agnosto wrote: So, which of the back-runners for the GOP nomination will be next?
I would guess Paul will likely get out soon as he still has a viable job in politics to go back to and the longer he runs without any success, the more tarnished he will be. I would also guess Santorum and Huckabee will get out immediately after Iowa if they don't catch fire there soon. I'm not really sure what Pataki is still doing in the race. He is still in, isn't he?
agnosto wrote: So, which of the back-runners for the GOP nomination will be next?
I would guess Paul will likely get out soon as he still has a viable job in politics to go back to and the longer he runs without any success, the more tarnished he will be. I would also guess Santorum and Huckabee will get out immediately after Iowa if they don't catch fire there soon. I'm not really sure what Pataki is still doing in the race. He is still in, isn't he?
Pataki's still in, for now. A few days ago he said that he'd stay until someone he believes would do a good job became the front-runner. I don't know why he's bothering either, or any of the other kid table candidates.
Well, he's one of the most experienced and qualified people running for the republican ticket, he just has absolutely no charisma, as is not very well known.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Well, he's one of the most experienced and qualified people running for the republican ticket, he just has absolutely no charisma, as is not very well known.
No more Gov from the North East please.
The Rubio vs Cruz fight is heating up.
:pass the popcorn folks!:
Just thought of something... many of you despise Cruz... right?
Co'tor Shas wrote: Well, he's one of the most experienced and qualified people running for the republican ticket, he just has absolutely no charisma, as is not very well known.
No more Gov from the North East please.
The Rubio vs Cruz fight is heating up.
:pass the popcorn folks!:
Just thought of something... many of you despise Cruz... right?
Better than Trump, Carson, Fiorina, ect. He's one of the people who actually makes sense to be running, instead of just running because they can. Now, even if the ones with no chance who are just running because they can, nutsjobs, ect weren't in (probably leaving us with maybe 4-5 candidates total) he's still most probably lose (because of the aforementioned lack of charisma, and also the fact that he is quite socially liberal, although still fiscally conservative, and willing to work with non-R's), and even he couldn't stand up to Hillary at this point (although well see how far these scandels go).
Co'tor Shas wrote: Well, he's one of the most experienced and qualified people running for the republican ticket, he just has absolutely no charisma, as is not very well known.
No more Gov from the North East please.
The Rubio vs Cruz fight is heating up.
:pass the popcorn folks!:
Just thought of something... many of you despise Cruz... right?
I despise how he panders to the most base instincts of the far right. I don't think he actually believes most of it though because he is way too intelligent for that. Which I guess makes him even more despicable, because he is a demagogue when he doesn't really need to be.
Edit: then again, looking at the political realities of the race on the right right now, maybe he does need to be.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Well, he's one of the most experienced and qualified people running for the republican ticket, he just has absolutely no charisma, as is not very well known.
No more Gov from the North East please.
The Rubio vs Cruz fight is heating up.
:pass the popcorn folks!:
Just thought of something... many of you despise Cruz... right?
I despise how he panders to the most base instincts of the far right. I don't think he actually believes most of it though because he is way too intelligent for that. Which I guess makes him even more despicable, because he is a demagogue when he doesn't really need to be.
Edit: then again, looking at the political realities of the race on the right right now, maybe he does need to be.
They all Pander™... Cruz is just a dick about it.
Man... at this point, I hope it's Rubio vs. Clinton.
So, are you actually going to provide some evidence of Obama endorsing the execution of people for the "crime" of failing to obey his religion's rules? Or is this the exact "they're both the same" nonsense I was referring to?
Oh, I know they all pander. (Except maybe, Sanders, Grahm, and Huckabee--I think those three actually believe the stuff they say, good or bad) It's to the basest irrational instincts I have a problem with.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Yeah, a young, relatively inexperienced Senator, especially a non white minority, could never win running against an elderly white politician with decades of political experience and a history of hawkish foreign policy.
So, are you actually going to provide some evidence of Obama endorsing the execution of people for the "crime" of failing to obey his religion's rules? Or is this the exact "they're both the same" nonsense I was referring to?
I'm guessing he is equating what Rev. Wright said to what this pastor said. False equivalency. As much as Wright was inflammatory, at least he never equated homosexuals to "p**sy sores". Not even close.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Yeah, a young, relatively inexperienced Senator, especially a non white minority, could never win running against an elderly white politician with decades of political experience and a history of hawkish foreign policy.
C'mon, let's be realistic, at least a bit. Trump surged to 42% this past week and Rubio's way back at 10%. Unless something odd happens, we're looking at Trump or Carson....lord help us all.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Yeah, a young, relatively inexperienced Senator, especially a non white minority, could never win running against an elderly white politician with decades of political experience and a history of hawkish foreign policy.
C'mon, let's be realistic, at least a bit. Trump surged to 42% this past week and Rubio's way back at 10%. Unless something odd happens, we're looking at Trump or Carson....lord help us all.
If we want realism, is the internet the place to find it?
So, are you actually going to provide some evidence of Obama endorsing the execution of people for the "crime" of failing to obey his religion's rules? Or is this the exact "they're both the same" nonsense I was referring to?
Bill fething Ayers.
I'm willing to bet significant money that the Republicans candidates are/were unaware of that paster's past, as it's fething reprehensible and I wouldn't want to associate my campaign to that crap.
Obama launched his political career in the living room of an admitted terrorist. You don't "rehabilitate" after doing something like that...
But really, my disdain for Obama are his policies.
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Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Oh... I don't know about that... I think it'd be close... but, HRC wins a squeaker.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Yeah, a young, relatively inexperienced Senator, especially a non white minority, could never win running against an elderly white politician with decades of political experience and a history of hawkish foreign policy.
C'mon, let's be realistic, at least a bit. Trump surged to 42% this past week and Rubio's way back at 10%. Unless something odd happens, we're looking at Trump or Carson....lord help us all.
I still think that if it looks like Trump or Carson will be the nominee, the GOP will change the rules to somehow exclude them. They know it would be the death of the party.
Gordon Shumway wrote: Oh, I know they all pander. (Except maybe, Sanders, Grahm, and Huckabee--I think those three actually believe the stuff they say, good or bad) It's to the basest irrational instincts I have a problem with.
Those three panders just as bad...
Sanders wants to repeal Citizen United and neuter 1st amendment rights... and yet, he's recieved donations from corporations and unions.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Yeah, a young, relatively inexperienced Senator, especially a non white minority, could never win running against an elderly white politician with decades of political experience and a history of hawkish foreign policy.
C'mon, let's be realistic, at least a bit. Trump surged to 42% this past week and Rubio's way back at 10%. Unless something odd happens, we're looking at Trump or Carson....lord help us all.
Michelle Bachman / Hermain Cain were leading about this time in 2010.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Yeah, a young, relatively inexperienced Senator, especially a non white minority, could never win running against an elderly white politician with decades of political experience and a history of hawkish foreign policy.
C'mon, let's be realistic, at least a bit. Trump surged to 42% this past week and Rubio's way back at 10%. Unless something odd happens, we're looking at Trump or Carson....lord help us all.
I still think that if it looks like Trump or Carson will be the nominee, the GOP will change the rules to somehow exclude them. They know it would be the death of the party.
The party exerts a lot of control over the primary process for a reason. Plus the "blue state" delegates to the Republican convention actually outnumber the "red state" delegates so unless Trump or Carson are really popular in places like the west coast and northeast I don't think they'll win the nomination.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Oh... I don't know about that... I think it'd be close... but, HRC wins a squeaker.
Really? I just don't see Rubio bringing people to the polls. Hell, Hillary getting the nomination will probably bring more R's out to vote than Rubio.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Oh... I don't know about that... I think it'd be close... but, HRC wins a squeaker.
Really? I just don't see Rubio bringing people to the polls. Hell, Hillary getting the nomination will probably bring more R's out to vote than Rubio.
Co'tor Shas wrote: Nah, Rubio will get devoured. He doesn't have the political and governmental experience to stand against Clinton. She would crush him like an ant.
Yeah, a young, relatively inexperienced Senator, especially a non white minority, could never win running against an elderly white politician with decades of political experience and a history of hawkish foreign policy.
C'mon, let's be realistic, at least a bit. Trump surged to 42% this past week and Rubio's way back at 10%. Unless something odd happens, we're looking at Trump or Carson....lord help us all.
I still think that if it looks like Trump or Carson will be the nominee, the GOP will change the rules to somehow exclude them. They know it would be the death of the party.
The party exerts a lot of control over the primary process for a reason. Plus the "blue state" delegates to the Republican convention actually outnumber the "red state" delegates so unless Trump or Carson are really popular in places like the west coast and northeast I don't think they'll win the nomination.
Oh, I agree, I highly doubt either one will actually win delegate wise. But if the stars align, and they somehow do, look to the party to instigate a "no nominee with the last name Trump or Carson" rule at the convention. Of course that would damn the party too.
You don't "rehabilitate" after doing something like that...
When was the last time Ayers blew something up?
?? Does it matter how long ago it was? Shoot man, the Weather Underground group admitted to at least 20+ bombing across the US.
If memory serves me right, the one the blew up in their faces (taking his GF) was intended for some dance hall frequented by the military.
But, let's chalk that up as a youthful exuberance in an anti-war climate...
Okay, let's say Ayers was a gigantic influence on Obama. What policies has he advocated that would suit Ayers's needs or desires or political goals? Has the Weather Underground made some sort of insurgance that I haven't seen in the last eight, or twenty five years? No? What policies were the underground pushing towards that Obama has advanced? I guess I don't know, and considering myself, as you do, as politically informed, I think that should say something.
Especially since he remains largely unrepentent (oh, he'll hem and haw about it... ), facts of the matter, he participated in actual BOMBINGS of Federal buildings and Banks to sow fear.
Let me repeat myself. He:
BOMBED...
BUILDINGS...
IN...
THE...
USofA.
feth him.
And any politicians worth their salt would NOT have any associations with him. That's my point to peregrine's earlier question.
You don't "rehabilitate" from that and you *shouldn't* have someone like this near your political party.
But, the state of Obama supporters (and Bill Clinton's)... ya'll be like:
You don't "rehabilitate" after doing something like that...
When was the last time Ayers blew something up?
?? Does it matter how long ago it was? Shoot man, the Weather Underground group admitted to at least 20+ bombing across the US.
If memory serves me right, the one the blew up in their faces (taking his GF) was intended for some dance hall frequented by the military.
But, let's chalk that up as a youthful exuberance in an anti-war climate...
Okay, let's say Ayers was a gigantic influence on Obama. What policies has he advocated that would suit Ayers's needs or desires or political goals? Has the Weather Underground made some sort of insurgance that I haven't seen in the last eight, or twenty five years? No? What policies were the underground pushing towards that Obama has advanced? I guess I don't know, and considering myself, as you do, as politically informed, I think that should say something.
So, are you actually going to provide some evidence of Obama endorsing the execution of people for the "crime" of failing to obey his religion's rules? Or is this the exact "they're both the same" nonsense I was referring to?
Clinton Goes after Laugh Factory Comedians for Making Fun of Her
In what appears to be a first for a serious presidential contender, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going after five comedians who made fun of the former Secretary of State in standup skits at a popular Hollywood comedy club.
A video of the short performance, which is less than three minutes, is posted on the website of the renowned club, Laugh Factory, and the Clinton campaign has tried to censor it. Besides demanding that the video be taken down, the Clinton campaign has demanded the personal contact information of the performers that appear in the recording. This is no laughing matter for club owner Jamie Masada, a comedy guru who opened Laugh Factory more than three decades ago and has been instrumental in launching the careers of many famous comics. “They threatened me,” Masada told Judicial Watch. “I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video.”
Practically all of the country’s most acclaimed comedians have performed at the Laugh Factory and undoubtedly they have offended politicians and other well-known personalities with their standup routines. Tim Allen, Jay Leno, Roseanne Bar, Drew Carey, George Carlin, Jim Carrey, Martin Lawrence, Jerry Seinfeld and George Lopez are among the big names that have headlined at the Laugh Factory. The First Amendment right to free speech is a crucial component of the operation, though Masada drew the line a few years ago banning performers—including African Americans—from using the “n-word” in their acts.
The five short performances that Clinton wants eliminated include some profanity and portions could be considered crass, but some of the lines are funny and that’s what the Laugh Factory is all about. The video features the individual acts of five comedians, four men and a woman. The skits make fun of Clinton’s wardrobe, her age, sexual orientation, the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the former First Lady’s relationship with her famous husband. The Laugh Factory has appropriately titled it “Hillary vs. The First Amendment.”
Masada told Judicial Watch that, as soon as the video got posted on the Laugh Factory website, he received a phone call from a “prominent” person inside Clinton’s campaign. “He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this,” Masada said. The Clinton staffer, who Masada did not want to identify, also demanded to know the names and phone numbers of the comedians that appear in the video. Masada refused and hung up. He insists that the comedy stage is a sanctuary for freedom of speech no matter who is offended. “Just last night we had (Emmy-award winner) Dana Carvey doing Donald Trump and it was hilarious,” Masada said.
You don't "rehabilitate" after doing something like that...
When was the last time Ayers blew something up?
?? Does it matter how long ago it was?
It does when you claim that you can't rehabilitate after doing something like that.
That's horse gak... the really stinky kind.
So you either don't know the definition of rehabilitation or this is just another one of those fun areas where you use your own definition just because it makes you feel better about whatever point it is you think you are making.
Fair enough, care to answer mine Whembly, or care to dodge it some more while you do some research on talking points to grasp at straws? Since you claim Obama was so influenced by Ayers, certainly you have something in the last seven years to substantiate those claims...
So you either don't know the definition of rehabilitation or this is just another one of those fun areas where you use your own definition just because it makes you feel better about whatever point it is you think you are making.
*opens up a browser tab*
*types 'define rehabilitate'*
*reads:
rehabilitate
[ree-huh-bil-i-teyt, ree-uh-]
verb (used with object), rehabilitated, rehabilitating.
1.
to restore to a condition of good health, ability to work, or the like.
2.
to restore to good condition, operation, or management, as a bankrupt business.
3.
to reestablish the good reputation of (a person, one's character or name, etc.).
4.
to restore formally to former capacity, standing, rank, rights, or privileges.
*
*sees #3*
*whembly stands by his previous post *
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Gordon Shumway wrote: Fair enough, care to answer mine Whembly, or care to dodge it some more while you do some research on talking points to grasp at straws?
You're asking a different question.
I was responding to Peregrine's... did you miss it?
So you don't care to answer mine? What am I not good enough? Or you don't have an answer? Edit: I can repeat the gist if you want: what policies has Obama advocated or advanced that has promoted Ayers's political goals? An answer would be nice considering you have attacked him for being so close to Ayers. You know who else liked to throw bombs for no good reason? The Weather Underground. See,ms like you have more in common with them than the big O
Gordon Shumway wrote: So you don't care to answer mine? What am I not good enough? Or you don't have an answer? Edit: I can repeat the gist if you want: what policies has Obama advocated or advanced that has promoted Ayers's political goals? An answer would be nice considering you have attacked him for being so close to Ayers.
Don't even waste your time. The truth is that Obama is not and has never been close to Bill Ayers. However, as he has proven time and time again, the truth doesn't really matter unless it aligns with his bias.
This is how things like this play out:
He makes extraordinary claim People call him out on it He puffs up and gets defensive while dismissing anything he doesn't already think and not actually backing the original claim up People call him out on that He ignores it People call him out again He ignores that He moves on
He's pretty much a living case study on confirmation bias. (By the way, I chose that link because I'm reading his book right now and it's really good!)
You don't "rehabilitate" from that and you *shouldn't* have someone like this near your political party.
