US Politics Mega-thread - Page 731

On December 22 2013 06:22 Poffel wrote:

But Sam, phallic appropriation theory (patent pending) clearly shows that the transnominalist reproduction of gender capital in post-ideological markets is a simultaneously structuring and structured semiotic - or, rather, semiologic - process of geo-memetic virtuality. So, as you see, what you're saying makes no sense.

...
A study by CDP, a research group, asked large firms based or operating in America what tools they had for managing risk; 29 said they used an internal carbon price. Anecdotally, more apply such a price but did not mention it as a risk-mitigation measure. This is the first economy-wide picture of how far internal carbon pricing has gone and what it is used for.

The prices range from $6-7 a tonne of carbon dioxide at Microsoft to $60 a tonne at Exxon Mobil. The span is not surprising, since companies use carbon prices for different purposes. As a rule, those whose assets have a long productive life and which might be affected by green policies far into the future (such as oil companies) use higher prices than consumer-goods firms whose products are mainly influenced by current policies (see chart)
+ Show Spoiler +
...
Perhaps the most intriguing thing about the prices, though, is how high some of them are. The market price of carbon is €4.90 ($6.70) per tonne of CO2 in the EU, $11.50 in California. Big oil companies charge $34 or more. That is closer to the “social cost of carbon”—the damage from an extra tonne of CO2—than to the market price. America’s administration recently estimated the social cost at $37 a tonne. These prices change behaviour. A huge amount of attention is paid to government action. But the sort of carbon price some companies are using for planning would, if it became a market price, have a much bigger impact than any of the policies that governments are now talking about.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas won the Iowa caucuses in 2008 before quitting the presidential race.

He skipped 2012 contest entirely -- "All the factors say go, but my hearts say no" was how he described his decision back then.

And now, with 2016 in the distance, might he make another go of it?

Here's what he told "Fox News Sunday" when asked whether he's open to the possibility of running: "The honest answer is yes."

He says the party has "a strong stable" of potential candidates and he'll make a decision after the 2014 election.

And how does he give the odds now? "Maybe at this point it is 50-50."

And we've heard this before -- "It would be a decision of the heart."

On December 22 2013 10:45 KwarK wrote:

and what about male masculinists? I'd argue it's the exact same field so are they better or worse than women?

A covert CIA program has helped Colombia's government kill at least two dozen leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the rebel insurgency also known as FARC, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

The National Security Agency has also provided "substantial eavesdropping help" to the Colombian government, according to the Post. And the U.S. provided Colombia with GPS equipment that can be used to transform regular munitions into "smart bombs" that can accurately home in on specific targets, even if they are located in dense jungles.

In March 2008, Colombian forces killed a top FARC commander, Raul Reyes, in one of several jungle camps the rebels operated in Ecuador, just across the border. The Post report Saturday said Colombia used U.S.-made smart bombs in the operation.

The report is based on interviews with more than 30 former and current U.S. and Colombian officials, who the Post said spoke on condition of anonymity because the program is classified and ongoing.

The CIA would not comment on the Post report. Without going into detail, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos told the Post that the CIA has been "of help," providing Colombian forces with "better training and knowledge."

The multibillion-dollar program was funded secretly and separately from $9 billion in aid that the U.S. has openly provided to Colombia, mostly in military assistance. It was authorized by President George W. Bush and has continued under President Barack Obama, the newspaper reported.

On December 23 2013 05:50 sam!zdat wrote:
did you ever go through puberty kwark?

(what amuses me most is that your idea about the fundamental androgeny of our spiritual being is basically christian - in christ there is no man or woman. What you want to do is usher in the kingdom of heaven where we can cast off the sin of our bodies and hormones and other unpleasant chemicals and live in perfect androgynous harmony.)

On December 23 2013 05:24 KwarK wrote:
The idea that a gender could be obsolete is absurd because the differences between the genders are so incredibly minor in the overall scheme of things that any one factor that would render either obsolete would make both obsolete. Neither gender is the superior model about to replace the other and anyone who claims otherwise a very silly person.

On December 23 2013 06:11 MoltkeWarding wrote:
And by which primal callings is our nurture supposedly guided? i.e. How am I to raise my prospective son/daughter once the collective consciousness to which I belong has been liberated from the habits of gender/race/class identification?

Young urban women today are not oppressed by the inaccessibility of male careers. Overwhelmingly in schools and colleges, they complain about the lack of direction, not knowing what to do with their lives.

On December 23 2013 06:18 Jormundr wrote:

I think you just described young people.

On December 23 2013 05:50 sam!zdat wrote:
(what amuses me most is that your idea about the fundamental androgeny of our spiritual being is basically christian - in christ there is no man or woman. What you want to do is usher in the kingdom of heaven where we can cast off the sin of our bodies and hormones and other unpleasant chemicals and live in perfect androgynous harmony.

The majority of people living within a discrete civilisation will always elect a complementary manner in which nurture builds upon the imperatives of nature, rather than in opposition to them.

America's newest, most expensive coal-fired power plant is hailed as one of the cleanest on the planet, thanks to government-backed technology that removes carbon dioxide and keeps it out of the atmosphere.

But once the carbon is stripped away, it will be used to do something that is not so green at all.

It will extract oil.

When President Barack Obama first endorsed this "carbon-capture" technology, the idea was that it would fight global warming by sparing the atmosphere from more greenhouse gases. It makes coal plants cleaner by burying deep underground the carbon dioxide that typically is pumped out of smokestacks.

But that green vision proved too expensive and complicated. So the administration accepted a trade-off.

To help the environment, the government allows power companies to sell the carbon dioxide to oil companies, which pump it into old oil fields to force more crude to the surface. A side benefit is that the carbon gets permanently stuck underground.

The program shows the ingenuity of the oil industry, which is using government green-energy money to subsidize oil production. But it also showcases the environmental trade-offs Obama is willing to make, but rarely talks about, in his fight against global warming.

Companies have been injecting carbon dioxide into old oil fields for decades. But the tactic hasn't been seen as a pollution-control strategy until recently.

Obama has spent more than $1 billion on carbon-capture projects tied to oil fields and has pledged billions more for clean coal. Recently, the administration said it wanted to require all new coal-fired power plants to capture carbon dioxide. Four power plants in the U.S. and Canada planning to do so intend to sell their carbon waste for oil recovery.

On December 23 2013 07:09 Nyxisto wrote:


What's so bad about that idea in principle?



Yes people who are as smart as monkeys usually behave like monkeys. That doesn't mean that the (growing) minority of people who actually use their brain and don't act on their instincts shouldn't be treated equally.

On December 23 2013 07:21 MoltkeWarding wrote:


Isn't the doctrine of equality for its own sake an instinctive belief adopted by the collegiate middle-class nowadays? What about it distinguishes it as a thought rather than an instinct?

On December 23 2013 07:26 Nyxisto wrote:


Sure some people have adopted equality as an ideology, the same way many environmentalists may belief in environmental protection just for ideological reasons. That doesn't change the fact that environmental protection is a very reasonable thing. You don't need to be very ideological to belief that the differences between many males and females are so small that a very high degree of equality is a reasonable goal.

On December 23 2013 07:31 MoltkeWarding wrote:


If the differences between males and females are so small, why is a high degree of equality necessary as a goal at all? Is it because the majority of people are monkeys?