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All these authoritarian laws that have been introduced everywhere across the world since 9/11 are absolute dogshit. From intrusive searches at every airport, to all the Internet surveillance, to the very foundation of ICE, and far worse such as the invasion of Afghanistan (I remember reading about Barbara Lee's stance back then - I'm still very much in agreement) and Iraq as passed in law. But also things like the Hague Invasion Act. It is all based on 9/11 xenophobia.
And why?
"We're going to stop terrorism."
Well, just look the fuck around you. It's all one big cruel fucking joke.
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On July 05 2018 08:40 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 05:59 TheTenthDoc wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. I think this is just a human trait. Everyone on both sides loves a strawman. After all, Doug Jones become a radical abortionist with a history of supporting full-birth abortion with one terrible response to a question about specific legislation in front of congress pushing forward the trimester date, and Hillary Clinton became a hater of all Trump supporters because of a quote from a speech specifically about how some Trump supporters have legitimate opinions and grievances we should care about. Neither side takes the other side uniformly figuratively or literally, but that being the burden of "the left" and "the right" seems odd. Everyone perpetuates it become simplicity and strawmanning are tremendously potent weapons in politics, which the right realized even before the left. We'd be better off if neither side does it, but it's pretty hard for either side to disarm unilaterally. Especially when the current de facto leader of one side (Trump) will go so far as to completely fabricate things the other side supports. There is much to agree to here, but the problem is that the Bad Person assumption has fans in the media and culture. If someone says "you all just want to abolish borders!" you'll be deluged with "no! We just want to get rid of ICE and replace it with a humane agency." And of course the reverse is true with "abolish the EPA." But in that case, you get supposedly serious people telling us how conservatives want to allow Koch Industries to dump millions of gallons of waste upstream from a bunch of frolicking children or whatever. It isn't even about taking people literally, in the case of the EPA. It's actually much worse than that. What happens is that the EPA is treated as the One True Environmental Agency, and getting rid of it means you want no regulations at all. And for the record, I don't hold any government agency to be God's gift, as I mentioned to earlier. Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 06:00 Howie_Dewitt wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. Despite most of this being true when applied to "the left," I don't feel like this is a political phenomenon only limited to one side of the aisle; in fact, I would say that the Republican Party's grande strategy revolves around assuming that the other side is made up of "bad" or "misguided" individuals. There are not a lot of attempts that I remember (my bad memory might play a part in this, but I'm reasonably comfortable with my statement here) where Republicans reached out to Democrats for an attempt at legislation instead of using brute force and only red votes to pass laws. I would also say that people like Joe Manchin should not be counted as reaching out by Republicans; he changed in response to the views of his constituents, and he always switched without Republican action targeted at him (although, they certainly approve of this shift). The assumption that "the right" is the victim here is quite concerning, as it allows you to brush off "calls for civility" instead of saying that both sides need to work on their attitudes (our current president is a symptom of this); why was "If you'll be civil, we will too. Stop assuming we're willing to destroy the country to advance the interests of the capital class and we'll start considering what you say and drafting more moderate legislation" not the Republicans' response to this? Essentially, where is your high ground? You created one for yourself, but I see it crumbling away. In short, I understand the thrust of your argument, but disagree with the statement that this is perpetuated solely by "the left." Edit: the tea party does make it very difficult to reach out, considering that they have much more of a visible impact on Congress than the "hard leftists." My above reply applies here too. In addition to that, I'm not even counting very obvious political power moves. not supporting something because you how the game is played if you go along with it is actually not terribly offensive to me. It IS utterly absurd when we apply to supposed concentration camps on the border, but for everyday back and forth I don't mind it too much. + Show Spoiler +
This is kind of a side note and I'll spoiler it cause I wrote it, but I think it could become thing everyone responds to.
As for civility, I will remind you which party it was that treated Bush and Romney as moral monsters, while every time someone said something slightly untoward to Obama you could find 153534 Republicans tripping over themselves to disassociate from it. I suspect many disagree with me, but to shield myself I will remind the thread of how many times I've criticized Trump and his rhetoric. I just don't think the left, broadly speaking, has a leg to stand on. If they think they were being civil at the time... I can't want to see what they end up doing now.
And the media dominance I referenced above should also be food for thought. When almost the entire "neutral" media is placing the status of bad personhood upon one party, maybe one should be closely reevaluating if you were really as civil and nice as you thought you were.
Once again, it feels like you're trying to say that the Republican party is the victim, using yourself (an objectively civil and intelligent person, from what I can tell) as an example. I admit that media dominance by left-leaning sources does make it look shaky, but I feel like it's balanced out by the rhetoric that the tea party uses in government all the time.
People who don't like to think are easily swayed by such arguments as "Not liking the EPA? You must want to have no regulations on the environment then and let the earth die, you evil bastard;" however, it's just as easy to counter with "Not supporting pro-life policy? You must want to set up industrial fetus part factories and kill off children, you evil bastard."
People get elected as members of both parties using garbage and propaganda, and I don't think the left has a leg to stand on, either; I am of the opinion that both parties are waist deep in this muck, and still flinging more mud at each other. Just because you're better than that doesn't mean your party's representatives are, or that large swaths of the Republican voter base don't think the exact same way because of their choice of conservative-biased media like fox news and talk shows.
Also, reminding me which party called Bush and Romney 'moral monsters' won't help much, as I'm 19; I only really started becoming aware of the political scene and interested in it around 2015 or 2016.
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On July 05 2018 19:10 Howie_Dewitt wrote:
I admit that media dominance by left-leaning sources does make it look shaky, but I feel like it's balanced out by the rhetoric that the tea party uses in government all the time.
I would strongly object to calling the centrist neoliberal garbage that passes for media today to be called left-wing. The actual left has ZERO media dominance. Ever watch Rachael Madcow and her red scare propaganda?
Washington Post, New York Times... all neoliberal shills. Not trying to tell you what to think, but that ain't left-wing.
But hey you are 19? Hell you are well above the curve then. My goodness what I wouldn't give to be 19 again- not a "back in my day", but today. My generation was completely useless... your future is bright. 
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I really hate the discussion about if the media is left, right, center, neoliberal(capitalist), liberal or whatever other group people want their media to represent. At some point it is just marketing to demographics who are seeking out that sort of coverage.. People should find writers and reporters they like and trust to provide to keep them informed.
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In other words PBS Newshour. No 24hr News Channel.