Given that Ayers hasn't bombed any buildings since then, it seems as though he has rehabilitated. You don't seem to understand what the word "rehabilitated" means.
Whether or not someone like Ayers should be near a political party is a matter opinion, but its worth noting that he isn't a particularly important figure in Chicago, and certainly has nothing to do with the national Democratic Party.
Nah, I'll give ole whem the benefit of the doubt here. He wouldn't actually make inflammatory remarks without a rational reason for doing so. That's, that's just Trump territory. And we all know how much he hates the trumpster.
rehabilitate
[ree-huh-bil-i-teyt, ree-uh-]
verb (used with object), rehabilitated, rehabilitating.
1.
to restore to a condition of good health, ability to work, or the like.
2.
to restore to good condition, operation, or management, as a bankrupt business.
3.
to reestablish the good reputation of (a person, one's character or name, etc.).
4.
to restore formally to former capacity, standing, rank, rights, or privileges.
*
*sees #3*
*whembly stands by his previous post *
Dictionary definitions are ranked in order of significance. If your argument hinges on the third definition in a dictionary entry, one which I suspect you didn't know about until just now given your usage of inverted commas around the word "rehabilitated", then it is in serious trouble.
Gordon Shumway wrote: So you don't care to answer mine? What am I not good enough? Or you don't have an answer? Edit: I can repeat the gist if you want: what policies has Obama advocated or advanced that has promoted Ayers's political goals? An answer would be nice considering you have attacked him for being so close to Ayers. You know who else liked to throw bombs for no good reason? The Weather Underground. See,ms like you have more in common with them than the big O
*I* have more in common with WU?
Yeah... I don't think so.
WU is a far left, anti-war, anti-white privlege organization.
Sounds very much like Obama's and modern liberalism's ideology.
rehabilitate
[ree-huh-bil-i-teyt, ree-uh-]
verb (used with object), rehabilitated, rehabilitating.
1.
to restore to a condition of good health, ability to work, or the like.
2.
to restore to good condition, operation, or management, as a bankrupt business.
3.
to reestablish the good reputation of (a person, one's character or name, etc.).
4.
to restore formally to former capacity, standing, rank, rights, or privileges.
*
*sees #3*
*whembly stands by his previous post *
Dictionary definitions are ranked in order of significance. If your argument hinges on the third definition in a dictionary entry, one which I suspect you didn't know about until just now given your usage of inverted commas around the word "rehabilitated", then it is in serious trouble.
Keep picking on that "thread" to pull the tapestry apart.
Gordon Shumway wrote: So you don't care to answer mine? What am I not good enough? Or you don't have an answer? Edit: I can repeat the gist if you want: what policies has Obama advocated or advanced that has promoted Ayers's political goals? An answer would be nice considering you have attacked him for being so close to Ayers.
Don't even waste your time. The truth is that Obama is not and has never been close to Bill Ayers. However, as he has proven time and time again, the truth doesn't really matter unless it aligns with his bias.
This is how things like this play out:
He makes extraordinary claim
People call him out on it
He puffs up and gets defensive while dismissing anything he doesn't already thing and not actually backing the original claim up
People call him out on that
He ignores it
People call him out again He ignores that
He moves on
He's pretty much a living case study on confirmation bias. (By the way, I chose that link because I'm reading his book right now and it's really good!)
I find that laughable man.
I've backed up plenty.
Ironically, you keep saying that you don't really *like* Obama, but everytime his honor appears to be impugned, you attempt to save the day.
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Gordon Shumway wrote: hat's, that's just Trump territory. And we all know how much he hates the trumpster.
So, are you actually going to answer the question of what policies Obama has advocated that has promoted Ayers's political goals or are you just going to throw rhetorical bombs and dodge, because right now, it sounds like the latter. Generic panaceas of "far left" don't cut it when you make such specific claims to political connections, sorry. As to "anti war" and "anti white privilege", welcome to the 20th century. Or are you pro war and pro white privlidge?
Gordon Shumway wrote: So you don't care to answer mine? What am I not good enough? Or you don't have an answer? Edit: I can repeat the gist if you want: what policies has Obama advocated or advanced that has promoted Ayers's political goals? An answer would be nice considering you have attacked him for being so close to Ayers.
Don't even waste your time. The truth is that Obama is not and has never been close to Bill Ayers. However, as he has proven time and time again, the truth doesn't really matter unless it aligns with his bias.
This is how things like this play out:
He makes extraordinary claim People call him out on it He puffs up and gets defensive while dismissing anything he doesn't already thing and not actually backing the original claim up People call him out on that He ignores it People call him out again He ignores that He moves on
He's pretty much a living case study on confirmation bias. (By the way, I chose that link because I'm reading his book right now and it's really good!)
I find that laughable man.
Oh right, I forgot to add the part with you claim you're being persecuted. Silly me!
I've backed up plenty.
Ironically, you keep saying that you don't really *like* Obama, but everytime his honor appears to be impugned, you attempt to save the day.
No, I have a low tolerance for bs regardless of what form it takes.
I know you have this weird duality outlook where anyone that disagrees with some of the stupid you things you say means they believe the exact opposite, but seriously... it isn't the case. It is possible to not like someone (Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, etc.) but also to know that Obama isn't Weather Underground sympathizer because he has a casual acquaintanceship with a former domestic terrorist, Hillary Clinton isn't the personification of evil who went out of her way to make sure people died in Benghazi, and Bernie Sanders doesn't want to transform the USA into Cold War-era Soviet Russia because he went there once in the late 1980s.
It's almost like you don't realize that there are more than two positions on any giver matter.
But you didn't answer my question, at least not very well. Obama having a very loose association with that guy many years ago is not really the same as republican presidential candidates appearing at a horrifying "we should have the death penalty for being gay" conference in 2015. This isn't a case of some awkward past that certain people might like to forget, with arguments about what degree of reform and repentance may exist, it's what they're doing right now.
Gordon Shumway wrote: So, are you actually going to answer the question of what policies Obama has advocated that has promoted Ayers's political goals or are you just going to throw rhetorical bombs and dodge, because right now, it sounds like the latter. Generic panaceas of "far left" don't cut it when you make such specific claims to political connections, sorry. As to "anti war" and "anti white privilege", welcome to the 20th century. Or are you pro war and pro white privlidge?
No because I haven't stated that Obama promoted Ayer's goals.
Peregrine is playing the 'guilt by association' game.
whembly wrote: Peregrine is playing the 'guilt by association' game.
No, I'm making the very reasonable assumption that if a candidate appears at an event and is praised and introduced by the host of that event then they probably agree with the content of the event. This is not just a case of "one time he was in the same room as a horrible person".
whembly wrote: Peregrine is playing the 'guilt by association' game.
No, I'm making the very reasonable assumption that if a candidate appears at an event and is praised and introduced by the host of that event then they probably agree with the content of the event. This is not just a case of "one time he was in the same room as a horrible person".
Ayers and Obama worked together! On the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), ACORN, Developing Communities Project...
It more than a case of "one time he was in the same room as a horrible person". Shoot... you can find actual interviews from Ayers, like this one: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/03/exclusive-bill-ayers-on-the-weathermen-obama-s-crap-job-more.html “David Axelrod said we were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was “a guy around the neighborhood,” that was true. Today, I wish I knew him better and he was listening to me. Obama’s not a radical. I wish he were, but he’s not.”
whembly wrote: “David Axelrod said we were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was “a guy around the neighborhood,” that was true. Today, I wish I knew him better and he was listening to me. Obama’s not a radical. I wish he were, but he’s not.”
Did you even read your own quote? The guy is explicitly saying that he didn't have very strong ties in the past, and has no influence with him in the present. Can you really not see how this is different from the "kill all the gay people" preacher introducing republican presidential candidates in 2015 and endorsing them by saying "god approves of this man"?
whembly wrote: “David Axelrod said we were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was “a guy around the neighborhood,” that was true. Today, I wish I knew him better and he was listening to me. Obama’s not a radical. I wish he were, but he’s not.”
Did you even read your own quote? The guy is explicitly saying that he didn't have very strong ties in the past, and has no influence with him in the present. Can you really not see how this is different from the "kill all the gay people" preacher introducing republican presidential candidates in 2015 and endorsing them by saying "god approves of this man"?
Seems like they're both equally distant from the individuals in question.
I'm sure Obama shook this guys hand a few times and appeared at events he was involved in. Not really any different from the situation Carson is in.
The difference is, this guy actually physically acted out on his radical beliefs. These "kill all gays" people are highly unlikely to do so. Such a law would never gain meaningful traction and I don't see any lynch mobs roaming the streets killing gays either.
So one guy who did some stuff over a decade ago is proof that this is worse? Its not even someone who was at this convention. Has anyone at this convention participated in terrorism and direct murder? No? Then there really isn't an equivalency.
I'm not saying either is ok, just saying that both are equally bad/not good/whatever this is.
Grey Templar wrote: So one guy who did some stuff over a decade ago is proof that this is worse?
No, it's proof that the "kill gay people" extremists are not harmless, and the idea that nobody could ever turn those ideas into violence is simply wrong. The reason the current incident is worse than Obama's past is what I said previously: it's a more direct association, and it's current events.
But again, have any of these people actually done anything beyond blow hot air?
From what I know about the time these incidents took place with Obama, they were also current events at the time. its not like when Obama was associating with this terrorist he was long retired and de-radicalized.
Grey Templar wrote: But again, have any of these people actually done anything beyond blow hot air?
These specific people? No. But similar extremists have, so you can't just dismiss it as harmless talk.
From what I know about the time these incidents took place with Obama, they were also current events at the time. its not like when Obama was associating with this terrorist he was long retired and de-radicalized.
See previous quote where the guy explicitly says "I have no influence with Obama, and I wish I did so he'd follow my beliefs". The actual bombings (which were specifically intended to cause property damage, not kill people, if you believe him) were way back in the 1970s. And by the time Obama was elected he had expressed remorse for even that. So yeah, I think there's a pretty big difference between "we smashed some property to stop the war 30 years ago" and "Jesus says kill everyone who is gay, and let me introduce a Jesus-approved candidate".
I'm willing to bet significant money that the Republicans candidates are/were unaware of that paster's past, as it's fething reprehensible and I wouldn't want to associate my campaign to that crap.
Just to clarify you're saying that not one person in their respective campaigns is capable of using Google ?
I'm willing to bet significant money that the Republicans candidates are/were unaware of that paster's past, as it's fething reprehensible and I wouldn't want to associate my campaign to that crap.
Just to clarify you're saying that not one person in their respective campaigns is capable of using Google ?
Well, according to Cruz, he "doesn't know what this gentleman has said and what he hasn't said."
Of course, that's the "right" answer that his supporters (that don't agree with the sentiment) will eat up. However, I don't believe it's the truth. Cruz knows his audience and he knows how to put on a show for him.
Wait. So, associating with a former domestic terrorist who's been prosecuted, time etc, is somehow worse or the same as association with a current hate-speech mongrel?
Guy, did some wrong in the past, paid for it as the justice system dictated at the time and is now a political animal. It could be confirmation bias on my part but that would seem to indicate that he was reformed and is using the established, legal process to promulgate the changes that he wants to see.
Guy who is currently preaching that all people of a certain subgroup should be rounded up and killed.
I'm not sure I follow the logic. Let's see what the officials have to say on the matter.
agnosto wrote: Wait. So, associating with a former domestic terrorist who's been prosecuted, time etc, is somehow worse or the same as association with a current hate-speech mongrel?
Guy, did some wrong in the past, paid for it as the justice system dictated at the time and is now a political animal. It could be confirmation bias on my part but that would seem to indicate that he was reformed and is using the established, legal process to promulgate the changes that he wants to see.
Guy who is currently preaching that all people of a certain subgroup should be rounded up and killed.
What "dues" did Ayers pay?
He wasn't specifically convicted of anything (many of his cohorts were). He ADMITTED that he bombed buildings to sow terror.
So, on that admission, Ayers is worst than some guy shouting some despicable hate speech.
This association is a suggestion (guilt by association game) that the two men were friends and that the friendship might indicate that the two shared similar worldviews. I mean, here's a guy who said: “I don’t regret setting bombs…I feel we didn’t do enough.”
I'm willing to bet significant money that the Republicans candidates are/were unaware of that paster's past, as it's fething reprehensible and I wouldn't want to associate my campaign to that crap.
Just to clarify you're saying that not one person in their respective campaigns is capable of using Google ?
Well, according to Cruz, he "doesn't know what this gentleman has said and what he hasn't said."
Of course, that's the "right" answer that his supporters (that don't agree with the sentiment) will eat up. However, I don't believe it's the truth. Cruz knows his audience and he knows how to put on a show for him.
Just like Obama saying of Ayers "he's just some guy in my neighborhood"...
For what it's worth, I *am* extremely disappointed that Cruz didn't outright condemn what that guy said.
Just like Obama saying of Ayers "he's just some guy in my neighborhood"...
Obama also said " Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago. Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. I have roundly condemned those acts." in his third debate with McCain.
agnosto wrote: Wait. So, associating with a former domestic terrorist who's been prosecuted, time etc, is somehow worse or the same as association with a current hate-speech mongrel?
Guy, did some wrong in the past, paid for it as the justice system dictated at the time and is now a political animal. It could be confirmation bias on my part but that would seem to indicate that he was reformed and is using the established, legal process to promulgate the changes that he wants to see.
Guy who is currently preaching that all people of a certain subgroup should be rounded up and killed.
What "dues" did Ayers pay?
He wasn't specifically convicted of anything (many of his cohorts were). He ADMITTED that he bombed buildings to sow terror.
So, on that admission, Ayers is worst than some guy shouting some despicable hate speech.
This association is a suggestion (guilt by association game) that the two men were friends and that the friendship might indicate that the two shared similar worldviews. I mean, here's a guy who said:
“I don’t regret setting bombs…I feel we didn’t do enough.”
He was forgiven by the one man that he accidentally injured. Property damage, sure we can bemoan property but we're talking about death here, not destroyed office furniture. If you're saying him blowing up some empty offices is the same as a man standing on stage, now, today, and advocating for actual deaths of human beings, I don't know what I can say to you. Wow.
You're right, the FBI obtained the evidence illegally and he got off on a technicality.
Your quote is accurate but it's easy to jump to conclusions if you take it out of the greater context of what he meant by "we":
When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough gak."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'
agnosto wrote: Your quote is accurate but it's easy to jump to conclusions if you take it out of the greater context of what he meant by "we":
When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough gak."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'
Context whembly should be well aware of, since that quote was included in the article he posted earlier. And I'm sure he reads his entire sources instead of just pulling out whatever quote happens to make a democrat look bad.
Nope, they don't but to steal one of your axioms, none of them do. That's the problem with our system, it takes so much money to get elected to any office that you have to be rich to do it which means we're electing people into office who have absolutely no idea how the majority of Americans live. Sure, they say that they get it but they always wind up looking our for themselves and the richer people who paid the bills to get them there.
Nope, they don't but to steal one of your axioms, none of them do. That's the problem with our system, it takes so much money to get elected to any office that you have to be rich to do it which means we're electing people into office who have absolutely no idea how the majority of Americans live. Sure, they say that they get it but they always wind up looking our for themselves and the richer people who paid the bills to get them there.
100% agreement!
The irony of ironies... it's laws like Citizen's United that contributes to this.
I'm not making any sort of judgment, I'm simply pointing out that Obama did, indeed, acknowledge and condemn Ayers' past. This distinguishes him from Senator Cruz regarding the pastor in question. Granted, stating that you condemn the bombing of buildings (something most people acknowledge as being bad) is much easier than stating that you condemn an extreme manifestation of a religious opinion held by many of your supporters.
