Now look at the 4 results from my query in quotes. Which top 4 results are more pertinent to our discussion, with or without quotes? Or if you want to dig through 10 million results and tell me how many actually pertain that works too :joy:
approxinfinity
17303 posts
Let me clarify.. since I'm pretty sure you're gonna run wild with the first one... Which of these ACTUALLY.. is SOMEONE... calling SOMEONE ELSE.... a RACIST?
The first one does not count, because it is SOMEONE... ASKING... everyone else... if they're a racist for not voting for Obama.
@JayHawkFanToo ok hotshot, which of these 4 top results remotely resemble someone calling someone else a racist for not voting for Obama?
@JayHawkFanToo Because I wanted to prove that nobody actually said those words. That was my point. See look. Here's one for "Obama is not an American". That has a lot of results because a lot of people said that.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-google&ei=hL14W9q0MZC5ggejg66gBw&q ↗="obama+is+not+an+american"&oq="obama+is+not+an+american"&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.3...20659.38539..39242...8.0..1.232.4339.28j12j2......0....1.........0j46j0i20i264j0i131j33i22i29i30.uNYTjmd0qBg#ip=1
Did anyone tell you you were racist for not voting for Obama? Has anyone you know been told that because they didn't vote for Obama they were racist? How about a friend of a credible friend?
@JayHawkFanToo mine was an exact match using quotes. Yours wasn't. However, it appears theres an outstanding bug with duckduckgo that won't let me exact match the search:
https://duck.co/forum/thread/1750/is-there-something-wrong-with-the-exact-match-oper ↗
Regardless the question I have is where @DoubleDD was told he was a racist.
@DoubleDD You are making zero sense right now.
Which libs and dems told you, Double DD Esquire, directly, "you are a racist"? Anyone? I know I didn't.
Who on the big wide interwebs said, "if you didn't vote for Obama, you're a racist"?
Let's see:
4 results.
How about "anyone who didn't vote for Obama is a racist"?
2 results.
So what exactly is Fox News telling you that other people are saying about you?
@jaybate-1.0 yep.
I predict something happens at some point in the season: injury, ineligibility , something with our starters, and Silvio goes off.
@DoubleDD https://civiqs.com/results/approve_president_trump?race=Black%20or%20African-American ↗
Sample size for Rasmussen was too small? That poll is the outlier, with all others showing much lower support.
Who called you a racist for 8 years for not voting for Obama? Relatives? Coworkers?
@DoubleDD My point is that Trump firing people due to the Russia investigation, as well as his tweets demanding the investigation to cease, etc could be construed as obstruction of justice, and as @mayjay mentioned, Trump is a habitual liar, and if he were to take the stand, he'd almost certainly get himself a perjury charge as well.
So, your original question was "when was a President impeached for nothing?" and my point was, Trump's actions are not much different than Clinton's. So if you think Trump has done nothing, then Clinton is the comp you seek.
@DoubleDD He was impeached for lying to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. Had he not done those things, he wouldn't have been impeached.
Do you think obstruction of justice should be an impeachable offense? And, why do you think Trump's lawyers are trying to avoid having him testify?
Article I charged that Clinton lied to the grand jury concerning:
- the nature and details of his relationship with Lewinsky
- prior false statements he made in the Jones deposition
- prior false statements he allowed his lawyer to make characterizing Lewinsky's affidavit
- his attempts to tamper with witnesses
Article III charged Clinton with attempting to obstruct justice in the Jones case by:[22]
- encouraging Lewinsky to file a false affidavit
- encouraging Lewinsky to give false testimony if and when she was called to testify
- concealing gifts he had given to Lewinsky that had been subpoenaed
- attempting to secure a job for Lewinsky to influence her testimony
- permitting his lawyer to make false statements characterizing Lewinsky's affidavit
- attempting to tamper with the possible testimony of his secretary Betty Curie
- making false and misleading statements to potential grand jury witnesses
(other articles were dropped)
@Crimsonorblue22 the divide has actually grown bigger.
!
↗
https://news.gallup.com/poll/236420/record-low-extremely-proud-americans.aspx ↗
@DoubleDD I think the guys in that picture are both extremely proud to be Amurkan AND would rather be Russian than Democrat, right?
@DoubleDD The IRS cares about whether you are paying your taxes. I don't think they care about much else, and yes, I think we can assume that Donald Trump pays his taxes. The purpose of providing your tax returns as a candidate pertains more to the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution which states:
“No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
And it has been standard behavior for presidential candidates to provide their tax returns.
When was the last time you heard of a President's citizenship being questioned? Yes, I do think by the time a candidate is running for office his citizenship has been pretty well vetted.
maga.ru :hammer_pick:
@DoubleDD see what @justanotherfan said... thats exactly the point here.
