Politics Thread: 13 Ghosts

[Bartimaeus]

In other news, in addition to disbanding net neutrality laws, the FCC will also block states from implementing their own versions of net neutrality.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691344/fcc-preempt-block-state-local-net-neutrality-laws

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

In other news, in addition to disbanding net neutrality laws, the FCC will also block states from implementing their own versions of net neutrality.https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691344/fcc-preempt-block-state-local-net-neutrality-laws

FREEDOM YES

[ShadySands]

 

In other news, in addition to disbanding net neutrality laws, the FCC will also block states from implementing their own versions of net neutrality.https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691344/fcc-preempt-block-state-local-net-neutrality-laws

FREEDOM YES

It's about time the ISPs can throw off the oppressive yoke of their tyrant customers

[Zoraptor]

http://m.dw.com/en/ratko-mladic-found-guilty-at-bosnian-war-crimes-trial/a-41475978#fromDesktop

 

This is why a strong international official body is something good.

 

Seriously, every nation should submit to the internal court of justice already.

 

Not really, an unbiased strong international body is a good idea, what we have now is an abject joke. Mladic is a maggot to be sure, but selectively applied justice is not necessarily better than no justice at all as it ends up justifying and making precedents for all sorts of things based on current convenience. Ethnic cleansing being OK because Operation Storm was done by a now NATO and EU member and them being convicted would be embarrassing or Kosovo's secession (without even a vote, in contrast Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine twice prior to 2014 they just got gazumped by the USSR breaking up then crushed by 70k Ukrainian soldiers) being legal set precedents if you have international laws yet were done for pure convenience. You're also not going to see Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, Muhammed bin Salman who's busy starving Yemen (or the Mays, Trudeaus, Merkels, Trumps, Macrons etc who are arming and supporting him); or Putin or even Assad so long as he has Putin's backing in The Hague. You'll just see ossified current irrelevancies like Mladic and those like Gbagbo who pissed the French off but didn't have Russian or Chinese protection instead.

[Malcador]

 

 

In other news, in addition to disbanding net neutrality laws, the FCC will also block states from implementing their own versions of net neutrality.https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/22/16691344/fcc-preempt-block-state-local-net-neutrality-laws

FREEDOM YES

It's about time the ISPs can throw off the oppressive yoke of their tyrant customers

Still not understanding the reason why this change will make things competitive. Have heard NN is bad because some traffic deserves to be prioritized and NN will block that, but not sure I buy that.

 

Corporations like people, need a gun to their head to be honest

[Guard Dog]

Going back to Micheal and Jeanette I heard a lot of good advice for them. What I didn't hear, that I was hearing a lot of previous to that post is "you're born poor, you die poor because you live in a (mostly) capitalist country. So just give up". If they listen to any of you their situation will improve. If the listen to Majestic and Sharp One they will likely reach their goals. They are not going to make it unless one (or preferably both) find higher paying jobs. Doing that is easy, you just acquire the skills the higher paying jobs require. They need to go to school. And it does not have to be Penn, Temple, LaSalle etc. Britghtwood, UTI, Philadelphia Community college will all do fine. Just because you can't go to an Ivy League school does not mean you can't get an education. Atoms still have protons, neutrons, and electrons when you lean about them in a community college. 

 

The other thing I heard was get out of Philadelphia. Yes. The absolutely should look at that. 1. You need to go where the work is. If you can't find suitable employment where you are you need be ready to look elsewhere. 2. Cost of living is absolutely a consideration. 

 

It's just baffles me the rank defeatism I'm hearing from KP, Number guy, and others that it's impossible to better yourself in a capitalist economy. It's not. It's not even all that hard. You decide to do it and you do it.

 

Becoming a millionaire is a lot harder that becoming affluent if that's your goal. That does require a bit of luck. There are two good paths to it. First off is you will need an advanced education. You are looking at grad school in all likelihood to find a career where salary and basic investments alone can get you there. It's a long and hard road to walk and it requires a commitment but it's open to anyone and can even be done without a great deal of cost if you're smart about it.

