ScaramoucheVoice #9

WHAT "triumph" does he even have in mind in the first place, though?

The Consonant-String From Hell has gotten too out of hand for a question like this to any longer be answerable in a "yes/no/maybe" fashion. Inclusion cannot come at the expense of coherence.

"Harsh" and "lenient" present a deceptive dichotomy for what the real problem is; the Starmer government confessed that what had long been dismissed as a "right-wing conspiracy theory" was actually happening: Britain was being flooded with immigrants, blind eyes were being turned to some genuinely awful criminal groups, and the public was being gaslit and shut out all the way along.

Define "back"; we shouldn't be telling them what to do in the first place. There's NOBODY I'd trust less in this Admin on this matter than Marco "Ahab to Cuba's Moby Dick" Rubio.

"The sanest narrative possible on the chaos"...that's exactly the problem. Chaos isn't what's wrong with the world; the desire for Order is. "Narrative" has fallen far from its use by luminaries like Joseph Campbell, Oliver Sachs, and Terry Pratchett, to being just a hip way to say "pleasing and effective lie". The fact that 'Mickey Marco' (as I used to call him before his current position showed his true nastiness) can normalize grand-scale evil and make people comfortable with it is precisely why he is a more effective, ergo greater, evil. Like I said, he himself is driven by goals of his own: Not "Cuba Libre", but 'Cuba Reconquista'. The Castro+ regime has issues of course, but the general Cuban public chose them over the old oligarchs for a reason. In any case, surely you don't think the US military should be his private sectarian army? THAT'S his goal.

Here's the amazing part: https://www.commondreams.org/news/marco-rubio-cuba If lying to your Commander In-Chief in order to make a war happen somehow isn't a crime, it should be.

No denying the latter part, but I think you're mistaking a conventional facade for something good. My point is, there's nothing good about what's become conventional in D.C. over the past 30+ years.

I don't often cry, but I did yesterday.

I imagine it will be like 2022: A much-hyped counterincumbent "wave" will turn out to be a "trickle". Both halves of The Corporate Party have too thoroughly discredited themselves to actually inspire the enthusiasm required for a "wave", and the "blue" half in particular is once again hamstrung by its core existential contradiction (as I believe I've explained before). Hegseth is certainly a dunce, but at least he's also a buffoon; there's no reason to think anyone BETTER will be appointed to that office in particular short of a revolution. What do I mean by 'BETTER'? This should give you some idea, despite being written with the affectations of the prior junta in mind (note how what's being called for is COMPLETELY off the table as far as Colablican-Pepsicrat politics are concerned): https://original.antiwar.com/william_astore/2023/09/24/imagining-a-progressive-pentagon/

It would help to know WHY this individual was fired. If this planner WASN'T opposed to the war, Hegseth might have done "the right thing" for the wrong reason.

In this case, I wish there was a "Both" option.

Long story, and I'm sorry to say it's not one I recall chapter-and-verse; this is not a conflict with any good guys, though. The rule of law was betrayed and forsaken long ago. Fixing it would require going back DECADES, which is why all the moralistic brouhaha targeted at the Trump Administration is inherently deceptive (and designed to fail, as Trump's alibi is easy: "Hey, it was like this when I got here!"). To paraphrase Milan Kundera, the struggle between right and wrong is the struggle between memory and forgetting.

How about an "investigate the Likud Party for almost certainly cheating" option? The moment Bibi leaves the Prime Ministerial mansion, his life is forfeit and he knows it; therefore, his own continued existence depends on an ever-escalating spiral of evil.

Where are the publicly-funded TTRPG parlors or video-game arcades, huh? Hell, even theatres normally depend on private patrons.

My home never gets trick-or-treaters; we live too far afield. :(

Hopefully, this pit will drag all its malignant investors in and Silicon Valley will have an opportunity to rediscover what it used to be.

Their fault for choosing to staff an entity that shouldn't exist, I say.

That claim died a solid decade ago now (and had already been ground down to a facade by that point anyway).

...And I'd need a guarantee written in the manufacturer's own blood that NOBODY and NOTHING could access it but me.

"Best-effort basis"? What is that, exactly?

OTOH, what more can be said of any pursuit whatsoever in life? I guess the question is whether SAYING "we'll do our best" winds up assuring they'll do just short of that. Tightrope-walkers don't say they'll do their best; they'll literally do, or die.

