US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9598

On December 25 2017 05:06 A3th3r wrote:


Trump left the TPP because China wasn't in it & the USA trades the most with China. More than Japan, Myanmar, Indonesia, or any of the other small pacific nations that are in the TPP. Then he visited China & they had a trade summit. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that Trump favors China. I'd say that is a sensible policy to have, as that is our most important ally right now, even more important than Canada.

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On December 25 2017 05:06 A3th3r wrote:


Trump left the TPP because China wasn't in it & the USA trades the most with China. More than Japan, Myanmar, Indonesia, or any of the other small pacific nations that are in the TPP. Then he visited China & they had a trade summit. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that Trump favors China. I'd say that is a sensible policy to have, as that is our most important ally right now, even more important than Canada.

The tax bill makes so that the highest individual tax rate a person can be taxed at is 37%. That seems somewhat reasonable to me as I would be upset if I had to give half of the money that I earned to the government. That benefits successful people like me!

The Samsung factory in South Carolina puts a lot of people to work. Just after Trump took office & defeated Hillary Clinton in a somewhat close race, that factory was announced. NICE! More jobs for the poor.

I guess I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not as it seemed pretty clear to me in the first post but I guess this clarifies things a little

On December 25 2017 06:22 Sermokala wrote:
To be fair about TPP Trump later commented that he planned to pay off the nations debt by renegotiating our trade deals and specifically cited the 800 billion deficit with China as something he planned to balance out to put that tword paying off the national debt.

We don't really know why he left TPP but we can argue if it was a good decision or not.

On December 25 2017 03:25 Toadesstern wrote:

it's true though. I get that basicly everything from Europe is to the left for you as our spectrum tends to be more left as a whole but the examples given are sound. It might be easy for you to bunch everyone together as "the left" [in this thread] because that's your perspective on things, probably even a correct one from your point of view.
But it sure as hell doesn't help to make your point when people who consider themselves center-right (Kwark) or someone who's leaning slightly center-/libertarian (that'd be me for example) has to read nonstop about how "all the lefties in here" gang up on people and everyone's supposed to be part of that.

People just lose you right then and there and aren't even willing to take you seriously anymore.

« US politics megathread for sane people » and an « argue endlessly with Danglar and xDaunt thread over the merit of ethnostates, 19th century racial theories and how worthless eveything and everyone connected to Africa and Islam is »

On December 24 2017 23:36 Sermokala wrote:
Man what a bunch of whiny hipsters blaming all the problems on the monsters they created in their heads. Take some responsibility and do something about the issue instead of just contributing to it more. I dont think I've ever read so much overthought trash as this page.

A couple things. People complaining about how bad things that are completely under their control are. People declaring the republican party dead for decades as it sits at the highest its been in a long time. Remember when people thought Bush killed the party or when obama showed an easy way to electoral victory for the democrats for a generation? All leps post is just whine after moan after complaint about nonsense he creates in his head. Yet people eat it up like the cheerleaders they are because trump giving them a moral highground is the only thing that matters.

On December 25 2017 07:41 Danglars wrote:

And fuck at the turnaround. Some people are mentally acrobatic enough to criticize Republicans when it looked like a credibly-accused underage teenager molester was elected, then flip around to chuckle at Republicans losing Alabama as a party thing. Just let Trump go and have an ounce of self-consistency for the next three years, I say.

On December 25 2017 07:33 Danglars wrote:

xDaunt's said this before, but he gets five to ten people responding in outrage and he needs a collective term for the great many posters doing a shock and awe routine. See: xDaunt asks if IgnE will help "lost leftists" on civ question. You need a generic for 15-18 posters that pretty much agree that Trump's wrong on everything, half his supporters are racist, and the US left-right divide is worse than Europe because the GOP is stupid on its issues/stances. There's just too many people to single out individually--it took less than an hour to see Leporello, hunts, doomdonker, and Biff all make roughly the same point. You get more than a dozen arguing from the left (western civ gets too much credit/is shittier than you realize), so it's natural for literally the only guy or one of two guys arguing from the opposite point to use a term for the collective. You can literally single out conservatives by name, because there's so few. I try to narrow my liberals/leftists by behavior, particularly in this thread, because you can readily identify a big grouping that says my arguments are shit and the grounding is shit. Every post, every time.

Secondly, I try to use it as counterpoint for other people that would like to divide US Pol into two camps. Biff's was, if you recall, I will naturally throw it back to thread leftists (people who think sane/insane is a useful division of the thread) vs conservative point of view because it's already his opinion that there's these two camps. You don't like being part of the collective? Ignore posts/responses to posts where hypocrites try to do an insane/sane division, or call out posters that try to lump a portion into stupid insane vs sane camps. I'm just assuming you're in the "ignore" camp, but feel free to pipe up when the original poster makes dumb slurs before ignoring responses not drawn with you in mind.

