"If you don't believe what I believe then you are a racist" is not very convincing, nor is it an answer for the legit criticism about those ideologies.
I have an electronic journal, it's a simple text file. I keep it for my own benefit so I can remember what I've worked on and put down notes on how I fixed stuff.
DavidTC: ...affirmative action.
...But I don’t remember anyone, and certainly no elected Dem, saying ‘This is horrible! I approve of some sort of scoring system that explicitly includes race in it! We demand the courts allow this!’ Maybe they did, maybe I missed it.
19 years ago Michigan outlawed Affirmative Action.
And the law was ignored. The colleges came up with a more complicated "holistic" system that produced exactly the same results. Which means the same people (i.e Team Blue) were using the same quotas (i.e. percentage of population) and we've spent the last 19 years with Team Blue defending that in lockstep.
The only thing that changed was the language. So no, Team Blue won't say "we insist on a scoring system", they will say "we insist on a complex holistic system that makes race one factor of many and oops, it just coincidently results in the same outcome".
The lesson learned should be that removing this is going to be like outlawing someone's religion. Trump is correct to assume that there will be massive pushback, because that's what we've seen before.
The thinking is that there were alternatives other than killing 48k people.
The problem with that line of thinking is it amounts to the idea that Israel should suck up terrorism and/or that it doesn't have the right to defend itself. More importantly, in the context of WW2, the allies weren't obligated to kill one of their own civilians killed every time an axis civilian was killed... and even this is ignoring we don't know how many of those 48k were civilians.
And we're starting to wake up to the problem I pointed out a year plus ago. Hamas wasn't destroyed, but Israel is still more or less in charge. So Israel isn't going to allow military bases (i.e. hospitals) to be rebuilt or allow other "dual use" materials/facilities to be sent in. Further very few want to rebuild "civilian" structures that Hamas will occupy and Israel will then destroy.
At this point Israel will focus on keeping Hamas weak, which probably means not rebuilding Gaza.
And shouldn't. There are lots of reasons to oppose what he's doing. However invoking God just makes it harder to compromise and be reasonable and we should expect the other side to do the same thing.
Mostly agreed. Maybe someone will be able to do something with it but until we can make predictions there's not much to be done.
DavidTC: What I don’t do is build entire conspiracy theories about kids being taught string theory... and that we should toss the entire thing.
If String theory were attempting to set policy then it would be quackery and not a thought experiment. Ergo all related policies could and should be tossed.
DavidTC: assert that prejudice is best understood systemically
Let me guess, they totally ignore culture, self destructive behavior, and proclaim all differences between races should be explained by prejudice?
The criticism of CRT's core is massively damning. After we establish that the core of CRT is nonsense I'm not sure why there's the need to justify just tossing the entire thing out.
I'm sure there are some "good" aspects, but those can be redone under a sane ideology.
DavidTC: There will officially be no pressure to hire ‘non-white non-males’ if we can implement exactly one law and a Federal agency to do it.
We have already outlawed this kind of discrimination because it's heinous. If you're trying to claim the gov has to encourage heinous behavior until we get a perfect society then I don't agree.
that isn’t the goal of that form of DEI, it’s to hire equally qualified non-white non-men,
If you're going to insist that you hire people in higher percentages than exist in the talent pool, then math suggests you do have to hire unqualified people.
The problem is that isn’t all DEI does.
Then I suggest you stop defending the heinous parts and only defend the parts that are useful.
talking about microagressions... not entirely worthless.
One of the big problems with increasing taxes is our political system will just spend it and the deficit will remain.
We need a way to force politicians to pay for the goodies they promise or to revoke those goodies when the spending doesn't appear.
There are political forces to spend. There are political forces to oppose taxes. They're not actually matched against each other in a way that balances the budget.
For example, if every dollar of deficit spending was subtracted from some political sacred cow (Social Security) so that payments were lowered, then we'd always have a balanced budget. Every program that handed out free whatever would have tax increases to pay for it.
Or alternatively, every GOP effort to reduce taxation would also include actual cuts to something specific because the alternative is they're lowering whatever.
We could have "wholesale restructuring" without "massive cutting".
Force all HealthCare providers to set a price and publish it for every service. This would outlaw these price fixing "networks" and bring the market to bear.
Far as I can tell, no one is claiming that our HC is efficient even compared to other countries.
That's over and above whether or not the various reports I've been hearing are correct. I.e. whether 10-20% of spending is outright fraud and whether we have various boondoggles and such.
RE: Cutting Medicare
Making Medicare more efficient via the market would drastically reduce it's cost without "cuts". There would also be a ton of other positive side effects.
RE: Tax increases
It's unclear if seriously increasing taxes will actually result in seriously increasing the amount of money the gov collects via taxation.
RE: Cutting defense
We have already cut defense if we look at percentage of GDP. We also have the issue the amount of money we need to raise dwarfs Defense spending.