Regardless, I generally don't concern myself with peripheral associations like the one Obama had with Ayers, or Cruz has with this pastor. Politics, much like business, often requires that you work with people you don't necessarily agree with, or even like. If Ayers had been part of Obama's inner circle, or ended up working on any of his campaigns, that might be cause for concern. But their relationship, as it existed, is nothing.
Probably. If they aren't then they certainly should be. The two leading candidates right now are both horrifyingly bad, and a near-guaranteed loss against whoever the democrats decide to run.
Probably. If they aren't then they certainly should be. The two leading candidates right now are both horrifyingly bad, and a near-guaranteed loss against whoever the democrats decide to run.
I'd love to run the attack adds against the republicans. Show the clips of republicans saying to not let the refugees in, and in the background the picture of ISIS beheading a group of christians with a caption. "ISIS says thank you for not letting these christians get away"
Probably. If they aren't then they certainly should be. The two leading candidates right now are both horrifyingly bad, and a near-guaranteed loss against whoever the democrats decide to run.
I love Bernie but I don't think he would win; there are too many years of screaming hysteria about Socialism to overcome for voters to recognize he actually cares about people more than corporations.
That said, Trump and Carson are both raving lunatics....so I guess it'd be a toss-up.
When people post gak that was thoroughly debunked 7 years ago as "facts" you quickly realize that this country may just be stupid enough to elect Trump.
d-usa wrote: When people post gak that was thoroughly debunked 7 years ago as "facts" you quickly realize that this country may just be stupid enough to elect Trump.
Yeah. Your average American is a piss-poor fact-checker and too lazy to check into things for themselves so they wind up depending on whatever news agency validates their political leanings.
Edit:
But to give people a little credit; they didn't vote for the wacko from Alaska...
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Remind you of anyone yet?
My history detector is pinging in some rather dark places.
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Remind you of anyone yet?
My history detector is pinging in some rather dark places.
Someone should tell him that tattoos are especially effective as the person can't forget to bring it with them...
Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.
“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”
Remind you of anyone yet?
My history detector is pinging in some rather dark places.
Someone should tell him that tattoos are especially effective as the person can't forget to bring it with them...
Forgot a racialy pure elite corps clad in smart black uniforms, kneehigh boots and nice black leather coats....
OK, jackboots aside...Trumps an idiot but don't count out his ability to make people buy into his delusions; he's built a pretty sizable fortune and a career on it.
Besides, chips would be the new thing, not tattoos.
agnosto wrote: OK, jackboots aside...Trumps an idiot but don't count out his ability to make people buy into his delusions; he's built a pretty sizable fortune and a career on it.
Besides, chips would be the new thing, not tattoos.
Probably. If they aren't then they certainly should be. The two leading candidates right now are both horrifyingly bad, and a near-guaranteed loss against whoever the democrats decide to run.
I'd love to run the attack adds against the republicans. Show the clips of republicans saying to not let the refugees in, and in the background the picture of ISIS beheading a group of christians with a caption. "ISIS says thank you for not letting these christians get away"
Obama isn't about "letting these Christians in" and neither are the Democrats. In fact, one Republican is on record for saying we should prioritize letting Syrian Christians in and he's getting flack for it.
Also, why do you liberals want to spend millions of dollars to move people half-way around the world? What US interest is involved here? Seriously, what's wrong with Africa or Asia as primary destinations? Didn't the "arab spring" work wonderfully in Libya? Why not send them there? Or Algeria? Or Tunisia? Also, why is it that other Muslim dominated nations are refusing to take in Syrian refugees? I don't see Saudi Arabia looking to take in Syrian Christians. Jordan? Iran?
Ye gawds, what an idiot. At least both parties in his state are panning him.
Reading the letter, I'm not even sure what his point was; it didn't feel like he was recommending that we round up all the Muslims and place them in camps.
Probably. If they aren't then they certainly should be. The two leading candidates right now are both horrifyingly bad, and a near-guaranteed loss against whoever the democrats decide to run.
I'd love to run the attack adds against the republicans. Show the clips of republicans saying to not let the refugees in, and in the background the picture of ISIS beheading a group of christians with a caption. "ISIS says thank you for not letting these christians get away"
Obama isn't about "letting these Christians in" and neither are the Democrats. In fact, one Republican is on record for saying we should prioritize letting Syrian Christians in and he's getting flack for it.
Also, why do you liberals want to spend millions of dollars to move people half-way around the world? What US interest is involved here? Seriously, what's wrong with Africa or Asia as primary destinations? Didn't the "arab spring" work wonderfully in Libya? Why not send them there? Or Algeria? Or Tunisia? Also, why is it that other Muslim dominated nations are refusing to take in Syrian refugees? I don't see Saudi Arabia looking to take in Syrian Christians. Jordan? Iran?
There's so much wrong with what you typed, I don't know where to start. Good day to you sir!
Probably. If they aren't then they certainly should be. The two leading candidates right now are both horrifyingly bad, and a near-guaranteed loss against whoever the democrats decide to run.
I'd love to run the attack adds against the republicans. Show the clips of republicans saying to not let the refugees in, and in the background the picture of ISIS beheading a group of christians with a caption. "ISIS says thank you for not letting these christians get away"
Obama isn't about "letting these Christians in" and neither are the Democrats. In fact, one Republican is on record for saying we should prioritize letting Syrian Christians in and he's getting flack for it.
Also, why do you liberals want to spend millions of dollars to move people half-way around the world? What US interest is involved here? Seriously, what's wrong with Africa or Asia as primary destinations? Didn't the "arab spring" work wonderfully in Libya? Why not send them there? Or Algeria? Or Tunisia? Also, why is it that other Muslim dominated nations are refusing to take in Syrian refugees? I don't see Saudi Arabia looking to take in Syrian Christians. Jordan? Iran?
As Emperor of The Liberals, IMO
France is brave enough to take in another 30k refugees, Like I said earlier #teardownthestatueofliberty. the US should take them in as they created the mess in the ME, take some responsibilities for your actions. You can spend millions of dollars to help them, or billions bombing them. unfortunately all to many americans would rather spend the billions.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
I don't hardly ever agree with my Representative about anything. He's the ass clown that declared that he personally needed to inspect the Ranger school records of those women to make sure that they didn't soil the honor of his precious Ranger tab by completing the program.
Republican Rep. Steve Russell of Oklahoma laid into his party for its stance on Syrian refugees, saying that turning away people seeking solace from violent terrorist groups hands victory to Islamic State jihadists.
Russell, a combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and 21-year career soldier with the Army, spoke Wednesday to Congress and decried anti-refugee rhetoric and moves by mostly-conservative state governors to bar fleeing migrants from settling in their states.
“While I have tried to focus my comments on actions that we should take to eliminate ISIS, one action we should not take is to become like them. America is a lamp that lights the horizon of civilized and free mankind,” he said on the House floor.
“The Statue of Liberty cannot have a stiff arm. Her arm must continue to keep the torch burning brightly,” Russell continued. “If we use our passions, anger, and fear to snuff out her flame by xenophobic and knee-jerk policy, the enemy wins. We have played into their hands, period.”
Russell also pointed out there is a multi-layer system in place for vetting refugees, and also noted that only 1,900 Syrian refugees have come to the United States in the last four years, most of whom are women and children. He then illustrated the similarity between many conservatives’ current stance on refugees and the views held during World War II about people fleeing the Nazis in Europe.
I want you to listen carefully to these statements by Members of Congress in response to a refugee bill–not an illegal immigration bill or permanent residents, but refugees, a refugee bill. Listen to these comments by Members of Congress about people fleeing for their lives.
Fighting immigration is ‘the best vote-getting argument . . . The politician can beat his breast and proclaim his loyalty to America.’
‘He can tell the unemployed man that he is out of work because some alien has a job.’
Here is another one:
Congress must ‘protect the youth of America from this foreign invasion.’
And how about this one?
‘American children have first claim to America’s charity.’
There are many more, but these quotes were from 1939. The refugee bill was not for Muslim and Christian Syrians or Iraqi Muslims, Christians and Yazidis; it was for German Jews. While it was true that Germany was, indeed, a threat, the refugees were not. They were 20,000 children.
Not only did that bill of 1939 not pass, but that Congress, with the same speech and rhetoric that I have been hearing in recent days in this august Chamber, Mr. Speaker, passed hurdle after hurdle in 1939 to make it more difficult for refugees to enter. They were, unfortunately, successful.
He then talked about the need to defend American principles.
We must not become them. They win if we give up who we are, and even more so, without a fight.
We guard our way of life by vigilance. We must be watchful. We have to have each others’ back and be alert to dangers around us. We must speak up when we see something unusual. By maintaining who we are amidst the threat, amidst the hatred, amidst the trials, we win.
Patrick Henry did not say, “Give me safety or give me death,” but, rather, “Give me liberty,” implying that he was willing to lose his life to defend that liberty.
We have defended our way of life, Mr. Speaker, for 240 years. Now we as Americans must defend it again.
We must defend it when the critic sitting on the couch in his underwear eating his bag of cheese puffs is pecking out hatred and vitriol on some social media.
We must defend it and have courage when voters are caught up with sincere passion, demanding security that also might kill our liberty.
We must defend it with our warriors who have worked hard to keep the fight off our shores by being vigilant and aware at home and while looking after their families who don’t have them to protect them.
We will always have threats, but liberty, when lost, takes generations, if ever, to regain.
You know, I've changed my mind. We should accept refugees. Of course they should be subject to a screening process and monitoring of some kind for a period of time. Maybe we should reinstitute some of the work programs that FDR had. Put the refugees to work repairing our road systems or anything else the government could use unskilled manual labor for.
Grey Templar wrote: You know, I've changed my mind. We should accept refugees. Of course they should be subject to a screening process and monitoring of some kind for a period of time. Maybe we should reinstitute some of the work programs that FDR had. Put the refugees to work repairing our road systems or anything else the government could use unskilled manual labor for.
Isn't that supposedly the type of work our current "undocumented" immigrants are already doing? I.e., jobs "Americans" don't want to do?
sirlynchmob wrote: You can spend millions of dollars to help them, or billions bombing them. unfortunately all to many americans would rather spend the billions.
Okay, I'll bite. Why would we be bombing the refugees? (I expect you didn't mean to bomb the refugees but you did write it that way.) More seriously, wouldn't the terrorists still be over there even after the refugees were resettled? Wouldn't ISIS still need to be delt with? Wouldn't that require... bombs?
Grey Templar wrote: You know, I've changed my mind. We should accept refugees. Of course they should be subject to a screening process and monitoring of some kind for a period of time. Maybe we should reinstitute some of the work programs that FDR had. Put the refugees to work repairing our road systems or anything else the government could use unskilled manual labor for.
I worked with a refugee of the Iraq war my first year at FedEx. He was a driver for one of the delivery trucks but held a masters degree in computer science. Apparently, schools in his country suffer the problem of not being from this country Don't know how good he was a computer science, but he certainly wasn't unskilled.
Grey Templar wrote: You know, I've changed my mind. We should accept refugees. Of course they should be subject to a screening process and monitoring of some kind for a period of time. Maybe we should reinstitute some of the work programs that FDR had. Put the refugees to work repairing our road systems or anything else the government could use unskilled manual labor for.
Who said the refugees were unskilled?
They are already going through 5 different levels of screening as well, but apparently we need to start screening them.
This might be the most amazing thing that I have heard a Republican say in a long time that I really truthfully agree with:
We have defended our way of life, Mr. Speaker, for 240 years. Now we as Americans must defend it again.
We must defend it when the critic sitting on the couch in his underwear eating his bag of cheese puffs is pecking out hatred and vitriol on some social media
sirlynchmob wrote: You can spend millions of dollars to help them, or billions bombing them. unfortunately all to many americans would rather spend the billions.
Okay, I'll bite. Why would we be bombing the refugees? (I expect you didn't mean to bomb the refugees but you did write it that way.) More seriously, wouldn't the terrorists still be over there even after the refugees were resettled? Wouldn't ISIS still need to be delt with? Wouldn't that require... bombs?
If you leave them in Syria america will still continue to drop random bombs in the slim hope of hitting terrorists. As they tend to kill way more innocent civilians than bad guys you would in essence be bombing refugees.
and no more bombs are needed, you can't defeat an ideology with bombs. It's time to make peace, even if that involves letting ISIS have Iraq. They already have a large chunk of it and are running it, give them the reigns and lets see where it goes.
and no more bombs are needed, you can't defeat an ideology with bombs. It's time to make peace, even if that involves letting ISIS have Iraq. They already have a large chunk of it and are running it, give them the reigns and lets see where it goes.
sirlynchmob wrote: Yes, as part of our deal to pull out of Iraq, they'll promise to chill.
Do you have a source for that?
My experiences with human nature. Treat them with respect and legitimate their cause and stop bombing them and I'm sure they'd give in to a few of our demands.
sirlynchmob wrote: Yes, as part of our deal to pull out of Iraq, they'll promise to chill.
Do you have a source for that?
My experiences with human nature. Treat them with respect and legitimate their cause and stop bombing them and I'm sure they'd give in to a few of our demands.
LOL
ISIS was murdering, raping and stealing before we ever dropped a single bomb in their territory. ISIS isn't murdering apostate Muslims, Christians and any other non Salafi they can get their hands on, robbing every bank they come across and conducting Terror attacks against civilians across the globe because we're bombing them. We're not making them do anything. ISIS is committing atrocities and displacing millions of innocent civilians because they freely choose to do so. They actively promote and profess their zealous dedication to their hardcore fundamentalist sect and they're going to keep doing it whether we fight them or not.
Was going to respond, but Prestor J pretty much nailed it.
To bring the topic closer to the OP "politics"... I find it intriguing that there's plenty of bipartisan objections to Obama's refugee plan... but, Obama is digging harder into the ground.
Maybe the constituents who didn't vote in 2012... Obama heard them too.
If Obama didn't want opposition to the refugees coming in he should have had his administration talk to people like the director of the FBI and made sure that the FBI didn't declare that the refugees posed a security risk because terrorists could be hiding within the group and we wouldn't always be able to identify them. Controlling the message would have been advisable in this instance. Unless of course this whole tempest in a teapot right before an election year didn't manifest itself organically.
sirlynchmob wrote: Yes, as part of our deal to pull out of Iraq, they'll promise to chill.
Do you have a source for that?
My experiences with human nature. Treat them with respect and legitimate their cause and stop bombing them and I'm sure they'd give in to a few of our demands.
I can appreciate your surprisingly compassionate point of view but it is a complete fantasy where ISIS is concerned. They are not a culture you are familiar with. Nobody has seen the likes of ISIS for hundreds of years. They are not looking for recognition or a place to coexist. They are looking for something that we would normally reserve for Saturday morning cartoon bad guys. Death, destruction and domination are their actual honest goals.
sirlynchmob wrote: Yes, as part of our deal to pull out of Iraq, they'll promise to chill.
Do you have a source for that?
My experiences with human nature. Treat them with respect and legitimate their cause and stop bombing them and I'm sure they'd give in to a few of our demands.
LOL
ISIS was murdering, raping and stealing before we ever dropped a single bomb in their territory. ISIS isn't murdering apostate Muslims, Christians and any other non Salafi they can get their hands on, robbing every bank they come across and conducting Terror attacks against civilians across the globe because we're bombing them. We're not making them do anything. ISIS is committing atrocities and displacing millions of innocent civilians because they freely choose to do so. They actively promote and profess their zealous dedication to their hardcore fundamentalist sect and they're going to keep doing it whether we fight them or not.
well then, enjoy going bankrupt as you fight a never ending war. Morally & financially bankrupt. and I'll catch ya all when something new develops.
Maybe we should reinstitute some of the work programs that FDR had.
