Political Roundtable Part XXX

[Wizardspride]

Joe and Jill went over the hill
you can still hear the laughter
Joe fell down, concussed his crown
and it's all downhill ever after.

...........

[Zonkerbl]

threatening to assassinate the president and his wife is so edgy

[pancakes3]

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It really is unbelievable that an ex President of the US talks like that - and it barely makes the news. Before Trump became President, there was no chance any President or ex President of any party would say something so Un-American and anti-police like that.

bro, right now, people are losing their sht over Obama having a birthday party, which got more media attention than trump's press release.

[Zonkerbl]

It makes you think... I mean, the people of Afghanistan, if they wanted to get rid of the Taliban, they had 20 years of extremely enthusiastic help from the US military to do so and it didn't happen. Hard not to conclude that the Taliban is what they want.

The American people want Trump to be their dictator. The media wants it, the plutocrats want it, a plurality of the people want it. Apparently we're tired of having to treat people equally. We want favoritism and corruption, want it so badly we're willing to fight and die for it. Long live nepotism!

Maybe that's the way this needs to go - look at John Oliver's story on the Sacklers on youtube. This system is corrupt to the core. Maybe what has to happen is for it to show it's true face - have the Trumpists take over and become the bad guys, and then the revolution can overthrow them and in the process cut the plutes off at the knees.

Probably not going to happen but a good idea for an alternative history novel anyway.

[Benjammin]

^^^Definitely would make for an interesting story. The death of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its energy being taken up by CRT is a fascinating one. The plutocrats/tech moguls are completely comfortable with CRT and the transgender movements because they feel can manage them and still be insulated from scrutiny of their vast economic and social power and influence.

As for Afghanistan, it was hubris to think that the US would succeed where everyone else has failed in Afghanistan. Our record in nation and democracy building is spotty at best, particularly in the last fifty years.

[Zonkerbl]

^^^Definitely would make for an interesting story. The death of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its energy being taken up by CRT is a fascinating one. The plutocrats/tech moguls are completely comfortable with CRT and the transgender movements because they feel can manage them and still be insulated from scrutiny of their vast economic and social power and influence.

As for Afghanistan, it was hubris to think that the US would succeed where everyone else has failed in Afghanistan. Our record in nation and democracy building is spotty at best, particularly in the last fifty years.

What does "energy taken up by CRT" mean? There is no CRT, in the same sense that there is no Antifa - it's not an organized movement, it's an idea. So "Occupy Wall Street movement... being taken up by CRT" makes no sense. Occupy Wall Street was a protest movement. CRT is not - it's an academic theory.

I guess right wingers are tired of railing against SJWs so now they're saying CRT. Same smell. TBH at least SJWs were an actual thing so to complain about them doesn't make you look stupid/insane. CRT is a different story.

About Afghanistan - we had to respond. If we had said that we're going to occupy Afghanistan until we kill bin Laden, that would've been ok, and Obama tried to leave after that and the military wouldn't let him. He ordered them to come up with a viable exit strategy and they unsubordinately refused. Seems pretty simple to me - we can't stay in Afghanistan forever, we might as well leave now, what's the plan for minimizing our losses? And the military utterly failed, and so we had to just say eff it and leave. Was that a better outcome? There is a deep state of unelected officials making decisions that affect us and our country but they're in the military.

[Wizardspride]

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[Zonkerbl]

Help is coming, just gotta prevent the tyrants from destroying democracy over the next ten years

[Wizardspride]

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[pancakes3]

you don't understand the nuance of having the choice to die because you didn't get in line early enough (basically invoking the invisible hand) v. having BIG GOVERNMENT decide that you're going to die. i'll choose freedom any day. - Nate

[Zonkerbl]

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But that's her schtick - she's a crisis actor playing a role. The more riled up she gets everybody the more money she makes.

[dckingsfan]

Under the heading of "what took you so long?" and "it's a start, well kind of..."

Many Republicans in Congress no longer deny that Earth is heating because of fossil fuel emissions. But they say abandoning oil, gas and coal will harm the economy.

WASHINGTON — After a decade of disputing the existence of climate change, many leading Republicans are shifting their posture amid deadly heat waves, devastating drought and ferocious wildfires that have bludgeoned their districts and unnerved their constituents back home.

Members of Congress who long insisted that the climate is changing due to natural cycles have notably adjusted that view, with many now acknowledging the solid science that emissions from burning oil, gas and coal have raised Earth’s temperature.

But their growing acceptance of the reality of climate change has not translated into support for the one strategy that scientists said in a major United Nations report this week is imperative to avert an even more harrowing future: stop burning fossil fuels.

Instead, Republicans want to spend billions to prepare communities to cope with extreme weather, but are trying to block efforts by Democrats to cut the emissions that are fueling the disasters in the first place.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/republicans-climate-change.html

[dobrojim]

Re Afghanistan, it’s tragic both what our futile involvement resulted in
as well as the apparent dominance of medieval philosophy by many of the people
that live there. They’re the only ones who can fix it (sadly). Military
solutions to economic/cultural problems will never be more than temporary.