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That is one for sure. Local news is also good, since 24 hours news networks could give two shits about the school board fight two towns over.
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On July 05 2018 21:29 Plansix wrote:
That is one for sure. Local news is also good, since 24 hours news networks could give two shits about the school board fight two towns over.
I thought local news in the US was all owned by a very small group of corporate interests. I can't remember where I heard that but I remember thinking that it seemed true.
Maybe it was when I was young and liked crazy Alex Jones nonsense though.
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On July 05 2018 21:46 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 21:29 Plansix wrote:
That is one for sure. Local news is also good, since 24 hours news networks could give two shits about the school board fight two towns over. I thought local news in the US was all owned by a very small group of corporate interests. I can't remember where I heard that but I remember thinking that it seemed true. Maybe it was when I was young and liked crazy Alex Jones nonsense though.
There are big groups who own large numbers of local tv stations. Sinclair for one.
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On July 05 2018 21:55 Slaughter wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 21:46 Jockmcplop wrote:On July 05 2018 21:29 Plansix wrote:
That is one for sure. Local news is also good, since 24 hours news networks could give two shits about the school board fight two towns over. I thought local news in the US was all owned by a very small group of corporate interests. I can't remember where I heard that but I remember thinking that it seemed true. Maybe it was when I was young and liked crazy Alex Jones nonsense though. There are big groups who own large numbers of local tv stations. Sinclair for one.
And that is only in specific regions. There are almost non in my state. And even within those owned by Sinclair still have good people reporting on local events.
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On July 05 2018 17:37 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. The funny thing about this is that you don't even understand why I'm mocking you. Republicans have consistently indicated that they want the EPA abolished, not replaced with something better. In fact I can't recall any interview with any Republican government official that I've ever seen where they discussed a more efficient replacement for the EPA. It's all 'the EPA is an evil tyrannical organisation that hurts businesses'. Yes, I see a limited selection of such content, so if there is a detailed plan to replace the EPA with a superior organisation I'm all ears to hear it. But I see nothing from the American left wing posters here that tells me I'm missing an important part of the puzzle concerning reformation of the EPA, and the right wing posters never come in with something substantial on the topic, so I'm working off the assumption that the material doesn't exist, since nobody who should know about it seems to know that it does. You're attempting to have a discussion which your side concluded years ago. Come at us with your vision of a replacement agency and we can have that talk. Nobody on the left has the beginnings of a reason to assume you're being genuine because your side's political ideology has been to DESTROY the EPA, not improve it, and it has been for a long time, and making Scott fucking Pruitt the head of the EPA is the evidence that such is the intent. Where's the legislation you could currently be passing because you have the government? Where are Trump's new betterer yugely super good environmental protection regulations for a better EPA? They're nowhere. They don't exist. ICE on the other hand is doing its job really badly, damaging American social cohesion and essentially kidnapping children. Do I really need to go on to explain where the case for abolishing ICE arises? If ICE ceases to exist, the American border still exists, and there is still a patrol there keeping an eye on people crossing, and still legislation that deals with immigration. Abolish ICE = Open borders is utter nonsense. As for the other strand, as GH loves to point out, most Republican legislation and cabinet picks during this Presidency have passed with Democratic votes. I think they all have, actually. Doesn't matter. The narrative is the same. WHY WON'T YOU DEMONCRATS MEET US IN THE MIDDLE??? At the same time the President literally blames Democrats for unpopular things he's done. You can't behave this way consistently for a year and a half then turn around and start whining because the left is getting belligerent. Sure, the left is getting belligerent. And it's going to get worse unless y'all on the right stop driving the situation into the gutters. And you're beyond the point where you can blame Democrats. You have the power right now. Obama tried to reach across the aisle consistently during his Presidency and was rebuffed consistently. It's not his fault Congress refused to play ball. This Congress isn't even making the attempt, unless it's as a completely farce in order to immediately blame Democrats for not playing ball, while making 'deals' they would be stupid to go along with. Every Presidency is a chance to reset. Y'all on the right chose this direction. The Democrats tried to play ball several times, occasionally still do. Every single time they get punched in the face. After a certain point it just becomes stupidity to even make the attempt. Republicans have had the Presidency and majority control of both houses of Congress for a year and a half, and somehow it's still the Democrats' job to maintain basic civility in political dialogue? How does that even work in your head? When are Republicans - the alleged party of personal responsibility - going to take some fucking responsibility?
I'm not sure if you are being intentionally simple.
You k ow why there is no bill to get rid of the EPA? Because the idea is unpopular and it would just make the GOP less popular. You think that because someone doesn't have a bill on the table that means they... what exactly? You've managed to understand even less than the other posters. There is no talk of getting rid of the EPA right now, I picked it as an example because Danglars mentioned the EPA.
Moreover, if you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that those who don't want the EPA replaced want it at the state level. The percentage of people who are basically anarchists on the topic environmental regs is so small it's disingenuous or just ignorant to use them as a standard.
And I will note my objection to the "Obama tried compromise" garbage. This talking point had its origins in the Obamacare debate. Apparently, instead of agreeing to have the government take over 80% of healthcare, the GOP was supposed to agree to only 70% (random numbers but it makes the point). It's in keeping with the simplistic and incorrect view espoused above. Obamacare wasn't going to get GOP support like that.
And no, you don't have "to make the case." I'm explicitly NOT going that. You seem to think I am arguing the merits here still.
Your translator is still busted. All these assumptions you made aren't working. Next time you should go find someone instead of assuming that because you haven't seen a plan for something no one is going to do that having no plan IS the plan.
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On July 05 2018 19:10 Howie_Dewitt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 08:40 Introvert wrote:On July 05 2018 05:59 TheTenthDoc wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:
[quote]
Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach.
Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. I think this is just a human trait. Everyone on both sides loves a strawman. After all, Doug Jones become a radical abortionist with a history of supporting full-birth abortion with one terrible response to a question about specific legislation in front of congress pushing forward the trimester date, and Hillary Clinton became a hater of all Trump supporters because of a quote from a speech specifically about how some Trump supporters have legitimate opinions and grievances we should care about. Neither side takes the other side uniformly figuratively or literally, but that being the burden of "the left" and "the right" seems odd. Everyone perpetuates it become simplicity and strawmanning are tremendously potent weapons in politics, which the right realized even before the left. We'd be better off if neither side does it, but it's pretty hard for either side to disarm unilaterally. Especially when the current de facto leader of one side (Trump) will go so far as to completely fabricate things the other side supports. There is much to agree to here, but the problem is that the Bad Person assumption has fans in the media and culture. If someone says "you all just want to abolish borders!" you'll be deluged with "no! We just want to get rid of ICE and replace it with a humane agency." And of course the reverse is true with "abolish the EPA." But in that case, you get supposedly serious people telling us how conservatives want to allow Koch Industries to dump millions of gallons of waste upstream from a bunch of frolicking children or whatever. It isn't even about taking people literally, in the case of the EPA. It's actually much worse than that. What happens is that the EPA is treated as the One True Environmental Agency, and getting rid of it means you want no regulations at all. And for the record, I don't hold any government agency to be God's gift, as I mentioned to earlier. On July 05 2018 06:00 Howie_Dewitt wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:
[quote]
Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach.
Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. Despite most of this being true when applied to "the left," I don't feel like this is a political phenomenon only limited to one side of the aisle; in fact, I would say that the Republican Party's grande strategy revolves around assuming that the other side is made up of "bad" or "misguided" individuals. There are not a lot of attempts that I remember (my bad memory might play a part in this, but I'm reasonably comfortable with my statement here) where Republicans reached out to Democrats for an attempt at legislation instead of using brute force and only red votes to pass laws. I would also say that people like Joe Manchin should not be counted as reaching out by Republicans; he changed in response to the views of his constituents, and he always switched without Republican action targeted at him (although, they certainly approve of this shift). The assumption that "the right" is the victim here is quite concerning, as it allows you to brush off "calls for civility" instead of saying that both sides need to work on their attitudes (our current president is a symptom of this); why was "If you'll be civil, we will too. Stop assuming we're willing to destroy the country to advance the interests of the capital class and we'll start considering what you say and drafting more moderate legislation" not the Republicans' response to this? Essentially, where is your high ground? You created one for yourself, but I see it crumbling away. In short, I understand the thrust of your argument, but disagree with the statement that this is perpetuated solely by "the left." Edit: the tea party does make it very difficult to reach out, considering that they have much more of a visible impact on Congress than the "hard leftists." My above reply applies here too. In addition to that, I'm not even counting very obvious political power moves. not supporting something because you how the game is played if you go along with it is actually not terribly offensive to me. It IS utterly absurd when we apply to supposed concentration camps on the border, but for everyday back and forth I don't mind it too much. + Show Spoiler +
This is kind of a side note and I'll spoiler it cause I wrote it, but I think it could become thing everyone responds to.
As for civility, I will remind you which party it was that treated Bush and Romney as moral monsters, while every time someone said something slightly untoward to Obama you could find 153534 Republicans tripping over themselves to disassociate from it. I suspect many disagree with me, but to shield myself I will remind the thread of how many times I've criticized Trump and his rhetoric. I just don't think the left, broadly speaking, has a leg to stand on. If they think they were being civil at the time... I can't want to see what they end up doing now.
And the media dominance I referenced above should also be food for thought. When almost the entire "neutral" media is placing the status of bad personhood upon one party, maybe one should be closely reevaluating if you were really as civil and nice as you thought you were. Once again, it feels like you're trying to say that the Republican party is the victim, using yourself (an objectively civil and intelligent person, from what I can tell) as an example. I admit that media dominance by left-leaning sources does make it look shaky, but I feel like it's balanced out by the rhetoric that the tea party uses in government all the time. People who don't like to think are easily swayed by such arguments as "Not liking the EPA? You must want to have no regulations on the environment then and let the earth die, you evil bastard;" however, it's just as easy to counter with "Not supporting pro-life policy? You must want to set up industrial fetus part factories and kill off children, you evil bastard." People get elected as members of both parties using garbage and propaganda, and I don't think the left has a leg to stand on, either; I am of the opinion that both parties are waist deep in this muck, and still flinging more mud at each other. Just because you're better than that doesn't mean your party's representatives are, or that large swaths of the Republican voter base don't think the exact same way because of their choice of conservative-biased media like fox news and talk shows. Also, reminding me which party called Bush and Romney 'moral monsters' won't help much, as I'm 19; I only really started becoming aware of the political scene and interested in it around 2015 or 2016.
Some people apparently do believe that, see my response to Dave. although maybe that's not fair because he's a European and speaking with too little knowledge from too far away. Look st how people kept trying to discuss the merits of the idea with me. I think this demonstrates my point.
As for both parties being garbage heaps, I agree with that.
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On July 05 2018 22:26 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 17:37 iamthedave wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. The funny thing about this is that you don't even understand why I'm mocking you. Republicans have consistently indicated that they want the EPA abolished, not replaced with something better. In fact I can't recall any interview with any Republican government official that I've ever seen where they discussed a more efficient replacement for the EPA. It's all 'the EPA is an evil tyrannical organisation that hurts businesses'. Yes, I see a limited selection of such content, so if there is a detailed plan to replace the EPA with a superior organisation I'm all ears to hear it. But I see nothing from the American left wing posters here that tells me I'm missing an important part of the puzzle concerning reformation of the EPA, and the right wing posters never come in with something substantial on the topic, so I'm working off the assumption that the material doesn't exist, since nobody who should know about it seems to know that it does. You're attempting to have a discussion which your side concluded years ago. Come at us with your vision of a replacement agency and we can have that talk. Nobody on the left has the beginnings of a reason to assume you're being genuine because your side's political ideology has been to DESTROY the EPA, not improve it, and it has been for a long time, and making Scott fucking Pruitt the head of the EPA is the evidence that such is the intent. Where's the legislation you could currently be passing because you have the government? Where are Trump's new betterer yugely super good environmental protection regulations for a better EPA? They're nowhere. They don't exist. ICE on the other hand is doing its job really badly, damaging American social cohesion and essentially kidnapping children. Do I really need to go on to explain where the case for abolishing ICE arises? If ICE ceases to exist, the American border still exists, and there is still a patrol there keeping an eye on people crossing, and still legislation that deals with immigration. Abolish ICE = Open borders is utter nonsense. As for the other strand, as GH loves to point out, most Republican legislation and cabinet picks during this Presidency have passed with Democratic votes. I think they all have, actually. Doesn't matter. The narrative is the same. WHY WON'T YOU DEMONCRATS MEET US IN THE MIDDLE??? At the same time the President literally blames Democrats for unpopular things he's done. You can't behave this way consistently for a year and a half then turn around and start whining because the left is getting belligerent. Sure, the left is getting belligerent. And it's going to get worse unless y'all on the right stop driving the situation into the gutters. And you're beyond the point where you can blame Democrats. You have the power right now. Obama tried to reach across the aisle consistently during his Presidency and was rebuffed consistently. It's not his fault Congress refused to play ball. This Congress isn't even making the attempt, unless it's as a completely farce in order to immediately blame Democrats for not playing ball, while making 'deals' they would be stupid to go along with. Every Presidency is a chance to reset. Y'all on the right chose this direction. The Democrats tried to play ball several times, occasionally still do. Every single time they get punched in the face. After a certain point it just becomes stupidity to even make the attempt. Republicans have had the Presidency and majority control of both houses of Congress for a year and a half, and somehow it's still the Democrats' job to maintain basic civility in political dialogue? How does that even work in your head? When are Republicans - the alleged party of personal