US Politics Mega-thread - Page 972

On April 03 2014 05:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

The history of resource scarcity is that as a particular resource becomes more dear, it gets economized, new sources of the resources are brought to market, and substitutes are employed.

I propose that that process can plausibly continue. I offer solar energy as an example - the price is falling quickly and so over time it will be easier and easier to substitute solar for conventional energy. Solar isn't the only example I can give either. There are many new promising energy technologies out there.

If you want to prove that resources are running out, you need to demonstrate that there is some barrier that prevents the usual process of economizing and substitution from taking place going forward. So far, you haven't done that.

On April 03 2014 06:58 GreenHorizons wrote:


Well for one, consumption isn't just about energy. But on energy, during many of those cycles large new caches of natural resources were brought to market. Those caches wont be there forever (think Easter Island on a global scale), it helps if you don't think oil is less than 10,000 years old and there is an everlasting fountain of it in the earth too (a genuine idea supported by millions of conservatives who believe in your magical pie[not saying you're one of them].)

Not to mention emissions and their consequences, think China on a sunny day in peak factory output. There are countless problems with what you are suggesting, and I'm pretty sure you're smart enough to see why.

I'm not going to change your mind so I'm not going to bother trying. I'm just happy to have a conservative being so bullish on alternative energy. I hope you're right and somehow the magical hands of capitalism wave their magic wand over the world and resolve issues that few reasonable scientists would say can happen the way you suggest, but I sincerely doubt it.

In either event I'm just glad to have you on the side of defending the viability of alternative green energy and believing that our consumption of oil and (I think natural gas) is unsustainable.

You are the first conservative I have heard openly say that our consumption of oil is unsustainable. And that we have to change our consumption patterns in order to become sustainable.

Kudos for your bold stance against your peers in recognizing that our dependence on oil is unsustainable and in 100 years must be a much smaller fraction of the energy we use.

On April 03 2014 04:33 kwizach wrote:

Nobody is confusing signups with paid enrollees. Your article tries to claim that less than a million people who were previously uninsured have started to pay for their new policies. That is false. This is what is written in your article:


How does the article get that number? It multiplied 7 million by 23/100 and then by 53/100. Yet, as the article I quoted indicates, this completely ignores the "4.5 million previously uninsured adults [who] have signed up for state Medicaid programs", an "additional 3 million young adults [who] have gained coverage in recent years through a provision of the law that enables dependent children to remain on their parents' health plans until they turn 26", and "[a]bout 9 million people [who] have bought health plans directly from insurers, instead of using the marketplaces". Indeed, "the vast majority of [the latter] were previously insured."

From these numbers, you therefore have millions of people who were previously uninsured, are now insured and have started paying. Again, nice try.

On April 03 2014 06:58 GreenHorizons wrote:
Well for one, consumption isn't just about energy. But on energy, during many of those cycles large new caches of natural resources were brought to market. Those caches wont be there forever (think Easter Island on a global scale), it helps if you don't think oil is less than 10,000 years old and there is an everlasting fountain of it in the earth too (a genuine idea supported by millions of conservatives who believe in your magical pie[not saying you're one of them].)

Not to mention emissions and their consequences, think China on a sunny day in peak factory output. There are countless problems with what you are suggesting, and I'm pretty sure you're smart enough to see why.

I'm not going to change your mind so I'm not going to bother trying. I'm just happy to have a conservative being so bullish on alternative energy. I hope you're right and somehow the magical hands of capitalism wave their magic wand over the world and resolve issues that few reasonable scientists would say can happen the way you suggest, but I sincerely doubt it.

In either event I'm just glad to have you on the side of defending the viability of alternative green energy and believing that our consumption of oil and (I think natural gas) is unsustainable.

You are the first conservative I have heard openly say that our consumption of oil is unsustainable. And that we have to change our consumption patterns in order to become sustainable.

Kudos for your bold stance against your peers in recognizing that our dependence on oil is unsustainable and in 100 years must be a much smaller fraction of the energy we use.

On April 03 2014 08:05 Danglars wrote:
You're grasping at straws. Maybe if we mash together in slipshod fashion the new medicaid signups, kids (and what a laughing joke that is) of 26 years on their parent's plans, and signups apart from the failed exchange program, then we have a semblance of success.

It isn't any wonder that only 26% of Americans ( AP) support the ACA with such a failure so evident. People are paying more for health insurance and are unhappy. Unions and big special interests fought for and found their exemptions. Employers wanted none of it, and the employer mandate was unconstitutionally delayed time after time. Actually, it's hard to even judge the law's success given how much of it is dependent on whatever Obama wants it to say that particular day.

On April 03 2014 08:05 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I can't recall ever hearing someone claim that there's an infinite supply of oil in the world. I also don't know what magical pie you are referring to (I like apple pie, so hopefully it's something like that, but I digress...). These sound like something you're talking out of context and twisting into a talking point / political one-liner.

