Yup. Trash Maher is trash because he's trash.
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PoliGAF 2017 |OT2| Well, maybe McMaster isn't a traitor.
- Thread starter ItWasMeantToBe19
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Yup. Trash Maher is trash because he's trash.
I feel like you are just doing a more sympathetic and perhaps more intelligible version of my point.
When somebody says "stop doing purity tests" they mean "the issue that you think is important is not important to me and I think you should stop talking about it or expecting people to care about it."
Poodlestrike
Banned
Yeah, but who is "they?" I see a lot of people saying "stop doing purity tests" when they mean "stop making every disagreement no matter how fractional a point of absolute contention." Like, candidate A wants to forgive outstanding student debt, reform how its handled, and make community/tech college free. Candidate B wants to forgive student debt and make ALL college free. Saying that someone who preferred candidate B should vote for Candidate A if A is the one who makes it into the general election isn't saying "the issue that you think is important is not important to me and I think you should stop talking about it or expecting people to care about it," it's saying "don't make the perfect the enemy of the good."
Conversely, when somebody says "stop doing purity tests" to deflect from, for instance, Bill Maher's outrageously shitty stances on freedom of religion and other issues, they're totally doing that thing you said, and in the classic deflecting douchebag style, they're taking a perfectly legitimate term of criticism and twisting it to do so.
So there's degrees here.
BlastProcessing
Member
Depends, I think it applies to people who didn't vote for Hillary because she gave speeches to the bank. They didn't vote at all because Hillary only agreed with them on 95% of what they believe. There are a lot of millenials like that. I know a few in my social circle. Hillary didn't fill all their purity slots so they wouldn't vote for her. Its the privileged white person syndrome mainly although I have one black friend who told me he only voted for black candidates because they would be the only ones to understand black people to which I said, Clarence Thomas, does he understand you......?
ItWasMeantToBe19
Banned
I mean, the issue of Hillary speaking to banks I don't care about.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
LOL. You should make a thread about this.
A "purity test" as I define it is disregarding and entirely dismissing a person as being an enemy because they don't align with every issue. They might align with 9/10 issues you find to be very important, but if that 10th issue they don't agree with you on, the other 9/10 become irrelevant.
Whether it's justified or not is based on a per person basis. I personally find plenty of things Bill Maher says to be stupid and ignorant, but I align with his opinions and beliefs at least 80% of the time so I wouldn't even begin to think of him as useless or a bad person.
Joe Shlabotnik
Banned
Total coal industry employees: 76,572
Total votes Clinton lost by in PA + MI + WI: 77,774
Abinash117
Member
It is around 50,000 right now. That was the 2014 number.
balladofwindfishes
Member
smokeandmirrors
Banned
Good. Fuck coal. The faster it's 0 the better.
That industry is bad for everyone. It's killing the people who work it, it's killing the environment on every side of the supply line, and there's better options to produce energy so there's no point in using coal for the most part. If there was ever an industry that needed to die it's coal.
ShadowSwordmaster
Banned
The coal industry is fucked. Trump cannot do anything about it. The simple fact that other energies are going into those areas with cheaper prices is making coal a tough thing to sell. Obama and Hillary knew this was going to happen eventually, but Trump does not know or care enough about it.
MetalGearZed
Member
whats wrong with jerbs you terrorist!?
BigJonsson
Member
In Ontario, Canada we got rid of coal power plants and the air has been so much cleaner, Toronto went from having several smog alert days in the Summer to almost none!
Suikoguy
I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Anyone know what the non-energy consumption of coal is?
Mighty Chin
Banned
AntraxSuicide
Banned
As far as I can tell, it's got non-energy uses but they're almost all still within the manufacturing industry, and all seem to be replaceable, not just for environmental reasons, but because the replacements are cheaper.
Coal is like the deadest industry that we still talk about; you'd probably have better odds selling telegrams to hipsters than convincing major manufacturers to invest further in coal; it's got very few benefits, especially if you aren't near major coal operations.
BlastProcessing
Member
The thing that makes Maher terrible is less his policy positions and more the fact that he is a smug asshole who has made a career of trivializing politics down into bite sized pieces of meaningless entertainment all in the service of stroking his own ego and stacking cash.
You can follow the arc of Maher's entire career and watch how it mirrors the dissipation of american political discourse. He isn't the sole cause, or even the primary one, but he hitched his star to it, selling his particular brand of privileged impotent smugness to an ever growing audience.
He is a small, mean man who's primary goal is to diminish everything he sees in a vain attempt to feel superior.
Fuck. That. Guy.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Note to self: create telegraph app for phones.
Trivializing politics into meaningless bite sized entertainment? That's objectively untrue. He has lengthy panels every week and 10+ minute interviews. His show is an hour long, Jon Oliver's just 30 minutes. As far as his motivation for doing the show, it's armchair psychology to suppose you know the answer to that like you're claiming you do. His style and delivery is smug but it's actually impossible to argue that all of the actual content is because so much of it features other people in the political spectrum. His new rules segments are also often pretty thorough when talking about policy or social issues.
