US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7409

On April 27 2017 08:01 zlefin wrote:
I wish we could imprison/punish politicians for spouting off BS; then we could remove all the bad ones and be left with the oh, 3 or so, who aren't trash. just watching a bit of cspan and watching the utter nonsense some of the house republicans are spewing.

it's too bad people don't vote against politicians for spouting off BS.

On April 27 2017 09:59 Danglars wrote:

Yeah, that wouldn't work out at all. But it's perfectly natural to despise most of the political class.

Of course with our political differences, I don't know if you're referring to the maybe 2/3 I also dislike, or the 1/3 that I'd be applauding. Some of that is just the political divide. In this partisan age, normal differences arising from a different set of worldviews, morals, life experiences, and principals will culminate in very different ideas at what's utter nonsense and what's gospel truth.

On April 27 2017 10:22 zlefin wrote:


i'd be referring to both of those most likely, since I chose to only spare 3 congresspeople out of the 535 (not counting non-voting members). don't know who, but I'm sure there's a few who are ok.
most of the people spewing the BS probably know it's BS, but being lawyers and politicians, they know it's what they have to say.

plenty of room in between utter nonsense and gospel truth for the actual reasonable people to work with.
and plenty of knowledge of ethical philosophy and facts to establish very good grounding for what's BS and what isn't. sadly most politics is about dodging facts.

On April 27 2017 11:33 zlefin wrote:
it most certainly can be evaluated by dispassionate moral philosophy and factual analysis. even if it was not meant to be.
even with wildly differing worldviews, a lot of things simply do not hold up to scrutiny much at all. And I would prefer they be held to standards that at least hold up to scrutiny to a fair degree, as the courts generally do.

3 out of 535 is easy to get to when you have very high standards. though it's really more of a guesstimate.

On April 27 2017 12:05 Adreme wrote:
Oh good lord, he cant negotiate with the members of his own party and you want me to believe he can make a deal with another nation that is good for America. America is going to get eviscerated in this new deal. Nothing I have seen has shown me that anyone in that White House knows how to negotiate with anyone.

On April 27 2017 18:23 Biff The Understudy wrote:
So this tax reform is a textbook reverse Robin Hood apparently. Steal to the poor, give to the rich. I guess those transfer of wealth upward are deep down the raison d'être of the GOP. Bake it with a sauce of white resentment and you pull the perfect con by getting blue collars to vote to get robbed.

People who know their Washington, is it going to pass? Because at a time where inequalities are one of our biggest problems, this is simply horrifying.

On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote:

Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities.

The failure of American politics to deal with, or even coherently discuss, climate change was perhaps best illustrated when James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, took to the floor of the US senate with a ziploc bag and a mischievous grin in February 2015.

“We keep hearing 2014 has been the warmest year on record,” Inhofe said, pulling a snowball from the bag. “You know what this is? It’s a snowball, just from outside here. It’s very, very cold out, very unseasonal.” Inhofe, apparently content that 150 years of global warming research had been swatted away as nonsense, playfully tossed the snowball at the senate president.

Two years later – both of which set new global records for heat – at least half a dozen former aides to Inhofe, the fiercest critic of mainstream climate science in Congress, have been hired to top positions at the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the EPA who has an erstwhile Inhofe aid as his chief of staff, recently erred by denying that carbon dioxide was a primary driver of global warming.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, has vacillated on the issue but has previously called climate science “bullshit” and a “hoax”. His actions since becoming president perhaps speak loudest: he has set about dismantling the Clean Power Plan, thrown open federal lands to coal mining, ordered the revision of clean air regulations and halted new vehicle emissions standards.

But amid climate activists’ despair, there are fresh shoots of hope that, as a party, Republicans’ climate intransigence is shifting. A growing group of Republicans in Congress are newly emboldened and are speaking out in favor of finally addressing a crisis that is starting to bite their constituents.

The Climate Solutions Caucus, set up just last year, now has 38 members, half of them Republicans. The Congressional group, which is crafting bipartisan action on climate change, is bolstered by a new chorus of big business, faith groups and young college-based Republicans that are demanding that the GOP drops the climate skepticism that has become a key part of its tribal identity over the past decade.

“The vast majority of Republicans in private buy the science – the likes of Inhofe are in the minority,” said Danny Richter, legislative director of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a non-profit group that painstakingly helped put together the caucus.

“What Republicans needed was safe passage to talk about climate action in public, to not be the the first one to walk down that rickety bridge. There’s now a group who can see their constituents are genuinely concerned about climate change.

