Negatory

Do you ever think that Trump may have gotten more negative press coverage because he’s a worse human being with worse policies? Just like how I talk more shit about my sisters abusive ex husband than her current husband? Not everyone is entitled to 50-50 good:bad press.

Is your point that meritocracy shouldn’t exist or that it doesn’t?

The blunt truth is it hurts non minorities. That’s the harm in affirmative action policies. It’s why white male pilots, for the most part, should go ahead and stop applying to be astronauts. Edit: The sinister end result is the debasing of the meritocracy.

Here's the actual scientific article because, when it comes to science, mainstream news articles are basically worthless: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.18.427166v1.full BL: It looks like it could be bad, with over 50% of natural produced antibody samples not showing immunity to this strain. They predict that folks, even if they already had COVID or got the first vaccine, will now be able to get COVID 2.0, but this is a limited evaluation. They never tested actual people that were vaccinated, and they never actually saw a secondary reinfection. They just produce evidence that points to likelihood. Time will tell. God help us.

This is all somewhat ironic, because fairness issues up until very recently were primarily based around the extremely conservative talk radio bias that has existed for decades. Rules that would force private entities to protect political speech existed before under the fairness doctrine, which was repealed during the Reagan presidency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine#Opposition Many have attempted to revive it, but attempts have almost been unilaterally opposed by conservatives up until this point because it was politically in their favor to maintain a monopoly on things like radio messaging. Now that one private entity is showing an obvious anti-far-right bias, conservatives cry foul and say "not fair!" The hypocrisy is glaring.

Not at all. I don't agree with a lot of free speech, but I still want it protected. But there is a different between an opinion I don't agree with and an actual mistruth. Have any opinion in the world, that's fine. But I don't think lying about facts deserves a pass. And brother, what do you mean the 100% truth about the laptop? What was hidden precisely? A last minute hail mary to smear Joe Biden based off of circumstantial evidence presented by Rudy Giuliani? What you actually have to prove is that a 50 year old drug addict's dealings directly are tied to his father's finances. There has never been even an iota of proof that Joe Biden has been involved with anything related to Hunter Biden's tax problems or foreign business. Yes, there is an FBI investigation into Hunter Biden. No, there is no substance into investigating Joe Biden, like OANN and Tucker Carlson try to insinuate. You do realize that in late October 2020, FOX news even decided not to run the story based on the extreme lack of evidence. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/fox-news-passed-on-chance-to-break-hunter-biden-laptop-story-over-credibility-concerns-report This one's not a giant conspiracy against conservative voices, give me a break. Every news outlet from Antifa to Fox agreed that running a circumstantial story with no substance was not real press. Also, because we're all about maxims, how about "innocent until proven guilty?" You defending the ability for anyone to throw any political attacks they want, regardless of veracity/evidence and without accountability, is not something that I think I'm going to agree with you about.