 

The other is to start a business. This is a riskier road because the initial investment is the once you can least afford to lose. In my most recent business venture I re-mortgaged my home for the max amount to cover my share of the start up costs. Had our company failed I likely would have lost everything. All of my assets were tied up in my home at the time. I literally pushed every chip I had to the center of the table. That is often what it takes. And if we missed it I likely would have tried again at some point once I recovered. Success is sometimes an act of pure will. Yes I was lucky that I knew people who could invest and help pull this thing together. But my entire career I made a point of networking and staying in touch with business contacts. Is that really luck then or just being smart? Once your business is off the ground you need to work hard and run it carefully. Forget holidays, forget weekends, vacations, etc. All you are going to do is work. It was not unusual for me to work 100 to 120 hours a week. Literally every waking moment at times. In the beginning. Once we stabilized and began to grow steadily that pace did ease up because we were in a position to hire employees to help. But that first year one of the partners and myself literally did every single task from design, purchasing, installation, contract negotiation, everything. That is what it takes. The people who commit like that have a good shot at succeeding. It's still not a guarantee. You can still do everything right and fail. Like I said, this is life, it isn't fair. 

 

Yes there is a big disparity of wealth. If Micheal and Jeanette were the children of wealthy parents they would not have to worry about the same problems they do. Their task would be easier. But starting at a disadvantage in terms of money is NOT a show stopper. It's a problem to be worked around. People do it every single day. 

Edited November 23, 2017 by Guard Dog

[Malcador]

Have either of them said it's impossible to better their station, though ?  Seems they have a pessimistic view (usually the correct one in things to have) but not defeatist.  Again, it goes back to the curious way people like you see 'fair' vs their's, heh.

[Zoraptor]

 

 

http://m.dw.com/en/ratko-mladic-found-guilty-at-bosnian-war-crimes-trial/a-41475978#fromDesktop

 

This is why a strong international official body is something good.

 

Seriously, every nation should submit to the internal court of justice already.

Not really, an unbiased strong international body is a good idea, what we have now is an abject joke. Mladic is a maggot to be sure, but selectively applied justice is not necessarily better than no justice at all as it ends up justifying and making precedents for all sorts of things based on current convenience. Ethnic cleansing being OK because Operation Storm was done by a now NATO and EU member and them being convicted would be embarrassing or Kosovo's secession (without even a vote, in contrast Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine twice prior to 2014 they just got gazumped by the USSR breaking up then crushed by 70k Ukrainian soldiers) being legal set precedents if you have international laws yet were done for pure convenience. You're also not going to see Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, Muhammed bin Salman who's busy starving Yemen (or the Mays, Trudeaus, Merkels, Trumps, Macrons etc who are arming and supporting him); or Putin or even Assad so long as he has Putin's backing in The Hague. You'll just see ossified current irrelevancies like Mladic and those like Gbagbo who pissed the French off but didn't have Russian or Chinese protection instead.

the problem you are pointing out is that of an international institution not strong enough to act effectively against strong nations. I’m all for making them stronger, which will go hand in hand with an increasing number of nations submitting an increasing amount of their power.

 

 

You can't make it stronger. Firstly it won't be allowed to get stronger- it's only there in the first place because it's weak and controllable- and secondly even if it did it won't deal with itself if the 'International Community' is the one to overstep the mark. The UN even specifically excludes itself from liability, as seen with the Cholera epidemic in Haiti and the spate of UN peacekeepers caught diddling kids in Africa and not being able to be prosecuted for it.

 

And it will have to deal with the consequences of their poor decisions effectively forever due to their precedent setting nature. If they try to get anyone for, say, the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in Burma they have to deal with the Operation Storm verdict.

[Bartimaeus]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/us/politics/flynn-mueller-russia-trump.html

 

Word on the street is that Flynn may be flipping for Mueller against Trump as a result of Mueller targeting his son for various crimes he was involved with alongside his father.

[smjjames]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/us/politics/flynn-mueller-russia-trump.html

 

Word on the street is that Flynn may be flipping for Mueller against Trump as a result of Mueller targeting his son for various crimes he was involved with alongside his father.