As for emissions, typically a country industrializes and emissions rise (extreme poverty sucks, pollution is a worthwhile trade-off). Then people try to clean it up (we're no longer poor, pollution is no longer a worthwhile trade-off). Just look at the US over the past century. I don't see why China wouldn't follow the same pattern, particularly since the R&D on pollution control has already been done for them.

On April 03 2014 09:45 GreenHorizons wrote:


First Oil....

The who... "PRINCETON, NJ -- Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."

"While 58% of Republicans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, 39% of independents and 41% of Democrats agree."

Source

Now the what...

"In a young-earth framework, the oil reservoirs that we now find were either deposited during the Noachian Flood (Flood geology for short) or formed after the Flood (Recolonization geology). Either way, the oil that we now have access to was either:

*created after the Flood;

*or lain relatively undisturbed during the tectonic activity of the Flood (since then it has been released from wherever it was placed by God during the Creation Week and now entered the reservoirs that we now have);

*or was placed in deeper locations during Creation Week, and moved by standard hydraulic means into the target reservoirs during the Flood (Flood geology) whilst the “fountains of the great deep” were open."

Sorry a "boundless oil well" was a wild characterization... It was actually placed there by God 10,000 years ago in the perfect amount and accessibility to fit human demands...(potentially with a global flood to distribute it perfectly about 4,300 years ago)

Or.... all of the worlds petroleum formed in the last 4,300 years insinuating that there is a potential to replenish it in a similar time frame.

Source

Now the pie (Mmmm Pie, but not that nasty fruit ish ;p)...

The who....

"Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another" <--- A core conservative tenet -Milton Friedman

+ Show Spoiler +

(Most conservatives currently/have espouse/d some rhetorical variation of this concept.)

Even if the ethereal pie is theoretically infinite or 'non-fixed', there are still very real world limits on how much of that pie is realistically accessible at any given time (or the foreseeable future).

Now I'll touch on how what such a stellar example the US is on waste.

"The U.S. manages to produce a quarter of the world’s waste despite the fact that its population of 300 million is less than 5% of the world’s population, according to 2005 estimates."

Source

You could see how if another 50%+ of the world starts wasting like the model you were describing that the amount of waste would grow at an immense rate. (even adjusting for increases in efficiency and such).

I am not particularly tied to this last point as it was tangential to start so you don't have to nitpick on waste. If you want to refute my assertion about waste I'll concede it for now, so you can focus on the first two points. (I just didn't want it to go unanswered)

Note that, due to the large heat capacity of the climate system, especially the oceans, there is a lag time of decades or longer between elevating the concentration of the green house gases, and the warming response of the climate system.

A shooting at Fort Hood on Wednesday left four people dead, including the gunman, and others critically injured, officials said.

The shooter, identified as 34-year-old soldier Ivan Lopez, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Justice Department said.

Six of the victims were transported to Scott & White Hospital with gunshot wounds. “Their conditions range from quite stable to quite critically injured," Glen Couchman, Scott & White's chief medical officer, said. Couchman said the hospital was not currently in need of blood donations from individuals.

Emergency crews, FBI and SWAT teams were called in to the base following the shooting, which occurred at approximately 4:30 p.m. at a medical support building on the sprawling base. Soldiers and area residents were ordered to shelter in place as police pursued reports of a possible second shooter. The lockdown was lifted several hours later.

President Barack Obama said the White House was monitoring reports of the shooting.

"We're following it closely. The situation is fluid right now," Obama told reporters in Chicago, adding that investigators would "get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

"We're heartbroken something like this might have happened again," the president said.

In 2009, 13 people were killed and more than 30 wounded in a mass shooting at the base carried out by then-Maj. Nidal Hasan, an army psychiatrist. A U.S. Senate report following the incident described it as the worst attack on American soil since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, although the FBI said Hasan had no formal ties to terrorist groups despite having expressed anti-American viewpoints prior to the shooting.

Hassan was sentenced to death after admitting during his August 2013 court martial hearing to the mass shooting. He is now on death row.

"Ft. Hood was once again stricken by tragedy," Gov. Rick Perry said in a statement. "As Texans, our first priority must be caring for the victims and their families. Ft. Hood has proven its resilience before, and will again."

"The scenes coming from Ft. Hood today are sadly too familiar and still too fresh in our memories," Texas Sen. John Cornyn said in a statement Wednesday. " No community should have to go through this horrific violence once, let alone twice."

Killeen, Texas, where Fort Hood is located, was also home to the then-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Commonly known as “Luby’s Massacre,” on October 16, 1991 George Hennard shot 50 individuals, killing 23.

