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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

ohsointocats from The Sand Wastes Since: Oct, 2011 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#48676: Feb 2nd 2013 at 12:52:15 PM

How do we make people less violent, then?

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#48677: Feb 2nd 2013 at 12:54:40 PM

?

What? I'm not sure why they say "LOG SCALE!" there, since the axis is linear.

The second graph demonstrates there's 0 correlation between gun access and non-gun related murders. This suggests that guns don't "displace" other murders.

Aprilla Since: Aug, 2010
#48678: Feb 2nd 2013 at 1:04:24 PM

[up][up]

Nutritious food, adequate public schooling, ''quality public schooling, affordable college educations that focus on cultural and intellectual enrichment instead of putting more money into the pockets of athletic authorities and the campus administration, reinforcing family values (and not that "leave it to Beaver" bullshit).

When I say "family values", I mean sitting down with your kid and encouraging their strengths while calling attention to their weaknesses without putting them down. Giving them discipline without beating the everlasting shit out of them. When they say they want to be a rock star, a scientist or a doctor, don't shoot down their dreams. Just be realistic with them. Don't get married because it'll make your priest and your family happy. Don't get married just because you got pregnant. Recognize incompatible partners before you tie the knot. Pay attention to what your kids consume. Set the example by paying attention to what you consume.

We could also try, you know, decreasing the gap between the rich and the poor to the point where it's manageable. There will probably always be economic classism, but with the imbalance in current standards of living combined with how we pretty much worship plutocrats, we could stand to sort things out in that area.

A lot of this doesn't sound like it has anything to do with violence, but in many ways, it does. The silver lining here is that multiple reputable studies have shown that overall violence in the US is decreasing.

edited 2nd Feb '13 1:10:30 PM by Aprilla

Bluesqueak Since: Jan, 2010
#48679: Feb 2nd 2013 at 1:25:08 PM

Um - are you guys not even slightly worried that (according to that statement) current, serving members of your armed forces are weighing in on a political question?

That is, they are giving their opinion on a matter currently under public debate as members of the Special Forces. They are making a political speech for one side of that debate, which is prohibited by the UCMJ. And they clearly know that they are making a speech for one side only, because they're staying anonymous.

(Oh, and their grasp of history is crap, too, but that's another matter).

edited 2nd Feb '13 1:25:34 PM by Bluesqueak

It ain't over 'till the ring hits the lava.
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48680: Feb 2nd 2013 at 1:52:26 PM

What? I'm not sure why they say "LOG SCALE!" there, since the axis is linear.

...You did look at the tick marks on the left side, right? The evenly-spaced ones that go "0.02, 0.06, 0.25, 1, 4"?

The silver lining here is that multiple reputable studies have shown that overall violence in the US is decreasing.

It's actually unexpectedly low for the scale of economic disparity we've been having. If we got our shit in gear and fixed that, we'd probably be decently golden.

edited 2nd Feb '13 1:55:46 PM by Pykrete

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#48681: Feb 2nd 2013 at 1:58:47 PM

OOPS! Stupid me. Not 100% sure how that changes the graph.

Blueeyedrat Since: Oct, 2010
#48682: Feb 2nd 2013 at 2:00:36 PM

I think the general rule is "straight line on log scale = huge upward curve on linear scale".

Aprilla Since: Aug, 2010
#48683: Feb 2nd 2013 at 2:06:49 PM

"It's actually unexpectedly low for the scale of economic disparity we've been having. If we got our shit in gear and fixed that, we'd probably be decently golden."

True.

Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48684: Feb 2nd 2013 at 2:11:29 PM

Yes. Straight line on log scale is an exponential curve on linear scale, since you're basically just applying the same transform to the axis and data to flip between them. Log scale is used to highlight order of magnitude (typically extreme changes in it) rather than absolute difference.