responsibility - going to take some fucking responsibility? I'm not sure if you are being intentionally simple. You k ow why there is no bill to get rid of the EPA? Because the idea is unpopular and it would just make the GOP less popular. You think that because someone doesn't have a bill on the table that means they... what exactly? You've managed to understand even less than the other posters. There is no talk of getting rid of the EPA right now, I picked it as an example because Danglars mentioned the EPA. Moreover, if you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that those who don't want the EPA replaced want it at the state level. The percentage of people who are basically anarchists on the topic environmental regs is so small it's disingenuous or just ignorant to use them as a standard. And I will note my objection to the "Obama tried compromise" garbage. This talking point had its origins in the Obamacare debate. Apparently, instead of agreeing to have the government take over 80% of healthcare, the GOP was supposed to agree to only 70% (random numbers but it makes the point). It's in keeping with the simplistic and incorrect view espoused above. Obamacare wasn't going to get GOP support like that. And no, you don't have "to make the case." I'm explicitly NOT going that. You seem to think I am arguing the merits here still. Your translator is still busted. All these assumptions you made are working. Next time you should go find someone instead of assuming that because you haven't seen a plan for something no one is going to do that having no plan IS the plan.
Except the US tried to do the state level thing a long time ago. Rivers and water supplied cross state lines. That is why the Connecticut River was a polluted mess until the Federal government stepped in 1965. Who do you think does the water quality testing for all the rivers in the country? The EPA. So as someone who lives down stream,
The conservative plan for how to handle the EPA already failed once. It is just that peoples understanding of history is bad. The only people who benefit from a state level EPA are businesses that want to pollute and cause problems for other states. So as someone who lives down stream, the conservatives can fuck off with this plan where NH and VT can mess up the Connecticut River again and MA and CT get to deal with the run off.
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On July 05 2018 22:33 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 22:26 Introvert wrote:On July 05 2018 17:37 iamthedave wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:
[quote]
Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach.
Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. The funny thing about this is that you don't even understand why I'm mocking you. Republicans have consistently indicated that they want the EPA abolished, not replaced with something better. In fact I can't recall any interview with any Republican government official that I've ever seen where they discussed a more efficient replacement for the EPA. It's all 'the EPA is an evil tyrannical organisation that hurts businesses'. Yes, I see a limited selection of such content, so if there is a detailed plan to replace the EPA with a superior organisation I'm all ears to hear it. But I see nothing from the American left wing posters here that tells me I'm missing an important part of the puzzle concerning reformation of the EPA, and the right wing posters never come in with something substantial on the topic, so I'm working off the assumption that the material doesn't exist, since nobody who should know about it seems to know that it does. You're attempting to have a discussion which your side concluded years ago. Come at us with your vision of a replacement agency and we can have that talk. Nobody on the left has the beginnings of a reason to assume you're being genuine because your side's political ideology has been to DESTROY the EPA, not improve it, and it has been for a long time, and making Scott fucking Pruitt the head of the EPA is the evidence that such is the intent. Where's the legislation you could currently be passing because you have the government? Where are Trump's new betterer yugely super good environmental protection regulations for a better EPA? They're nowhere. They don't exist. ICE on the other hand is doing its job really badly, damaging American social cohesion and essentially kidnapping children. Do I really need to go on to explain where the case for abolishing ICE arises? If ICE ceases to exist, the American border still exists, and there is still a patrol there keeping an eye on people crossing, and still legislation that deals with immigration. Abolish ICE = Open borders is utter nonsense. As for the other strand, as GH loves to point out, most Republican legislation and cabinet picks during this Presidency have passed with Democratic votes. I think they all have, actually. Doesn't matter. The narrative is the same. WHY WON'T YOU DEMONCRATS MEET US IN THE MIDDLE??? At the same time the President literally blames Democrats for unpopular things he's done. You can't behave this way consistently for a year and a half then turn around and start whining because the left is getting belligerent. Sure, the left is getting belligerent. And it's going to get worse unless y'all on the right stop driving the situation into the gutters. And you're beyond the point where you can blame Democrats. You have the power right now. Obama tried to reach across the aisle consistently during his Presidency and was rebuffed consistently. It's not his fault Congress refused to play ball. This Congress isn't even making the attempt, unless it's as a completely farce in order to immediately blame Democrats for not playing ball, while making 'deals' they would be stupid to go along with. Every Presidency is a chance to reset. Y'all on the right chose this direction. The Democrats tried to play ball several times, occasionally still do. Every single time they get punched in the face. After a certain point it just becomes stupidity to even make the attempt. Republicans have had the Presidency and majority control of both houses of Congress for a year and a half, and somehow it's still the Democrats' job to maintain basic civility in political dialogue? How does that even work in your head? When are Republicans - the alleged party of personal responsibility - going to take some fucking responsibility? I'm not sure if you are being intentionally simple. You k ow why there is no bill to get rid of the EPA? Because the idea is unpopular and it would just make the GOP less popular. You think that because someone doesn't have a bill on the table that means they... what exactly? You've managed to understand even less than the other posters. There is no talk of getting rid of the EPA right now, I picked it as an example because Danglars mentioned the EPA. Moreover, if you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that those who don't want the EPA replaced want it at the state level. The percentage of people who are basically anarchists on the topic environmental regs is so small it's disingenuous or just ignorant to use them as a standard. And I will note my objection to the "Obama tried compromise" garbage. This talking point had its origins in the Obamacare debate. Apparently, instead of agreeing to have the government take over 80% of healthcare, the GOP was supposed to agree to only 70% (random numbers but it makes the point). It's in keeping with the simplistic and incorrect view espoused above. Obamacare wasn't going to get GOP support like that. And no, you don't have "to make the case." I'm explicitly NOT going that. You seem to think I am arguing the merits here still. Your translator is still busted. All these assumptions you made are working. Next time you should go find someone instead of assuming that because you haven't seen a plan for something no one is going to do that having no plan IS the plan. Except the US tried to do the state level thing a long time ago. Rivers and water supplied cross state lines. That is why the Connecticut River was a polluted mess until the Federal government stepped in 1965. Who do you think does the water quality testing for all the rivers in the country? The EPA. So as someone who lives down stream, The conservative plan for how to handle the EPA already failed once. It is just that peoples understanding of history is bad. The only people who benefit from a state level EPA are businesses that want to pollute and cause problems for other states. So as someone who lives down stream, the conservatives can fuck off with this plan where NH and VT can mess up the Connecticut River again and MA and CT get to deal with the run off.