Those were options although just spelling them out goes a long way to explain why the Jews wanted a country so bad.
Big picture that region had two sets of indigenous natives who had opposite ideas on who would be setting up a state and what peoples will be welcomed.
As normal, there were population exchanges and the process of setting up state(s) and winding down empire was messy. See also Britain's pull out of India and the creation of India/Pakistan and so on.
The truly abnormal part was Israel not being forgiven the crimes of it's creation. That's the root of all other problems here.
There shouldn't be "refugees" decades, much less generations, after a state creation conflict. There especially shouldn't be UN support for that.
Everyone is a reasonable person who thinks like I do. The only way I'd act like they do is if I were repressed.
Problem is when I listen to what the Palestinians are actually saying it sounds a lot like they're serious about "No Jews". Unfortunately that means Hamas isn't the actual problem because while they're brutal and repressive, they represent the Palestinians political desires.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/24/2025”
I'm not defending GG.
I'm suggesting that there are legit problems with DEI (etc) and one can reasonably have problems with those ideologies.
"
Sure.
Maybe someone is motivated by racism when they say they think Obama's children don't need affirmative action.
However if that accusation is the only way to defend that result, then you have no argument. Ergo racist or not, they're correct.
"
He's claiming that to be [anti-“woke”, anti-“CRT,” and anti-“DEI”] you have to be pro-GG or look like that.
"
"If you don't believe what I believe then you are a racist" is not very convincing, nor is it an answer for the legit criticism about those ideologies.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/17/2025”
I have an electronic journal, it's a simple text file. I keep it for my own benefit so I can remember what I've worked on and put down notes on how I fixed stuff.
It's a gift to my future self.
"
JB: I don’t know that learning to code remains good advice for the same reason it was good advice in 2005.
It's still great advice.
Spreadsheets didn't doom Accountants. Inhumanly good Robotic Surgical Arms haven't replaced Surgeons.
AI will be a tool the software engineers use, it will not replace us. My 1st daughter using AI on a regular basis and I use it on an irregular basis.
Tools increase the productivity of the person using them. Ergo there is more demand for that kind of work and the people who can do it.
The level of technology in society is going up, not down. The need for software to run that technology is going to go up, not down.
"
Learn to Code is excellent advice. I've given it to all my daughters and to various interns I've talked to over the years.
"
Zionism is a political movement which says the Jews should have a state.
Are they trying to define anti-Zionism as something other than calling for Israel's destruction?
"
DavidTC: ...affirmative action.
...But I don’t remember anyone, and certainly no elected Dem, saying ‘This is horrible! I approve of some sort of scoring system that explicitly includes race in it! We demand the courts allow this!’ Maybe they did, maybe I missed it.
19 years ago Michigan outlawed Affirmative Action.
And the law was ignored. The colleges came up with a more complicated "holistic" system that produced exactly the same results. Which means the same people (i.e Team Blue) were using the same quotas (i.e. percentage of population) and we've spent the last 19 years with Team Blue defending that in lockstep.
The only thing that changed was the language. So no, Team Blue won't say "we insist on a scoring system", they will say "we insist on a complex holistic system that makes race one factor of many and oops, it just coincidently results in the same outcome".
The lesson learned should be that removing this is going to be like outlawing someone's religion. Trump is correct to assume that there will be massive pushback, because that's what we've seen before.
"
The thinking is that there were alternatives other than killing 48k people.
The problem with that line of thinking is it amounts to the idea that Israel should suck up terrorism and/or that it doesn't have the right to defend itself. More importantly, in the context of WW2, the allies weren't obligated to kill one of their own civilians killed every time an axis civilian was killed... and even this is ignoring we don't know how many of those 48k were civilians.
And we're starting to wake up to the problem I pointed out a year plus ago. Hamas wasn't destroyed, but Israel is still more or less in charge. So Israel isn't going to allow military bases (i.e. hospitals) to be rebuilt or allow other "dual use" materials/facilities to be sent in. Further very few want to rebuild "civilian" structures that Hamas will occupy and Israel will then destroy.
At this point Israel will focus on keeping Hamas weak, which probably means not rebuilding Gaza.
"
And shouldn't. There are lots of reasons to oppose what he's doing. However invoking God just makes it harder to compromise and be reasonable and we should expect the other side to do the same thing.
Further the Church is hardly an expert in ethics.
"
The opioid addiction scandal was mostly doctors prescribing badly.
Presumably that's a thing in other situations.
On “From Vox: How Democrats should respond to Trump’s war on DEI”
RE: String theory
Mostly agreed. Maybe someone will be able to do something with it but until we can make predictions there's not much to be done.
DavidTC: What I don’t do is build entire conspiracy theories about kids being taught string theory... and that we should toss the entire thing.