Re climate change it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that
the costs of addressing it are not trivial compared to the costs of ignoring it.
I really wonder what may happen when or if rainfall patterns disrupt and
interfere with our ability to do industrial scale agriculture so everyone
can have food.

We need an efficient method of desalination of sea water.

[verbal8]

Re climate change it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that
the costs of addressing it are not trivial compared to the costs of ignoring it.
I really wonder what may happen when or if rainfall patterns disrupt and
interfere with our ability to do industrial scale agriculture so everyone
can have food.

We need an efficient method of desalination of sea water.

The smart debate to have would be how we should allocate resources between preventing climate change from getting worse and resources to deal with the effects.

Not whether a strongly supported scientific theory(which should be a political fact) is true.

[dckingsfan]

Re climate change it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that
the costs of addressing it are not trivial compared to the costs of ignoring it.
I really wonder what may happen when or if rainfall patterns disrupt and
interfere with our ability to do industrial scale agriculture so everyone
can have food.

We need an efficient method of desalination of sea water.

The smart debate to have would be how we should allocate resources between preventing climate change from getting worse and resources to deal with the effects.

Not whether a strongly supported scientific theory(which should be a political fact) is true.

A bit of that is the positioning of climate change in the media as well, I thought the following was well written on that topic:

In May, when a series of environmental wins occured back to back, the media reported the news nearly universally as a "bad day for Big Oil." And while this wasn't untrue, it also ignored the positive side of the stories, namely that pro-environment and anti-oil activism had worked — the public tide had turned against oil causing shareholder revolts at two major oil companies. One was ordered by the government to drastically reduce emissions.

By centering the oil companies, media outlets failed to show why the companies' luck had turned, obscuring the work of environmental activists and leaving the impression that climate change is something that happens passively, without human and corporate actors.

As climate journalist Emily Atkin points out in her newsletter, the media prefers this framing mostly because it hides a fact they're reluctant to admit: "that stabilizing the climate requires an end to oil and gas extraction." Atkin explains that "describing May 26 as 'A good day for life on Earth' means admitting to that fact, and becoming vulnerable to cries of bias from the oil industry and its allies. News outlets don't want to deal with that, so they simply call it 'a bad day for Big Oil,' and let the industry attack those pesky oil-hating climate activists instead."

https://www.businessinsider.com/media-frames-climate-change-hopeless-hiding-the-solutions-2021-8

And a bit of stats - we still have work to do but it is getting there.

A record-tying 73% of Americans think global warming is happening. Only one in ten Americans (10%) think global warming is not happening. Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it isn’t by a ratio of about 7 to 1.

And

A record-tying 62% of Americans understand that global warming is mostly human-caused. By contrast, about three in ten (29%) think it is due mostly to natural changes in the environment.

And

Majorities of Americans think state and local governments should place a “high priority” on protecting agriculture, public water supplies, and people’s health (all 55%) from the effects of global warming over the next ten years.

https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-in-the-american-mind-april-2020/2/

[dckingsfan]

Joe and Jill went over the hill
you can still hear the laughter
Joe fell down, concussed his crown
and it's all downhill ever after.

Humpty Trumpty called for a wall.
Trumpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Now all the Grand Wizards and Lizards
and Faux PR men
Can never put Trumpty together again.

[Kanyewest]

Re Afghanistan, it’s tragic both what our futile involvement resulted in
as well as the apparent dominance of medieval philosophy by many of the people
that live there. They’re the only ones who can fix it (sadly). Military
solutions to economic/cultural problems will never be more than temporary.

Re climate change it’s getting harder and harder to pretend that
the costs of addressing it are not trivial compared to the costs of ignoring it.
I really wonder what may happen when or if rainfall patterns disrupt and
interfere with our ability to do industrial scale agriculture so everyone
can have food.

We need an efficient method of desalination of sea water.

The US indirectly lead to the insurrection against the Soviet Union in the 1980s and didn't seem to learn that lessons. Although once the US and Russia left 1980s, it created a vacuum for Pakistan/Saudi Arabia to give money/support to the Taliban.

[TGW]

^^^Definitely would make for an interesting story. The death of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its energy being taken up by CRT is a fascinating one. The plutocrats/tech moguls are completely comfortable with CRT and the transgender movements because they feel can manage them and still be insulated from scrutiny of their vast economic and social power and influence.

As for Afghanistan, it was hubris to think that the US would succeed where everyone else has failed in Afghanistan. Our record in nation and democracy building is spotty at best, particularly in the last fifty years.

So spot on….

[Wizardspride]

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[Ruzious]

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Graham is one of the few on that side that understands right from wrong, but he's made the decision that right and wrong are secondary considerations. His primary consideration was, is, and always will be... keeping himself relevant.