Disagree here, I think your point is extremely overblown. You could replace “they” and “them” in your post with Twitter and Facebook. Twitter and Facebook are not the internet. Let me repeat. Twitter and Facebook are not “the internet.” Now if you’re talking about the sensible regulation of over reaching, monopolistic large tech companies, I’m all ears. But that’s not your post. Instead, you’re mad that a company has a political leaning. Newsflash: all companies do. Find a different company. The internet in its current form is a worldwide international marvel, not just an American free speech machine. And if you go on it and actually look outside Twitter and Facebook, you can find literally every group of people still has their place and their voice. I’m not keen to make the American internet into the Chinese version anytime soon. Also, they don’t control your access to information. YOU control your access to information, and, sure, the fact that a bunch of dumbasses get their news from Facebook is a huge contributing factor to the problem. But that’s not facebooks fault. That’s your great Aunt Kay being an idiot who doesn’t look at multiple sources. I don’t see Twitter or Facebook limiting the ability for Fox or MSNBC or CNN or the Washington Post to put out their own stories. I don’t see Facebook shutting down 4chan. It’s not like Twitter took Parler off the web. My rub with a lot of this is you could just as easily argue that former president Trump getting online and spouting lies and misinformation is as destructive or even more destructive to the country. Yet there’s no discussion there? Hell, I think you’d be hard pressed to argue against that. Here’s just a few of the gems of falsehood and disinformation Trump has produced and spread using Twitter and Facebook that have helped us get to where we are today: 1) President Obama isn’t born in the US and isn’t a US citizen. YGBSM. 2) “Just stay calm, it will go away” in reference to COVID. Turned out his plan isn’t working so great, maybe should have followed science/his own advisors. 3) “VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY, IT IS FACT” - thousands of bipartisan government workers have argued that there is no meaningful amount of fraud. The other side has failed to prevent any actual evidence. Yet this is the speech you are trying to protect? 4) “Republicans will always protect people with pre-existing conditions” while stripping away protections 5) “Tarrifs are making us rich” in 2018 as economic experts showed that we were and still are the people who pay the lions share of the costs 6) Single payer healthcare is a “radical left socialist” movement that Dems are using to turn America into Venezuela. When 90% of first world democratic nations have something like it. 7) “We’ve pulled off an economic turnaround of historic proportions” in 2018 when the economy was doing just fine coming out of Obama’s second term. 8: “There was no crime” in the Mueller probe, which resulted in charges brought down on nearly 50 people close to Trump. Oh, and it still has the words in there about “individual #1,” if you ever actually read it 9) “We’re building the wall as we speak” in 2018, as they were not in fact doing so 10) Hell, choose between the 30,000 false or misleading claims that the Washington post found. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?itid=lk_inline_manual_4 At what point do straight lies and misinformation from the president no longer deserve coverage? At what point does lying lose its “press protections?” At what point can a sitting US presidents misinformation cause a threat to America. Because there is a point. And there is not a good political way to reign it in. And I’ll use your overblown oath example. You’re an officer who swore an oath to the constitution to defend from all enemies, including domestic. This bro tore our country apart and made enough people think that the election results were deliberately and simultaneously faked across 6 different states that he got a mob to legitimately invade the legislative branch of our government. And you think that should be protected? He’s off his rocker, and why should companies be required to host his lies? What I got out of this is, actually, those in office should have to be held accountable for anything they say. If they say things that are provably false at the time they say them, then that should be illegal. Free speech and free press doesn’t equal politicians getting to lie to our faces on every platform that exists.

I don't see how ending 230 is actually going to help. In my eyes, ending 230 protections would have one of two effects: 1) Companies are more wary of being sued, and they actually censor a lot more stuff based on their opinions of what is right and wrong 2) Companies try to maintain neutrality by allowing literally anything and everything, turning the whole internet into 4chan

Interesting to see the SQ/CC at the time is now an O-7.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/mypillow-lindell-white-house-martial-law-b1788176.html?utm_source=reddit.com The onion is real. Also, pretty gucci cameras out there.

Interesting argument that is legitimately making me rethink a lot of assumptions. My typical argument to post modern society is what happens to the truck drivers when trucks become automated? Why should all the money from that industry go to just a few people with automated trucks while everyone else goes out of work? But I guess in reality the majority of profits would be dwindled down by competition and passed on via cost savings to the consumer. Still would probably be nice if there was an easier way to switch professions in America, but modernization may not be as bad as I previously thought.