AntraxSuicide
Banned
And I like Keith Olbermann better for this stuff anyway.
I swear to God, you'd probably get millions of downloads from hipsters.
"You know, the conversation is just better in Morse Code."
BlastProcessing
Member
Lengthy panels that are melees. Nothing every gets hashed out. Nothing ever moves. His show lives in a state of stasis carefully modeled around a both sides doctrine. I also certainly never said I was a fan of Oliver, so not sure what he has to do with any of this.
His style and delivery is smug and that would be fine if it was counteracted by anything of substance, but it isn't. He is 100% style. He's been in the game for decades and he has never left any real mark. He's a rhetorical shadow boxer.
He presents an entertainment product. If that works for you, that's fine; it's a big world and his style obviously connects with a ton of people, but disliking him needn't be based on some sort of purity test.
Looks like some lawsuit brought against trump and two other people because of something that happened at a rally in Kentucky during last year's election campaign is allowed to proceed.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ump-defense-claim-incited-violence-protesters
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...ump-defense-claim-incited-violence-protesters
A Serious Man
Member
Natural gas, solar and wind are all cheaper than coal at this point, plus much of the work has been automated. Trump might as well be trying to revive blacksmithing.
Disliking him based on falsehoods is a problem.
Don't watch an opinion show for policy consensus/bipartisanship. The panel discussions may be "melees", but, they are better than the opinion panels you find on network and cable TV most of the time.
He provides factual information, he is literally not 100% style. Yes, he provides his own interpretation of the facts, but, that leads to the next point.
He never pretended to be anything other than entertainment (just like John Stewart's Daily Show). He never pretended to be objective.
BlastProcessing
Member
So he provides facts, but he never pretends to be objective.
shinra-bansho
Member
How about... he's just an arse. I'm not sure why it requires elaborate explanation. He's a trash asshole. If you're into that whatever. No accounting for your trash taste.
AntraxSuicide
Banned
There's virtually no way to do that though that would help. Places like CA would see massive immigration as they probably keep their wages high, and red states get left in the dust even worse. Automation also gets cheaper every year, so while certain places might keep jobs around for a few more years, eventually they'll get phased out too.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/your-new-fast-food-worker-a-robot/
Most of this seems reasonable to me, and if you accept the paper's findings (from 2014), then we see that if you push a job's wages low (that is, it's the kind of job where you can push the wages down. These coal jobs aren't quite a good fit for that, but they're also highly susceptible to automation), you just risk making it easier to cut them in favor of automation.
I think we're so attached to the platitude "those who don't learn from history yada yada yada" that we're looking backwards for the wrong things. We are no longer a manufacturing workforce, and we never will be again. We can replace most of these jobs in a few years.
Here's the most common job in each state. At best, Alaska, Massachusetts, and Virginia can afford to wait a bit (though I imagine driving jobs are still big there), and maybe the farmers can hold out. But this automation business is serious. Maybe when coal finally collapses we can get some tough conversations going.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
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whatever veil of ignorance could be used to justify some of the stuff he says stopped being a valid excuse aaaaaages ago
Him hosting Milo was crossing the line, and emblematic of his overall problems. The guy's a shit-stirrer at the end of the day. I think if he were 35 years younger, he would've been Milo. He just came to prominence in a time when "the shocking truth" was a left-wing thing rather than the domain of the neofascists.
Not to say that i think he's entirely disingenuous. I think he believes what he says, but that he arrived at those opinions from a motive of wanting to be a contrarian rather than from wanting to do some good for the world.
Not to say that i think he's entirely disingenuous. I think he believes what he says, but that he arrived at those opinions from a motive of wanting to be a contrarian rather than from wanting to do some good for the world.
Is nuance not allowed here anymore? No one here is denying that he has frequent fuck ups, but it also can't be denied that he has frequent episodes of substance with important panelists. If you don't want to have a conversation about it, fine, but straight up insulting people who are trying to articulate the value they see in the show isn't serving anyone.
He donated $1 million to Obama's campaign and travels the country doing political stand up every week. I don't really see all that being fueled by contrarianism and nothing else, he might be an asshole but he gives a shit about what he's doing.
MetalGearZed
Member
Yes. Im late and just found out about Keith like a month or two ago. (from an episode of Real Time, funnily enough)
love his The Resistance segments. He posts them on Twitter.
AntraxSuicide
Banned
That's probably a shinra joke. Does that phrasing a lot
edit: Yeah, in a household with Bill O'Reilly on all the fucking time, I really needed Keith to keep me from blowing up at my folks. He raged so I didn't have to lol. And sorry if I'm rambling up there, but automation is insanely serious to me. That picture should scare the shit out of everyone into politics.
Yes. That you can't discern these two things is troubling.
Fact: Schools in XX state are the least funded in the country.
Opinion: That's why people there vote the way they do.
BlastProcessing
Member
I think you missed my point.
1. Deals in facts.
2. Never claims to be objective.
You kinda have to pick one there.