“They are done with the denial. That should really shift something fundamental in American politics.”

The standard bearer in Congress is Carlos Curbelo, whose district includes the Florida Keys, an area in dire peril from the advancing seas. Curbelo, the son of Cuban migrants, said his generally moderate views and age – he’s 37 – make him “both an old school Republican and also a new young Republican.”

Curbelo was the first Republican to join the Climate Solutions Caucus and co-chairs it alongside Ted Deutch, a Florida Democrat. In a bid to get beyond partisanship, members of the group are evenly split. “If you want to join as a Democrat, you have to bring along a Republican,” said Deutch. “It’s a Noah’s Ark sort of approach, which is appropriate given the subject matter. We don’t argue about the science. It’s all very respectful.”

The wretched polarization of climate politics in the US showed signs of shifting last year when a group of 17 Republicans put their name to a resolution that called for “meaningful and responsible action” to the heatwaves, storms, floods and rising sea levels wrought by climate change. After surviving last year’s election despite committing what was thought to be a party heresy, this group is now attempting to break their colleague’s collective fever over climate.

On April 27 2017 12:30 Danglars wrote:

Sorry, these things really do conflict more than you presume they do. When it comes right down to it, your comprehension of moral philosophy and facts are hopelessly tinted by your political bent as evidenced by your posting across three years and a little. Your scrutiny is biased, your standards are biased, the standards of courts shift, so it's really just a question of your left-ward focused political views and how they determine what you consider sound/unsound, productive/unproductive, blind/clear, supported/unsupported, factual/counter-factual, apt/inapt, and the rest. But that's probably a question I'd ask you in a decade. Anyways, that's it.

On April 27 2017 18:23 Biff The Understudy wrote:
So this tax reform is a textbook reverse Robin Hood apparently. Steal to the poor, give to the rich. I guess those transfer of wealth upward are deep down the raison d'être of the GOP. Bake it with a sauce of white resentment and you pull the perfect con by getting blue collars to vote to get robbed.

People who know their Washington, is it going to pass? Because at a time where inequalities are one of our biggest problems, this is simply horrifying.

On April 27 2017 21:12 Danglars wrote:

Inasmuch as you can admit the current progressive tax system is Robin Hood and a focus on inequality is pure societal envy, you can be right. If Robin Hood slows his robbery or quits the trade and things return more to keeping the money you make, it will always be criticized by progressives/progressive-leaders as tax cuts for the rich, trickle-down, etc. It's pretty passé at this point and about as surprising as claiming Republicans don't care about minorities.

Following President Trump’s executive order in January, the Department of Homeland Security rolled out a new office to help protect the victims of crime from illegal immigrants on Wednesday. In the latest of Trump’s methods to continue to crackdown on illegal immigration in the U.S., the White House also launched a new hotline in which victims or witnesses could easily report criminal incidents. But organized online under the #AlienDay hashtag, immigrants’ rights activists claimed to have quickly overwhelmed Trump’s hotline with complaints of crimes committed by space aliens.

Surrounded by the families of victims of crime committed by undocumented immigrants, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announced the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, also known as VOICE.

“All crime is terrible, but these victims as represented here are unique — and too often ignored,” Kelly said. “They are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place — because the people who victimized them often times should never have been in the country,” CNN reported:

The office will also cover cover victims of any crime with an immigration nexus, officials said. That would cover any potentially removable individual, which include legal permanent residents and visa holders who commit crimes.

The executive order, signed in January, also called for the office to issue reports once a quarter “studying the effects of the victimization by criminal aliens present in the United States.”

“Until today, those victimized at the hands of illegal aliens have had no point of contact in our federal government dedicated to this issue and to them. Families would call and would send letters all over Washington hoping that someone in some agency would respond,” Kelly said, according to CNN.

The White House’s newly launched hotline in which victims or witnesses could easily report criminal incidents has a mission statement that reads, “With honor and integrity, we will support victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens through access to information and resources.”

But critics like Common Defense Executive Director Pam Campos argue that Trump’s new initiative is incredibly dangerous.

“This office is a depraved and dangerous propaganda vehicle that exploits tragedy to fuel hate and division,” Campos said in a statement. “Our commitment of service has no room for tolerating a xenophobic registry, which serves no purpose in helping victims of crime, and only exists to provide fodder for racism.”

Trump continues to hype up an issue that isn’t exactly backed up with much data. A study by the American Immigration Council shows that among men between the ages of 18-49, immigrants are far less likely to engage in criminal activity than those who are native-born.