If String theory were attempting to set policy then it would be quackery and not a thought experiment. Ergo all related policies could and should be tossed.
DavidTC: assert that prejudice is best understood systemically
Let me guess, they totally ignore culture, self destructive behavior, and proclaim all differences between races should be explained by prejudice?
Yes, I do reject that.
"
Well, now here we are. Complaining about bad DEI instead of CRT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory#Academic_criticism
The criticism of CRT's core is massively damning. After we establish that the core of CRT is nonsense I'm not sure why there's the need to justify just tossing the entire thing out.
I'm sure there are some "good" aspects, but those can be redone under a sane ideology.
On “The USAID Fight Is About Power, Not Spending”
DavidTC: There will officially be no pressure to hire ‘non-white non-males’ if we can implement exactly one law and a Federal agency to do it.
We have already outlawed this kind of discrimination because it's heinous. If you're trying to claim the gov has to encourage heinous behavior until we get a perfect society then I don't agree.
that isn’t the goal of that form of DEI, it’s to hire equally qualified non-white non-men,
If you're going to insist that you hire people in higher percentages than exist in the talent pool, then math suggests you do have to hire unqualified people.
The problem is that isn’t all DEI does.
Then I suggest you stop defending the heinous parts and only defend the parts that are useful.
talking about microagressions... not entirely worthless.
Source?
"
DEI programs are generally good things that people mostly agree with.
Hardly. The way the local program works is we get worthless meetings on fighting microaggressions and there is pressure to hire non-white non-males.
That's somewhere between worthless, unethical, and illegal.
On “Deficits, Debt, and DOGE”
One of the big problems with increasing taxes is our political system will just spend it and the deficit will remain.
We need a way to force politicians to pay for the goodies they promise or to revoke those goodies when the spending doesn't appear.
There are political forces to spend. There are political forces to oppose taxes. They're not actually matched against each other in a way that balances the budget.
For example, if every dollar of deficit spending was subtracted from some political sacred cow (Social Security) so that payments were lowered, then we'd always have a balanced budget. Every program that handed out free whatever would have tax increases to pay for it.
Or alternatively, every GOP effort to reduce taxation would also include actual cuts to something specific because the alternative is they're lowering whatever.
"
We could have "wholesale restructuring" without "massive cutting".
Force all HealthCare providers to set a price and publish it for every service. This would outlaw these price fixing "networks" and bring the market to bear.
Far as I can tell, no one is claiming that our HC is efficient even compared to other countries.
That's over and above whether or not the various reports I've been hearing are correct. I.e. whether 10-20% of spending is outright fraud and whether we have various boondoggles and such.
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
RE: Cutting Medicare
Making Medicare more efficient via the market would drastically reduce it's cost without "cuts". There would also be a ton of other positive side effects.
RE: Tax increases
It's unclear if seriously increasing taxes will actually result in seriously increasing the amount of money the gov collects via taxation.
RE: Cutting defense
We have already cut defense if we look at percentage of GDP. We also have the issue the amount of money we need to raise dwarfs Defense spending.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
Those were options although just spelling them out goes a long way to explain why the Jews wanted a country so bad.
Big picture that region had two sets of indigenous natives who had opposite ideas on who would be setting up a state and what peoples will be welcomed.
As normal, there were population exchanges and the process of setting up state(s) and winding down empire was messy. See also Britain's pull out of India and the creation of India/Pakistan and so on.
The truly abnormal part was Israel not being forgiven the crimes of it's creation. That's the root of all other problems here.
There shouldn't be "refugees" decades, much less generations, after a state creation conflict. There especially shouldn't be UN support for that.
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
The math of what they're trying to do suggests they need to cut entitlements because that's where the money is at.
In a sane government we'd try to reduce gov spending by forcing HealthCare providers to fix and publish prices so market forces are brought to bear.
The pollical system is so easy for special interests to gum up that we're doing to have insane gov instead.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
It's holding Israel to different standards than normal.
It's an effort to support the idea that "Israel shouldn't exist".
"
1) Jews are a successful minority and thus disprove many of the Left's core beliefs.
2) Much of the discrimination against Jews comes from other minorities and thus disproves many of the Left's core beliefs.
3) Jews are religious and openly have a different culture in a way that goes well beyond foods, and thus disproves many of the Left's core beliefs.
4) Many Jews are white, which disproves many of the Left's core beliefs.
Questioning core beliefs is hard, pretending there aren't questions is much easier.
"
he seemed to understand how just…taking a country could be problematic
That part of the world hasn't been a country for thousands of years, it's always been the outback of some empire.
"
Everyone is a reasonable person who thinks like I do. The only way I'd act like they do is if I were repressed.
Problem is when I listen to what the Palestinians are actually saying it sounds a lot like they're serious about "No Jews". Unfortunately that means Hamas isn't the actual problem because while they're brutal and repressive, they represent the Palestinians political desires.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.