SERIOUS flaw in this poll: It asks HOW MUCH you care, but not WHY. It matters "a lot" to me whether a computer has an embedded LLM, because I DON'T WANT IT.

Hardly seems like a priority where trust-busting is concerned, but I'm all in favor of preventing conglomeration regardless.

Hostile? No, don't be ridiculous. Lazy and uncouth? Yes.

What a boorish notion; nobody should do this.

Safety to consumers was never the real issue; GMO crops have been a catastrophic abuse of patent-laws, laws that were mostly written by people who couldn't even have known that DNA existed.

What about breakfast?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyse-BB-u9o

I'd rather we just admitted it was a mistake that does us all more harm than good and roll it all back into oblivion. The Internet was at its best BEFORE "Web 2.0", and it should have just stayed that way. To the question as posed, therefore, I'd like to say "Yes", but again, the real reasons the idea is being pushed are all the wrong ones.

Normally I'd say it was the right call, but IIRC they did this for all the wrong reasons.

You'd be amazed at what's "coming back": About a month ago I discovered a store that was full of vinyl records, CDs, and - especially - VHS casettes!! The proprietors seemed anything but demoralized. People are quite rightly growing alienated from a corporate regime managed by a legion of Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss-types who ruin every single thing they touch. Davos wants a "Great Reset", but the people want a 'Great U-Turn'.

From a standpoint of abstract ethics without regard for current personalities, I don't see the harm.

He won't; he's long-since made it clear who he works for, and that yoke is precisely what prevents him and all the other tories from doing precisely what you're hoping for.

Presidents love to do this and have usually gotten away with it; doesn't make it right, of course.

Surely you jest; that's when they'll start talking about 2028!

It kind of amazes me that that is not a GIVEN. If most workers are stuck with static wages when a company is enjoying record profits that are only going to a few people, some of whom may not have even actually done anything to have helped acquire those profits, that reeks to me of wage-slavery.

Considering what's already happened, I don't understand how "stay out of it entirely" is an option anymore; that SHOULD'VE been the thing to do, but now it's too late. Wars must end at diplomatic tables.

Rather than pegging it to a mere number, perhaps they should be required to pass regular medical/psychiatric reviews to ensure they're still fit to function. Even that, though, is tricky; I had a very old professor who'd suffered a stroke, and while it'd left him with (as one of my classmates put it) "a load-screen", he nevertheless had all his marbles until his dying day.

The whole conceit was that keeping the SCOTUS beyond the reach of voters would make them immune to politics so they could be their oh-so-enlightened and wise selves and do whatever is truly best for the nation (once again, Alexander fucking Hamilton - "I hate democracy and I probably hate YOU, but watch me rap and dance! Tra-la-laaa!"). That experiment has thoroughly failed.

It would be one thing if the American legal system could be trusted not to accidentally kill an innocent person, but it cannot. I am not opposed to the death penalty on sheer moral principle, like some are, but the above and the economic argument lead me to oppose it.

Term-limits and regular, involuntary rotation (i.e. each POTUS gets to appoint a set number of judges, each time a new one is appointed the seniormost gets knocked off whether it wants to retire or not) is what the SCOTUS needs, not this.

What's more, it strikes me as an obvious case of those in control taking advantage of those who aren't to make the latter pay the costs of the idiocy, waste, and failure of the former - and even if it didn't start that way, that's sure as hell how it would end up.

I'm not sure what "fast fashion" is, but the term has 'sleaze' written all over it.

It's rude to keep it reclined IF the person behind you asks you otherwise - but this preemptive/predictive approach to civility is just a bad idea all around. Do as thou wilt, let others complain if they feel the need, THEN reconsider your own action.

Can't say that's not how he rolls...nor that I'd be unlikely to do the same in his position. As I was saying just yesterday, financial punishments don't change behavior unless they're big/precise enough to make decision-makers terrified for their own futures.

How "big" are we talking?

Robots (potentially) good, LLMs bad.

"Gender-affirming care" has gotten WAY out of hand: https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids

Don't make "the company" pay; make STOCKHOLDERS pay. From their own dividends. Make it personal. Knock on their doors. Strike actual fear into the hearts of decision-makers, THEN we'll see changes!

