, sees the documents you're not supposed to have, and leaves. Then contacts you in July and asks you to put a stronger padlock on the door to where it's kept. You do that, at least. And then in August, they raid your house for those documents, and anything else pertaining to a crime is fair game.

Like, what was Trump's thought process here? That top secret files he didn't turn over were like some kind of loot or bargaining chip he had to physically hold on to, instead of destroying everything that could point to him having committed some crime?

[None]

It’s time for us in the Florida Legislature to call an emergency legislative session & amend our laws regarding federal agencies

Sever all ties with DOJ immediately

Any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight

That's, erh, that's straight secession, isn't it? Or sedition? Sure that's what you want, Florida?

1/x The FBI raiding Donald Trump is unprecedented.

It is corrupt & an abuse of power.

What Nixon tried to do, Biden has now implemented: The Biden Admin has fully weaponized DOJ & FBI to target their political enemies.

And with 87K new IRS agents, they’re coming for YOU too.

watch out, the IRS is coming for YOU to make sure that you (checks notes) paid your taxes! OH NO! Tyranny!

If they can do it to a former President, imagine what they can do to you.

Yep, that was always allowed! Imagine thinking you have more legal protection than a former president with too much money and too many lawyers.

I hope they found the documents they were looking for and it's an open-and-shut case. It'll be super fun to see whatever else comes to light, but from my lay perspective, this one seems pretty simple.