Do people think I'm stealth arguing something else? People are really obsessed with the pros and cons of environmental regulations in this discussion. What if I said there should be federal regs (which I claimed is the majority viewpoint) . Nah, people would still try to bring it up.
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On July 05 2018 22:47 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 22:33 Plansix wrote:On July 05 2018 22:26 Introvert wrote:On July 05 2018 17:37 iamthedave wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:
[quote]
Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way.
I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. The funny thing about this is that you don't even understand why I'm mocking you. Republicans have consistently indicated that they want the EPA abolished, not replaced with something better. In fact I can't recall any interview with any Republican government official that I've ever seen where they discussed a more efficient replacement for the EPA. It's all 'the EPA is an evil tyrannical organisation that hurts businesses'. Yes, I see a limited selection of such content, so if there is a detailed plan to replace the EPA with a superior organisation I'm all ears to hear it. But I see nothing from the American left wing posters here that tells me I'm missing an important part of the puzzle concerning reformation of the EPA, and the right wing posters never come in with something substantial on the topic, so I'm working off the assumption that the material doesn't exist, since nobody who should know about it seems to know that it does. You're attempting to have a discussion which your side concluded years ago. Come at us with your vision of a replacement agency and we can have that talk. Nobody on the left has the beginnings of a reason to assume you're being genuine because your side's political ideology has been to DESTROY the EPA, not improve it, and it has been for a long time, and making Scott fucking Pruitt the head of the EPA is the evidence that such is the intent. Where's the legislation you could currently be passing because you have the government? Where are Trump's new betterer yugely super good environmental protection regulations for a better EPA? They're nowhere. They don't exist. ICE on the other hand is doing its job really badly, damaging American social cohesion and essentially kidnapping children. Do I really need to go on to explain where the case for abolishing ICE arises? If ICE ceases to exist, the American border still exists, and there is still a patrol there keeping an eye on people crossing, and still legislation that deals with immigration. Abolish ICE = Open borders is utter nonsense. As for the other strand, as GH loves to point out, most Republican legislation and cabinet picks during this Presidency have passed with Democratic votes. I think they all have, actually. Doesn't matter. The narrative is the same. WHY WON'T YOU DEMONCRATS MEET US IN THE MIDDLE??? At the same time the President literally blames Democrats for unpopular things he's done. You can't behave this way consistently for a year and a half then turn around and start whining because the left is getting belligerent. Sure, the left is getting belligerent. And it's going to get worse unless y'all on the right stop driving the situation into the gutters. And you're beyond the point where you can blame Democrats. You have the power right now. Obama tried to reach across the aisle consistently during his Presidency and was rebuffed consistently. It's not his fault Congress refused to play ball. This Congress isn't even making the attempt, unless it's as a completely farce in order to immediately blame Democrats for not playing ball, while making 'deals' they would be stupid to go along with. Every Presidency is a chance to reset. Y'all on the right chose this direction. The Democrats tried to play ball several times, occasionally still do. Every single time they get punched in the face. After a certain point it just becomes stupidity to even make the attempt. Republicans have had the Presidency and majority control of both houses of Congress for a year and a half, and somehow it's still the Democrats' job to maintain basic civility in political dialogue? How does that even work in your head? When are Republicans - the alleged party of personal responsibility - going to take some fucking responsibility? I'm not sure if you are being intentionally simple. You k ow why there is no bill to get rid of the EPA? Because the idea is unpopular and it would just make the GOP less popular. You think that because someone doesn't have a bill on the table that means they... what exactly? You've managed to understand even less than the other posters. There is no talk of getting rid of the EPA right now, I picked it as an example because Danglars mentioned the EPA. Moreover, if you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that those who don't want the EPA replaced want it at the state level. The percentage of people who are basically anarchists on the topic environmental regs is so small it's disingenuous or just ignorant to use them as a standard. And I will note my objection to the "Obama tried compromise" garbage. This talking point had its origins in the Obamacare debate. Apparently, instead of agreeing to have the government take over 80% of healthcare, the GOP was supposed to agree to only 70% (random numbers but it makes the point). It's in keeping with the simplistic and incorrect view espoused above. Obamacare wasn't going to get GOP support like that. And no, you don't have "to make the case." I'm explicitly NOT going that. You seem to think I am arguing the merits here still. Your translator is still busted. All these assumptions you made are working. Next time you should go find someone instead of assuming that because you haven't seen a plan for something no one is going to do that having no plan IS the plan. Except the US tried to do the state level thing a long time ago. Rivers and water supplied cross state lines. That is why the Connecticut River was a polluted mess until the Federal government stepped in 1965. Who do you think does the water quality testing for all the rivers in the country? The EPA. So as someone who lives down stream, The conservative plan for how to handle the EPA already failed once. It is just that peoples understanding of history is bad. The only people who benefit from a state level EPA are businesses that want to pollute and cause problems for other states. So as someone who lives down stream, the conservatives can fuck off with this plan where NH and VT can mess up the Connecticut River again and MA and CT get to deal with the run off. Do people think I'm stealth arguing something else? People are really obsessed with the pros and cons of environmental regulations in this discussion. What if I said there should be federal regs. Nah, people would still try to bring it up.
Federal regulations must be written and enforced by a federal agency, aka the EPA. The states can’t do that. I cannot tell if you don’t understand the federal government or are simply arguing that the regulations can stay in place without enforcement.