@DoubleDD Obama released 11 years of tax returns as a presidential candidate. You're comparing horseshoes and hand grenades.
@jaybate-1.0 nice! Thank you for reframing the discussion! Classic jaybate. These terms are so steeped in tradition their practical meaning cannot be discerned any more, and the feelings around them are confusing and irrational. Still, we trudge on under these meaningless banners.
I like what @mayjay had to say trying to frame conservative and liberal, but I wonder if it's too late for those words too.
@justanotherfan I don't know that the two things you cite (people self identifying as conservative more, and the perception of liberals by conservatives) proves that the legislation being put forth is more conservative (I admittedly have done zero research for stats on that, just observe what comes over the daily newswire), but it does show how Republican voters have rallied around the "conservative" moniker and bought in to the Republican party disparaging certain Democrats by making them appear to be fringe liberals.
Good stuff, thanks for sharing.
@HighEliteMajor when was the last time you vocally protested crimes by white supremacists? Yes, this does sound familiar. You want ethnic groups to be responsible for the actions of other members of the same ethnic group, it seems. That's how I read you.
@HighEliteMajor Why do you seek to identify, group, illegitimize and destroy people that disagree with you? Your ideas are far more compelling when they aren't barbed with personal attacks.
I don't think you addressed the main part of @justanotherfan 's logic on the point that you're trying to refute: that GOP candidates are much more likely to be primaried, thus the push to the extreme.
I'd like to see statistical evidence either way on this. Friday's "The Daily" was about how Trump's base is less likely to show up in the midterm, whereas the moderate voters that voted for him (college educated white females, 12% of his vote) are more likely to show up for the midterms. This would seem to be somewhat contrary in that Trump's base is less likely to show up for elections not involving Trump... so I wonder if in the midterms, if moderate GOP candidates will be less likely to be primaried.
Come March, Andrea Hudy will douse the team in her secret "call fouls on the other guy" pheromone (codename "Zebra piss") and every team will foul out against us in the tournament leading to expanded classification of controlled substances, but not vacation of the title.
@dylans Fantasy will set you free!
@Bwag When you're talking about socialists being the fringe of the Left, you're talking about the economic spectrum, and of all the spectrums you could point to as the default one that most closely aligns with Democrat vs Republican, economic is the one.
I don't think the Democratic base is going as far from center on economic issues as social issues, though I'm willing to listen to evidence to the contrary. I'm much more in support of progressive social change than economic change.
I do however think that the constant regime changes in this country has us in a perpetual state of motion. It's tidal politics. What might appear a hard left lean on economics is in fact just a recession of the policies of the right when they had power, and vice versa.
Really, I want an economic plan that isn't getting thrown on its head every 4 years. I'd like to think that a lot of people want consistency there. I don't appreciate the sabotage of ACA and I feel the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is something that will have an adverse impact on the economy in the long run (again, willing to listen to evidence to the contrary). It is almost impossible, and certainly impossible for the layman, to determine which party's policies are responsible for economic boon and bust, because they don't operate in a time vacuum.
Socially, this President has created division at every turn. I can understand people's frustration that we aren't discussing the economic issues and we are focusing on the President's social agenda, but I also think this Presidenct's social agenda has a significant negative impact on this country, and cannot be ignored.
@DoubleDD liberals and conservatives. Another false dichotomy.
What proof is there that "liberals started the name calling"?
And... Who and what are liberals?
I agree that "leaning right" doesn't make you a racist
The definition of 'leaning right" has gotten conflated with racist, along with a million other voting groups because.... "Leaning right" just means Republican!
@KUSTEVE I like your list.
I think KJ is a player we underestimate, I think he will push Vick at the 3 for minutes.
I'd also like to think that Mitch can do two things for us this year that he wasn't given an opportunity to do last year: hit 3's, and guard the stretch 4.
20 ppg for Grimes? I think that would put him in company with only Frank's senior year and Simien's senior year under Self. He might be our lead scorer, but 20 ppg seems doubtful, especially with the depth of talent on team.
After giving @HighEliteMajor an earful for labeling me a leftist, I got to thinking... My assumption was that leftist was a term made up by the alt-right, but now I'm starting to realize that some people self-identify as leftist. I would never ever want to self-identify as a leftist.
What is a leftist anyway and who came up with it?
I think what we are really dealing with here is a false dichotomy of "leftist" and "alt-right". In reality, if you wipe away the fresh coat of paint, I think underneath you'll just find a donkey and an elephant.
