161–170 of 171 posts
"Nah, we'll rise again like some mythical bird," said a voice in Arizona.
Oh God. Don’t say that. Nothing says “thoroughly defeated” quite as well as people lacking in self-awareness running around shouting, “The South shall rise again!”. Let’s just put our heads down and come up with some ideas on how we can better operate in the newly leveling global context.
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Well, 1995 was seven years before Congress passed the statute that the FEC was misinterpreting in the Citizens United case. The Citizens United ruling had essentially noting to do with "money in politics" and was just a bog standard first amendment ruling against a federal agency attempting to read the power to regulate political speech into a statute that had been passed a mere eight years earlier. Contrary to the m…
This is just lying by ommision or gaslighting.... Yes citizens United opened the floodgates to money in us politics overturning nearly A CENTURY old precedent and allowing something unlike anything that had happened in that previous century.... And to downplay it as just going back to status quo is absurd .
There was no century old precedent at stake at all. The case, and the ruling, was about the FEC attempting to use a 2002 statute to censor the release of a movie in 2008, invoking a concept ("electioneering communication") that did not exist at all prior to the 21st century.
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This is just lying by ommision or gaslighting.... Yes citizens United opened the floodgates to money in us politics overturning nearly A CENTURY old precedent and allowing something unlike anything that had happened in that previous century.... And to downplay it as just going back to status quo is absurd .
This is a good point. No matter the intent, we must also focus on the real world outcomes of said policy. The Citizens United ruling didn’t just clarify the FEC’s authority, it fundamentally reshaped the landscape of American politics by allowing unlimited corporate and union spending on elections, which critics argue disproportionately amplifies the influence of wealth. While the Court didn’t explicitly equate money…
The court did the exact opposite, and repudiated the attempt by the FEC to equate money with speech.
The FEC were effectively arguing that "speech is money" and that their authority to regulate campaign donations allowed them to censor the direct expression of political opinions by organizations that weren't associated with candidates in any way, under the theory that the expenditure of resources in a way that might influence voters' opinions is equivalent to directly donating the monetary value of those resources to whichever candidates might benefit from shifts in opinion.
Prior to the FEC's attempted enforcement of the 2002 BCRA, this wasn't even an issue at question -- the right of individuals and organizations alike to express their own opinions with their own resources was never in doubt.
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This is just lying by ommision or gaslighting.... Yes citizens United opened the floodgates to money in us politics overturning nearly A CENTURY old precedent and allowing something unlike anything that had happened in that previous century.... And to downplay it as just going back to status quo is absurd .
No, it didn't. There's gaslighting going on, but I'm afraid you've been gaslit by the media here. CU was not about campaign donations, despite the frenzied attempts by various factions to pretend otherwise. No donations of money to political candidates were involved in the facts of the case or in the ruling in any way whatsoever. There was no century old precedent at stake at all . The case, and the ruling, was about…
What I meant was that before this case ....there were a variety of limits and checks regarding money in politics from a variety of sources... and especially regarding corporate donations.... And after the case was ruled this way... money flowed in a way that it hasnt in 100 years prior. Any attempt to deny this is just criminal.
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The problem is that China is still self sufficient. Huge country with a single timezone and great infrastructure and now has the expertise to produce for itself and enough people to buy its own products. Sure there's going to be some instability but even then the dictatorship is helping in preventing people to go too crazy. There's a reason musk is pushing for babies: the US is mostly empty land with a few large citi…
What is the relevance of a single time zone?
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The problem is that China is still self sufficient. Huge country with a single timezone and great infrastructure and now has the expertise to produce for itself and enough people to buy its own products. Sure there's going to be some instability but even then the dictatorship is helping in preventing people to go too crazy. There's a reason musk is pushing for babies: the US is mostly empty land with a few large citi…
Fascist movements usually crusade for more babies and venture into (futile) nationalistic pro-natalist policies to try and drive up birth rates. Sometimes they fully commit to eugenics programs. It's a thing. But there's a catch. Some kinds of babies are good and other babies are bad (in their view). They only want "good" babies. Trump's unconstitutional executive order targeting birthright citizenship tells you all…
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> I don't think China (yet) wants any part of funding proxy wars IDK, I could see China funding a proxy war in Ukraine, any time soon. Just not in a good way, so to speak.
For the forseeable future I think China mostly wants to stay as neutral as possible and make as much money as possible by selling as much crap as possible to as many countries as possible. I don't think they want the US as an enemy. It's not good business for them. I have a 100% unsupported belief that 100% of the public messaging from all sides regarding Taiwan is complete BS. I think that behind closed doors, all p…
China is thinking long term and building capabilities:
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
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Fascist movements usually crusade for more babies and venture into (futile) nationalistic pro-natalist policies to try and drive up birth rates. Sometimes they fully commit to eugenics programs. It's a thing. But there's a catch. Some kinds of babies are good and other babies are bad (in their view). They only want "good" babies. Trump's unconstitutional executive order targeting birthright citizenship tells you all…
I don't get your comment. You are saying immigration is the solution to more babies because we haven't figured out yet how to make the local populace make more babies? That doesn't hold. You can't just say there is no solution to a problem because a solution hasn't been found yet.
First, I'm saying Musk's apparent interest in birth rates is best understood as a component of the neo-fascist, authoritarian project in which he's embedded himself, the likes of which we've seen many times throughout history, and is the kind of thing that often culminates in large scale atrocity.
Second, I'm saying for anyone who is truly interested in driving population growth, the last thing one would do is inhibit immigration. Instead, you'd open the floodgates.
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No, it didn't. There's gaslighting going on, but I'm afraid you've been gaslit by the media here. CU was not about campaign donations, despite the frenzied attempts by various factions to pretend otherwise. No donations of money to political candidates were involved in the facts of the case or in the ruling in any way whatsoever. There was no century old precedent at stake at all . The case, and the ruling, was about…
So are you stupid, malicious, or a lawyer? I don't mean the term precedent as in the specifics of this legal case. What I meant was that before this case ....there were a variety of limits and checks regarding money in politics from a variety of sources... and especially regarding corporate donations.... And after the case was ruled this way... money flowed in a way that it hasnt in 100 years prior. Any attempt to de…
Your facts are just straight-up wrong.
Yet, 30 years later America is on the lead, large and sound. Until it decides to go on a mission of self fulfilled prophecy, trying to undo everything overnight.