Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Current Political Mood (Past 24h)

@the-grey-tribe

All Issues Are Wedge Issues

Years ago, a government minister was asked why he proposed to increase welfare while raising taxes at the same times. The welfare money did not actually help to the people in need. He answered on an accidentally hot mic “You see, Iwan, wages and pensions have been stagnant for two years. This scheme will raise average wages on paper and divert welfare money into pension funds. Retirees are our base. We can’t not raise pension in an election year. It would be political suicide!“

I have a friend who sometimes volunteers for a left-wing party. He’s friends with many activists and left-wing think tank pilots. I asked his party friends at his birthday party: “Why don’t you support the elimination of welfare cliffs, or simplifying tax law, or a version of the paperwork reduction act, or a version of FOIA?“ They agreed that all of these were sensible ideas with potentially broad popular and multi-partisan parliamentary support. That was precisely the problem: “Why would anybody vote for us specifically if we just did the same shit as everybody else. Why not let the conservatives spend their political capital on bureaucracy? What if we make a big deal out of this and then moderates agree and steal our votes? If conservatives or moderates proposed this, we would have to oppose on principle. If social democrats proposed this maybe we would support it. If Marxists come out against bureaucracy we will be surprised. But why waste time on this instead of minimum wage? Our constituents are all poor people anyway. The middle class and self-employed people are affected by complicated taxes. They don’t vote for us anyway. It would be political suicide!“

* hissing sounds *

We will CRUSH the pathetic legislature and their traitorous, kakistocratic political parties by rolling over them with a column of actual tanks 

think-tanks nerf bats redundant unpruned regulations 

We will REPLACE the treacherous legislature with voter-delegate think-tanks that are funded according to their percentile standing on a legislative prediction market times their number of votes! DEATH TO THE TREASONOUS INCENTIVE SYSTEMS!  LONG LIVE THE UNION!

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

Why do you think China is about to enter a period of decline?

Well, kind of.  They have some serious challenges ahead in the 21st century which exceed those of America’s.

The rivers running red with industrial runoff?  The gradual slowdown in economic activity that the PRC has depended on to remain in power?  The continued significant corruption, debt, and malinvestment such as the ghost cities?  But the biggest one is, of course, the after-effects of the One Child Policy, which dramatically increases the ratio of older dependents to workers, and puts more economic pressure on young people, making family formation difficult/unaffordable.

China can potentially rise to meet all of these challenges, but it will not be easy, and the stress may break the PRC government and result in a civil war.

To do so, it may be necessary to transform their style of government into something new, but if they go the direction I’d go if I were them?  That may be one helluva fight for dominance of the 21st century.

(Not sure when I got this ask.  In fact, I can’t even remember when in recent times I mentioned this about China.  It is important to remember in this and other considerations that the Chinese are not stupid, contrary to what the outsourcing American corporations assured us with “but the good jobs will stay here!”)

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mutant-aesthetic]

jesus fucking christ, some poor soul shared David Hines’s debut article on Jacobite on /pol/ and the users are really going out of their way to prove his point about the right being incredibly disorganized and ill-prepared for any actual happening

[mitigatedchaos]

What if people are not stupid because of political ideology, but political ideology is stupid because of people?

…this thought is going to keep me up at night.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

The inability for the different political parties to work together to accomplish their goals is just like when I was working on this project for school and... Oh my god, I just remembered that time Emily refused to do her part of the group project, even though we had initially all agreed on what each of us had to do, and we had two weeks to get it done, but nooo, she just never got around to doing her part. She even had the easiest part, and I had to do it for her. Uhm, what was I saying before?

argumate answered:

this is like a political cartoon except all the passive aggressive labels are set in a girl’s high school like a tedious anime

school aka THE LEGISLATURE

project aka PROGRESSIVE HEALTH REFORM

emily aka GRANDSTANDING REPUBLICANS

etc.

[mitigatedchaos]

I’ve lived the Congressional Anime AU, Argumate.

You don’t want to go there.  You really don’t.

If I never hear “but Ryan-sempai, we can’t!” again, it will be too soon.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Dropped a normie Liberal a thought puzzle about cousin marriage, culture, and racism.  The results should be… enlightening.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Scalise Shot by Assailant at Congressional Baseball Practice

[bloomberg953-yahoopartner]

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot at congressional baseball practice in Del Ray, Virginia, and possibly four others were injured by an assailant, according to another lawmaker who was at the practice.

Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama said on CNN that he and other lawmakers tried to apply a tourniquet with his belt on one injured person to try and stop the bleeding. Scalise crawled to the outfield.

More from Bloomberg.com: Russian Cyber Hacks on U.S. Electoral System Far Wider Than Previously Known

“There must have been 50, 100 shots fired,” Brooks said.

Brooks said Capitol security forces were firing back with pistols at the shooter until the shooter was tackled to the ground.