These terms don't actually mean anything! By using them and attempting to separate people into two buckets we just feed into the two party machine.
I'm not a leftist @HighEliteMajor, and I don't appreciate you attempting to label people so you can dismiss them, but you're not the only person making this mistake. My gut reaction was to blame the alt-right for coining the term leftist. Regardless of who invented the new terms, people are more than happy to hop right back in these buckets, a familiar dysfunctional duopoly.
@Kcmatt7 I just don't see what the salary will make that much difference. You're right about the net worths being high. I think a lot of those are carried in from jobs before public office, and I think all the other ways a politician can build net worth would just become more tempting if you lower their salary.
@HighEliteMajor You want to shove me in a group and label the group with some bs title that you can easily dismiss. You know full well that the term "leftist" is a construct of the alt-right.
Treat people with some respect man.
@HighEliteMajor I'm glad he's competitive again. He's been through hell and back in his personal life. Being groomed since childhood to be a sports legend doesn't yield normal people. Woods seems to have learned what it is to be a man on his own terms, the hard way.
@HighEliteMajor I don't think I can argue with you about mainstream media, because you won't acknowledge that Fox is mainstream media, and they certainly weren't Obama's lapdog while the Republican House and Senate took a party-line scorched earth policy on everything.
You act as if the media has no negative material on Trump, they're only upset at being snubbed by him via his proclamations on Twitter (I think you can find the joke you seek here). Do I think he's an idiot? No. Do I think he's a warped asshole? Yes. And by no means a "very stable genius".
If you want to call me names rather than talk, why don't you go back to your Trump impersonation shouting in bold on your thread without acknowledging anyone else's opinion? This does demonstrate well what you're saying on your thread -- that anyone who even questions the position of the President is a "leftist".
I didn't prescribe a solution; I tried to be honest explaining the problems as I see them, and you hit me with your rubber stamp. "Leftist".
@mayjay I think we are in unprecedented territory. There is no comp for what Fox is now and how Trump brazenly disparages the integrity of all other news sources save Fox. There has been no president who uses a network as his primary source for understanding the issues.
@mayjay I dont know if relying on other media is a complete solution. This assumes that:
1. The other media actually does this and reports it well
2. That people do something in response to their coverage
Do you believe there Is anything corrupt in the relationship between Fox and the President? Is trading influence for ratings corrupt even if money is not directly changing hands? When you say corruption are you talking illegal or immoral?
Isn't favoring one news organization you have deep ties with, routinely addressing issues they bring up on the air with policy, and proclaiming all others as "fake news" several steps towards establishing state run media?
@mayjay I appreciate your perspective, and I would like to agree with you; I really do not want government to have to define censorship limits and I am glad that it seems that the private sector limiting hate speech for their own businesses best interest might work out here.
I do wonder in the case of Fox News, if there needs to be stricter rules NOT preemptively limiting free speech but around limiting relationships between media organizations and elected officials.
@mayjay Do you believe anything has changed regarding the impressionability and interconnectedness of people today compared to at the time of Thomas Paine, and if so (maybe the answer is no.) does this affect areas that previously seemed well addressed with absolutist policies?
Also, in this nuclear, global age, is the option of revolution off the table, and therefore does this too affect areas that previously seemed well addressed with absolutist policies, as balance and preservation of the Republic is more imperative now?
Is the world so radically different that in some areas where it previously fit, absolutism no longer applies? is this a new age of political relativity?
I think the Thomas Paine example is a great one. What if someone you vehemently disagreed with were calling on the internet for revolution right now, and had a mob of 400,000 people actually ready to act, with millions of others passively onboard with the idea as well? Instead of limiting free speech, I guess the solution would be to allow the revolution to happen?
Isn't this kind of like when Czarist Russia was aware of the communist propaganda Lenin was passing out, but did nothing to stop it?
@Kcmatt7 I don't think the salaries are insane. they're actually gone down when adjusted by inflation since 1992. Nice chart on wikipedia of that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_United_States_Congress ↗
I think that salary isn't terribly far from middle class in the DC area. Reducing salary brings other problems, namely, inviting corruption as they may become more dependent on supplemental income that is always tempting.
@Woodrow it's a repost from another site. I find it interesting, not exasperating.
As the government is bitterly partisan, every time the President changes parties it will feel more and more like a coup, and a regime change, with a mad scramble to tear everything the predecessor did down. That is what Trump has done and I'm pretty sure by the amount of damage he has done so far, it will be what the Democrats will feel they have to do if they take the presidency back.
So why not entertain eliminating the presidency as it currently stands and spread the power over more people, where coalitions can be built, third parties can have a chance to get a foothold, and things can become less dumbly divided.