If someone claims that they are structuring their argument around certifiable fact, then that is a tacit claim of objectivity. They go hand in hand. Maher absolutely claims to be objective on his show, at least part of the time. His whole character is that he is a straight shooting truth teller. His shtick is built around a veneer of objectivity. "He might be a smug ass, but he tells it like it is."
His old show was called Politically Incorrect for a reason.
You absolutely do NOT have to pick one.
"Here's a fact, discuss it" is the whole premise of the show. The entertainment comes not from the fact, but from the discussion. He never claims to be, in and of himself, a source of objectivity. He never asks his guests to be objective, but, rather, to provide context to the fact; and he does not shy away from providing his own context to the fact.
It is not a news program.
shinra-bansho
Member
Facts like how trans "weirdos" are perpetrators of sex crimes with a psych disorder.
This is a great argument for loving Bill O'Reilly.
AntraxSuicide
Banned
Was this posted?
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/rep...z-in-fiery-healthcare-speech/?comments=disqus
Perez getting worked up is nice.
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/04/rep...z-in-fiery-healthcare-speech/?comments=disqus
Perez getting worked up is nice.
BlastProcessing
Member
Hey, we agree on something!
I think you are putting yourself in a completely indefensible situation by claiming that he never claims to be a source of objectivity. The dude has an editorial segment called "New Rules". He jumps on his atheist soapbox constantly. He punctuates discussions with end cap factual statements at a McLoughlin-esque rate. Hell, he got shit canned from ABC for doing just that.
Again, straight shooting truth teller is his character and you don't play that character without surrounding yourself with an aura of objectivity.
Damn.
This is what's known as false equivalence.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Right, but: former coal employees who are now unemployed or on lower wage jobs, communities that were dependent on coal workers as part of the demand for their goods and services, family and close friends of coal employees and former coal employees: definitely a lot more than 77,774.
Community matters. People are more than individuals.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
He's a self-aggrandizing ass-hat.
He always has been. Smug is a pretty accurate descriptor.
But he is an ass-hat who agrees with the lib side more often then not, so he's an occasionally entertaining ass-hat.
He completely loses me with his prior anti-vax stance. His laser focus on Islam, when "Christians" are trying to destroy this country from the inside, always comes off as punching down. We don't have to like any of the archaic views held by the leaders of the Muslim world, but if we lived in the most chaotic region of the world (because of interference and persistent infighting) with religious orthodoxy being law... I'd hate to see what the "enlightened" Christian world would look like.
It's punching down. We've got bigger battles to fight here, with much more worthy opponents that currently have all of the power, and absolutely no moral compass.
He always has been. Smug is a pretty accurate descriptor.
But he is an ass-hat who agrees with the lib side more often then not, so he's an occasionally entertaining ass-hat.
He completely loses me with his prior anti-vax stance. His laser focus on Islam, when "Christians" are trying to destroy this country from the inside, always comes off as punching down. We don't have to like any of the archaic views held by the leaders of the Muslim world, but if we lived in the most chaotic region of the world (because of interference and persistent infighting) with religious orthodoxy being law... I'd hate to see what the "enlightened" Christian world would look like.
It's punching down. We've got bigger battles to fight here, with much more worthy opponents that currently have all of the power, and absolutely no moral compass.
Not sure if this was posted here yet but trump's approval rating is like -20 in upstate new york according to some poll This may be bad for republicans that have districts in this area in 2018 and for trump in 2020 if he is still around by then.
https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/847082220758220800
https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/847082220758220800
cartoon_soldier
Member
This was a very important article IMO
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/democrats-trump-polling-236560
It also burned other public pollsters. Basically, Rural white voters either weren't reached or declined to participate in polls and that skewed polling completely in many states.
Based on past articles, some of it was actually planned. Alr-right organized online to either lie and say they supported Clinton or not answer polls so polling won't show their support.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/democrats-trump-polling-236560
It also burned other public pollsters. Basically, Rural white voters either weren't reached or declined to participate in polls and that skewed polling completely in many states.
Based on past articles, some of it was actually planned. Alr-right organized online to either lie and say they supported Clinton or not answer polls so polling won't show their support.
Thanks for linking this, really uplifting listen
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
The alt-right don't have that kind of reach. They're a very small clique of people that influence a wider group people by pandering to their fears, but they can't really organize those people. The fraction of alt-right voters out of total Trump voters is very small. Having worked in polling, we've been struggling to reach working-class voters for decades now, for many other older and more important reasons.
More significant is this:
Part of that, for example, comes for social shaming. In the UK, UKIP always does better in online polling than telephone polling, because people don't want to admit that they vote UKIP to a real person. Another part comes from engagement. The more educated you are, the more politically interested you tend to be and the more you're willing to give 5 minutes from your day to chat about these things. I love it when I get polled! But at the same time, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to have socially liberal beliefs. If you sample people who described themselves as at least 8+ on a 1-10 scale of "How interested would you say you were in politics?", then Ed Miliband's Labour would have won the 2015 general election in a crushing landslide.
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