US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9032

On October 20 2017 08:07 Plansix wrote:

I've sort of said this before, but progress is a grind. This isn't a movie, there is no sweeping victory and everyone pats you on the back and says you're right. It is a slow, terrible grind against the banal and those who prefer things staying as they are. You don't have to win everyone over, just the majority. And that can't be done by primarying everyone out of office.

Fossil fuel energy is the lifeblood of the modern world. Before the Industrial Revolution, humanity depended on burning wood and candle wax. But with the ability to harness the energy in oil and other fossil fuels, quality of life and capacity for progress increased exponentially. Thanks to incredible innovations in the energy industry, fossil fuels are as promising, safe, and clean an energy resource as has ever existed in history. Yet, highly politicized climate policies are pushing a grand-scale shift to unreliable, impractical, incredibly expensive, and far less efficient energy sources. Today, "fossil fuel" has become such a dirty word that even fossil fuel companies feel compelled to apologize for their products. In Fueling Freedom, energy experts Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White make an unapologetic case for fossil fuels, turning around progressives' protestations to prove that if fossil fuel energy is supplanted by "green" alternatives for political reasons, humanity will take a giant step backwards and the planet will be less safe, less clean, and less free.

On October 20 2017 08:26 Danglars wrote:

Obligatory: Her name is Kathleen Hartnett White, you sexist troglodytes.




Excellent job Trump. Let's see if you can follow through on the likely policy suggestions.

Chuck D: Why Donald Trump Is a White Supremacist
Trump is a bloated mess—and a weapon of mass distraction. Many people are so turned off and perturbed by the whole Trump-POTUS charade that they fail to understand that there are other things in motion behind the scenes.
On our track “Hail to the Chief,” we decided to focus on the seriousness of Vice President Mike Pence, who basically ran a regime in the state of Indiana that was a disturbing throwback rife with political and administrative bias. The wheels are now in motion for an eight-year regime that will prove very difficult for a lot of people to swallow. The music video to “Hail to the Chief” isn’t an attack on Pence, but rather lays bare who this guy is while posing the question: Why is everybody not paying attention to this guy in the background? It’s important not to trivialize this dude. There’s an underlying layer to this administration that is very sinister.
To me, David C-Doc Snyder is the greatest videographer of all-time. He’s been Public Enemy’s videographer for the last decade, and is able to brilliantly hone in on a subject. On the topic of Charlottesville, when you can’t condemn live and actual racists, you might as well be doing the Nazi salute, like Trump does in the video. He’s a 70-year-old white alpha male who looks down on other peoples, and bullies others to get what he wants. If that’s not supremacy, then what the fuck is? He’s the epitome of a white supremacist. He’s not about sharing the world; he’s about taking. He has no concern for the future of the world because he’s selfish, and is only going to be around for 10, 15 more years.
Trump also didn’t condemn those racists who marched on Charlottesville because he doesn’t want to lose his base. Everything has turned into entertainment to the point where we think politicians actually have “fan bases” now. They’re not rock stars—even though Trump’s calling Kim Jong Un “Rocket Man.” Everything cannot be popularized, and we’re in a society now that popularizes everything within a system of “popular” versus “unpopular.” Whatever happened to a person wanting to do the dirty work and not get any points for it? We don’t need the person who governs our country to have a freestyle, too. Obama wasn’t trying to be cool; he was just a cool black dude. All this trying to be cool has gone too far. It boggles the mind. So this toxic mindset reached the point where the country voted for a TV-star president. Donald Trump, some asshole television personality, as president of the United States? Get outta here.
The other day I was half-asleep in front of the TV and overheard a news report that said, “Trump and his generals.” As a sports fan, I immediately had a flashback to 1984 when he owned the New Jersey Generals of the USFL. Then I woke up and realized, oh, this guy’s in charge of real generals. It’s a crazy thing. So, Trump with a Nazi salute? Why not.
But we have to remember that Donald Trump’s rhetoric resonated enough to get him in the White House, and to actually get votes against the other candidate, Hillary Clinton, who wasn’t a pretty picture either. Because really, who wanted a monarchy? So, with all this mass distraction going on, there’s something that lies in the background that’s going to be a stench that will stink for the next 40 years, long after these people are gone. If you really give a damn about what world your children are going to inherit, you have to rail against these regimes now. It’s our duty.
The lynching images in the music video for “Hail to the Chief” are from America’s past, and used symbolically to represent what’s been happening in this country over the past decade. There was racial animosity towards the Obama administration that was completely uncalled for. If they had a chance to kill him, they would have. What I mean by “they” is, if the adversarial, far-right wing of society got away with what they wanted to get away with, President Obama would have been hanging from a tree. And that is the truth.
I recorded the track “Rebel Without a Pause” in 1987, and strangely enough, that song’s lyrics were in part inspired by Biz Markie who, in “Nobody Beats the Biz,” had one of the great political hip-hop lines that’s been largely overlooked: “Reagan is the Pres but I voted for Shirley Chisholm.” That line is so powerful that it inspired me to write this entire song about Ronald Reagan. At that time, R&B stood for Reagan and Bush. There were a lot of policies that affected people of color that we’re still fighting to free ourselves of now. President Obama helped unthread some, but we’ve been thrust into a situation where these discriminatory policies are being revived by the Trump administration. There’s a reason why Trump stole Reagan’s slogan. “Make America Great Again” means that the white male will always reign supreme, and there’s no room for anybody else.
Being black and taking on the term “radical” is all about survival. You must be radical to survive. Trump, after all, is the frontman for the rock group that is the United States of America. Trump has no moral scruples, no ethics, no knowledge of laws. Trump doesn’t know anything other than what he wants to know. But all the king’s men are different. Mike Pence is different. Jeff Sessions is different. How long will Trump be in office? Health-wise, I don’t think he’ll be there longer than two years, which is what inspired me to write “Hail to the Chief.” He’ll slide further and further into irrationality. If he doesn’t get impeached, he’ll come up with his own trumped-up reasons for why he can’t do the job. And then we’ll have to deal with the tyranny of Mike Pence.
Welcome to the United States of America.