I've read other sources saying that he may be flipping to Mueller, but no mention of it resulting from !ueller targeting his son. Which is a normal lawyer tactic, even if it seems like a dirty trick sort of thing. There's also other reasons why his lawyer would stop communicating with Trumps team (which is what's generating the speculation) that wouldn't mean he is talking to Mueller. However, if he is talking to Mueller (perhaps in exchange for a plea deal as he's already in some legal trouble) that's a pretty major milestone.

 

Trump and his team seem to keep expecting it to wrap soon, but this kind of thing generally takes years.

[majestic]

Awesome! That's a program I could get behind being implemented in the US at taxpayer expense. I also like the concept of a "qualification framework". Btw, what's your EQF, if you don't mind my prying.

 

Level 6, in theory. In practice it's more like an Anakin Skywalker situation. It just means my qualification level can be expected to equal a bachelor's, but I have no access to studies or other activities that specifically require being an actual BSc (e.g. Master courses or jobs that specifically require a university degree).

 

Still not too shabby considering I was done with it when I was 19.

[Hurlshort]

My salary is public record as well.

[ShadySands]

In the military we all knew what everyone makes because all the pay scales are public but it seems taboo to discuss it in the corporate world. Might be because it can vary so much between people doing the same job.

[Volourn]

EVIL.

 

Just more Nazism.

 

And, as shown in the article, it can lead to bullying,  shaming, and even robbery!

[Malcador]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

 

Thoughts?

 

Well transparency is good and all.  Sadly decent amounts of people are ****, so this information will be used to target people for abuse or scams.

[pmp10]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

 

Thoughts?

I'd much rather see transparency in candidate selection.

Salaries don't mean much if you can't land a job.

[Raithe]

On the tangentially related to politics...

 

More than a million pro-repeal net neutrality comments were likely faked by bots

 

And for anyone still trying to understand net neutraility, here it's explained with stick figures:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAxMyTwmu_M

Edited November 24, 2017 by Raithe

[HoonDing]

 

It is an honor to be here. I have to tell you, you know. The Coast Guard always respected, but if you're looking at it as a brand, there's no brand that went up more than the Coast Guard with what happened in Texas, and I would say in particular, Texas has been incredible. You saved 16,000 lives. Nobody knows that. 16,000 lives. In fact when I first heard the number, I said, you mean like 600? 500? 16,000 lives in Texas.

So as bad as that hurricane was, and that was bad one. That was a big water job, right? It kept coming in and going back, they couldn't get rid of it. They'd never seen it. I guess it was the biggest water dump they've ever seen. But when you've got 16,000...

[inaudible, Trump turns around to face the crowd] ...big groups of people...

[inaudible, Trump turns back around] but when you've got 16,000, that's really something. And then Florida hit. And you know that went very well, you know that went pretty well, right? The job you did in Florida. And then Puerto Rico. I really mean that, I think that there's no brand of any kind, I'm not just talking about a military brand, that's gone up more than the Coast Guard. Incredible people. You've done an incredible job. I love coming in here and doing this with you today. I think it's — we have to keep you very well fed. This is good stuff. It's an honor. This is the first lady, you know.

 

[Melania Trump: Happy Thanksgiving.]

 

We went together to Texas and we saw what you were doing. You just followed that storm, right next to that storm. You saved so many people. I still haven't figured out how people take their boats out into a hurricane. Someday you'll explain it. Jean was just telling me they actually do it to save their boat in many cases. They're not thinking about their life. They're thinking about their boats. They go out in a boat and think I guess they've got a wonderful boat. They've had it for years. It can weather anything and then they have 25-foot waves crashing down. And that would be the end of that. You saved a lot of people. I want to thank you. On behalf of the whole country and on behalf of us, what a job you've done. Thank you all very much.

I'll also take questions. Should we leave the media here to do the questions or should we tell the media? It's Thanksgiving. Let's let the media stay. Anybody have any questions about the country, how we're doing or any of those things? Wow. I love it when you don't. That means you're doing great. I love that. That's the greatest. The press I know doesn't have any questions. If you do, we won't take them but that's alright. The press has plenty of questions.