And come on now, if you don't see that behavior from people from the left in this thread repeatedly and almost unceasingly, you haven't been reading it. I wouldn't even need to go back fifty pages to find ten people making the argument that thread conservatives should just be ignored because they're that extremist. Pardon me, but you really need to examine both sides here and not think there's high guilt for my part if you want me to take you seriously from here on out.

Louisiana is finalizing a plan to move thousands of people from areas threatened by the rising Gulf of Mexico, effectively declaring uninhabitable a coastal area larger than Delaware.

A draft of the plan, the most aggressive response to climate-linked flooding in the U.S., calls for prohibitions on building new homes in high-risk areas, buyouts of homeowners who live there now and hikes in taxes on those who won’t leave. Commercial development would still be allowed, but developers would need to put up bonds to pay for those buildings’ eventual demolition.

“Not everybody is going to live where they are now and continue their way of life,” said Mathew Sanders, the state official in charge of the program, which has the backing of Governor John Bel Edwards. “And that is an emotional, and terrible, reality to face.”

Months of community meetings on the program wrapped up this week.

The draft plan, a portion of which was obtained by Bloomberg News, is part of a state initiative funded by the federal government to help Louisiana plan for the effects of coastal erosion. That erosion is happening faster in Louisiana than anywhere in the U.S., due to a mix of rising seas and sinking land caused in part by oil and gas extraction. State officials say they hope the program, called Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments, or LA SAFE, becomes a model for coastal areas around the country and the world threatened by climate change.

While the state hasn’t come up with a cost estimate, the buyouts and resettlement could add up to billions of dollars. The federal grant for the initial phase cost $40 million.

The idea hasn’t gone over well with all the people it’s supposed to help, some of whom want the government to do more to protect their communities instead of abandoning them.

“Are we doing every single damn thing we can? I don’t think we are,” Richie Blink, 31, said over a bowl of gumbo in Empire, a town 60 miles south of New Orleans on the bank of the Mississippi River. He paused, then said he didn’t mean to get worked up. “This stuff wears you out emotionally.”

Empire lost half its population after Hurricane Katrina, and now has fewer than 1,000 people. Blink, a community organizer for the National Wildlife Federation, said he understands the dilemma political leaders face, but wishes they would do more to keep the area habitable longer.

Empire’s harbor has a flood gate to protect the boats inside from extreme weather. “When I was a kid, it was a big deal to see the flood gates closed,” said Blink. This year, he said, those gates were closed for 100 days.

Sanders is working to complete the plan by early next year, at which point it will be up to federal, state and local officials to decide if they will implement it. Edwards, the Democratic governor, announced his support for the program in March. If he backs its recommendations, the state could create a buyout program or eliminate the homestead exemption for homes in high-risk areas, which would mean higher property taxes for many residents.

In a statement, the governor’s office said he is “following the progress being made by the LA SAFE team intently and looking for ways to build upon their success as we determine the next steps for the program.”

Under the proposal, commercial development would still be allowed, but developers would need to put up bonds to pay for those buildings’ eventual demolition.

Rob Moore, a flood policy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Chicago, said that if the state goes ahead with the plan, “then every coastal state in the country should be asking themselves, ‘If Louisiana can do this, why aren’t we?’”

The LA SAFE program defines as “high risk” land where, five decades from now, the expected depth of a 100-year flood will reach more than six feet. According to data provided by state officials, 94 percent of the land in Plaquemines Parish, which includes Empire, falls into that category.

Across the six coastal parishes covered by the LA SAFE program, more than 59,000 people live in those high-risk areas. The proposed buyouts and restrictions on future development would only apply to the parts of that land that aren’t protected by levees, and the state isn’t sure how many that may be.

Another town on the wrong side of the state’s risk map is Leeville, a cluster of houses and trailer homes west of Empire that state officials say will soon be underwater. On a recent afternoon, Opie Griffin stood on the front deck of his family’s gas station and restaurant and wondered what he’s supposed to do then.

“There’s no way they can protect this,” Griffin said, sweeping his hand out over what’s left of the town, the bayou seeping in from all sides. “I see more and more water every year." He put the store up on stilts, perched 16 feet in the air, after Hurricane Gustav blew through in 2008. Now his parking lot floods nearly every day. “Nothing I could do, except come to work on a boat.”

However untenable Leeville becomes, however, Griffin is more worried about what’s waiting for him somewhere else. “I’m almost forty. Do I want to start a whole new chapter in my life?” he asked. “Where do you want me to go?”

The possibility of backlash makes it hard to predict whether the state’s recommendations will take effect. Other ideas in the plan would require cooperation from different levels of government.