The problem is that they graph two different statistics of relatively similar order of magnitude on different scales. Their second "flat" graph of non-gun murders would be a relatively meaningless scattergram if they used the same scale of the first one, and their first log-scale graph would basically just look like the same "everyone's low and the US is a huge anomaly for some reason" as in the Washington Post video game graph if you didn't stretch out the difference between 0.02 and 0.25 to take up half the graph. When you get down to that fine level of granularity, chances are it's not one extra gun per 100 people or whatever that's causing an increase that minute.

edited 2nd Feb '13 2:55:45 PM by Pykrete

TheyCallMeTomu Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#48685: Feb 2nd 2013 at 2:15:00 PM

The second graph isn't intended to be compared to the first graph so much as it demonstrates the point "guns don't reduce non-gun violence."

And the correlation between gun accessibility and gun violence is astoundingly higher than the graph presents it. If anything, they're underselling the point.

Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48686: Feb 2nd 2013 at 2:35:16 PM

They also appear to have used inconsistent sources. The gun-murders-per-100k numbers on the log-scale graph don't line up with what are supposedly the same figures from the Washington Post graph — notably, Netherlands shifted down to coincide with less guns, Canada shifted up slightly to coincide with more, France (more guns) got pulled up far past Australia where the other graph had them roughly equal, and Germany is on the wrong side of both of them.

And furthermore, deleting the US (extreme outlier) from the log-scale graph would result in a very, very small correlation if any, just like deleting it from the WP graph does.

edited 2nd Feb '13 2:38:30 PM by Pykrete

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#48687: Feb 2nd 2013 at 2:36:48 PM

How do we make people less violent, then?
What Aprilla said, largely. Treat the underlying causes, rather than the symptoms. Reduce the necessity to resort to crime by giving people more legitimate opportunities to improve their social and financial situation. Make sure people with mental health issues get the care they need. Generally make the country a better, easier place to live and violence will become less necessary.

Um - are you guys not even slightly worried that (according to that statement) current, serving members of your armed forces are weighing in on a political question?
Not really. Why should we be? Members of the military are allowed to have political opinions just as much as everyone else. It's not like he's saying that they'll mutiny if they don't get their way.

I mean, yeah, it's not kosher as far as military regulations go, but that's on them. I don't see why we, as civilians, should be concerned.

The second graph isn't intended to be compared to the first graph so much as it demonstrates the point "guns don't reduce non-gun violence."
It's supposed to demonstrate that guns don't reduce non-gun violence by being compared to the first graph. That's why it's misleading. If you just look at the position of each country on both graphs, without realizing that they're vastly different scales, then you come to very different (and wrong) conclusions.

And the correlation between gun accessibility and gun violence is astoundingly higher than the graph presents it.
No one's disputing that. Easier access to guns leads to guns being used more often. That's a given. What we're talking about is whether people who would have used a gun, but couldn't get access to one, use something else instead. We're not interested in comparing gun accessibility to gun crime, because we know there's a positive correlation. We're interested in comparing gun accessibility to violence overall.

The logic that they're setting up with those two graphs is "if restricting access to guns doesn't reduce violence overall, then there will be more non-gun violence in places where access to guns is more restricted. Non-gun violence isn't higher in places where access to guns is more restricted, therefore restricting access to guns reduces violence overall". The problem is that they don't control for any variable besides "access to guns" (such as, you know, incidence of violent crime in general) so the comparison is meaningless.

Going solely by those two graphs, you can come to almost any conclusion you want. For example: Switzerland and the United States have far fewer non-gun murders than gun murders. However, literally every other country on the graph has far more non-gun murders than gun murders. (This is obscured by the differing scales on the two graphs, which make it look like there are fewer non-gun murders in every country except the US.) Importantly, this is true regardless of how easily accessible guns are in each country. Clearly, then, gun accessibility has no bearing on the rate of violence.

Or, you know, there are other factors not shown in those graphs.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Achaemenid HGW XX/7 from Ruschestraße 103, Haus 1 Since: Dec, 2011 Relationship Status: Giving love a bad name
HGW XX/7
#48688: Feb 2nd 2013 at 2:38:29 PM

[up]

The UK's total murder rate is well below the USA's, even accounting for the gun disparity. See here. Britain has an average of 1.2 murders per 100,000 heads of the population, whilst the USA has 4.8 per 100,000. Planet Earth has 6.9 per 100,000.