You implied that suppression would lead to involvement from the ACLU. Seemed to me that implies legality. Glad to see we're on the same page. And I do support the baker in that it’s 100% his legal right. It’s also 100% my legal right to personally hold that against him.

https://www.newsweek.com/former-aclu-lawyer-says-course-twitters-ban-trump-censorship-1560970 Suppression and first amendment violations are literally only offenses if the government does it. Not a private organization. Twitter is a private organization. The government, whether you like it or not, had no part in this decision. In fact, I’d say that they would have chosen the opposite result. I don’t think your legal argument or points really have much substance here. Also, Twitter has no legal requirement to follow their terms of service how you understand it - they can interpret it however they want. The free market principal here is that if they abuse their power, you’ll totally go find another service. Technically, they could kick off all conservatives. You are ALLOWED to suppress free speech if it’s your own message board. Do you think some of the conservative message boards would let AOC and Bernie spread their messages easily? But from a moral perspective, I get that it’s messed up. We have handed over a lot of trust and the keys to people who run the internet, while not ensuring to make sure it stays fair or regulated. And these tech companies have been allowed to gobble up all their competition and essentially become monopolies. Caveat emptor and the free market doesn’t always work out in the long term. Especially not in this cases And I agree that I would have preferred to see Trump not be banned. But i still don’t think it’s illegal under our current law.

On another note, it’s infuriating to see liberal leaders entirely contradict themselves. All politicians are hypocrites. I really believe this is a great time to push for overarching governmental reform. Everyone is seeing the system at its absolute worst.

Maybe you could solve this problem by giving everyone money, but subtracting out the amount of benefits you are already receiving. E.g. if you get 20k in welfare and housing, you don’t get 20 more. I think there are nuanced, not one size fits all, solutions that could address these issues.

Yes, this is entirely it, it’s horridly inefficient just so people can sneer and say “the poor wouldn’t know what to do with money anyways.” What? The vast majority would spend their money on food and shelter, I’ll tell you that. $3.1T so far, with the vast majority of benefits helping big business or pump the stock market. Could have given every single person almost $10k for that amount of money. Do you feel like the average American has received $10k worth of government assistance?

I think this is a poor representation of the problem, because I’m certain if that “homeboy” doesn’t have money, he’s trying to find a way to get some. Every human in American society has to spend money on food and shelter or else they become destitute. It’s not a “choice” to engage in the American economy for all but the most privileged of people.

I can’t disagree with this based on our current government’s ineptitude. They are damning poor people and small businesses. Even landlords. A more middle grounded solution would have been to provide funds to high risk folks to actually quarantine while allowing everyone that’s not high risk to take whatever precautions they want. Would still result in over hospitalization, so target that problem. To put it in perspective, we could have given the 100M “high risk” Americans 20k this year (enough for food and shelter, don’t come outside) and still had $1T for medical system fortifications (this is an actually insane amount of money) for the same cost as the $3.1T in stimulus bills we’ve wasted. It’s insane. I’m not saying that’s the right answer, but it sure as hell would have done more for America than whatever the hell we did. And it would have actually involved personal responsibility and liberty, at least to an extent.

Fair enough, my point wasn’t well connected. It’s just blatantly ironic that the “small government” side believes that the power of government should be diminished, while at the same time also typically believing that we should have either the same size or bigger military. And thats with the military accounting for over 50% of the discretionary spending of the government. And yes, I do believe the power of government is generally about directly proportional to the amount of money it expends. What should the government power be? No income tax, like the 1700s/1800s? Or is WWI your opus magnus? Maybe Reagan years? It’s a spectrum.

Lol at some people saying the free market is anti conservative now. The hypocrisy is reaching critical levels.

Get rid of 90% of our military then, because the strong, overreaching federal government and its ability to impose broad sweeping taxes is the only way we as a group were able to procure 20 B-2s.

True that. It’s not going to do jack. Moderate dems still have to vote with full up communists. Just like moderate reps will still have to vote with full up Nazis. Ranked choice voting and a transition towards a parliamentary system is the solution. But that would require the nation to admit that the two party system (which is great for those currently in power) isn’t working.

I assume if martial law is attempted to be declared in 2 weeks, 100% of you will totally set aside all partisanship and defend the constitution. Reaction to the events of today - no, nothing to see here. It's just business as usual. It's always been like this. But when it actually matters, we'll care, promise.

What's tragic is that military officers on this forum can't see that.

I literally remember this conversation. When you personally liked the post below back in July, it was probably a misclick, right?