US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6973

On February 26 2017 02:50 Ghostcom wrote:


How come you repeatedly misrepresent it then? And considering Australia has made it work, how is it pretty naive? Mind you, Australia has failed from a humanitarian perspective in so far that their "camp" is complete and utter shit. But they have managed to if not downright stop, at least stem the tide of people crossing the ocean.

On February 26 2017 02:02 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Mate, the US is the richest country in the world, and actually, in history of humankind. It's not hitting some kind of lottery. It's human beings knocking at your door for protection and help when they flee war, death and persecutions and you guys demonizing them and telling them to fuck off in some camp in the desert.

And don't tell me the US can't absorb a few thousand of refugees or doesn't have the means to. It's ridiculous.

So again, what strikes me is the complete lack of empathy and humanity of the right. You see people in need and danger and all you think about is that you don't want to share any of your priviledges.

The gop is seen around the world as a party of mean, egoistic people. Maybe it would be time to reflect on that. Not the leaders, who actually are horrible people, but from you, voters and supporters. Thinking like a nice, decent and compassionate guy does not cause any harm.

On February 26 2017 03:00 Plansix wrote:

Australia is surrounded by oceans and exported all their refugees to horrible camps on an island. They didn't really stop the flow of refugees as much as increased the resistance to coming to their country. It is the politically maneuver of passing the buck to other nations.

And there will always be nations willing to accept refugees. And even if all the nations say no,(which won't happen) there will be smaller communities who give refugees shelter within those nations. Your plan is naive because it is an attempt to stop basic human kindness in the hope that people will stop seeking it. It isn't a solution.

On February 26 2017 03:05 LegalLord wrote:
Also, keep in mind: Hillary's 65k refugees, much less Obama's 10k, barely make a dent in the actual count of displaced people. All you're doing is picking off the most well-off of those (who are still far, far below Western standards) and importing them as a feel-good gesture.

For the price of the projected direct cost of "open the floodgates" Germany could have taken care of all of the Syrian refugees, if you consider that it costs 1/10 to deal with them in Jordan/Turkey. With more political support to boot.

On February 26 2017 03:51 LegalLord wrote:

Money and political will is a constraint.

Putting refugees in camps is as "taken care of" as they need to be. Fleeing a war doesn't entitle you to live in the first world.

On February 26 2017 03:56 Simberto wrote:
A big problem with the "deal with the problem where it occurs" argument is, that it is only made when talking about taking in refugees at home.

When you start with talking about dealing with the problem where it occurs, the same people who were in favor for it when talking about taking in refugees usually claim that it is not there problem, and that you should let the people of the region take care of it.

To me, it often feels like an excuse to just do nothing at all.

On February 26 2017 03:36 Dan HH wrote:

I keep seeing this mentioned by various people here and it's a doubly shit argument. Firstly by making a utilitarian false equivalence between resettlement programs in the west with a makeshift tent city in Jordan as a 1:1 'taken care of'. And secondly by suggesting that it's a zero sum game and doing the former reduced the capacity of helping by the latter.

White House officials said a report disputing the threat posed by travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries included in President Donald Trump's executive order was "not the intelligence assessment the president asked for," according to a report published Saturday by the Wall Street Journal.

“The President asked for an intelligence assessment. This is not the intelligence assessment the President asked for,” an unnamed senior administration official said as quoted in the Wall Street Journal's report.

Unnamed officials said that the report ignored information that supports the travel ban, per the report, and that they have not yet been presented with the report they requested.

The Associated Press reported on Friday that it had obtained a draft document of the report, which concluded that citizenship of the countries included in Trump's ban is an "unlikely indicator" of terrorism threat level.

When Trump announced the now-blocked ban in January, however, he specifically cited "foreign terrorist entry" as one threat it would eliminate.

“We all know what that means,” he said.

Gillian M. Christensen, acting press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, told the Wall Street Journal that the dispute over the report was on the basis of "sources and quality, not politics."

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to TPM's requests for comment.

On February 26 2017 04:28 GoTuNk! wrote:


You are right in that sense, taking care for them close to their homes is much better than brining them to the west. How is someone supposed to make living when they don't speak the language, is ilitirate on their own language, barely attended school, does not know anyone, and doesn't share or even understand values of the local culture? Millenials can't find jobs, and somehow refugees are expected to magically adapt and earn living. It is inevitable that most of them end up as welfare leechs, and it's not their fault to a large extent.

They should be helped abroad. A tent city in Jordan is way better, and a chance to help them all.

On February 26 2017 04:28 GoTuNk! wrote:


You are right in that sense, though I think you interpret it the other way. Taking care for them close to their homes is MUCH BETTER than bringing them to the west. How is someone supposed to make living when they don't speak the language, is ilitirate on their own language, barely attended school, does not know anyone, and doesn't share or even understand values of the local culture? Millenials can't find jobs, and somehow refugees are expected to magically adapt and earn living. It is inevitable that most of them end up as welfare leechs, and it's not their fault to a large extent.

They should be helped abroad. A tent city in Jordan is way better, and a chance to help them all.

President Donald Trump is on the look-out for a chief science adviser, but who to choose?

If his most recent appointments are any indication of the future, then, on climate change at least, Americans should expect the president to tap a climate science denier.

So it is little surprise then that one person reportedly in the running is 77-year-old Princeton atomic physicist William Happer.

Happer has for more than a decade rejected all the credible evidence on the risks of human-caused climate change. He is often described as an “expert” on climate change, yet his record of publishing research on the issue in peer-reviewed scientific journals is almost non-existent.

So who is he?

Happer’s expertise is in atomic physics. He served in the George H.W. Bush administration as a science director.

But since the late 90s, Happer has become known for his outspoken and often offensive views on climate change and climate scientists, whom he has described as being “more like a cult.”

“They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science,” he told The Guardian.

He has also claimed that the “demonization” of carbon dioxide is like the “demonization of poor Jews under Hitler.”

In recent times Happer has been associating with conspiracy theorists and other oddballs as he rolls out the same talking points that have been his staple for years.

Since the mid-2000s, Happer was involved with the George C. Marshall Institute, a think tank that concentrated heavily on pushing claims that global warming concerns had been over-hyped. Happer was a former chair of the institute — one of many to take cash from oil giant ExxonMobil.

Happer is now the president of the CO2 Coalition — a group created after the Marshall Institute folded — with the tagline that carbon dioxide (CO2) is “vital for life.”

In 2015 Happer was caught in a sting by Greenpeace activists when he offered to write a report on the benefits of carbon dioxide for a fake fossil fuel client. He offered to find a way to hide the funder of the report by asking for the payment to go to the CO2 Coalition.

Happer’s position is shown to be wrong by all the credible evidence and scientific institutions across the world. His claims can also be easily checked.

So what are his claims?

In December 2016, Happer repeated his long-debunked talking points in an interview with Stefan Molyneux (himself an odd character who has had to fend off accusations that he is running a cult-like group through his FreeDomainRadio enterprise).

In the interview, Happer talks about a geological period known as the Phanerozoic eon which started about 540 million years ago and stretches to the present.

Happer says that over this period CO2 has been much higher, suggesting that everything was all fine and, by implication, it would be fine again if levels of carbon dioxide in the air got up to 1,000 parts per million or more.