Make of that what you will.

edited 2nd Feb '13 2:41:13 PM by Achaemenid

Schild und Schwert der Partei
Linhasxoc Since: Jun, 2009
#48689: Feb 2nd 2013 at 4:23:20 PM

This is only semi-related, but Politifact seems to have been taken over by domain squatters.

DrunkGirlfriend from Castle Geekhaven Since: Jan, 2011
#48690: Feb 2nd 2013 at 4:43:02 PM

[up] I think you're mistyping the domain. It's coming up fine for me.

http://www.politifact.com/

"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian
Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#48691: Feb 2nd 2013 at 4:48:17 PM

Did something happen recently that I'm unaware of? Obama's promise kept meter seems to have spiked over the last few months and his in the works meter is almost at zero. I didn't think he got that much done since the election.

darksidevoid Anti-Gnosis Weapon from The Frontiers (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Robosexual
Anti-Gnosis Weapon
#48692: Feb 2nd 2013 at 5:58:41 PM

[up][up]I'm having exactly the same problem. It's pretty annoying.

Anyway, how about some good news?

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a long-awaited rule Friday finalizing the details for a database that will list payments made to physicians by pharmaceutical and device manufacturers.

It's part of the Affordable Care Act, apparently.

GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.
DevilTakeMe Coin Operator from Wild Wasteland Since: Jan, 2010
Coin Operator
#48693: Feb 2nd 2013 at 6:42:52 PM

I cringe every time someone brings up that knife attack in China. The unfortunate thing is that guy wasn't out to kill children, he was out there to maim them, as he was cutting off ears and fingers. Not exactly a good comparison.

Glove and Boots is good for Blog!
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#48694: Feb 2nd 2013 at 6:48:48 PM

[up] My mistake then, I assumed it was an attack along the same lines. Assuming you are right, it is not a fit comparison.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#48695: Feb 2nd 2013 at 7:19:24 PM

[up][up][up][up][up]Nope, I still got a domain squatter when I used your link.

edited 2nd Feb '13 7:19:33 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Linhasxoc Since: Jun, 2009
#48696: Feb 2nd 2013 at 7:26:30 PM

I think you're mistyping the domain. It's coming up fine for me.

I have a bookmark. That's not it.

Since it's working for some people and not others, I suspect there's a DNS issue somewhere.

NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#48697: Feb 2nd 2013 at 9:10:24 PM

The UK's total murder rate is well below the USA's, even accounting for the gun disparity.
Well, yeah — that's sort of the point. The number of factors that go into something like a nation's murder rate is so enormous that doing a simple one-to-one comparison and saying something like "the UK has tighter gun control and a lower murder rate, therefore gun control prevents murders" isn't really legit.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Bluesqueak Since: Jan, 2010
#48698: Feb 3rd 2013 at 1:30:55 AM

@Devil: There was a machete attack in the UK a few months after Dunblane.

The guy was insane - literally, he's still in a mental hospital. But that was used at the time to argue very strict gun control was the way to go: the number of dead at Dunblane versus the zero fatalities at Wolverhampton was ... striking.

edited 3rd Feb '13 1:31:36 AM by Bluesqueak

It ain't over 'till the ring hits the lava.
Achaemenid HGW XX/7 from Ruschestraße 103, Haus 1 Since: Dec, 2011 Relationship Status: Giving love a bad name
HGW XX/7
#48699: Feb 3rd 2013 at 2:37:44 AM

[up][up]

I agree, I was just pointing it out because someone asked for it. Notice that I deliberately didn't draw a conclusion?

edited 3rd Feb '13 3:54:42 AM by Achaemenid

Schild und Schwert der Partei
DevilTakeMe Coin Operator from Wild Wasteland Since: Jan, 2010
Coin Operator
#48700: Feb 3rd 2013 at 3:52:02 AM

[up][up] It worked as a better argument for improved school security, from what I understand.

This is, after all, how the man in China was stopped - armed guards from the school (who were present only because of the spate of school stabbings in 2010) apprehended the suspect before he could continue his knife rampage.

Then again, two weeks later, another man in china crashed his car into 13 kids and then tried the car on fire.

Glove and Boots is good for Blog!

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