I think it warrants discussion.
@DoubleDD The government didn't make these platforms remove Alex Jones. I also misspoke in earlier post where I implied Twitter removed him. They didn't while others did. And this proves that this is a decision very much being left up to private industry for better or worse.
What you said about Fox, that they filled a need for conservative news, I think we should discuss. Again, for better or worse, private industry was allowed to sell a product without interference. That product is being marketed as news, but our generation is old enough to remember when the expectation was that news was supposed to be an unbiased portrayal of events. I.e. there should be no "liberal" news or "conservative" news.
A desire to seek out "liberal news" or "conservative news" should be an acknowledgement that in fact you are no longer seeking out "news" but rather you are seeking out an opinion. Not only is it tenuous to call an opinion "news" it is also tenuous to call it "conservative" when it is so clearly in bed with a political party and that party's president. Should we assume that no matter what the party does every action is conservative? No! The news was once called the fourth branch of government. An impartial watchdog. It should remain free from political influence.
Fox News is neither conservative nor news.
Gonna lock this one as it's a dupe of another thread. :thumbsup:
Donald Trump broke the presidency. It's time to get rid of the job altogether.
Donald Trump is proof that the U.S. presidency is broken and democracy is in peril. It's time to amend the Constitution and abolish the presidency.
Abolish the POTUS!
We’ve seen it: the belligerent typo-ridden tweets; the fawning press conferences with autocrats and overlords; the self-described Nazis on parade praising an American president’s name. We have seen it with our own eyes. There is a bloated authoritarian lounging in his bathrobe in a 200-year-old mansion that used to symbolize the principal republic of the world.
This is a man who openly conspired to cheat with the help of a hostile foreign nation in a federal election. On election night, he came in second place, yet due to a scab of slavery in the Constitution (the electoral college), this usurper has the full power of the most powerful military in history, command of the treasury, the absolute power to pardon and he can unilaterally annihilate millions of people with his command to deploy nuclear weapons. He’s made refugees begging us for mercy into orphans hoping it will deter other asylum seekers — because he can. He’s now poised to put a man on the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, who believes in supreme leaders (if they’re Republican that is).
Russia attacked our country; the target was Hillary Clinton and liberal democracy and they hit their mark. If you’re stunned that President Donald Trump is still in office because he’s so horrible and so unpopular and so obviously corrupt — you are not alone — the overwhelming majority agrees with you. Only about 25 percent of eligible voters voted for President Grab ‘Em By The P----. Yet, the majority was apparently powerless to stop him.
Impeachment won't remove Trump from office
And I have other bad news. The remedy in our Constitution for a treasonous turncoat who got into the White House on a technicality is impeachment. But guess what? Impeachment has never gotten rid of a bad president in this country. Not ever. Bill Clinton finished his term after being impeached. The threat of impeachment got Nixon to step down, but impeachment as a whole has failed. It’s never lived up to its promise.
More: The real impeachment question isn't if Trump broke the law. It's if we can survive him.
Trump can't be trusted to protect America. What will it take for Republicans to impeach?
Trump's rude he-man act is catnip to his fans. They don't care that he's putty for Putin.
It failed to remove President Andrew Johnson, described by his contemporaries as "the vilest radical and most unscrupulous demagogue in the Union." The main charge against Johnson was that he ignored the authority and will of Congress. It was then thata group of concerned citizens saw a monarchy in the making and drew up a petition titled "Memorial Regarding the Abolition of the Presidency." Their idea was to copy the Swiss Republic and make the executive branch a federal council without veto power. Mid-19th century Americans’ trepidation that an emperor could follow an idealistic revolution was well founded; they’d witnessed that very thing in France with the ascension of Napoleon.
The petition makes the case that the three branches of government are not equal. “Congress is more dependent on the President than he is on Congress,” reads the petition. “The President has the elements of power; Congress has but words: he can act; Congress can but talk.” The pamphlet printed in 1868 offers that a constitutional monarchy is still a monarchy, and the exorbitant powers of the executive branch are borrowed from monarchs, which make it impossible to hold a president accountable. And if the president is above the law, they argue, he’s an autocrat and not a (small d) democrat.
Abolish presidency to save democracy
In 1973, the idea came up again a few weeks after the second inauguration of Richard Nixon, when Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a piece in The New York Times asking “Should We Abolish the Presidency?” Tuchman argued that Congress is at fault for the executive branch becoming too powerful. “Responsibility must be put where it belongs: in the voter. The failure of Congress is a failure of the people.” Eighteen months later Nixon resigned. His successor gave Nixon a blanket pardon, ratifying that he was in fact above the law. Tuchman also touted the Swiss Republic’s use of a council in lieu of a hero-like dad figure.