So you're essentially saying you are in favor of a 2015 version of the New Deal? Do you not know that the WPA was severely criticized by the right for being a "hotbed of Communism" and allegations that Roosevelt set it up to serve as a political machine for himself?
Put the refugees to work repairing our road systems or anything else the government could use unskilled manual labor for.
Who said the refugees were unskilled? Also, do you know that half of the refugees are children and a quarter of them are over the age of 60?
Gonna paste a comment I saw about this on Facebook (or maybe it was Yahoo!). "Let's get one fact straight. States DO NOT have ANY control over "immigrants". NONE at all."
Sanctuary Cities aside this is true as immigration, including refugees and asylum seekers, is a function of the Federal government. Therefore, where a State "stands" on the issue is pretty much irrelevant.
Gonna paste a comment I saw about this on Facebook (or maybe it was Yahoo!). "Let's get one fact straight. States DO NOT have ANY control over "immigrants". NONE at all."
Sanctuary Cities aside this is true as immigration, including refugees and asylum seekers, is a function of the Federal government. Therefore, where a State "stands" on the issue is pretty much irrelevant.
I think the point that Whembly wants to make is that those states have a lot of people in them that don't want Syroan refugees. If Obama forces Syrian refugees on those people then those people might get upset at Obama and that anger might make them not want to vote Democrat in 2016. Angering large portions of the electorate is usually bad for politicians and political parties.
hotsauceman1 wrote: isnt this more of a govenors doing? rather than the electorate?
I think a primary motivation for the governor's issuing their refusal statement ts even though they have no legal standing is that polls show that people support that position. It's a good political move for the governor's they get take a popular position but without actually doing anything so there's no downside.
Prestor Jon wrote: It's a good political move for the governor's they get take a popular position but without actually doing anything so there's no downside.
I think the point that Whembly wants to make is that those states have a lot of people in them that don't want Syroan refugees. If Obama forces Syrian refugees on those people then those people might get upset at Obama and that anger might make them not want to vote Democrat in 2016. Angering large portions of the electorate is usually bad for politicians and political parties.
I'd argue it's not actually very relevant. Republicans control most of those State Legislatures and Governor positions, so of course they'll band wagon together. There's no real information there that would translate to a Presidential election.
Not one of them can win, but one must. That's the paradox of the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, fast becoming the signature event in the history of black comedy.
Conventional wisdom says that with the primaries and caucuses rapidly approaching, front-running nuts Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson must soon give way to the "real" candidates. But behind Trump and Carson is just more abyss. As I found out on a recent trip to New Hampshire, the rest of the field is either just as crazy or as dangerous as the current poll leaders, or too bumbling to win.
Disaster could be averted if Americans on both the left and the right suddenly decide to be more mature about this, neither backing obvious mental incompetents, nor snickering about those who do. But that doesn't seem probable.
Instead, HashtagClownCar will almost certainly continue to be the most darkly ridiculous political story since Henry II of Champagne, the 12th-century king of Jerusalem, plunged to his death after falling out of a window with a dwarf.
Just after noon, Wednesday, November 4th. I'm in Hollis, New Hampshire, a little town not far from the Massachusetts border.
The Hollis pharmacy is owned by Vahrij Manoukian, a Lebanese immigrant who is the former chairman of the Hillsborough County Republican Committee. If you come into his establishment looking for aspirin, you have to first survive dozens of pictures of the cannonball-shape businessman glad-handing past and present GOP hopefuls like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rudy Giuliani.
Primary season is about who most successfully kisses the asses of such local burghers, and the big test in Hollis today is going to be taken by onetime presumptive front-runner Jeb Bush.
Despite its ideological decorative scheme, the Manoukian pharmacy has some charming small-town quirks you wouldn't find in a CVS. There's a section of beautiful handmade wooden toys, for instance. There's also a pair of talkative parrots named Buddy and Willy perched near the cash registers.
While waiting for the candidate to arrive, I try to make conversation.
"Who are you voting for this year?"
"Hello," says Willy.
"Is Jeb Bush going to win?"
"Rooowk!" the bird screeches, recoiling a little.
It seems like a "no." Bush comes in a moment later and immediately hears the birds squawking. A tall man, he smiles and cranes his head over the crowd in their direction.
"Whose dog is that?" he cracks.
Technically, that is the correct comic response, but the room barely hears him. For Bush, Campaign 2016 has been a very tough crowd.
It's hard to recall now, but a year ago, it appeared likely that Bush would be the Republican nominee. He had a lead in polls, and some Beltway geniuses believed Republican voters would favor "more moderate choices" in 2016, pushing names like Mitt Romney, Chris Christie and this reportedly "smarter" Bush brother to the top of the list.
Moreover, the Bush campaign was supposed to be a milestone in the history of post-Citizens United aristocratic scale-tipping. The infamous 2010 Supreme Court case that deregulated political fundraising birthed a monster called the Super PAC, also known as the "independent-expenditure-only committee." This new form of slush fund could receive unlimited sums from corporations, billionaires and whomever else, provided it didn't coordinate with an active presidential campaign.
Decrying the "no-suspense primary" and insisting, "It's nobody's turn," Bush announced his candidacy on June 15th. But he and his Super PAC, Right to Rise, had been raising money all year long.
Fifteen days after his announcement, on July 1st, the books closed on the first six months of Right to Rise's backroom cash-hoovering. Bush was already sitting atop an astonishing $103 million. That was about 10 times the amount of the next-biggest GOP Super PAC, Christie's America Leads fund.
A hundred million bucks, a name that is American royalty, and the apparent backing of the smoke-filled room. What could go wrong?
Only everything! Before his official announcement even, Bush iceberged his candidacy when he crisscrossed the country in mid-May tying his face in knots in a desperate attempt to lay out a cogent position on his brother's invasion of Iraq.
During a remarkable five days of grasping and incoherent answers, in which Bush was both for and against the invasion multiple times, it became clear that this candidate: (a) doesn't understand the meaning of the phrase "knowing what we know now," and (b) doesn't know how to cut his losses and shut up when things go bad. People began to wonder out loud if he really was the smarter brother.
The real disaster was the second debate, when he decided to go after the other "plausible" establishment candidate, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and ended up getting beaten to gristle onstage. He was reduced after that episode to admitting, "I'm not a performer." He headed into his New Hampshire trip with reporters pronouncing his campaign "on life support."
The operating theory of the Bush campaign is that there's still a massive pot of donor cash, endorsements and support the Republican Party elders must throw to someone. But can Bush remake his candidacy in time to re-establish himself as a plausible vessel for all of that largesse?
In Hollis, there is little evidence of a remade Bush candidacy. His stump presentation is surprisingly half-assed. He tries to get over with lines like, "We've had a divider-in-chief – we need a commander-in-chief," which are so plainly canned that they barely register, even with a crowd jacked up for any put-down of Obama.
Worse, he issues one of the odder descriptions of the American dream you'll ever hear from a Republican.
"We need to create a society," he says, "where we create a safety net for people, and then we say, 'Go dream the biggest possible dreams.'"
I look around. Did a Republican candidate just try to sell a crowd full of New Hampshire conservatives on a government safety net?
He has one near-excellent moment, when answering a question about Syria and Russia. "I don't want to sound bellicose," he says. (Why not? This is the Republican race.) "But my personal opinion is, we're the United States of f— of America. They should be more worried about us than we are about them."
Bush could have become an instant YouTube sensation if he'd completed his thought and said, "We're the United States of fething America," but he couldn't do it. That's just not who he is.
Who is he? Minus the family imperative, Bush is easily imagined as a laid-back commercial lawyer in some Florida exurb, the kind of guy who can crack dirty jokes while he runs a meeting about a new mixed-use development outside Tallahassee.
He doesn't seem at all like a power-crazed, delusionally self-worshipping lunatic, and that's basically his problem. He doesn't want this badly enough to be the kind of effortless sociopathic liar you need to be to make it through this part of the process.
Toward the end of his speech, for instance, the pharmacist Manoukian puts the Jebster on the spot. The local apothecary has a proposal he's been trying to make state law that would give drug dealers special status.
"They would be like child molesters, always being registered," he says. He wheezes excitedly as he details his plan to strip dealers of all social services. I don't think the plan involves using hot irons to brand them with neck tattoos, but that's the spirit.
The reporters all flash bored looks at one another. People like Manoukian are recurring figures on the campaign trail, particularly on the Republican side. There's always some local Junior Anti-Sex League chief who asks the candidate in a town hall to endorse a plan for summary executions of atheists or foreigners or whoever happens to be on the outs that election cycle.
Bush absorbs the pharmacist's question and immediately launches into a speech about the dangers of addiction – to prescription drugs! Through the din of screeching parrots, Bush talks, movingly, I think, about his "precious daughter" Noelle's problems with prescription pills.
"There are some bad actors," he says. "You have people who overprescribe, people who are pharmacy shopping, doctor shopping..."
Everything he just said is true, but Manoukian, as he listens to this diatribe, looks like someone has hit him with a halibut. Does Bush know he's talking to a pharmacist?
Trump would have killed a moment like this, delivering some dog-whistle-ready line about gathering up all the dealers by their hoodies and shooting them into space with all of the child molesters. Who cares if it makes sense? This is the Clown Car.
But Bush has no feel for audience. He doesn't know how to play down to a mob. Nor does he realize how absurd he sounds when a Lucky Spermer scion like himself tries to talk about his "small-business" experience (his past three "jobs" were all lucrative gigs with giant companies that had done business with Florida when he was governor). Despite all this, Bush doesn't seem crazy, nor even like a particularly disgusting person by presidential-campaign standards, which probably disqualifies him from this race.
Lynn Cowan, a Hollis resident, agrees. She thinks Bush comes across as a reasonable guy, but she also thinks his reasonableness is probably crippling in the current political environment.
"It's to his detriment," she says. "And it's sad that we've reached a point where these politicians can't even be on the level."
A few hours later, Nashua, New Hampshire. Rubio strides onstage to a roaring young crowd at the Dion Center of Rivier University. He is like a cross of Joel Osteen and Bobby Kennedy, jacketless with a red tie and shirtsleeves. He is short but prickishly good-looking, all hair and teeth and self-confidence. He's the kind of guy that no group of men wants to go to a bar with, both because he spoils the odds and because he seems like kind of an donkey-cave generally.
There are young women in the crowd looking up at him adoringly, like a Beatle. It's a sight one doesn't often see in presidential politics, but even more seldom on the Republican side, where most candidates are either 500 years old or belong to religions barring nonprocreative use of the wiener. Rubio plainly enjoys being an exception to the rule.
His speech is a total nothingburger, full of worn clichés about America being an "exceptional country," where people are nonetheless living "paycheck to paycheck" and wondering if "achieving [the American dream] is still possible."
SIDEBAR
Donald Trump at a town hall in New Hampshire. Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny »
But he's so slick, he could probably sell a handful of cars at every speech. His main pitch is his Inspirational Personal Tale™. As he's told it, he's the son of refugees from Fidel Castro's Cuba (actually, they left Cuba before Castro, but whatever) who rose from nothing to reach the U.S. Senate, where he was eventually able to draw a $170,000 paycheck despite a brilliant Office Space-style decision to not quit, exactly, but simply not go to work anymore. Which is pretty sweet.
Actually, that last bit isn't openly part of his stump speech. But if you listen hard enough, you can hear it. Rubio has announced that he isn't going to run for re-election to the Senate, where he recently cast his first vote in 26 days and spoke for the first time in 41. He said he didn't hate the work but was "frustrated" ("He hates it," a friend more bluntly told The Washington Post).
In addition to the stories about laying down in the Senate, old tales about Rubio's use of an American Express card given to him by the Republican Party when he was in the Florida House began swirling again. The stories are complex, but the upshot is that Rubio once used party credit cards to spend $10,000 on a family vacation, $3,800 on home flooring, $1,700 on a Vegas vacation and thousands more on countless other absurdities.
Couple those tales with the troubling stories about his financial problems – the Times learned that he cashed in a retirement account and blew $80,000 on a speedboat he probably couldn't afford – and the subtext with Rubio is that he is probably both remaining in the Senate and running for president, at least partly, for the money.
A debt addict with a burgeoning Imelda Marcos shopping complex was pretty much the only thing missing from the top of this GOP field. Yet he looks like the party's next attempt at an Inevitable Candidate.
It's easy to see why. Rubio storms through his stump speech in Nashua, blasting our outdated infrastructure with perfect timing and waves of soaring rhetoric. We have outdated policies in this country, he says. "We have a retirement system designed in the 1930s. We have an immigration and higher-education system designed in the 1950s. Anti-poverty programs designed in the 1960s. Energy policies designed from the 1970s. Tax policies from the Eighties and Nineties..."
The punchline is something about needing to burn it all to the ground and remake everything into a new conservative Eden for the 21st century. "An economic renaissance, unlike anything that's ever happened," he gushes.
I raise an eyebrow. Any vet of this process will feel, upon seeing Rubio in person, a disturbance in the campaign-trail force. He checks all the boxes of what the Beltway kingmakers look for in a political marketing phenomenon: young, ethnic, good-looking, capable of working a room like a pro and able to lean hard on an inspirational bio while eschewing policy specifics.
A bitter Bush recently pegged Rubio as a Republican version of Obama, a comparison neither Rubio nor many Democrats will like, but it has a lot of truth to it. The main difference, apart from the policy inverses, is in tone. 2008 Obama sold tolerance and genial intellectualism, perfect for roping in armchair liberals. Rubio sells a kind of strident, bright-eyed dickishness that in any other year would seem tailor-made for roping in conservatives.
But this isn't any year. It isn't just our energy, education and anti-poverty systems that are outdated. So is our tradition of campaign journalism, which, going back to the days of Nixon, trains reporters to imagine that the winner is probably the slickest Washington-crafted liar, not some loon with a reality show.
But in 2016, who voters like and who the punditocracy thinks they'll swallow are continuing to be two very different things. In the Clown Car era, if reporters think you're hot stuff, that's probably a red flag.
Concord, New Hampshire, the Secretary of State's office, morning of November 6th. I'm waiting to see Ohio Gov. John Kasich officially register as a candidate for the New Hampshire primary.
In another election, Kasich might be a serious contender, being as he is from Ohio, a former Lehman Brothers stooge and a haranguing bore with the face of a dogcatcher. He exactly fits the profile of what party insiders used to call an "exciting" candidate.
At the moment, though, he's a grumpy sideshow to Trump and Carson whose main accomplishment is that he hogged the most time in the fourth debate (and also became the first non-Trump candidate to be booed). Kasich in person seems like a man ready to physically implode from bitterness at the thought that his carefully laid scheme for power might be undone by a flatulent novelty act like Trump.
Surrounded by reporters in the Concord state offices, Kasich seethes again about the tenor of the race. "I think there are some really goofy ideas out there," he says.
I've driven to Concord specifically for this moment. I want to ask Kasich if maybe this is the wrong time in American history for someone pushing cold realism as a platform. It's a softball – I think he might enjoy expounding upon the issue of America's newfound fascination with "goofy" politicians.
"The people with the goofiest ideas are at the top of the polls," I say. "Do you think maybe being the sane candidate in this race is disqualifying?"
Kasich doesn't smile. Instead, he shoots me a look like I'd just dented his Mercedes.
"No," he hisses.
The candidacy of Carly Fiorina, with its wild highs and lows, has exposed the bizarre nature of this primary season. She was in Nowheresville until midsummer, when she attracted the notice of Trump. At the time, reveling atop the polls in full pig glory, Trump told Rolling Stone that America wouldn't be able to take looking at Fiorina's face for a whole presidency. In the second debate, Fiorina responded, "I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said."