More from Bloomberg.com

• Trump Has No Plans to Fire Special Counsel, Spokeswoman Says
• Trump Cheerleaders Turn on Special Counsel Mueller
• Singapore Premier Lee’s Brother to Leave City Amid Family Feud

Read Scalise Shot by Assailant at Congressional Baseball Practice on bloombergpolitics.com

[tommyconlonsmouthguard]

I’m afraid that we’ve crossed lines we can never come back from. Attacks on public servants are an attack on democracy.

[misanthropymademe]

A truckload of presidents have been assassinated over the course of U.S. history. Congresscritters have been succesfully murdered before. Democracy will survive. 

[ranma-official]

Attack more public servants imo

[mitigatedchaos]

Do you want right-wing paramilitaries? Because that’s how you get right-wing paramilitaries.

[ranma-official]

We already have more right-wing paramilitaries.

[mitigatedchaos]

Elevated above background levels for now, but they’d disengage over time as the narrative of leftist violence lost credibility.  Doing stuff that will only seem to prove them right is not a good plan.  Have you even been here?  The Klan/etc are not actually that big.  In fact, they’re pretty friggin’ small relative to population.  

Escalating is not the right plan.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[sludgeharp]

Steve Scalise is a racist, homophobic, anti-choice, shithead that gives speeches to crowds of white nationalists and called himself “David Duke without the baggage.” Please stop normalizing the murderous, bigoted agenda of the Republican party and pretending these right wing lawmakers just have a benign difference of political opinion. 

[aryn-inf]

The guy almost died, and you’re just going to insult him? What’s wrong with you?

[sludgeharp]

Look, you nazi sympathizing, hentai loving piece of shit: Not a single shred of courtesy or sympathy is owed to an avowed racist that gives speeches at white nationalist events. None. Zero. 

The only regrettable thing about this incident is that the shooter missed.

[mitigatedchaos]

The original Nazis, the actual ones, not these washed-up, low status fringe guys that no one likes, came to power because of an environment of substantial political violence in which people were willing to make large, very large, tradeoffs to restore the perception of security.

Socialists and Communists literally fought them in the streets and it failed.  It made the problem worse.  It took empires to defeat Nazism.

You lot have this idea that if White Nationalism is not constantly suppressed, it will naturally grow and take over, but this perception is mistaken.  Under normal post-war circumstances, white nationalism doesn’t have much to offer the typical white person.  After all, Hitler made them all look both stupid and evil, and his thousand-year empire imploded in only a fraction of a century.  White Nationalism has been mocked and made low-status for some time.

Now, normally, WNs don’t have much to offer the typical white male…

Unless you crank up the political violence such that WN ideas about erasure of whites and fundamentally incompatibility between races start to sound more reasonable to marginal people most vulnerable to WN conversion.  Mass immigration doesn’t help, nor does not believing in borders or countries, since you can’t credibly offer them a home they’d live in for a lifetime, but it might be overcome by someone clever enough.

You think you’re fighting White Nationalism with your righteous indignation, but you’re actually creating it.  You’re getting high on outrage while increasing the actual level of risk.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[slartibartfastibast]

@ranma-official

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mutant-aesthetic]

I’ve always wondered how lefties can reconcile this sort of cognitive dissonance. Like they’d think the best way to beat the far right is to not validate their narratives of massive tribal conflict and grand cultural transformation that feed into radicalization, but they can’t seem to stop themselves

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

thelondoneconomic.com

Corbyn tried to pass law to make homes safe last year – the Conservatives rejected it

[the-purity-of-nude-socialism]

“Jeremy Corbyn tried to pass through a law that would required private landlords to make their homes safe and “fit for human habitation” last year – but it was rejected by the Conservatives.

Labour proposed an amendment to the Government’s new Housing and Planning Bill – a raft of new laws aimed at reforming housing law – in January last year, but it was rejected by 312 votes to 219.

According to Parliament’s register of interests, 72 of the MPs who voted against the amendment were themselves landlords who derive an income from a property.”

[happinessisnotalwaysfun]

Whatever you think about the man as an individual or politician, he sure is on the right side of history a lot.

[voxette-vk]

More regulations driving up the cost of housing <—-> Right side of history

[argumate]

the regulation about not cladding the outside of high rise buildings in flammable material tho

having sufficient fire escapes

for that matter fire alarms

very poor choice of example of regulatory harm

[mitigatedchaos]

I’m sure our dear Voxette wouldn’t mind losing the regulations in favor of requiring all landlords to carry insurance against the death or debilitating injury to occupants with a cap at $1 million per occupant, reflecting the cost to the rest of society of people dying in unsafe housing. After all, it would be terribly immoral to give the landlords a subsidy, right?

They will of course also be required to carry sufficient insurance for neighboring buildings. It wouldn’t be very fair if they got away with a huge fire burning down someone else’s property just because they were bankrupt.