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On July 05 2018 22:26 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 17:37 iamthedave wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. The funny thing about this is that you don't even understand why I'm mocking you. Republicans have consistently indicated that they want the EPA abolished, not replaced with something better. In fact I can't recall any interview with any Republican government official that I've ever seen where they discussed a more efficient replacement for the EPA. It's all 'the EPA is an evil tyrannical organisation that hurts businesses'. Yes, I see a limited selection of such content, so if there is a detailed plan to replace the EPA with a superior organisation I'm all ears to hear it. But I see nothing from the American left wing posters here that tells me I'm missing an important part of the puzzle concerning reformation of the EPA, and the right wing posters never come in with something substantial on the topic, so I'm working off the assumption that the material doesn't exist, since nobody who should know about it seems to know that it does. You're attempting to have a discussion which your side concluded years ago. Come at us with your vision of a replacement agency and we can have that talk. Nobody on the left has the beginnings of a reason to assume you're being genuine because your side's political ideology has been to DESTROY the EPA, not improve it, and it has been for a long time, and making Scott fucking Pruitt the head of the EPA is the evidence that such is the intent. Where's the legislation you could currently be passing because you have the government? Where are Trump's new betterer yugely super good environmental protection regulations for a better EPA? They're nowhere. They don't exist. ICE on the other hand is doing its job really badly, damaging American social cohesion and essentially kidnapping children. Do I really need to go on to explain where the case for abolishing ICE arises? If ICE ceases to exist, the American border still exists, and there is still a patrol there keeping an eye on people crossing, and still legislation that deals with immigration. Abolish ICE = Open borders is utter nonsense. As for the other strand, as GH loves to point out, most Republican legislation and cabinet picks during this Presidency have passed with Democratic votes. I think they all have, actually. Doesn't matter. The narrative is the same. WHY WON'T YOU DEMONCRATS MEET US IN THE MIDDLE??? At the same time the President literally blames Democrats for unpopular things he's done. You can't behave this way consistently for a year and a half then turn around and start whining because the left is getting belligerent. Sure, the left is getting belligerent. And it's going to get worse unless y'all on the right stop driving the situation into the gutters. And you're beyond the point where you can blame Democrats. You have the power right now. Obama tried to reach across the aisle consistently during his Presidency and was rebuffed consistently. It's not his fault Congress refused to play ball. This Congress isn't even making the attempt, unless it's as a completely farce in order to immediately blame Democrats for not playing ball, while making 'deals' they would be stupid to go along with. Every Presidency is a chance to reset. Y'all on the right chose this direction. The Democrats tried to play ball several times, occasionally still do. Every single time they get punched in the face. After a certain point it just becomes stupidity to even make the attempt. Republicans have had the Presidency and majority control of both houses of Congress for a year and a half, and somehow it's still the Democrats' job to maintain basic civility in political dialogue? How does that even work in your head? When are Republicans - the alleged party of personal responsibility - going to take some fucking responsibility? I'm not sure if you are being intentionally simple. You k ow why there is no bill to get rid of the EPA? Because the idea is unpopular and it would just make the GOP less popular. You think that because someone doesn't have a bill on the table that means they... what exactly? You've managed to understand even less than the other posters. There is no talk of getting rid of the EPA right now, I picked it as an example because Danglars mentioned the EPA. Moreover, if you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that those who don't want the EPA replaced want it at the state level. The percentage of people who are basically anarchists on the topic environmental regs is so small it's disingenuous or just ignorant to use them as a standard. And I will note my objection to the "Obama tried compromise" garbage. This talking point had its origins in the Obamacare debate. Apparently, instead of agreeing to have the government take over 80% of healthcare, the GOP was supposed to agree to only 70% (random numbers but it makes the point). It's in keeping with the simplistic and incorrect view espoused above. Obamacare wasn't going to get GOP support like that. And no, you don't have "to make the case." I'm explicitly NOT going that. You seem to think I am arguing the merits here still. Your translator is still busted. All these assumptions you made aren't working. Next time you should go find someone instead of assuming that because you haven't seen a plan for something no one is going to do that having no plan IS the plan.
Out of curiosity, what changes to the ACA do you think would have caused it to receive GOP support? McConnell made it pretty clear they weren't going to support any legislation that could be construed as a win for Obama.
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On July 05 2018 22:51 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 22:26 Introvert wrote:On July 05 2018 17:37 iamthedave wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:
[quote]
Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach.
Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. The funny thing about this is that you don't even understand why I'm mocking you. Republicans have consistently indicated that they want the EPA abolished, not replaced with something better. In fact I can't recall any interview with any Republican government official that I've ever seen where they discussed a more efficient replacement for the EPA. It's all 'the EPA is an evil tyrannical organisation that hurts businesses'. Yes, I see a limited selection of such content, so if there is a detailed plan to replace the EPA with a superior organisation I'm all ears to hear it. But I see nothing from the American left wing posters here that tells me I'm missing an important part of the puzzle concerning reformation of the EPA, and the right wing posters never come in with something substantial on the topic, so I'm working off the assumption that the material doesn't exist, since nobody who should know about it seems to know that it does. You're attempting to have a discussion which your side concluded years ago. Come at us with your vision of a replacement agency and we can have that talk. Nobody on the left has the beginnings of a reason to assume you're being genuine because your side's political ideology has been to DESTROY the EPA, not improve it, and it has been for a long time, and making Scott fucking Pruitt the head of the EPA is the evidence that such is the intent. Where's the legislation you could currently be passing because you have the government? Where are Trump's new betterer yugely super good environmental protection regulations for a better EPA? They're nowhere. They don't exist. ICE on the other hand is doing its job really badly, damaging American social cohesion and essentially kidnapping children. Do I really need to go on to explain where the case for abolishing ICE arises? If ICE ceases to exist, the American border still exists, and there is still a patrol there keeping an eye on people crossing, and still legislation that deals with immigration. Abolish ICE = Open borders is utter nonsense. As for the other strand, as GH loves to point out, most Republican legislation and cabinet picks during this Presidency have passed with Democratic votes. I think they all have, actually. Doesn't matter. The narrative is the same. WHY WON'T YOU DEMONCRATS MEET US IN THE MIDDLE??? At the same time the President literally blames Democrats for unpopular things he's done. You can't behave this way consistently for a year and a half then turn around and start whining because the left is getting belligerent. Sure, the left is getting belligerent. And it's going to get worse unless y'all on the right stop driving the situation into the gutters. And you're beyond the point where you can blame Democrats. You have the power right now. Obama tried to reach across the aisle consistently during his Presidency and was rebuffed consistently. It's not his fault Congress refused to play ball. This Congress isn't even making the attempt, unless it's as a completely farce in order to immediately blame Democrats for not playing ball, while making 'deals' they would be stupid to go along with. Every Presidency is a chance to reset. Y'all on the right chose this direction. The Democrats tried to play ball several times, occasionally still do. Every single time they get punched in the face. After a certain point it just becomes stupidity to even make the attempt. Republicans have had the Presidency and majority control of both houses of Congress for a year and a half, and somehow it's still the Democrats' job to maintain basic civility in political dialogue? How does that even work in your head? When are Republicans - the alleged party of personal responsibility - going to take some fucking responsibility? I'm not sure if you are being intentionally simple. You k ow why there is no bill to get rid of the EPA? Because the idea is unpopular and it would just make the GOP less popular. You think that because someone doesn't have a bill on the table that means they... what exactly? You've managed to understand even less than the other posters. There is no talk of getting rid of the EPA right now, I picked it as an example because Danglars mentioned the EPA. Moreover, if you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that those who don't want the EPA replaced want it at the state level. The percentage of people who are basically anarchists on the topic environmental regs is so small it's disingenuous or just ignorant to use them as a standard. And I will note my objection to the "Obama tried compromise" garbage. This talking point had its origins in the Obamacare debate. Apparently, instead of agreeing to have the government take over 80% of healthcare, the GOP was supposed to agree to only 70% (random numbers but it makes the point). It's in keeping with the simplistic and incorrect view espoused above. Obamacare wasn't going to get GOP support like that. And no, you don't have "to make the case." I'm explicitly NOT going that. You seem to think I am arguing the merits here still. Your translator is still busted. All these assumptions you made aren't working. Next time you should go find someone instead of assuming that because you haven't seen a plan for something no one is going to do that having no plan IS the plan. Out of curiosity, what changes to the ACA do you think would have caused it to receive GOP support? McConnell made it pretty clear they weren't going to support any legislation that could be construed as a win for Obama.