Fiorina in the same debate implored Hillary Clinton and Obama to watch Planned Parenthood at work. "Watch these tapes," she said, staring hypnotically into the screen like a Kreskin or a Kashpirovsky. "Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.' "
It was a brilliantly macabre performance, and, according to some, it won her the debate. Even by this race's standards, a tale of evil liberal women's-health workers ripping out the brains of live babies rated a few very good days of what they call "earned media," i.e., press you don't have to pay for.
Of course, Fiorina's claim that she had actually seen a video of someone trying to harvest the brain of a fetus with its legs kicking turned out to be false. Her story matched up vaguely with one video that included a description of a fetus having its brain removed, but no such footage existed, as fact-checkers immediately determined.
Called on her fib by Fox's Chris Wallace, Fiorina doubled down.
"I've seen the footage," she insisted. "And I find it amazing, actually, that all these supposed fact-checkers in the mainstream media claim this doesn't exist."
The week after that appearance with Wallace on Fox News Sunday was her best week in the polls, as she reached as high as 11 percent in some, tying for third with Rubio. She'd clued in to the same insight that drove the early success of Trump: that in the reality-show format of the 2016 race, all press attention is positive, and nobody particularly cares if you lie, so long as you're entertaining.
America dug Fiorina when she was a John Carpenter movie about bloodthirsty feminists harvesting baby brains. But when she talked about anything else, they were bored stiff.
On a Thursday night in Newport, New Hampshire, Fiorina is laboring through her monotone life story of corporate promotions and "solving problems." It's like watching a thermometer move. "Wouldn't it be helpful," she asks, "to reduce the 73,000-page tax code to three pages?"
I chuckle. Even by Clown Car standards, a three-page federal tax code is a hilarious ploy, right up there with Carson's 10-percent biblical tithe and a giant wall across the Central American isthmus. On the way out of the event, a few reporters are joking about it. "Three pages is good," one deadpans. "But I'd like to see her fit it on the label of a really nice local IPA."
Polls have suggested that Fiorina, Carson and Trump were all fighting over the same finite slice of Lunatic Pie (the Beltway press euphemistically calls it the "outsider vote"), a demographic that by late September comprised just north of half of expected Republican voters. That means that for Fiorina to rise, Trump or Carson must fall.
The problem is that after a late-summer swoon, Trump's support has stabilized. And Carson has taken campaign lunacy to places that a three-page tax code couldn't dent. Forget about winning a primary: Carson won the Internet.
Traditionally, we in the political media have always been able to finish off candidates once they start bleeding. The pol caught sending dick pics to strangers, lying about nannies, snuggling models on powerboats, concealing secret treatments for "exhaustion," or doing anything else unforgivably weird is harangued until he or she disintegrates. The bullying is considered a sacred tribal rite among the Beltway press, and it's never not worked.
Until this year. Trump should have been finished off half a dozen times – after the John-McCain-was-a-wuss-for-getting-captured line, after the "blood coming out of her wherever" bit, after the "Mexicans are rapists" episode, etc.
But we don't finish them off anymore. We just keep the cameras rolling. The ratings stay high, and the voters don't abandon their candidates – they just tune in to hate us media smartasses more.
Enter Ben Carson. Reporters early on in the summer thought he was a Jerzy Kosiński character, a nutty doctor who had maybe gotten lost on the way to a surgical convention and accidentally entered a presidential race. In the first debate, he looked like an amnesiac who might at any moment reach into his pocket, find a talisman reminding him of his true identity, and walk offstage.
Then he started saying stuff. First there was that thing about using drones on immigrants crossing the border. Then people began picking apart old stories he'd told, like that a Yale professor in a psych class called "Perceptions 301" had once given him $10 for being honest (nobody remembers that class), or that he'd helped hide frightened white high school students in a lab in Detroit during race riots (nobody remembers that, either).
Everyone who's ever been to an American megachurch recognizes the guy who overdoes the "before" portion of his evangelical testimony, telling tall tales about running with biker gangs or participating in coke orgies (this is always taking place somewhere like Lubbock or suburban Topeka) before discovering Jesus.
As some ex-evangelicals have pointed out, Carson fits this model. He claims in his autobiography, Gifted Hands, that he once tried to stab someone named "Bob," failing only because he accidentally hit a belt buckle. Also, he told reporters decades ago that as a youth he attacked people with "bats and bricks" and hammers. The hammer victim was apparently his mother.
In Gifted Hands, none of this stuff seems any more real than the book's other inspirational passages, like the one where as a college student he prays to God about being broke and gets immediate relief as he walks across campus. "A $10 bill lay crumpled on the ground in front of me," he wrote (the magical $10 bill is a recurring character in Carsonia).
Soon, reporters were interviewing childhood friends, who were revealing what is clear if you read between the lines of Carson's book, which is that he was probably never anything but a nerd with an overheated imagination. "He was skinny and unremarkable," a classmate named Robert Collier told CNN. "I remember him having a pocket saver."
Carson lashed out at reporters for doubting his inspirational tale of a homicidal, knife-wielding madman turned convivial brain surgeon. "I would say to the people of America: Do you think I'm a pathological liar like CNN does?" he said.
This bizarre state of affairs led to stories in the straight press that were indistinguishable from Onion fare. "Ben Carson Defends Himself Against Allegations That He Never Attempted to Murder a Child," wrote New York magazine, in perhaps the single funniest headline presidential politics has ever seen.
Next, BuzzFeed reporters unearthed an old speech of Carson's in which he outlined a gorgeously demented theory about the Egyptian pyramids: They were not tombs for Pharaohs, but rather had been built by the biblical Joseph to store grain. The latter idea he accepted after discarding the obvious space-aliens explanation.
"Various scientists have said, 'Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge,'" he said. "[But] it doesn't require an alien being when God is with you."
Scientists were quick to point out all sorts of issues, like the pyramids not really being hollow and therefore really sucky places to store grain. Then there was the fact that the Egyptians wrote down what the pyramids were for in, well, writing.
The pyramid story sent the Internet, which specializes in nothing if not instant mockery, into overdrive. Carson quickly became perhaps the single funniest thing on Earth. The Wrap ran a piece about Carson being "mocked mercilessly" on social media, where other "Carson theories" quickly developed: that the Eiffel Tower was for storing French bread, brains were actually a fruit, and peanut butter can be used as spermicide, etc. The whole world was in on it. It was epic.
Poor Trump now had to concede that someone else in the race was even more ridiculous and unhinged than he was. The campaign's previously unrivaled carnival expert/circus Hitler was reduced to sounding like George Will as he complained somberly – and ungrammatically – about the attention the mad doctor was stealing away from him.
"With Ben Carson wanting to hit his mother on head with a hammer, stabb [sic] a friend and Pyramids built for grain storage," Trump tweeted sadly, "don't people get it?"
By the end of the first week of November, Carson did not experience, upon close scrutiny, an instant plunge in the polls, as previous front-runners-for-a-day like Rick Perry or Herman Cain had in years past. Instead, he remained atop the polls with Trump, having successfully convinced his followers that the media flaps were just liberal hazing of a black man who threatened leftist stereotypes. And so the beginning of the long-awaited "real race" stalled still another week.
Trump commented during a rally in Illinois: "You can say anything about anybody, and their poll numbers go up. This is the only election in history where it's better off if you stabbed somebody. What are we coming to?"
We are coming to the moment when Trump is the voice of reason, that's what.
have to say the .... uninspiring ..? ... or whatever performance of Jeb Bush has been something of a surprise.
One recalls that in the previous election , when Romney was selected, Daily Show et al christened that the road to Jeb Bush in 2016 or somesuch.
Considering how organised the Rep. party used to be -- at least at a national level -- it's quite odd how......hmm ..... shambolic ? ...no... unfocused maybe is a better term, they are now.
Perhaps this is simply their "turn" , much like the Dems. in the 80s.
I think it surprised a lot of people. Jeb Bush early on seemed like the most reasonable guy to run, and somehow he managed to completely bumble all his advantages.
I'm saddened that I keep hearing all this "why aren't the Muslim countries taking refugees" talk when Turkey and Jordan combined have taken in 4/5s of all Refugees. Turkey and Jordan. Seriously. A country where a terrorist organization is a legitimate political party. It's like literally no one fact checks anything ever or looks at how ludicrous it is to get all paranoid about 30,000 refugees. Wow. What a burden we're taking on
The kicker being that this all started because once again, people jumped to conclusions. Thus far, all definitively identified attackers in Paris were French/Belgian Nationals EDIT: save one (see I fact checked to be sure ). Not immigrants or refugees. Of course the real icing on the cake would be if none of the attackers turned out to be refugees. That's just perfect troll fuel for Yahoo! comments
LordofHats wrote: I'm saddened that I keep hearing all this "why aren't the Muslim countries taking refugees" talk when Turkey and Jordan combined have taken in 4/5s of all Refugees. Turkey and Jordan. Seriously. A country where a terrorist organization is a legitimate political party. It's like literally no one fact checks anything ever or looks at how ludicrous it is to get all paranoid about 30,000 refugees. Wow. What a burden we're taking on
The real icing on the cake being that this all started because once again, people jumped to conclusions. Thus far, all definitively identified attackers in Paris were French/Belgian Nationals EDIT: save one (see I fact checked to be sure ). Not immigrants or refugees.
See my earlier post that highlighted the fact that most terrorist attacks on US soil have been committed by US citizens. 9/11 being the exception, but those terrorists were citizens of a country that is supposed to be a major 'ally.'
LordofHats wrote: I'm saddened that I keep hearing all this "why aren't the Muslim countries taking refugees" talk when Turkey and Jordan combined have taken in 4/5s of all Refugees. Turkey and Jordan. Seriously. A country where a terrorist organization is a legitimate political party. It's like literally no one fact checks anything ever or looks at how ludicrous it is to get all paranoid about 30,000 refugees. Wow. What a burden we're taking on
The real icing on the cake being that this all started because once again, people jumped to conclusions. Thus far, all definitively identified attackers in Paris were French/Belgian Nationals EDIT: save one (see I fact checked to be sure ). Not immigrants or refugees.
Not refugees does not mean not immigrants.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud though born in France, was the son of immigrants from Morocco and held dual citizenship (Belgian/Moroccan).
And many of the European and even US jihadists are 1st generation from immigrants or immigrants themselves. Heck, MAJ Nidal Hassan was 1st generation, the Tsarnaevs were immigrants.
You really can't argue against it. There are areas in Europe where immigrants do not assimilate at all and have brought the salafist/wahabi traditions with them. We are seeing some areas like that crop up here in the US as well.
What you can argue is that the number of 'bad eggs' is pretty small and the fact they exist should not deter bringing in refugees. In my opinion that is a fair way to frame the argument. But the refugee population is going to be targeted for radicalization and a portion of it (however small) will prove very susceptible to radicalization. We are seeing it with refugees and immigrants from Somalia and Bosnia for example.
And no, they are not the only folks susceptible to radicalization.
Well the saddest part is that refusing the refugees is just handing ISIS a win. They sure as hell don't seem to want anyone leaving their zone of control. Who are they gonna kill if everyone runs away?!
ISIS hasn't even attacked us (the US), and we're already giving in to fear.
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CptJake wrote: And many of the European and even US jihadists are 1st generation from immigrants or immigrants themselves.
That's splitting hairs. People are saying "no refugees" on a fraudulent (and unsupported by evidence) notion that refugees pose a threat, in spite of the attackers thus far all being nationals + 1 guy with dual citizenship. Worse, the argument is circular. "Refugees will feel isolated and prone to radicalization so we should isolate them more!" Yeah. That's a great way to go about reducing radicalization in the world. Just lock everyone in a little corner of the globe with the radicals.
LordofHats wrote: Well the saddest part is that refusing the refugees is just handing ISIS a win. They sure as hell don't seem to want anyone leaving their zone of control. Who are they gonna kill if everyone runs away?!
ISIS hasn't even attacked us (the US), and we're already giving in to fear.
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CptJake wrote: And many of the European and even US jihadists are 1st generation from immigrants or immigrants themselves.
That's splitting hairs. People are saying "no refugees" on a fraudulent (and unsupported by evidence) notion that refugees pose a threat, in spite of the attackers thus far all being nationals + 1 guy with dual citizenship. Worse, the argument is circular. "Refugees will feel isolated and prone to radicalization so we should isolate them more!"
The refugees do pose a threat. They end up being a population that will be targeted for radicalization and some will be radicalized, whether the actual refugees or their kids. Again, the facts bear that out. The magnitude of the threat and wether or not is is acceptable is what the argument needs to be if you want to be honest about it. If we let in all 65k and that means we have 10 radicalized folks attempt some form of attack or lend support to some form of attack in the next few years (say 10-15) will it be worth helping the vast majority of that 65k? What if it 20 radicalized? Or 100? We don't know how many and can't really predict, bet we do know there will be some that would not be here if we did not allow them in.
And there have been ISIS inspired attacks in the US, which is what the real fear in the US is. The attack in TX against the Draw Mohamed fest, the hatchet attack in NY, and other foiled. And a couple have occered in Canada. Even Australia has had at least one and others thwarted.
It is the world we live in. Those attacks are gonna keep coming.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I feel bad for Jordan in all this. We pretty much coerced them into accepting way more refugees than they can handle and it has caused them a lot of problems and will cause a lot more in the future unless Syria miraculously stabilizes in the coming year.
LordofHats wrote: Well the saddest part is that refusing the refugees is just handing ISIS a win. They sure as hell don't seem to want anyone leaving their zone of control. Who are they gonna kill if everyone runs away?!
ISIS hasn't even attacked us (the US), and we're already giving in to fear.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
CptJake wrote: And many of the European and even US jihadists are 1st generation from immigrants or immigrants themselves.
That's splitting hairs. People are saying "no refugees" on a fraudulent (and unsupported by evidence) notion that refugees pose a threat, in spite of the attackers thus far all being nationals + 1 guy with dual citizenship. Worse, the argument is circular. "Refugees will feel isolated and prone to radicalization so we should isolate them more!"
The refugees do pose a threat. They end up being a population that will be targeted for radicalization and some will be radicalized, whether the actual refugees or their kids. Again, the facts bear that out. The magnitude of the threat and wether or not is is acceptable is what the argument needs to be if you want to be honest about it. If we let in all 65k and that means we have 10 radicalized folks attempt some form of attack or lend support to some form of attack in the next few years (say 10-15) will it be worth helping the vast majority of that 65k? What if it 20 radicalized? Or 100? We don't know how many and can't really predict, bet we do know there will be some that would not be here if we did not allow them in.
And there have been ISIS inspired attacks in the US, which is what the real fear in the US is. The attack in TX against the Draw Mohamed fest, the hatchet attack in NY, and other foiled. And a couple have occered in Canada. Even Australia has had at least one and others thwarted.
It is the world we live in. Those attacks are gonna keep coming.
Yes that's acceptable, I doubt it would even affect the gun death statistics IF they did. we accept 30k deaths a year from gun violence, how much harm could 100 of them do compared to what we already do.
and yes the attacks will keep coming, mostly from americans anyways, so let them in and take the moral high ground for once.
Let's let in all 65k and fix our homeless problem once and for all: I still like the detroit option, move all the refugees & homeless people in america to detroit. Hire those with the right skills to reconstruct the houses, fix the infrastructure and hire more public servants, cops, firemen, teachers etc. then they'll need stores & they'll probably start restaurants and boom detroit is a booming economy again. Or being more political with it, find a red state where dumping 100k+ people in it grateful to the dems, would tip them into the blue. Texas could easily accommodate them all, plus it would feel like home to them environmentally.
Not one of them can win, but one must. That's the paradox of the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, fast becoming the signature event in the history of black comedy.
Conventional wisdom says that with the primaries and caucuses rapidly approaching, front-running nuts Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson must soon give way to the "real" candidates. But behind Trump and Carson is just more abyss. As I found out on a recent trip to New Hampshire, the rest of the field is either just as crazy or as dangerous as the current poll leaders, or too bumbling to win.