On October 20 2017 10:01 KwarK wrote:

You're not stupid enough to not see the obvious fallacies in that argument, are you? The debate isn't between the people who like the vast amounts of free chemical energy coming out of the ground and the environmentalists who hate civilization, it's between the scientists who are saying "we checked and although fossil fuels are great we have to stop using them because it's fucking up the planet" and idiots.

On October 20 2017 08:22 zlefin wrote:

people won't admit they were wrong if you don't provide proof they were. and you don't. (in addition to you rarely admitting you're wrong, or admitting to the considerable flaws with bernie, or own up to your own part in causing losses, yet you expect others to act better than you)

On October 20 2017 11:30 zlefin wrote:
too bad there isn't a mechanism for reversing a pardon; because arpaio really should be in jail.

On October 20 2017 11:31 Plansix wrote:

That completely defeats the purpose of a pardon.

On October 20 2017 10:33 GoTuNk! wrote:


Questioning about wether we should let tons of people starve to death in the third world, have access to electricity, and generally have shorter lives, in the off chance we can stop the temperature of the world from rising a few degrees, but will most likely not anyway (and the world will not explode a few celcius warmer over a 100 year span). Those idiots.

At what point would you consider that maybe global warming (yes they changed the name) was not what they said it was? You know, like the Al-Gore movie which predicted everything wrong.
Like, if in 10 or 20 years, if the world was essentially the same, like 20 years ago when the world was supposed to explode, would you even question that maybe the "consensus" was not accurate?

On October 20 2017 10:39 Aquanim wrote:

A lot of people living in third world countries will starve to death if they become less able to farm because of climate change as well. A lot of people living in third world countries will starve to death no matter what.

Can you provide evidence which indicates that in the long run more people will starve, die of curable diseases, etc. if climate change is addressed than if it is not?


What exactly is the prediction that was made 20 years ago that you are claiming was profoundly wrong? I am pretty sure nobody predicted the literal explosion of the world. Again, it's pretty difficult to discuss this without specifics.

A lot of people living in third world countries will starve to death if they become less able to farm because of climate change as well. A lot of people living in third world countries will starve to death no matter what.

What exactly is the prediction that was made 20 years ago that you are claiming was profoundly wrong? I am pretty sure nobody predicted the literal explosion of the world. Again, it's pretty difficult to discuss this without specifics.

On October 20 2017 11:32 zlefin wrote:

no it doesn't. and when the pardons are abused to oppose justice and actively destroy the country, it's necessary to have countermeasures put in.

On October 20 2017 11:09 GoTuNk! wrote:


To start, I thank you for wanting to argue in good faith.

I've esentially seen 2 scenarios:

a) The world is warming up at an atonishing rate, and we need to halve carbon emissions to avoid a huge part of the world's coast from flooding due to rising temperature and correspondant sea level.

b) The world's temperature is rising a few degrees in the next 100 years, with very little influence of human nature.

For a), cutting emisssions in the current way is worthless. Literally worthless and costs and unimaginable amount of money. Might as well have more resources to deal with problems later. Or, we could cut emissions to 50%, which is essentially going back to the stone age, and destroying the lives of millions people (billions?).
Should we do that? are we sure ? Is it worth it?

I see no benefit in cutting emissions trough government mandates on dubious ways as it works now, for either scenario.



Crops yield increase with higher carbon content on the air, it's plant's "oxigen". Cheap electricity (no restrictions) increases access to required supply, machinery and water transportation also allow for better farming.



In January, 2006 — when promoting his Oscar-winning (yes, Oscar-winning) documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — Gore declared that unless we took “drastic measures” to reduce greenhouse gasses, the world would reach a “point of no return” in a mere ten years. He called it a “true planetary emergency.” Well, the ten years passed today, we’re still here, and the climate activists have postponed the apocalypse. Again.

Gasoline was supposed to be $9 per gallon. Milk would cost almost $13 per gallon. Wildfires would rage, hurricanes would strike with ever-greater intensity.

In reality, I respect the wild-eyed rapture-pastors far more than the climate hysterics. They merely ask me to believe, they don’t use the power of government to dictate how I live. Pastors aren’t circumventing the democratic process to impose dangerous and job-killing environmental regulations. Draconian fuel-economy standards have actually cost American lives. And now the coal industry is reeling in part because of stringent EPA standards. Overall, the EPA’s climate-change regulations are set to impose enormous economic costs.