I don't know If there were any. The two parties had fundamentally different views of healthcare and the government's involvement.
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I think the other spooky thing for "the left" specifically when it comes to EPA rhetroic is that the last time Congressional Republicans tried to repeal something (Obamacare) they had a collective "oh crap" moment of "we don't actually have a replacement we agree on even though we lied and said we did" that was one vote away from resulting in repeal and hope to replace later maybe. Then they lied to one of the members of their party about allowing a vote on an ACA update on the horrific current situation that was clearly never intended by the authors (Medicaid expansion eligible adults get 0 subsidy). This reinforced a lot of negative stereotypes in a way that's hard to get away from, and it wasn't just limited to any one wing of the Republican party: anti-establishment and establishment Republicans and Trump all fucked up.
I'm not sure we've any governance quite that toxic from Democratics when it comes to repealing/abolishing things, but I could be misremembering (perhaps one could interpret the Obama admin's policy on state marijuana that way?). When you generate a party based on "we want to get rid of things," the only thing anyone should expect you to agree on is getting rid of things; doing any more than that requires a pretty uniform position that no one in their right mind expects from the current Republican caucus except when it comes to $$$.
Whether it's worthwhile to judge and interpret the statements of generic Republicans based upon the buffoons of poor policymaking representing them in Congress and the White House is another story.
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On July 05 2018 22:51 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 22:26 Introvert wrote:On July 05 2018 17:37 iamthedave wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:
[quote]
Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach.
Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. The funny thing about this is that you don't even understand why I'm mocking you. Republicans have consistently indicated that they want the EPA abolished, not replaced with something better. In fact I can't recall any interview with any Republican government official that I've ever seen where they discussed a more efficient replacement for the EPA. It's all 'the EPA is an evil tyrannical organisation that hurts businesses'. Yes, I see a limited selection of such content, so if there is a detailed plan to replace the EPA with a superior organisation I'm all ears to hear it. But I see nothing from the American left wing posters here that tells me I'm missing an important part of the puzzle concerning reformation of the EPA, and the right wing posters never come in with something substantial on the topic, so I'm working off the assumption that the material doesn't exist, since nobody who should know about it seems to know that it does. You're attempting to have a discussion which your side concluded years ago. Come at us with your vision of a replacement agency and we can have that talk. Nobody on the left has the beginnings of a reason to assume you're being genuine because your side's political ideology has been to DESTROY the EPA, not improve it, and it has been for a long time, and making Scott fucking Pruitt the head of the EPA is the evidence that such is the intent. Where's the legislation you could currently be passing because you have the government? Where are Trump's new betterer yugely super good environmental protection regulations for a better EPA? They're nowhere. They don't exist. ICE on the other hand is doing its job really badly, damaging American social cohesion and essentially kidnapping children. Do I really need to go on to explain where the case for abolishing ICE arises? If ICE ceases to exist, the American border still exists, and there is still a patrol there keeping an eye on people crossing, and still legislation that deals with immigration. Abolish ICE = Open borders is utter nonsense. As for the other strand, as GH loves to point out, most Republican legislation and cabinet picks during this Presidency have passed with Democratic votes. I think they all have, actually. Doesn't matter. The narrative is the same. WHY WON'T YOU DEMONCRATS MEET US IN THE MIDDLE??? At the same time the President literally blames Democrats for unpopular things he's done. You can't behave this way consistently for a year and a half then turn around and start whining because the left is getting belligerent. Sure, the left is getting belligerent. And it's going to get worse unless y'all on the right stop driving the situation into the gutters. And you're beyond the point where you can blame Democrats. You have the power right now. Obama tried to reach across the aisle consistently during his Presidency and was rebuffed consistently. It's not his fault Congress refused to play ball. This Congress isn't even making the attempt, unless it's as a completely farce in order to immediately blame Democrats for not playing ball, while making 'deals' they would be stupid to go along with. Every Presidency is a chance to reset. Y'all on the right chose this direction. The Democrats tried to play ball several times, occasionally still do. Every single time they get punched in the face. After a certain point it just becomes stupidity to even make the attempt. Republicans have had the Presidency and majority control of both houses of Congress for a year and a half, and somehow it's still the Democrats' job to maintain basic civility in political dialogue? How does that even work in your head? When are Republicans - the alleged party of personal responsibility - going to take some fucking responsibility? I'm not sure if you are being intentionally simple. You k ow why there is no bill to get rid of the EPA? Because the idea is unpopular and it would just make the GOP less popular. You think that because someone doesn't have a bill on the table that means they... what exactly? You've managed to understand even less than the other posters. There is no talk of getting rid of the EPA right now, I picked it as an example because Danglars mentioned the EPA. Moreover, if you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that those who don't want the EPA replaced want it at the state level. The percentage of people who are basically anarchists on the topic environmental regs is so small it's disingenuous or just ignorant to use them as a standard. And I will note my objection to the "Obama tried compromise" garbage. This talking point had its origins in the Obamacare debate. Apparently, instead of agreeing to have the government take over 80% of healthcare, the GOP was supposed to agree to only 70% (random numbers but it makes the point). It's in keeping with the simplistic and incorrect view espoused above. Obamacare wasn't going to get GOP support like that. And no, you don't have "to make the case." I'm explicitly NOT going that. You seem to think I am arguing the merits here still. Your translator is still busted. All these assumptions you made aren't working. Next time you should go find someone instead of assuming that because you haven't seen a plan for something no one is going to do that having no plan IS the plan. Out of curiosity, what changes to the ACA do you think would have caused it to receive GOP support? McConnell made it pretty clear they weren't going to support any legislation that could be construed as a win for Obama.