But I’m most inspired by Comedy Central’s "The President Show" starring comedian Anthony Atamanuik. With his searing Trump impersonation, Atamanuik is introduced as “the 45th and final president.”
We can make that happen! My fear isn’t Trump; it’s that the next autocrat is most likely smarter and savvier than Trump. Every partisan from every niche of American politics should be alarmed. We have a branch of government that stinks so bad it’s wafted over the entire nation and its outer territories. The entire world sees it. We’re in trouble. The presidency is broken. Our little democratic experiment is in peril.
We can amend our Constitution to save the republic. Abolish the presidency! Power to the people! Power to the Congress! Make the co-equal branches of government more equal. Give us a council of boring bureaucrats who will do their job, serve the people and leave after their term ends.
Because, as our forefathers believed, democracy is worth fighting for — even if you have to fight a mad king for it.
@wissox Do you have a big problem with the Trump administration being in bed with Fox News? Do you think it makes sense for Bill Shine, former co-president of Fox News and longtime friend of Sean Hannity to now join the Trump staff?
I can guarantee you that an agenda for what Fox viewers are allowed to think is being shaped by those people. Fox is the source that the President encourages people to accept as "real news" while all other sources are "fake news".
@DoubleDD The difference btwn flatearthers and Alex Jones is that Alex Jones deliberately used these platforms to incite hatred and violence (unless you got some seriously aggro alt-alt-flatearthers in mind)
Over the years, I have frequently heard from the right that we should allow businesses to do whats best for business, even when large numbers of people oppose the companies' actions. Think gun companies, Walmart, etc.
It is interesting that in this case the right does not want to allow companies like Facebook and Twitter to do what they want to do, even though they believe that their actions are best for their businesses.
Facebook has been under all sorts of fire for their impact in mob mentalities being cultivated in other countries. We Americans exceptionalists are not so exceptional that we don't have our own mob tendencies.
Yes, the social media platforms have created a mess, but if you believe in laissez faire economics, we should let them sort this problem out as they see fit, doesn't the private sector know best?
If we don't think media platforms like Twitter and Facebook should be restricting hate speech, maybe we should take a glance at the gigantic elephant-fox in the room filtering their content a whole lot more.
@bskeet It certainly would be healthier to have that debate. I think thats where our mainstream news corps have utterly failed us. That would be an interesting, non-partisan and viable talking point to engage the viewing audience with. Instead, we get divisive entrenched garbage that keeps us locked in a partisan war.
We are a nation steered by ratings. Our tyranny of the majority listens to celebrities.
@HighEliteMajor so you think that Alex Jones saying "Hillary Clinton is a frickin intergalactic alien" is a healthy talking point?
@kjayhawks There's a big difference here between what people other than us do, and what we do.
As far as I'm concerned, what antifa, or a few dozen protestors somewhere are doing is nothing compared to what we do, right here, right now. We can control ourselves. We can act with dignity and compassion. Let the outliers be outliers, not fodder for our own hate.
Let the murder-death-kill channels shill their dirty swill. It doesn't matter nearly as much as what we do, each and every one of us.
When Saul converted to Christianity from Judaism, and changed his name to Paul, he had very different ways of addressing Gentile congregations and Jewish congregations. When he preached to Jewish congregations, he pointed out issues he had with the Jewish faith. When he preached to Gentile congregations, he spoke ill of Jews, calling them "uncircumcised mongrels" and other foul names.
This was not a good look for Paul.
We shouldn't speak of those we disagree with by labeling them names, repeating those names over and over in a derogatory manner, and talking about them as subhuman. It's evil. It's just evil.
We should speak of the things we disagree about, and let rationality rule the day.
These labels for people like "kneelers", whether you believe them to be racist or are not, are a vehicle to dismiss and hate your neighbor more easily.
I find this line of thinking in your last post divisive, deeply disturbing, and I believe it leads down a dark path where people act impulsively without rational thought.
Why are you trying so hard to dismiss the humanity of people you disagree with, @HighEliteMajor ?
@JayHawkFanToo I know more about the content of the links you post than you do? We're getting somewhere! :joy: Im glad you're not reading Fox.
Tell me man, are any of these conservative sites worth a look in your opinion?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/22/conservative-websites-media-bubble ↗
Here's an article on the fallacy of the "Good Guy With a Gun" rhetoric being pushed by the NRA:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evd4we/the-good-guy-with-a-gun-theory-debunked ↗
I hope he comes back too. There isn't much going on in basketball world these days; I know he's a bball junkie, so hopefully he's taking a break to focus on other [less] important things [now that World Cup is over].