The country's doing really well. Stock market, all-time high. This is all good stuff. I just spoke to a lot of your friends in Afghanistan and Iraq. We spoke to the USS

Monterey

. Great ship, great missile ship. We spoke to a lot of different folks, from the Air Force, the Army, just now, a little while ago at Mar-a-Lago. The telecommunication systems [inaudible] "We go live to Iraq, live to Afghanistan," and it's really incredible. I told them, our country is doing great. You folks are fighting so hard and working so hard. It's nice that you're working for something that's really starting to work. We've cut back so much on regulation and all the waste and the all of the abuse.

The stock market on Friday hit the all-time high. The highest it's ever been, ever. In your whole long life, the stock market is higher than it's ever been. And that means your 401(k)s and all of the things you have. You know whether it's, even if you're in the military. You have a country that's starting to turn. We want to have a strong country.

We want have a country where I can buy new Coast Guard cutters and not have to worry about it, alright. And that's what we're doing, we're building up wealth so we can take care of our protection. And we're ordering tremendous amounts of new equipment, we're at $700 billion for the military. And you know they were cutting back for years, they just kept cutting, cutting, cutting the military. And you got lean, to put it nicely — depleted was the word — and now it's changing.

The Navy, I can tell you, we're ordering ships, with the Air Force I can tell you we're ordering a lot of planes, in particular the F-35 fighter jet, which is like almost like an invisible fighter. I was asking the Air Force guys, I said, "How good is this plane?" They said, "Well, sir, you can't see it." I said, "But in a fight. You know, in a fight, like I watch on the movies. The fight, they're fighting. How good is this?" They say, "Well, it wins every time because the enemy cannot see it. Even if it's right next to them, it can't see it." I said, "That helps. That's a good thing."

But I mean we have equipment that — nobody has the equipment that we have. And it's sad when we're selling our equipment to other countries but we're not buying it ourselves. But now that's all changed. And I said, the stuff that we have is always a little bit better too. When we sell to other countries, even if they're allies you never know about an ally. An ally can turn. You're going to find that out. But I always say make ours a little bit better. Give it that extra speed, a little bit — keep a little bit — keep about 10% in the bag. We have — nobody has what with we have. That's what we're doing. We're really proud of the Coast Guard and I'm very proud — I walked in today and Jean said, the day I got elected, the following morning, they were putting up the statement that I made right on your front door, right on your glass, and I came in and the first thing I noticed, of course, I said wow, look at that. I said, did you put that up just for me because I happen to be coming here today? And you did that the first day. So that tells me something. That tells me something.

Let's go, fellas. Come on. Let's get up here. Let's get up here. Yeah. This is good stuff.

 

[Malcador]

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/361750-trump-i-turned-down-person-of-the-year-honor-over-photo-shoot

 

[smjjames]

Time says "NOPE! That's not how we do it!" http://thehill.com/homenews/media/361760-time-fires-back-at-trump-after-person-of-the-year-claim

 

Trump is just being butthurt over not being in the top anymore, especially losing to two women. Taylor Swift and San Juan (capital of Puerto Rico) mayor Carmen Cruz no less. Given that he has the audacity to be butthurt over it (not surprising he is butthurt over it, unfortunately) I don't think he deserves to be there anyway.

Edited November 25, 2017 by smjjames

[Elerond]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239

 

Thoughts?

 

We have quite similar system in Finland, as every year on 1st of November (also called national envy day) everybody's tax returns are made public.

[smjjames]

Come to think of it, wouldn't something like that be what a communist country does? I'm all for transparency, just musing here. Seems socialist.... Or maybe it's just the Nordic country association.

[Volourn]

 "I don't think he deserves to be there anyway.  "

 

Going by TIME's criteria he should be. Like him or not he is the person talked about the most and basically trumps (lol) all other 'news'.

 

Just look at TIME's history.. not exactly a list of nice people.         

[smjjames]

"I don't think he deserves to be there anyway.  "

 

Going by TIME's criteria he should be. Like him or not he is the person talked about the most and basically trumps (lol) all other 'news'.

 

Just look at TIME's history.. not exactly a list of nice people.

 

"given that he has the audacity to be butthurt over it" is why, and yeah, I know the times person of the year doesn't neccesarily have nice people every time.

[Darkpriest]

I wonder what our friend Bruce would have to say on this topic:

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-protest-murders-south-african-165353612.html