US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6577

On January 17 2017 10:01 Blisse wrote:


Found this neat gradient of the news. Would move a bunch of things like Slate left and down, Huffington down, Vox left and down, WSJ left, WaPo left, AP up, Reuters up, etc. etc. but yeah doesn't look too off. Maybe you could argue that you should move Breitbart up a bit but I'm not reading any more of their content and giving them traffic or ad money.

It's not so much that the MSM was/is against Trump so much as lots of "normal" people are against Trump. And I would say being specifically anti-Trump is different from being anti-Republican and that spectrum.

On January 17 2017 20:24 Nebuchad wrote:


So here's the thing.

I'm living in Europe, which means my news are neutral between "liberal" and "progressive", the two main parties there.

On January 17 2017 20:19 Velr wrote:
But yeah, globalisation and Immigration are the boogymen... Its not that the bonus of a CEO (or just higher tier Manager) is bigger than the payraise all "low" employes get together - if they get one

On January 17 2017 20:32 Velr wrote:



Uhm, what?

On January 17 2017 20:33 DickMcFanny wrote:


Because they're both symptoms of capitalism.

Welfare migrants wouldn't be flocking in droves to the EU states that pay the most if

a) Their countries hadn't been ravaged by war
b) Their farmlands hadn't been destroyed by climate change
c) EU bureaucrats weren't deciding that importing millions of military aged men suppresses wages and makes people favour tighter limits on civil liberties.

And CEO wages wouldn't be as high if capitalism didn't own the political system.

Our economic system lies at the heart of most problems the world faces today.

On January 17 2017 20:24 Nebuchad wrote:


So here's the thing.

I'm living in Europe, which means my news are neutral between "liberal" and "progressive", the two main parties there.

Please tell me, have I been watching hyper partisan biased news that I shouldn't trust all my life?

On January 17 2017 20:58 Acrofales wrote:


you could also make the case that Islamic extremism has nothing to do with globalism

Almost three-quarters of Americans think President-elect Donald Trump should release his tax returns, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Seventy-four percent say Trump should release his tax returns, which the president-elect refused to do during his campaign. At his first post-election press conference last week, Trump argued that no one but members of the media care about his tax returns, reiterating that he won't release them while he's under federal audit.

He also argued that he could run his businesses and the government simultaneously, but has decided against it, putting his two adult sons in charge.

Americans are divided on whether Trump and those surrounding him are adhering to federal ethics laws. Forty-three percent believe they are, while 43 percent believe they are not.

The poll results largely fall along party lines, with 79 percent of Republicans saying Trump is adhering to ethics laws, while 44 percent of independents and 16 percent of Democrats feel that's true.

The survey was conducted via cellphones and landline phones Jan. 12-15, polling 1,005 adults. It has a margin of error of 3.5 points and was conducted in both English and Spanish.

On January 17 2017 20:24 Nebuchad wrote:


So here's the thing.

I'm living in Europe, which means my news are neutral between "liberal" and "progressive", the two main parties there.

Please tell me, have I been watching hyper partisan biased news that I shouldn't trust all my life?

On January 17 2017 22:59 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

You got to understand the chart in view of the politics of USA. USA is very loyalist and tribal and split into two camps. Read "liberal" as "views in line with people who would vote for Democratic Party" and "Conservative" with "views in line with people who would vote for the Republican Party".

Global warming obviously refers to temperature increases across the entire globe. We know the Earth is warming, we know it is human-caused, we have a pretty good idea about how much the warming will be in the future and what some of the consequences are. In fact, when it comes to the Earth’s average climate, scientists have a pretty good understanding.

On the other hand, no one lives in the average climate. We live spread out north, west, east, and south. On islands, large continents, inland or in coastal regions. Many of us want to know what’s going to happen to the climate where we live. How will my life be affected in the future?

This type of question is answered in a very recent study published by scientists from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The team, which includes Dr. Raymond Bradley and researcher Dr. Ambarish Karmalkar looked specifically at the Northeastern United States. They found that this area will warm much more rapidly than the globe as a whole. In fact, it will warm faster than any other United States region. The authors expect the Northeast US will warm 50% faster than the planet as a whole. They also find that the United States will reach a 2 degree Celsius warming 10–20 years before the globe as a whole.

So why does this matter? Well first, it matters because some of the effects people will experience are directly tied to the temperature increase in their region. For instance, we know that warmer air leads to more intense precipitation. In fact, we are already observing increases in very heavy rainfall across the United States (especially in the Northeast). Based on this new research, that trend will only get worse. It means that winters in this region will get warmer and wetter – more winter precipitation will likely occur as rain rather than snow. This affects the availability of water into the spring months. It also means that summers will have more intense heat waves which will lead to more severe droughts.

However, there is another impact to this study. We often hear that it is important to avoid increasing the Earth’s temperature by 2°C if we want to prevent the worst risks of climate change. This 2-degree target is somewhat based on science and somewhat based on messaging and politics. There’s nothing magic about this number. It isn’t like everything will be fine so long as we stay below 2 degrees; similarly the world won’t end if we exceed 2 degrees.

It turns out that staying below a 2°C warming means we think we have a reasonable chance of avoiding some of the worst climate impacts and some of the potentially disastrous tipping points. But this is really just an educated guess. Some people have argued convincingly that our target should be lower, perhaps 1.5°C. Others argue that even 2°C is not achievable.

Regardless of the so-called temperature target, what this study shows is that even if we do keep the globe as a whole to a 2°C temperature increase, some regions, like the Northeast United States will far exceed this threshold. So, what is “safe” for the world is unsafe for certain regions.

Not to muddy the waters, but the whole issue of “safe” versus “unsafe” also depends on what climate effects we are concerned about and where we live. As an example, if you are concerned about heavy precipitation and flooding in your area, then local climate change (in your area) is pretty important to you. Conversely, if you are concerned about sea level rise (which is a global phenomenon), then the global temperature change is of most interest.

So really, what this latest paper does is provide sound evidence that we need to keep in mind BOTH the global and the regional climate effects. We need to think about which effects we care about most and how the global and regional temperature changes will cause those effects. Furthermore, we cannot simply be lulled into a sense of safety even if we reduce emissions dramatically and keep global temperature changes small. There still could be large effects in our neighborhood.

On January 17 2017 23:14 ChristianS wrote:

It isn't just that though. The far left and far right often hate their own parties for not being liberal/conservative enough. If liberal is subbed for "in line with the Dem party" it wouldn't make sense for extreme liberals to hate the Dems for being insufficiently in line with themselves.

On January 17 2017 22:59 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

You got to understand the chart in view of the politics of USA. USA is very loyalist and tribal and split into two camps. Read "liberal" as "views in line with people who would vote for Democratic Party" and "Conservative" with "views in line with people who would vote for the Republican Party".

On January 17 2017 23:31 Nebuchad wrote:

I understand that perfectly, it's not a very sophisticated idea. I just think it's incorrect.

On January 17 2017 23:41 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
It depends. Do you read/watch any of those news? In the UK, the only ones in that chart than are available to be read are The Guardian, The Economist, the BBC and maybe Reuters. But truly none of those actually would fit into the simple x axis spectrum displayed here. The chart basically makes no sense outside of the US.