Disaster could be averted if Americans on both the left and the right suddenly decide to be more mature about this, neither backing obvious mental incompetents, nor snickering about those who do. But that doesn't seem probable.
Instead, HashtagClownCar will almost certainly continue to be the most darkly ridiculous political story since Henry II of Champagne, the 12th-century king of Jerusalem, plunged to his death after falling out of a window with a dwarf.
Just after noon, Wednesday, November 4th. I'm in Hollis, New Hampshire, a little town not far from the Massachusetts border.
The Hollis pharmacy is owned by Vahrij Manoukian, a Lebanese immigrant who is the former chairman of the Hillsborough County Republican Committee. If you come into his establishment looking for aspirin, you have to first survive dozens of pictures of the cannonball-shape businessman glad-handing past and present GOP hopefuls like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rudy Giuliani.
Primary season is about who most successfully kisses the asses of such local burghers, and the big test in Hollis today is going to be taken by onetime presumptive front-runner Jeb Bush.
Despite its ideological decorative scheme, the Manoukian pharmacy has some charming small-town quirks you wouldn't find in a CVS. There's a section of beautiful handmade wooden toys, for instance. There's also a pair of talkative parrots named Buddy and Willy perched near the cash registers.
While waiting for the candidate to arrive, I try to make conversation.
"Who are you voting for this year?"
"Hello," says Willy.
"Is Jeb Bush going to win?"
"Rooowk!" the bird screeches, recoiling a little.
It seems like a "no." Bush comes in a moment later and immediately hears the birds squawking. A tall man, he smiles and cranes his head over the crowd in their direction.
"Whose dog is that?" he cracks.
Technically, that is the correct comic response, but the room barely hears him. For Bush, Campaign 2016 has been a very tough crowd.
It's hard to recall now, but a year ago, it appeared likely that Bush would be the Republican nominee. He had a lead in polls, and some Beltway geniuses believed Republican voters would favor "more moderate choices" in 2016, pushing names like Mitt Romney, Chris Christie and this reportedly "smarter" Bush brother to the top of the list.
Moreover, the Bush campaign was supposed to be a milestone in the history of post-Citizens United aristocratic scale-tipping. The infamous 2010 Supreme Court case that deregulated political fundraising birthed a monster called the Super PAC, also known as the "independent-expenditure-only committee." This new form of slush fund could receive unlimited sums from corporations, billionaires and whomever else, provided it didn't coordinate with an active presidential campaign.
Decrying the "no-suspense primary" and insisting, "It's nobody's turn," Bush announced his candidacy on June 15th. But he and his Super PAC, Right to Rise, had been raising money all year long.
Fifteen days after his announcement, on July 1st, the books closed on the first six months of Right to Rise's backroom cash-hoovering. Bush was already sitting atop an astonishing $103 million. That was about 10 times the amount of the next-biggest GOP Super PAC, Christie's America Leads fund.
A hundred million bucks, a name that is American royalty, and the apparent backing of the smoke-filled room. What could go wrong?
Only everything! Before his official announcement even, Bush iceberged his candidacy when he crisscrossed the country in mid-May tying his face in knots in a desperate attempt to lay out a cogent position on his brother's invasion of Iraq.
During a remarkable five days of grasping and incoherent answers, in which Bush was both for and against the invasion multiple times, it became clear that this candidate: (a) doesn't understand the meaning of the phrase "knowing what we know now," and (b) doesn't know how to cut his losses and shut up when things go bad. People began to wonder out loud if he really was the smarter brother.
The real disaster was the second debate, when he decided to go after the other "plausible" establishment candidate, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and ended up getting beaten to gristle onstage. He was reduced after that episode to admitting, "I'm not a performer." He headed into his New Hampshire trip with reporters pronouncing his campaign "on life support."
The operating theory of the Bush campaign is that there's still a massive pot of donor cash, endorsements and support the Republican Party elders must throw to someone. But can Bush remake his candidacy in time to re-establish himself as a plausible vessel for all of that largesse?
In Hollis, there is little evidence of a remade Bush candidacy. His stump presentation is surprisingly half-assed. He tries to get over with lines like, "We've had a divider-in-chief – we need a commander-in-chief," which are so plainly canned that they barely register, even with a crowd jacked up for any put-down of Obama.
Worse, he issues one of the odder descriptions of the American dream you'll ever hear from a Republican.
"We need to create a society," he says, "where we create a safety net for people, and then we say, 'Go dream the biggest possible dreams.'"
I look around. Did a Republican candidate just try to sell a crowd full of New Hampshire conservatives on a government safety net?
He has one near-excellent moment, when answering a question about Syria and Russia. "I don't want to sound bellicose," he says. (Why not? This is the Republican race.) "But my personal opinion is, we're the United States of f— of America. They should be more worried about us than we are about them."
Bush could have become an instant YouTube sensation if he'd completed his thought and said, "We're the United States of fething America," but he couldn't do it. That's just not who he is.
Who is he? Minus the family imperative, Bush is easily imagined as a laid-back commercial lawyer in some Florida exurb, the kind of guy who can crack dirty jokes while he runs a meeting about a new mixed-use development outside Tallahassee.
He doesn't seem at all like a power-crazed, delusionally self-worshipping lunatic, and that's basically his problem. He doesn't want this badly enough to be the kind of effortless sociopathic liar you need to be to make it through this part of the process.
Toward the end of his speech, for instance, the pharmacist Manoukian puts the Jebster on the spot. The local apothecary has a proposal he's been trying to make state law that would give drug dealers special status.
"They would be like child molesters, always being registered," he says. He wheezes excitedly as he details his plan to strip dealers of all social services. I don't think the plan involves using hot irons to brand them with neck tattoos, but that's the spirit.
The reporters all flash bored looks at one another. People like Manoukian are recurring figures on the campaign trail, particularly on the Republican side. There's always some local Junior Anti-Sex League chief who asks the candidate in a town hall to endorse a plan for summary executions of atheists or foreigners or whoever happens to be on the outs that election cycle.
Bush absorbs the pharmacist's question and immediately launches into a speech about the dangers of addiction – to prescription drugs! Through the din of screeching parrots, Bush talks, movingly, I think, about his "precious daughter" Noelle's problems with prescription pills.
"There are some bad actors," he says. "You have people who overprescribe, people who are pharmacy shopping, doctor shopping..."
Everything he just said is true, but Manoukian, as he listens to this diatribe, looks like someone has hit him with a halibut. Does Bush know he's talking to a pharmacist?
Trump would have killed a moment like this, delivering some dog-whistle-ready line about gathering up all the dealers by their hoodies and shooting them into space with all of the child molesters. Who cares if it makes sense? This is the Clown Car.
But Bush has no feel for audience. He doesn't know how to play down to a mob. Nor does he realize how absurd he sounds when a Lucky Spermer scion like himself tries to talk about his "small-business" experience (his past three "jobs" were all lucrative gigs with giant companies that had done business with Florida when he was governor). Despite all this, Bush doesn't seem crazy, nor even like a particularly disgusting person by presidential-campaign standards, which probably disqualifies him from this race.
Lynn Cowan, a Hollis resident, agrees. She thinks Bush comes across as a reasonable guy, but she also thinks his reasonableness is probably crippling in the current political environment.
"It's to his detriment," she says. "And it's sad that we've reached a point where these politicians can't even be on the level."
A few hours later, Nashua, New Hampshire. Rubio strides onstage to a roaring young crowd at the Dion Center of Rivier University. He is like a cross of Joel Osteen and Bobby Kennedy, jacketless with a red tie and shirtsleeves. He is short but prickishly good-looking, all hair and teeth and self-confidence. He's the kind of guy that no group of men wants to go to a bar with, both because he spoils the odds and because he seems like kind of an donkey-cave generally.
There are young women in the crowd looking up at him adoringly, like a Beatle. It's a sight one doesn't often see in presidential politics, but even more seldom on the Republican side, where most candidates are either 500 years old or belong to religions barring nonprocreative use of the wiener. Rubio plainly enjoys being an exception to the rule.
His speech is a total nothingburger, full of worn clichés about America being an "exceptional country," where people are nonetheless living "paycheck to paycheck" and wondering if "achieving [the American dream] is still possible."
SIDEBAR
Donald Trump at a town hall in New Hampshire. Donald Trump Just Stopped Being Funny »
But he's so slick, he could probably sell a handful of cars at every speech. His main pitch is his Inspirational Personal Tale™. As he's told it, he's the son of refugees from Fidel Castro's Cuba (actually, they left Cuba before Castro, but whatever) who rose from nothing to reach the U.S. Senate, where he was eventually able to draw a $170,000 paycheck despite a brilliant Office Space-style decision to not quit, exactly, but simply not go to work anymore. Which is pretty sweet.
Actually, that last bit isn't openly part of his stump speech. But if you listen hard enough, you can hear it. Rubio has announced that he isn't going to run for re-election to the Senate, where he recently cast his first vote in 26 days and spoke for the first time in 41. He said he didn't hate the work but was "frustrated" ("He hates it," a friend more bluntly told The Washington Post).
In addition to the stories about laying down in the Senate, old tales about Rubio's use of an American Express card given to him by the Republican Party when he was in the Florida House began swirling again. The stories are complex, but the upshot is that Rubio once used party credit cards to spend $10,000 on a family vacation, $3,800 on home flooring, $1,700 on a Vegas vacation and thousands more on countless other absurdities.
Couple those tales with the troubling stories about his financial problems – the Times learned that he cashed in a retirement account and blew $80,000 on a speedboat he probably couldn't afford – and the subtext with Rubio is that he is probably both remaining in the Senate and running for president, at least partly, for the money.
A debt addict with a burgeoning Imelda Marcos shopping complex was pretty much the only thing missing from the top of this GOP field. Yet he looks like the party's next attempt at an Inevitable Candidate.
It's easy to see why. Rubio storms through his stump speech in Nashua, blasting our outdated infrastructure with perfect timing and waves of soaring rhetoric. We have outdated policies in this country, he says. "We have a retirement system designed in the 1930s. We have an immigration and higher-education system designed in the 1950s. Anti-poverty programs designed in the 1960s. Energy policies designed from the 1970s. Tax policies from the Eighties and Nineties..."
The punchline is something about needing to burn it all to the ground and remake everything into a new conservative Eden for the 21st century. "An economic renaissance, unlike anything that's ever happened," he gushes.
I raise an eyebrow. Any vet of this process will feel, upon seeing Rubio in person, a disturbance in the campaign-trail force. He checks all the boxes of what the Beltway kingmakers look for in a political marketing phenomenon: young, ethnic, good-looking, capable of working a room like a pro and able to lean hard on an inspirational bio while eschewing policy specifics.
A bitter Bush recently pegged Rubio as a Republican version of Obama, a comparison neither Rubio nor many Democrats will like, but it has a lot of truth to it. The main difference, apart from the policy inverses, is in tone. 2008 Obama sold tolerance and genial intellectualism, perfect for roping in armchair liberals. Rubio sells a kind of strident, bright-eyed dickishness that in any other year would seem tailor-made for roping in conservatives.
But this isn't any year. It isn't just our energy, education and anti-poverty systems that are outdated. So is our tradition of campaign journalism, which, going back to the days of Nixon, trains reporters to imagine that the winner is probably the slickest Washington-crafted liar, not some loon with a reality show.
But in 2016, who voters like and who the punditocracy thinks they'll swallow are continuing to be two very different things. In the Clown Car era, if reporters think you're hot stuff, that's probably a red flag.
Concord, New Hampshire, the Secretary of State's office, morning of November 6th. I'm waiting to see Ohio Gov. John Kasich officially register as a candidate for the New Hampshire primary.
In another election, Kasich might be a serious contender, being as he is from Ohio, a former Lehman Brothers stooge and a haranguing bore with the face of a dogcatcher. He exactly fits the profile of what party insiders used to call an "exciting" candidate.
At the moment, though, he's a grumpy sideshow to Trump and Carson whose main accomplishment is that he hogged the most time in the fourth debate (and also became the first non-Trump candidate to be booed). Kasich in person seems like a man ready to physically implode from bitterness at the thought that his carefully laid scheme for power might be undone by a flatulent novelty act like Trump.
Surrounded by reporters in the Concord state offices, Kasich seethes again about the tenor of the race. "I think there are some really goofy ideas out there," he says.
I've driven to Concord specifically for this moment. I want to ask Kasich if maybe this is the wrong time in American history for someone pushing cold realism as a platform. It's a softball – I think he might enjoy expounding upon the issue of America's newfound fascination with "goofy" politicians.
"The people with the goofiest ideas are at the top of the polls," I say. "Do you think maybe being the sane candidate in this race is disqualifying?"
Kasich doesn't smile. Instead, he shoots me a look like I'd just dented his Mercedes.
"No," he hisses.
The candidacy of Carly Fiorina, with its wild highs and lows, has exposed the bizarre nature of this primary season. She was in Nowheresville until midsummer, when she attracted the notice of Trump. At the time, reveling atop the polls in full pig glory, Trump told Rolling Stone that America wouldn't be able to take looking at Fiorina's face for a whole presidency. In the second debate, Fiorina responded, "I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said."
Fiorina in the same debate implored Hillary Clinton and Obama to watch Planned Parenthood at work. "Watch these tapes," she said, staring hypnotically into the screen like a Kreskin or a Kashpirovsky. "Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, 'We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.' "
It was a brilliantly macabre performance, and, according to some, it won her the debate. Even by this race's standards, a tale of evil liberal women's-health workers ripping out the brains of live babies rated a few very good days of what they call "earned media," i.e., press you don't have to pay for.
Of course, Fiorina's claim that she had actually seen a video of someone trying to harvest the brain of a fetus with its legs kicking turned out to be false. Her story matched up vaguely with one video that included a description of a fetus having its brain removed, but no such footage existed, as fact-checkers immediately determined.
Called on her fib by Fox's Chris Wallace, Fiorina doubled down.
"I've seen the footage," she insisted. "And I find it amazing, actually, that all these supposed fact-checkers in the mainstream media claim this doesn't exist."
The week after that appearance with Wallace on Fox News Sunday was her best week in the polls, as she reached as high as 11 percent in some, tying for third with Rubio. She'd clued in to the same insight that drove the early success of Trump: that in the reality-show format of the 2016 race, all press attention is positive, and nobody particularly cares if you lie, so long as you're entertaining.
America dug Fiorina when she was a John Carpenter movie about bloodthirsty feminists harvesting baby brains. But when she talked about anything else, they were bored stiff.
On a Thursday night in Newport, New Hampshire, Fiorina is laboring through her monotone life story of corporate promotions and "solving problems." It's like watching a thermometer move. "Wouldn't it be helpful," she asks, "to reduce the 73,000-page tax code to three pages?"
I chuckle. Even by Clown Car standards, a three-page federal tax code is a hilarious ploy, right up there with Carson's 10-percent biblical tithe and a giant wall across the Central American isthmus. On the way out of the event, a few reporters are joking about it. "Three pages is good," one deadpans. "But I'd like to see her fit it on the label of a really nice local IPA."
Polls have suggested that Fiorina, Carson and Trump were all fighting over the same finite slice of Lunatic Pie (the Beltway press euphemistically calls it the "outsider vote"), a demographic that by late September comprised just north of half of expected Republican voters. That means that for Fiorina to rise, Trump or Carson must fall.
The problem is that after a late-summer swoon, Trump's support has stabilized. And Carson has taken campaign lunacy to places that a three-page tax code couldn't dent. Forget about winning a primary: Carson won the Internet.