Which has always been weird since the ACA is an invention of the heritage foundation, a conservative group. It was supposed to be the Republicans solution to health care reform. But because the opposing party passed it, the Republicans now treat it like the great Satan.
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On July 05 2018 22:26 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 17:37 iamthedave wrote:On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. The funny thing about this is that you don't even understand why I'm mocking you. Republicans have consistently indicated that they want the EPA abolished, not replaced with something better. In fact I can't recall any interview with any Republican government official that I've ever seen where they discussed a more efficient replacement for the EPA. It's all 'the EPA is an evil tyrannical organisation that hurts businesses'. Yes, I see a limited selection of such content, so if there is a detailed plan to replace the EPA with a superior organisation I'm all ears to hear it. But I see nothing from the American left wing posters here that tells me I'm missing an important part of the puzzle concerning reformation of the EPA, and the right wing posters never come in with something substantial on the topic, so I'm working off the assumption that the material doesn't exist, since nobody who should know about it seems to know that it does. You're attempting to have a discussion which your side concluded years ago. Come at us with your vision of a replacement agency and we can have that talk. Nobody on the left has the beginnings of a reason to assume you're being genuine because your side's political ideology has been to DESTROY the EPA, not improve it, and it has been for a long time, and making Scott fucking Pruitt the head of the EPA is the evidence that such is the intent. Where's the legislation you could currently be passing because you have the government? Where are Trump's new betterer yugely super good environmental protection regulations for a better EPA? They're nowhere. They don't exist. ICE on the other hand is doing its job really badly, damaging American social cohesion and essentially kidnapping children. Do I really need to go on to explain where the case for abolishing ICE arises? If ICE ceases to exist, the American border still exists, and there is still a patrol there keeping an eye on people crossing, and still legislation that deals with immigration. Abolish ICE = Open borders is utter nonsense. As for the other strand, as GH loves to point out, most Republican legislation and cabinet picks during this Presidency have passed with Democratic votes. I think they all have, actually. Doesn't matter. The narrative is the same. WHY WON'T YOU DEMONCRATS MEET US IN THE MIDDLE??? At the same time the President literally blames Democrats for unpopular things he's done. You can't behave this way consistently for a year and a half then turn around and start whining because the left is getting belligerent. Sure, the left is getting belligerent. And it's going to get worse unless y'all on the right stop driving the situation into the gutters. And you're beyond the point where you can blame Democrats. You have the power right now. Obama tried to reach across the aisle consistently during his Presidency and was rebuffed consistently. It's not his fault Congress refused to play ball. This Congress isn't even making the attempt, unless it's as a completely farce in order to immediately blame Democrats for not playing ball, while making 'deals' they would be stupid to go along with. Every Presidency is a chance to reset. Y'all on the right chose this direction. The Democrats tried to play ball several times, occasionally still do. Every single time they get punched in the face. After a certain point it just becomes stupidity to even make the attempt. Republicans have had the Presidency and majority control of both houses of Congress for a year and a half, and somehow it's still the Democrats' job to maintain basic civility in political dialogue? How does that even work in your head? When are Republicans - the alleged party of personal responsibility - going to take some fucking responsibility? I'm not sure if you are being intentionally simple. You k ow why there is no bill to get rid of the EPA? Because the idea is unpopular and it would just make the GOP less popular. You think that because someone doesn't have a bill on the table that means they... what exactly? You've managed to understand even less than the other posters. There is no talk of getting rid of the EPA right now, I picked it as an example because Danglars mentioned the EPA. Moreover, if you actually knew what you were talking about you'd know that those who don't want the EPA replaced want it at the state level. The percentage of people who are basically anarchists on the topic environmental regs is so small it's disingenuous or just ignorant to use them as a standard. And I will note my objection to the "Obama tried compromise" garbage. This talking point had its origins in the Obamacare debate. Apparently, instead of agreeing to have the government take over 80% of healthcare, the GOP was supposed to agree to only 70% (random numbers but it makes the point). It's in keeping with the simplistic and incorrect view espoused above. Obamacare wasn't going to get GOP support like that. And no, you don't have "to make the case." I'm explicitly NOT going that. You seem to think I am arguing the merits here still. Your translator is still busted. All these assumptions you made aren't working. Next time you should go find someone instead of assuming that because you haven't seen a plan for something no one is going to do that having no plan IS the plan.
I'm relatively confident that you are being intentionally simple, so there's that.
There's no bill to remove the EPA, yet they elected Scott Pruitt to run it into the ground and took half a dozen specifically anti-environment positions in the last year. Funny confluence of events there, don't you think? If they don't remove the EPA but reduce it to a shell of its former self with vastly reduced funding, much reduced staff, and a head dedicated to not doing the things the EPA is literally there to do, then that tells you something about the administration's attitude to said organisation.
But hey, you have a clear, complex understanding of everything, right? You interpret it for me.
Also, can't someone of your elevated comprehension see why state-level environmental protections are fundamentally counter-productive?
re: Obama's bipartisanship, there seems to be a lot more cases than just Obamacare: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/01/16/obamas_unsung_bipartisan_legacy_132798.html
http://www.themodestproposal.com/?p=151
Seems like he tried pretty hard.
EDIT: You seem to be spending a lot of posts telling people what you're not saying but are scant on what you are. Maybe it's worth taking a post out to make your point explicit? It's going a bit GH circa abolish the police arguments and Danglars on half a dozen different occasions.
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