losthighway wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:59 am

enframed wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:48 am
I just saw a news clip in which Pelosi said that according to Freedom House, China is one of the freest countries in the world. According to Freedom House website China is ranked 9 out of 100. USA is 83, UK is 93. I wish we could vote her out.

We really need an age cap on elected officials, 65 would be good.

All of this confuses me. Why would Pelosi who just kicked the east Asian hornet's nest tour the freedom of Chinese society? By what metric can Freedom House describe a nation with a heavily censored internet and a state run media as freer than the UK and US?

Also, I'm with you on the age cap.

Also scratching my head on this. Apparently Pelosi meant to say Taiwan, not China - that's not really a mistake you want to make there, Mrs. Speaker. Gheez.

And, yeah, is Freedom House sponsored by RT News or something? Say what you will about how fucked up things are in the USA, but there's no way we are less free than the folks in the PRC.

Agree on term limits; not age limits.

EDIT: joke's on me!!! In the Freedom House rankings, lower is less free, higher is more free. Taiwan is 94. Finland is 100.

jfv wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:29 am

losthighway wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:59 am

enframed wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:48 am
I just saw a news clip in which Pelosi said that according to Freedom House, China is one of the freest countries in the world. According to Freedom House website China is ranked 9 out of 100. USA is 83, UK is 93. I wish we could vote her out.

We really need an age cap on elected officials, 65 would be good.

All of this confuses me. Why would Pelosi who just kicked the east Asian hornet's nest tour the freedom of Chinese society? By what metric can Freedom House describe a nation with a heavily censored internet and a state run media as freer than the UK and US?

Also, I'm with you on the age cap.

Also scratching my head on this. Apparently Pelosi meant to say Taiwan, not China - that's not really a mistake you want to make there, Mrs. Speaker. Gheez.

And, yeah, is Freedom House sponsored by RT News or something? Say what you will about how fucked up things are in the USA, but there's no way we are less free than the folks in the PRC.

Agree on term limits; not age limits.

EDIT: joke's on me!!! In the Freedom House rankings, lower is less free, higher is more free. Taiwan is 94. Finland is 100.

No, the joke's on Pelosi for misspeaking and confusing all of us.

jfv wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:29 am

losthighway wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:59 am

enframed wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:48 am
I just saw a news clip in which Pelosi said that according to Freedom House, China is one of the freest countries in the world. According to Freedom House website China is ranked 9 out of 100. USA is 83, UK is 93. I wish we could vote her out.

We really need an age cap on elected officials, 65 would be good.

All of this confuses me. Why would Pelosi who just kicked the east Asian hornet's nest tour the freedom of Chinese society? By what metric can Freedom House describe a nation with a heavily censored internet and a state run media as freer than the UK and US?

Also, I'm with you on the age cap.

Also scratching my head on this. Apparently Pelosi meant to say Taiwan, not China - that's not really a mistake you want to make there, Mrs. Speaker. Gheez.

And, yeah, is Freedom House sponsored by RT News or something? Say what you will about how fucked up things are in the USA, but there's no way we are less free than the folks in the PRC.

Agree on term limits; not age limits.

EDIT: joke's on me!!! In the Freedom House rankings, lower is less free, higher is more free. Taiwan is 94. Finland is 100.

Why not age limits? Cognitive decline is real. You know the old saying: the elderly are not so different from toddlers. At a certain point it's true. IMHO, best to get everyone like that out of office before that time comes.

^ Re: age limits - I don't think that's the right way to go, mainly because significant cognitive decline happens to some folks at 45, others at 65, and others at 85. In principle, it should be the voters to determine who is (still) fit for office... though the electorate is often too stupid to figure it out and/or heavily influenced by other factors.

I think other things, like term limits, and actually finding ways to make the playing field for candidates a little bit more level (If the playing field was completely level, would Biden be president right now? I don't think he would have made it out of the primaries.), will take care of the senile folks without needing a law restricting age.

Right. Dementia is not one-size-fits-all. And also, you have wise, experienced elders (rare as they are), plus dipshit young people (less rare).

Age caps would be as much of a detriment to say, Sanders as they would be to Biden or Pelosi. Not implying that Sanders was perfect, but you know...

Fuck, real campaign finance reform would be an even better start to all this than term limits. Such a goddamn circus, politics in this country.

enframed wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:48 am I've spent the last couple of months working with Italians from all over the country from Piedmont to Tre Venezie to Sicily. According to them, Italy is not worried about Putin pushing further.