Traditionally, we in the political media have always been able to finish off candidates once they start bleeding. The pol caught sending dick pics to strangers, lying about nannies, snuggling models on powerboats, concealing secret treatments for "exhaustion," or doing anything else unforgivably weird is harangued until he or she disintegrates. The bullying is considered a sacred tribal rite among the Beltway press, and it's never not worked.
Until this year. Trump should have been finished off half a dozen times – after the John-McCain-was-a-wuss-for-getting-captured line, after the "blood coming out of her wherever" bit, after the "Mexicans are rapists" episode, etc.
But we don't finish them off anymore. We just keep the cameras rolling. The ratings stay high, and the voters don't abandon their candidates – they just tune in to hate us media smartasses more.
Enter Ben Carson. Reporters early on in the summer thought he was a Jerzy Kosiński character, a nutty doctor who had maybe gotten lost on the way to a surgical convention and accidentally entered a presidential race. In the first debate, he looked like an amnesiac who might at any moment reach into his pocket, find a talisman reminding him of his true identity, and walk offstage.
Then he started saying stuff. First there was that thing about using drones on immigrants crossing the border. Then people began picking apart old stories he'd told, like that a Yale professor in a psych class called "Perceptions 301" had once given him $10 for being honest (nobody remembers that class), or that he'd helped hide frightened white high school students in a lab in Detroit during race riots (nobody remembers that, either).
Everyone who's ever been to an American megachurch recognizes the guy who overdoes the "before" portion of his evangelical testimony, telling tall tales about running with biker gangs or participating in coke orgies (this is always taking place somewhere like Lubbock or suburban Topeka) before discovering Jesus.
As some ex-evangelicals have pointed out, Carson fits this model. He claims in his autobiography, Gifted Hands, that he once tried to stab someone named "Bob," failing only because he accidentally hit a belt buckle. Also, he told reporters decades ago that as a youth he attacked people with "bats and bricks" and hammers. The hammer victim was apparently his mother.
In Gifted Hands, none of this stuff seems any more real than the book's other inspirational passages, like the one where as a college student he prays to God about being broke and gets immediate relief as he walks across campus. "A $10 bill lay crumpled on the ground in front of me," he wrote (the magical $10 bill is a recurring character in Carsonia).
Soon, reporters were interviewing childhood friends, who were revealing what is clear if you read between the lines of Carson's book, which is that he was probably never anything but a nerd with an overheated imagination. "He was skinny and unremarkable," a classmate named Robert Collier told CNN. "I remember him having a pocket saver."
Carson lashed out at reporters for doubting his inspirational tale of a homicidal, knife-wielding madman turned convivial brain surgeon. "I would say to the people of America: Do you think I'm a pathological liar like CNN does?" he said.
This bizarre state of affairs led to stories in the straight press that were indistinguishable from Onion fare. "Ben Carson Defends Himself Against Allegations That He Never Attempted to Murder a Child," wrote New York magazine, in perhaps the single funniest headline presidential politics has ever seen.
Next, BuzzFeed reporters unearthed an old speech of Carson's in which he outlined a gorgeously demented theory about the Egyptian pyramids: They were not tombs for Pharaohs, but rather had been built by the biblical Joseph to store grain. The latter idea he accepted after discarding the obvious space-aliens explanation.
"Various scientists have said, 'Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge,'" he said. "[But] it doesn't require an alien being when God is with you."
Scientists were quick to point out all sorts of issues, like the pyramids not really being hollow and therefore really sucky places to store grain. Then there was the fact that the Egyptians wrote down what the pyramids were for in, well, writing.
The pyramid story sent the Internet, which specializes in nothing if not instant mockery, into overdrive. Carson quickly became perhaps the single funniest thing on Earth. The Wrap ran a piece about Carson being "mocked mercilessly" on social media, where other "Carson theories" quickly developed: that the Eiffel Tower was for storing French bread, brains were actually a fruit, and peanut butter can be used as spermicide, etc. The whole world was in on it. It was epic.
Poor Trump now had to concede that someone else in the race was even more ridiculous and unhinged than he was. The campaign's previously unrivaled carnival expert/circus Hitler was reduced to sounding like George Will as he complained somberly – and ungrammatically – about the attention the mad doctor was stealing away from him.
"With Ben Carson wanting to hit his mother on head with a hammer, stabb [sic] a friend and Pyramids built for grain storage," Trump tweeted sadly, "don't people get it?"
By the end of the first week of November, Carson did not experience, upon close scrutiny, an instant plunge in the polls, as previous front-runners-for-a-day like Rick Perry or Herman Cain had in years past. Instead, he remained atop the polls with Trump, having successfully convinced his followers that the media flaps were just liberal hazing of a black man who threatened leftist stereotypes. And so the beginning of the long-awaited "real race" stalled still another week.
Trump commented during a rally in Illinois: "You can say anything about anybody, and their poll numbers go up. This is the only election in history where it's better off if you stabbed somebody. What are we coming to?"
We are coming to the moment when Trump is the voice of reason, that's what.
have to say the .... uninspiring ..? ... or whatever performance of Jeb Bush has been something of a surprise.
One recalls that in the previous election , when Romney was selected, Daily Show et al christened that the road to Jeb Bush in 2016 or somesuch.
Considering how organised the Rep. party used to be -- at least at a national level -- it's quite odd how......hmm ..... shambolic ? ...no... unfocused maybe is a better term, they are now.
Perhaps this is simply their "turn" , much like the Dems. in the 80s.
That rollingstones article is rubbish.
But, if you want a "take away" from the writers... it's that in the GOP field, the conventional wisdom is taking a beating.
Hence the rise of Trump and Carson.
However, keep in mind that it's still waaaaay early. This time last in last election, Hermain Cain and Michelle Bachman were leading the pack.
It'll eventually end up being Rubio vs Cruz in the primary.
LordofHats wrote: I'm saddened that I keep hearing all this "why aren't the Muslim countries taking refugees" talk when Turkey and Jordan combined have taken in 4/5s of all Refugees. Turkey and Jordan. Seriously. A country where a terrorist organization is a legitimate political party. It's like literally no one fact checks anything ever or looks at how ludicrous it is to get all paranoid about 30,000 refugees. Wow. What a burden we're taking on
The real icing on the cake being that this all started because once again, people jumped to conclusions. Thus far, all definitively identified attackers in Paris were French/Belgian Nationals EDIT: save one (see I fact checked to be sure ). Not immigrants or refugees.
Not refugees does not mean not immigrants.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud though born in France, was the son of immigrants from Morocco and held dual citizenship (Belgian/Moroccan).
And many of the European and even US jihadists are 1st generation from immigrants or immigrants themselves. Heck, MAJ Nidal Hassan was 1st generation, the Tsarnaevs were immigrants.
You really can't argue against it. There are areas in Europe where immigrants do not assimilate at all and have brought the salafist/wahabi traditions with them. We are seeing some areas like that crop up here in the US as well.
What you can argue is that the number of 'bad eggs' is pretty small and the fact they exist should not deter bringing in refugees. In my opinion that is a fair way to frame the argument. But the refugee population is going to be targeted for radicalization and a portion of it (however small) will prove very susceptible to radicalization. We are seeing it with refugees and immigrants from Somalia and Bosnia for example.
And no, they are not the only folks susceptible to radicalization.
If memory serves, you guys had trouble with militia movements in the 1990s, culminating in one of the worst terrorist attacks ever committed on US soil. Those guys were white...
I'm not trying to detract from your point about immigrants, it's more complex than concerns about a few thousand Syrian refugees.
If I were American, I'd be more worried about drunk drivers, too much sugar in the diet, smoking, heart disease, and gun crime, as those things are more likely to kill you than a possible terrorist attack.
In the past, America had the red scare, and then restrictions on Chinese immigrants.
The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that tightens restrictions on the resettlement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, amid security concerns.
Dozens of Democrats joined Republicans as the House passed the measure 289-137, in a rebuke to the White House.
President Barack Obama has said he will veto the legislation.
The bill follows the attacks in Paris that left 129 people dead, claiming to the be the work of Islamic State.
Seven of the perpetrators died in the attacks, and one of them is thought to have been a Syrian who entered Europe via Greece with migrants.
It still needs to pass the Senate before hitting Mr Obama's desk.
The bill would require the head of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence to sign off on each refugee as being "not a threat to the security of the United States," following an FBI background check.
Calling the Paris attacks "a game changer", Rep Brad Ashford, a Democrat from Nebraska, said: "I cannot sit back and ignore the concerns of my constituents and the American public."
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he supported the bill because "it is against the values of our nation and the values of a free society to give terrorists the opening they are looking for".
Rep Michael McCaul, who co-wrote the bill, said: "The status quo is not acceptable".
Others urged compassion for those fleeing the war-torn regions.
"Defeating terrorism should not mean slamming the door in the faces of those fleeing the terrorists," said Rep Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from New York. "We might as well take down the Statue of Liberty".
The current vetting process
takes two years
in-person interviews and supporting documents
their experience of conflict cross-checked against intelligence
about 50% of applicants approved
Republicans do not have the votes to override Mr Obama's veto, but say that their affirmative vote is symbolic.
Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky who is currently running for president, has highlighted a 2011 case in his home state of two Iraqi refugees who schemed to send rifles, missiles and money to al-Qaeda against US troops in Iraqi. They are now imprisoned.
The White House has said that 2,174 Syrians have been admitted to the US since the attacks in September 2001, and noted that none of them has been arrested or deported for terror offences.
Millions of Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries and to Europe since the Syrian conflict began about four years ago.
The Obama administration announced in September that it wanted to resettle about 10,000 Syrian refugees in the US by the same time next year.
I think the point that Whembly wants to make is that those states have a lot of people in them that don't want Syroan refugees. If Obama forces Syrian refugees on those people then those people might get upset at Obama and that anger might make them not want to vote Democrat in 2016. Angering large portions of the electorate is usually bad for politicians and political parties.
I'd argue it's not actually very relevant. Republicans control most of those State Legislatures and Governor positions, so of course they'll band wagon together. There's no real information there that would translate to a Presidential election.
So most of them are "Republicans" means that their opinions don't matter?
America’s top spy said Wednesday that U.S. intelligence officials have a “huge concern” about Islamic State’s ability to infiltrate waves of Syrian war refugees flowing into Europe and potentially the United States as pressure mounts on Western nations to take in a growing number of people fleeing the conflict in the heart of the Middle East.
“As they descend on Europe, one of the obvious issues that we worry about, and in turn as we bring refugees into this country, is exactly what’s their background?” Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said. “We don’t obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.”
“That is a huge concern of ours,” Mr. Clapper said during a rare and unusually informal public appearance at an annual U.S. intelligence community conference that kicked off Wednesday morning in Washington.
While he added that U.S. authorities, who have so far allowed in fewer than 2,000 of Syria’s some 4 million refugees, have a “pretty aggressive” system for screening the backgrounds of those seeking entry into the United States, Mr. Clapper said he’s not so confident about the capabilities of some European nations.
He made the remarks during a wide ranging question-and-answer session that former ambassador and U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte moderated at Wednesday’s conference sponsored by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance and the Armed Forces Electronics Communication Association.
LordofHats wrote: I'm saddened that I keep hearing all this "why aren't the Muslim countries taking refugees" talk when Turkey and Jordan combined have taken in 4/5s of all Refugees. Turkey and Jordan. Seriously. A country where a terrorist organization is a legitimate political party. It's like literally no one fact checks anything ever or looks at how ludicrous it is to get all paranoid about 30,000 refugees. Wow. What a burden we're taking on
The real icing on the cake being that this all started because once again, people jumped to conclusions. Thus far, all definitively identified attackers in Paris were French/Belgian Nationals EDIT: save one (see I fact checked to be sure ). Not immigrants or refugees.
Not refugees does not mean not immigrants.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud though born in France, was the son of immigrants from Morocco and held dual citizenship (Belgian/Moroccan).
And many of the European and even US jihadists are 1st generation from immigrants or immigrants themselves. Heck, MAJ Nidal Hassan was 1st generation, the Tsarnaevs were immigrants.
You really can't argue against it. There are areas in Europe where immigrants do not assimilate at all and have brought the salafist/wahabi traditions with them. We are seeing some areas like that crop up here in the US as well.
What you can argue is that the number of 'bad eggs' is pretty small and the fact they exist should not deter bringing in refugees. In my opinion that is a fair way to frame the argument. But the refugee population is going to be targeted for radicalization and a portion of it (however small) will prove very susceptible to radicalization. We are seeing it with refugees and immigrants from Somalia and Bosnia for example.
And no, they are not the only folks susceptible to radicalization.
If memory serves, you guys had trouble with militia movements in the 1990s, culminating in one of the worst terrorist attacks ever committed on US soil. Those guys were white...
I'm not trying to detract from your point about immigrants, it's more complex than concerns about a few thousand Syrian refugees.
If I were American, I'd be more worried about drunk drivers, too much sugar in the diet, smoking, heart disease, and gun crime, as those things are more likely to kill you than a possible terrorist attack.
In the past, America had the red scare, and then restrictions on Chinese immigrants.
I fear history is repeating itself.
Well, don't you know that Timothy McVeigh was a radicalized immigrant?......if you go back far enough in his family tree that is.
Painting all immigrants with the same terrorist brush is some pretty huge blame the victim BS in my opinion.
agnosto wrote: Painting all immigrants with the same terrorist brush is some pretty huge blame the victim BS in my opinion.
Holy Straw Man, Batman!
Quick, Robin, get the bat-lighter.
LordofHats wrote: Well the saddest part is that refusing the refugees is just handing ISIS a win.
This "either you agree with me or the terrorists win" line of thinking that's been all over this forum is also a pile of bunk. The bill that just passed in the House is not "refusing the refugees". Furthermore, ISIS wins by not being wiped out, not by how other (non-ISIS) people are treated.
The possibility of radicals infiltrating the refugee population is serious enough to be a concern to any country taking them in. Wanting extra caution when dealing with this group is NOT blaming the victim or is it giving up any moral high ground. In fact, it is an example of government behaving responsibility.
agnosto wrote: Painting all immigrants with the same terrorist brush is some pretty huge blame the victim BS in my opinion.
Holy Straw Man, Batman!
Quick, Robin, get the bat-lighter.
A strawman to what. The original poster was alluding to the OKC bombing and I just added a silly comment to it. I think that a strawman actually needs an argument, maybe you need to pull up the bat-dictionary.
LordofHats wrote: Well the saddest part is that refusing the refugees is just handing ISIS a win. They sure as hell don't seem to want anyone leaving their zone of control. Who are they gonna kill if everyone runs away?!
ISIS hasn't even attacked us (the US), and we're already giving in to fear.
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CptJake wrote: And many of the European and even US jihadists are 1st generation from immigrants or immigrants themselves.
That's splitting hairs. People are saying "no refugees" on a fraudulent (and unsupported by evidence) notion that refugees pose a threat, in spite of the attackers thus far all being nationals + 1 guy with dual citizenship. Worse, the argument is circular. "Refugees will feel isolated and prone to radicalization so we should isolate them more!"
The refugees do pose a threat. They end up being a population that will be targeted for radicalization and some will be radicalized, whether the actual refugees or their kids. Again, the facts bear that out. The magnitude of the threat and wether or not is is acceptable is what the argument needs to be if you want to be honest about it. If we let in all 65k and that means we have 10 radicalized folks attempt some form of attack or lend support to some form of attack in the next few years (say 10-15) will it be worth helping the vast majority of that 65k? What if it 20 radicalized? Or 100? We don't know how many and can't really predict, bet we do know there will be some that would not be here if we did not allow them in.
And there have been ISIS inspired attacks in the US, which is what the real fear in the US is. The attack in TX against the Draw Mohamed fest, the hatchet attack in NY, and other foiled. And a couple have occered in Canada. Even Australia has had at least one and others thwarted.