On paper, but plutocracy as we now know it is all about privatizing gains and outsourcing losses, especially since the Bush-Obama bailouts, which took a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring Big Finance to heel and instead told them "you can get away with anything". It's not enough to trust that kind of transitive logic anymore; unless specifically pinned down to prevent it, it's reasonable to assume they'll find a way to weasel out of consequences they actually feel.

Therapists, bartenders, prostitutes, clergy...on a certain level, it's all the same profession. Something for everyone!

Depends, what kind of superpowers are we talking here?

Where's the "I'm single" option, for heavens' sake?

"Never" with the caveat that 'I never watch sports. Period'.

I want a DeLorean!

Try 'Clumsy, messy, often-smelly, high-maintenance, and domesticated ergo literally dependent on you for survival' VS 'graceful, fastidious, runs on its own custom-physics, medium-maintenance at most, and not truly domesticated ergo not truly dependent on you ergo if it stays close to you it's because it actually loves you'.

No cats for you growing up?! You poor devil.

What good argument was there for having them in the first place? This whole Ukraine situation is based on a complete lie. That said, to play devil's advocate, I COULD say that those sanctions have been doing Russia more good than harm! The "Western" imperial-corporate system has become so corrosive that getting kicked out of it is akin to being forced off of heroin.

WHAT issue, though? "No Kings" is just a personality-cult rage-fest, it doesn't have any actual demands. Just as the DHS umbrella is "security theater", this is "activism theater". The goal is to prevent policy-change by giving participants the warm fuzzy illusion of having accomplished something.

They certainly can! It's called 'wasting time, energy, and attention on things designed to go nowhere'. It's a trap, possibly even a psyop.

"Today, those with whom you disagree are framed as subhuman. The trend has been growing since the Clinton administration but you can thank the orange idiot and his wannabee storm troopers for raising it to truly frightening levels." Matthew 7:1

Who's to blame? Look no further than the oligarchs and apparatchiks who've worked for decades to render the 99% powerless and make real, nonviolent revolution impossible. They were warned what the alternative was.

No. They should SHUT THOSE DAMNED THINGS DOWN and stop building them. Bringing the nuclear plants back for OTHER reasons? I might be able to get behind that.

There's some evidence that there've been agent-provocateurs at work.

The ability to sell such cars alone would seem to demand a certain choice be made.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: THANKS FOR LESS THAN NOTHING, ALEXANDER HAMILTON.

James Madison's guidance, yes; Alexander Hamilton's guidance, hell no.

Strength in numbers, yes, but also clumsiness, stupidity, evil, and greater vulnerability to exploitation, at least from some directions. What's not being mentioned here is that Alberta feels like it is being treated like a colony (a sentiment that is quite justly resonating all over the world right now).

That's incredibly, INCREDIBLY unfair to vultures.

Voter fraud no, election fraud YES. George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden (or his puppeteers) should ALL be doing life for election-fraud (and the Corporate Media and DNC did booting out Howard Dean in 2004 for the bullshittiest of reasons could probably bear proper investigation too). That IS a real, serious problem. We're supposed to be a democratic republic, but oligarchs cheat us whenever they feel like it.

This could be all kinds of genuinely useful - the real question is not just "is it safe?" in the conventional sense, but also 'is it 100% free of backdoors and strings that the manufacturers or indeed anybody other than yourself can pull in order to control you (in any sense)'?

Is it not safe to say ALL executive orders are "mostly symbolic"? Oftentimes it's just the White House giving legitimacy to some foregone Deep State agenda (e.g. Obama signing off on domestic psyops), otherwise they'll be followed if those so ordered damned well feel like it.

Governments have no business imposing curfews on their citizens, period.

Bring back the Jubilee system! Making debt last indefinitely may be the single worst misstep civilization ever took.

It's not fair and it misses the target; it would, for example, rule out Bernie Sanders yet keep John Fetterman eligible. Real people are unique, differences within groups outweigh differences between them, and that alone prevents these blanket-category judgments from ever being fair.

When it comes to public policy, "One Size Fits All" is as red as any flag can get.

I'd make a cheeky remark about solar power, but I know that'd be missing the point.

I have a Chicagoan friend; when I E-mailed him after Pope Leo's election, he told me they were hoping for a Papal edict formally condemning ketchup on hot dogs.

Not a bad idea.

What's more, it's also an implicit mandate of support for the status quo. Not voting is the closest thing we've got to "No Confidence", which has been the real "winner" of every election for decades.