On April 03 2014 04:33 kwizach wrote:

Nobody is confusing signups with paid enrollees. Your article tries to claim that less than a million people who were previously uninsured have started to pay for their new policies. That is false. This is what is written in your article:


How does the article get that number? It multiplied 7 million by 23/100 and then by 53/100. Yet, as the article I quoted indicates, this completely ignores the "4.5 million previously uninsured adults [who] have signed up for state Medicaid programs", an "additional 3 million young adults [who] have gained coverage in recent years through a provision of the law that enables dependent children to remain on their parents' health plans until they turn 26", and "[a]bout 9 million people [who] have bought health plans directly from insurers, instead of using the marketplaces". Indeed, "the vast majority of [the latter] were previously insured."

From these numbers, you therefore have millions of people who were previously uninsured, are now insured and have started paying. Again, nice try.


The aim of the law is to allow more people to be covered. Millions of people who were previously uninsured are now getting coverage, and the numbers are ahead of expectations. It is clearly a success.

On April 03 2014 11:37 Livelovedie wrote:
No mention of the Ft. Hood shooting here?

http://news.yahoo.com/fort-hood-shooting-222528983.html

On April 03 2014 11:41 Sermokala wrote:

People die from gang violence every day and it isn't news to US politics usually anyway Why is that any different?

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:

But thats not at all the only point of insurance reform and you know it.

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:
It was sold that you'd be able to keep your doctor (not a success)

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:
would lower the amount you paid on premiums (not for the people who had insurance before)

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:
and would remove a lot of the shitty practices of the industry like denying care for "pre-existing conditions" which the industry consented to before the bill was even finished passing.

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:
2% of the population being insured for The huge cost that the project took

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:
[It] is not a success

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:
most of those people might have had health insurance before, we don't know the real numbers at this time.

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:
What I can tell you is that tons of minorities didn't get the coverage that they should have because for some reason no one thought to translate the form into anything other then English as well as for some reason there are select windows of time where you can sign up for coverage before getting penalized for it.

You want to see a shit storm wait until minorities start getting letters in the mail about the money they have to pay in a tax because they didn't sign up for something they didn't know about. Obama has been changing the law as he goes along to prevent many of the failures that have come along from going into effect.

On April 03 2014 11:39 Sermokala wrote:
The real Obamacare hasn't even started yet.

On April 03 2014 10:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Nothing here really supports your assertion that conservatives (let along the non-religious ones) think there's infinite oil. You seem to be relying on conjecture to get there and taking cheap shots at religious fundamentalists along the way.


The argument is that the economy is not a permanently fixed thing, which is 100% correct. It does not imply infinite growth or anything of the sort. Nor is it opposed to your assertion (which is also correct!) that there are limits on how much of the pie you can realistically get at a given point in time. The point being made is that someone gaining more money doesn't necessarily mean someone else has less.


The US creates about 25% of the world's waste because we represent about that much global economic activity. Of course if the rest of the world catches up to us in terms of economic activity, there will be a lot of waste, but that just means we need to get better at recycling and whatnot.

On April 03 2014 03:39 Danglars wrote:
A lot of things work and have my support if medicare and medicaid are eliminated. Tort reform has been on conservative platforms for a very long time, contrary to the relative inaction taken on it. With Medicare and Medicaid gone, a new welfare scheme can be developed involving money (call it vouchers if you want) to take to private companies to buy the plan you want. I still want those insurance companies, freed from cumbersome regulation and perverted minimum coverage requirements, competing for the business. The main change for them is not prejudicing employers with tax breaks and the rest, but allowing the same for individuals purchasing for themselves apart from employers. The second change is the choice for employees to take their same health plan between jobs and have the next employer may payments into it etc.

On April 03 2014 13:20 GreenHorizons wrote:



There is just so many interesting tidbits wrapped up in your response I'm going to have to come back to them later.

However, I did want to say kudos again for realizing conservatives should of been embracing Green Energy alternatives and recycling way back to Carter, instead of dismissing them, or deriding them and/or Carter for embracing what you now see as a necessary inevitability even if it is generations later than it could of been.

""We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment. We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now." Carter -1977

"Drill baby drill' anyone?

We probably could of reduced our need to fund despots, dictators, and 'terrorists' in order to get their oil too.


I just had to take a moment to appreciate the new direction conservatives are planning to head in being bullish on Green Energy, getting serious about recycling, and identifying 46% of American Christians and nearly 60% of the Republican party as 'religious fundamentalists'

Thank you Jonny for leading the way

On April 03 2014 14:18 Wolfstan wrote:


Absolutely private companies unencumbered by regulation would have a place beside socialized medicine. I disagree with you on the role though, private companies would serve where their biggest strength lies, which is why ACA(and Tesla vs. dealers) disgust me. Inefficient middle men should not be mandatory by law, middle man companies should get their cut by providing better service and solving inefficiencies inherent in big lumbering entities. The role of private companies alongside government services should not be to collect cheques from welfare schemes and providing services below the social minimum. In a free market, conservative world, they would provide better than social maximum services tailored to their clients needs(as opposed to one size fits all legislation.) Think private schools beside public schools, Fedex beside US post, private security beside police/military.