The report calls for adding Louisiana’s high-risk communities to what is called the Coastal Barrier Resource System, a federal designation that prevents homes and businesses there from getting most types of federal assistance. That change would require federal legislation, and President Donald Trump’s signature.

Perhaps the most challenging could be local governments, which have the most authority over land-use and zoning decisions. Sanders said his office’s strategy was to demonstrate to local officials that the plan’s recommendations have the support of the people who would be affected. The state, working with a nonprofit called the Foundation for Louisiana, held some 60 public events, which together drew more than 3,500 people.

The meetings presented the science on sea-level rise and future flood risks so that people could understand what it meant for where they live, according to Liz Williams, who runs the foundation’s coastal resilience program.

According to Sanders, the lesson from those months of meetings is that the people most at risk along Louisiana’s coast know they’re in danger, and they want more than just assurances that life can go on as normal.

“‘They will string you from a tree, burn the room down, throw rotten vegetables at you, slash the tires of your car,’” Sanders recalls being warned before he started talking to residents about the idea of emptying out their neighborhoods. “None of that has happened. People appreciate honesty.”

One of them is Ly Chan.

Two years ago, Chan moved from Richmond, Virginia to Buras, a town south of Empire, after she and her husband lost their jobs. The couple had a friend in Buras who owned a shrimp boat; he told them there was work. They bought a single-wide trailer and the land underneath it for $50,000 and planted banana, mango and papaya trees. It was almost paradise.

But the drawbacks of living along the Louisiana coast soon caught up to them. The area around their home floods constantly; in October, Chan, her husband and their teenage son had to evacuate north ahead of Hurricane Nate. Chan, who has worked with the LA SAFE program as a translator for her Cambodian neighbors, said that if the state offered her a buyout she would take it.

“It’s not just going to be one time – it’s going to be again and again,” Chan said of storms like Nate. “God gives you wisdom. You have to use it.”

On December 25 2017 07:45 Gorsameth wrote:

How is that mental acrobatics?

yes the Republicans are stupid for supporting a credibly-accused underage/teenager molester.
yes the Republicans are idiots for losing Alabama by supporting a credibly-accused underage/teenager molester

What part of it do you think is inconsistent?

On December 25 2017 08:01 Toadesstern wrote:


all I'm saying is that it doesn't help you to lump everyone together like that. You complain about people grouping everyone on the right together and it's basicly the same both ways. It doesn't make you want to engage with that person either when, like you just said, the argument starts with "everyone on the right is a racist that wants to see poor people die due to lack of healthcare" or something along the lines.

I am aware that Biff did that but then I really don't care myself because I wasn't the one targeted (sry I guess?), it's harder on you guys with that but it still doesn't help to just do the same.
I even wholeheartedly agree with you on him in this case but you lose me the second I hear that "all you guys on the left" rhetoric so it all goes to waste.

Basicly, the only reason I posted about it in the first place was because I wasn't sure if you realize that you're doing the same.

On December 25 2017 10:46 Danglars wrote:

No need to apologize man. Just look at what I was responding to and understand the audience. I will continue to use the terms for people that I just described. I will continue to fruitfully use it for trolls and shitposters that think the real debate is between sane/insane, racists/nonracists+antiracists, Trump/(every good policy decision possible). You’re stopping very short in considering how stupid it is when leftists and liberals (a group) try to assume they’ve already won the debate (a smaller group of the former group characterized by that action). I’m not going to spend a lot of energy arguing that my approach is logical given the percentage of active posters from that ideology that exhibit that behavior or excuse it/are silent about it. “Hey don’t group me in there” + “hey I’m not gonna say how I’m different” + “I’m not going to recognize thread norms or contextualize all the group shit thrown on thread conservatives habitually” doesn’t add up.

You’re not really commenting on my first paragraph, so whatever. I guess you’re done. If I were you, substitute “all those currently attacking my position X vigorously” for liberals/leftists. Or join a forum where you post often and in the minority against a bevy of responses, because that isn’t you in this forum and you’re having trouble identifying and responding to that issue in this forum.

On December 25 2017 10:09 Danglars wrote:

You’re missing the post primary bit. McConnell spent millions destroying his credible conservative challenger, thinking Luther strange would win over the wacko. Voters gave him the middle finger and selected Moore. It was only after the primary that all this gets out. Then you have his name on the ballot for the Republican Party no matter what and he denies the allegations until the end. Putting this in Republican terms, it’s child molestor vs babykiller. If you can’t put that history into context of voters choices, my problem is your logic and twisted analysis. If you can’t think straight, believe whatever you want is true about the Alabama election. I’m not about to waste my time on proven ideological zealots that can’t think rationally if it’s not disagreements within the left.

On December 25 2017 10:46 Danglars wrote:


I will continue to fruitfully use it for trolls and shitposters that think the real debate is between sane/insane [...]