The feudal structure of business is bad enough; saying employers should be able to control employees when they're not even on the clock is definitively totalitarian.

It was true before; now it's just...tru-ER, I suppose. The main difference I notice is that I haven't heard the term "campaign finance reform" in years.

I'd agree with your statement at face-value, but it's asinine to agree that "money = speech" and "corporations = people", no matter what the SCOTUS says.

Fair, but haven't we already been there for a very long time? A free press isn't free if ANYBODY gets to decide who asks the questions, and somebody's obviously already been doing that; that's what Cancel-Culture is. The hubbub over the same thing happening to CNN reeks of self-appointed in-group hypocrisy.

I'll vote "No", but with the caveat that the question is a major lie of omission.

Depends in part on what the heck "passion" means.

You're familiar with the "boiling frog" effect, right? George Carlin's pre-TSA rant about airport-security has only gotten more potent with age. His specific complaints sure seem quaint now, but his point about their fundamental reasoning was right on the money. It's all about standards and principles: The more is conceded, the more will be demanded.

Better idea: Abolish the stupid Greek houses, let individuals form parties as they wish.

Same here (though unfortunately, by the time I'd graduated, one or two had creeped in).

Similarly to elections, or things like Change.org., or that petition-thing the early Obama Administration put out before The People had the gall to use it to demand something the Deep State didn't like (i.e. exonerating Assange/Manning/Snowden, I forget which).

The Houthis, of course not; "we"'ve decided to make them their enemies, just as "we" do to anyone who doesn't play ball with Team Global Parasite. The Saudis? "We" have some control (though certainly a lot less than we used to), who do you think built their airfields?

Much obliged.

They specifically won't, though, not as long as they're run like totalitarian monarchies.

"I was referring to the CIA led overtheow [sic] of an elected PM and replacing him with the Shah." I am confused; you made it sound like you were supporting covert regime-change, but surely you realize that was a monstrous act that led to exactly where Iran is now? It was also showcase of just what Adams was warning against (as well as Exhibit A as to why the "Special Relationship" is long-overdue for reappraisal)?

"Reality"? We're talking about politics here, it's a game of make-believe. "I will simply note that this is no longer the early 18th century and we are no longer a hardscrabble rabble trying to stand up a nation." 250 years have passed, but the important things have either not changed, or come full-circle: We are an already-collapsed nation struggling to stand BACK up, and our enemy in that effort is transnational corporations who want us all to be slaves yoked to eternal debt. I claim your calling me an "isolationist" is a strawman (and "Fortress America" doesn't even enter into it). You are missing JQA's point entirely, which is awful because it's as accurate as can be.

OK, so we are on exactly the same page there, glad to hear it! I was just confused because you'd initially said, "We should work to undermine it and to support the Iranian people and their desire for a more stable and inclusive government form." Those first 6 words describe what the CIA did to Mosaddegh, and the rest would be (a contemporary edition of) how they'd spin their actions to the American public. Note how those protesters in Iran a while back were holding signs and chanting in English, THAT'S how you know it was not an organic uprising but an attempted color-revolution: Their real audience was NOT the Iranian government, but English-speaking Viewers Like You.

If adding ads drives people away from ChatGPT, I'm all for it!

The UK has fewer gun-crimes, but violent crimes with OTHER lethal weapons (e.g. knives, bludgeons, and acid) have gone up to compensate; it seems Heston's NRA had a point. What we're really seeing is competing, zero-sum bids for control; any time a new restriction is established, restriction-advocates don't stay satisfied for long, they want to tighten the screws still harder (e.g. now the British are talking about banning knives).

Umm...why? If we're re-releasing older movies, I can think of many that have more to gain from The Big Screen than a mundane human drama. I never got to see "Pacific Rim" when it was in theaters; "Tron" and the Max von Sydow/Brian Blessed version of "Flash Gordon" came out well before I was born. Give me a chance to see any of those the way they were meant to be seen, preceded by "Le Voyage dans la Lune" or something for good measure!

I'm no expert on the topic, but I understand most athletic careers have a very limited timespan; you're expected to retire by the time you're what, 40? Younger? A "temporary suspension" in this case would therefore be a lot scarier than it sounds - if long enough, it could be the practical equivalent of a lifetime ban, and however much time is lost would really be multiple times more than it sounds like.