I just saw a news clip in which Pelosi said that according to Freedom House, China is one of the freest countries in the world. According to Freedom House website China is ranked 9 out of 100. USA is 83, UK is 93. I wish we could vote her out.

We really need an age cap on elected officials, 65 would be good.

I think she might just actually be an idiot. Freedom In The World is a SCORE out of 100. You can be a senior citizen and still understand the difference between a score where 1 is the worst and 100 is the best, and a list of the top 100 where 1 is the best and 100 is the worst.

The killing of Harvey Milk was a tragedy in many ways, and one of the less-known is that it created a power vacuum that made Pelosi's political career possible.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 4:18 pm Right. Dementia is not one-size-fits-all. And also, you have wise, experienced elders (rare as they are), plus dipshit young people (less rare).

Age caps would be as much of a detriment to say, Sanders as they would be to Biden or Pelosi. Not implying that Sanders was perfect, but you know...

Fuck, real campaign finance reform would be an even better start to all this than term limits. Such a goddamn circus, politics in this country.

I think if the goal is a guardrail that keeps people who aren’t capable of performing the job out of the job, I agree with the principle. I think age is an easy one to pick, but I also don’t think it’s a good thing to use. Our politics are littered with people incapable of rational or complex thoughts regardless of age, so I’m not really down with age limits as one of the protections against fools in politics.

I’ve been trying to develop the idea of a of demerit system of sorts for elected officials that has pretty strict rules about how they broadcast and deliver information. For instance, coordinating with known criminals is worth enough demerits to get you kicked out of office, or knowingly lying about something on TV or social media 3 or more times gets you kicked out.

Also somehow have a barrier between the Alex Jones, MTG’s, Roger Stones of the world and elected people who are supposed to be working for the good of the people.

I dunno….I’m spitballing, but once people are in office, unless another person has the money to challenge them, it’s difficult to get them out. That shouldn’t be the case, and if they are clearly lying or just cheating the system for personal gain, the current guardrails don’t work well at all.

^ Both parties' unwillingness to challenge an incumbent seems to contribute to the problem.

This is happening again.

(U.S. lawmakers arrive in Taiwan with China tensions simmering)

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-paci ... 022-08-14/

enframed wrote: Sat Jul 09, 2022 1:16 pm I know nothing of this Jonathan Haidt or who he pals around with. Yes of course what's happening is more complicated than what the essay suggests. But the current form of social media (algorithms) is a problem and seems to be contributing to greater social polarization, and it's likely not going away or and will not be altered any time soon. And one can agree with Haidt here and not whatever his ideology might be.

Also, what exactly does "X% not using the site" mean? I don't have a Twitter account, but I certainly see posts, multiple every day, namely posts embedded in message boards like this one and others. There's one in this very thread a couple pages back. That surely ought to count as some form of "use." If you count seeing posts via third parties as use, I bet the percentage of users goes up quite a lot. I know some people who work in TV news. Twitter informs a lot of TV news stories and many stories are reported on Twitter before being reported by TV news. It's becoming increasingly difficult to separate Twitter from TV news media.

"Using" Twitter (or IG or FB) is much more complicated than simply having a Twitter account and using the site itself. Edit: In other words, the reach of social media goes far beyond only the people who have accounts.

I don't think anybody denies that social media is having an effect on culture (how could it not?), with one recent and gross example being the effect of Instagram on teenage girls. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/tech ... agram.html
But I have two big issues I have with his framing. First, I believe he overstates the effect. Facebook, Twitter, et al did not bring us to this point. There were some major cultural calamities and events that would seem to have a much greater impact. Leaving aside the wholesale dismantling of the social safety net over the past 40 years, or ever-worsening effects of global climate change, two specific moments probably bear quite a bit of blame. First, the disastrous "war on terror," which, among other things exacerbated white power and militia movements (see "Bringing the War Home" by Katheen Belew). Second the Great Recession of 2008, after which nobody of consequence paid any kind of price and the poor were scapegoated by the right-wing. Both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party both came basically directly as a result of it. My second issue is I don't think polarization is the problem. The problem is the that right-wing authoritarianism is on the rise and has captured major institutions. You can't really both-sides that shit, no matter how many students at Oberlin get mad at Dave Chappelle.