It is the world we live in. Those attacks are gonna keep coming.
Yes that's acceptable, I doubt it would even affect the gun death statistics IF they did. we accept 30k deaths a year from gun violence, how much harm could 100 of them do compared to what we already do.
and yes the attacks will keep coming, mostly from americans anyways, so let them in and take the moral high ground for once.
Let's let in all 65k and fix our homeless problem once and for all: I still like the detroit option, move all the refugees & homeless people in america to detroit. Hire those with the right skills to reconstruct the houses, fix the infrastructure and hire more public servants, cops, firemen, teachers etc. then they'll need stores & they'll probably start restaurants and boom detroit is a booming economy again. Or being more political with it, find a red state where dumping 100k+ people in it grateful to the dems, would tip them into the blue. Texas could easily accommodate them all, plus it would feel like home to them environmentally.
Well it only took 19 people to knock down the Twin Towers on 9/1, murder over 3,000 peope and permanently alter US domestic and foreign policy so 100 could do quite a bit of damage if they were motivated to do it.
When the Asst Director of the FBI testifies before Congress that we don't have enough data to effectively screen all the refugees for links to terrorist groups that creates a legitimate concern in citizens that any Syrian refugees resettled near them could be very dangerous people.
During a recent congressional hearing a director with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which operates under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), confirmed that the U.S. has no method of vetting the new refugees because the Syrian government doesn’t have an intelligence database to run checks against. It’s actually embarrassing to watch the footage of the DHS director, Matthew Emrich, getting grilled by the senator who chairs the committee that conducted the hearing a few days ago. The session was held to address the fiscal and security implications of the Obama administration’s refugee resettlement program.
Under questioning from Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, Emrich admits that there is no reliable way to assure that individuals coming from Syria are properly checked. The exchange lasts about seven minutes and Emrich sounds desperate when he says “we check everything that we are aware of” and that “we are in the process of overturning every stone.” The bottom line is that there is no way to verify the identity of Syrians so the defeated Homeland Security official proceeds to say that “in many countries of the world from which we have traditionally accepted refugees over the years the United States government did not have extensive data holdings.”
Emrich’s testimony before the Senate panel comes on the heels of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Assistant Director Michael Steinbach’s revelation that the U.S. government has no system to properly screen Syrian refugees. “The concern in Syria is that we don’t have systems in places on the ground to collect information to vet,” Steinbach said. “That would be the concern is we would be vetting — databases don’t hold the information on those individuals. “You’re talking about a country that is a failed state, that is — does not have any infrastructure, so to speak. So all of the data sets — the police, the intel services — that normally you would go to seek information don’t exist.”
Moving people to a place doesn't magically create jobs for them just because people live there. People left Detroit for a reason, there weren't any jobs. Moving a bunch of people back to Detroit doesn't create jobs. Where would the money come from to hire all these people to fix up houses that have been abandoned for years and mostly can't be fix but would need to be torn down and rebuilt? Where do the Syrian refugees get the capital to start businesses? Why spend millions (probably billions) to rebuild Detroit suburbs from Syrian refugees when there aren't any jobs there for the refugees to do?
How about we don't move thousands of refugees into Detroit and create and enclave. Detroit is rebuilding itself just fine (slowly), the last thing it needs is to become a literal foreign country.
How about we take them on and spread them out and spend much less on them to provide them the means to successful integrate and assimilate to American culture than creating a small Syrian country where an American city is.
The day one briefing should be, if you touch US soil you will no longer be Syrian and you will do all that is necessary to become American. If you can not or will not then you don't touch US soil.
I'm all for saving people but I am not for creating nations inside the US. Refugee status should require the refugee to attend intergration and cultural assimilation classes. Preferably lead by people of their cultural background. So a Muslim to teach Muslim refugees how to be an American and a Muslim in the United States. An the same for Christain and Jew refugees.
An when ISIS is cleaned up, offer the former refugees a free ride back to their birth nation or the chance to become full citizens.
Those that break the law (assuming not petty crime) will get deported.
agnosto wrote: Painting all immigrants with the same terrorist brush is some pretty huge blame the victim BS in my opinion.
Holy Straw Man, Batman!
Quick, Robin, get the bat-lighter.
A strawman to what. The original poster was alluding to the OKC bombing and I just added a silly comment to it. I think that a strawman actually needs an argument, maybe you need to pull up the bat-dictionary.
I clearly missed the OKC reference then. Without that it looked like you were making a broader statement about this Syrian situation.
agnosto wrote: Painting all immigrants with the same terrorist brush is some pretty huge blame the victim BS in my opinion.
Holy Straw Man, Batman!
Quick, Robin, get the bat-lighter.
LordofHats wrote: Well the saddest part is that refusing the refugees is just handing ISIS a win.
This "either you agree with me or the terrorists win" line of thinking that's been all over this forum is also a pile of bunk. The bill that just passed in the House is not "refusing the refugees". Furthermore, ISIS wins by not being wiped out, not by how other (non-ISIS) people are treated.
The possibility of radicals infiltrating the refugee population is serious enough to be a concern to any country taking them in. Wanting extra caution when dealing with this group is NOT blaming the victim or is it giving up any moral high ground. In fact, it is an example of government behaving responsibility.
Well, one of the big issues these guys have with us is how we are culturally as a nation. We believe in freedom and we accept all people and religions. If we start refusing people based on religion, we are now changing our ideals and culture. Which is what they want. Which is a win for them.
agnosto wrote: Painting all immigrants with the same terrorist brush is some pretty huge blame the victim BS in my opinion.
Holy Straw Man, Batman!
Quick, Robin, get the bat-lighter.
LordofHats wrote: Well the saddest part is that refusing the refugees is just handing ISIS a win.
This "either you agree with me or the terrorists win" line of thinking that's been all over this forum is also a pile of bunk. The bill that just passed in the House is not "refusing the refugees". Furthermore, ISIS wins by not being wiped out, not by how other (non-ISIS) people are treated.
The possibility of radicals infiltrating the refugee population is serious enough to be a concern to any country taking them in. Wanting extra caution when dealing with this group is NOT blaming the victim or is it giving up any moral high ground. In fact, it is an example of government behaving responsibility.
Well, one of the big issues these guys have with us is how we are culturally as a nation. We believe in freedom and we accept all people and religions. If we start refusing people based on religion, we are now changing our ideals and culture. Which is what they want. Which is a win for them.
I honestly think we shouldn't stop accepting refugees.
Just be prudent about it and do the best we can in screening potential candidates.
But, to say that "they win" if we don't do it is asinine. When people see these atrocities and reacting in fear, don't denigrate them... educate them.
whembly wrote: When people see these atrocities and reacting in fear, don't denigrate them... educate them.
Often times when you attempt to educate people, especially people whose opinions are grounded in strong emotions, their response is to cling to those opinions even more strongly. At that point one of the only effective strategies for education is to focus on other, more reasonable, people while holding up the problematic ones as examples of what not to be through mockery and denigration.
whembly wrote: When people see these atrocities and reacting in fear, don't denigrate them... educate them.
Often times when you attempt to educate people, especially people whose opinions are grounded in strong emotions, their response is to cling to those opinions even more strongly. At that point one of the only effective strategies for education is to focus on other, more reasonable, people while holding up the problematic ones as examples of what not to be through mockery and denigration.
That's not what's happening here...
Those who are objecting to these refugee plans probably don't understand what it takes to claim "refugee status". Even I don't, but I've read that it's a more arduous process than simply immigrating here.
Most people don't know that refugee (permanent residents) aren't usually citizen's yet and thus can't vote in elections limited to US citizens (ie, US president).
What's happening is, Obama is digging his foot in the ground and doing a poor job explaining why his policies is the *right* one. Obama supporters are circling wagons around him... even in the face of bipartisan objection.
In short, he's being a petulant dick about this because he's not getting his way.
Well, it looks like the right wing has found a bit of hypocrisy in President Obama's twitter statement, "Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values. That's not who we are. And it's not what we're going to do."
According to the articles below, in 2011 Iraqi refugees had the metaphoric door slammed in their faces while the State Department took six months to reassess their procedures and security screening after two people were taken into custody on terrorism related charges.
So much for our "deepest values". I still would like to know what is wrong or damaging to our values that Congress wants careful screening of Syrian refugees today, especially given what we know about ISIS?
Those who are objecting to these refugee plans probably don't understand what it takes to claim "refugee status". Even I don't, but I've read that it's a more arduous process than simply immigrating here.
Most people don't know that refugee (permanent residents) aren't usually citizen's yet and thus can't vote in elections limited to US citizens (ie, US president).
I'm well aware of that, but I also know that opinions grounded in emotions like fear are not swayed by the provision of information, at least not in the short term. Once someone is riled up enough to be legitimately afraid of a potential event there is very little that can be done to reason with them, especially from afar.
Obama supporters are circling wagons around him... even in the face of bipartisan objection.
I'm not sure why it matters that the objection is bipartisan. If Obama's supporters believe his position is correct, then the nature of the opposition is irrelevant.
agnosto wrote: Painting all immigrants with the same terrorist brush is some pretty huge blame the victim BS in my opinion.
Holy Straw Man, Batman!
Quick, Robin, get the bat-lighter.
A strawman to what. The original poster was alluding to the OKC bombing and I just added a silly comment to it. I think that a strawman actually needs an argument, maybe you need to pull up the bat-dictionary.
I clearly missed the OKC reference then. Without that it looked like you were making a broader statement about this Syrian situation.
No biggie. Timothy McVeigh was the guy who parked a truck packed with explosives outside of a federal building and caused a great number of deaths. I'm from OKC and was around for the event (not on site of course).
Breotan wrote: Well, it looks like the right wing has found a bit of hypocrisy in President Obama's twitter statement, "Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values. That's not who we are. And it's not what we're going to do."
According to the articles below, in 2011 Iraqi refugees had the metaphoric door slammed in their faces while the State Department took six months to reassess their procedures and security screening after two people were taken into custody on terrorism related charges.
So much for our "deepest values". I still would like to know what is wrong or damaging to our values that Congress wants careful screening of Syrian refugees today, especially given what we know about ISIS?
So just to be clear, you are arguing that not shutting down a refugee program from Syria when no refugees from Syria were involved in terrorist activities is somehow a double standard because we did shut down a refugee program from Iraq when we found out that Iraqi refugees were involved in activities?
I am arguing that what Congress is asking for in their pending legislation is NOT a betrayal of our deepest values. I am arguing that scrutiny in the face of a realistic threat IS "who we are" and is "what we should do".
But I'm sure you know that by the way you carefully worded your argument.
Breotan wrote: Well, it looks like the right wing has found a bit of hypocrisy in President Obama's twitter statement, "Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values. That's not who we are. And it's not what we're going to do."
According to the articles below, in 2011 Iraqi refugees had the metaphoric door slammed in their faces while the State Department took six months to reassess their procedures and security screening after two people were taken into custody on terrorism related charges.
So much for our "deepest values". I still would like to know what is wrong or damaging to our values that Congress wants careful screening of Syrian refugees today, especially given what we know about ISIS?
You do realize that the screening process as it currently is is pretty strict right now, partially because of that revision? So he already did (or the state dept. did) the very thing that you are applauding the hyper hysteria crowd wants in less hysterical times. Sounds like he did good to me. Thanks, Obama.
So most of them are "Republicans" means that their opinions don't matter?
Talk about non sequitur.
This "either you agree with me or the terrorists win" line of thinking that's been all over this forum is also a pile of bunk
And another one. Given how much this country likes to play tough, it's shocking how little of a spine it has. Hypothetical potential future attacks are enough to make us cower in a corner and subject ourselves to illogical ramblings.
The possibility of radicals infiltrating the refugee population is serious enough to be a concern to any country taking them in.
I demand evidence of this proposition (namely, that picking out refugees for special scrutiny compared to any other immigrating population is warranted). Given that we've seen attacks conducted by nationals, both in the US and in Europe, by immigrants, both in the US and in Europe, and none thus far from refugees, why is everyone buying into this nonsense? They pose a threat? So do cars on Monday nights in Football seasons, unenforced gun control laws, and nuclear reactors. "It's a risk" is a pretty gakky argument. Everything is a risk. Hypothetical what if scenarios seem insufficient to prove something is deserving of special risk consideration, especially when the exact same risk already exists elsewhere (in immigration). This is the exact same bs argument that went on with that whole voter fraud bit a couple years ago. A demand to prevent a potential problem that does not apparently exist or warrant our attention. We already allow thousands of immigrants into most of our countries yearly, and the exact same risk exists with them as with refugees. In fact, if we want to talk evidence, thus far the risk is even higher. But we're obviously not going to place a ban on Muslims. People complain about threads being Godwinned, maybe we shouldn't make it so damn easy?
So most of them are "Republicans" means that their opinions don't matter?
Talk about non sequitur.
Hey *you* brought up the fact that these states are mostly republicans andof course, they'd band together.
This "either you agree with me or the terrorists win" line of thinking that's been all over this forum is also a pile of bunk
And another one. Given how much this country likes to play tough, it's shocking how little of a spine it has. Hypothetical potential future attacks are enough to make us cower in a corner and subject ourselves to illogical ramblings.
So does paranoia rule the republican field (and their constituents, I would guess considering they are try to get vote so) right now? Seems weird considering how tough they talk.
Breotan wrote: Well, it looks like the right wing has found a bit of hypocrisy in President Obama's twitter statement, "Slamming the door in the face of refugees would betray our deepest values. That's not who we are. And it's not what we're going to do."
According to the articles below, in 2011 Iraqi refugees had the metaphoric door slammed in their faces while the State Department took six months to reassess their procedures and security screening after two people were taken into custody on terrorism related charges.
So much for our "deepest values". I still would like to know what is wrong or damaging to our values that Congress wants careful screening of Syrian refugees today, especially given what we know about ISIS?
You do realize that the screening process as it currently is is pretty strict right now, partially because of that revision? So he already did (or the state dept. did) the very thing that you are applauding the hyper hysteria crowd wants in less hysterical times. Sounds like he did good to me. Thanks, Obama.
There is an issue with your answer.
It worked for Iraqis because during the course of the war there we built a VERY extensive biometric database on Iraqis. And what happened is we caught an Iraqi refugee wha had been admitted into the states who also had left fingerprints on an IED that killed US troops. So... The process changed to include a better/more thorough check which included ensuring all the biometric data was updated and the screeners had access to that data.
We don't have access to that type or quantity of data for the Syrian refugees. We will compare them to biometric holdings, but most Syrian bad guys we are worried about will not be in our database.
So, yes, the process improved, but no, all those improvements do not necessarily apply to this group.
CptJake wrote: We don't have access to that type or quantity of data for the Syrian refugees. We will compare them to biometric holdings, but most Syrian bad guys we are worried about will not be in our database.
Do you actually know that or are you just parroting what you heard?
CptJake wrote: We don't have access to that type or quantity of data for the Syrian refugees. We will compare them to biometric holdings, but most Syrian bad guys we are worried about will not be in our database.
Do you actually know that or are you just parroting what you heard?
I know that. The data collected in Iraq was done by our guys on patrols and collected over a period of years using BATS/HIDE (and a couple other systems).
We cataloged neighborhoods/villages/towns/regions and so on. It let you track people moving (get a hit on a guy who was collected in a different province and it can be an indicator...)
We have not done (had a chance to do) anything near that in Syria. It requires LOTS of boots on the ground over a period of time. We'll collect biometrics on them as they process through, but that is not as helpful when your doing this as part of a screening process as there is nothing to screen the new data against.
CptJake wrote: We don't have access to that type or quantity of data for the Syrian refugees. We will compare them to biometric holdings, but most Syrian bad guys we are worried about will not be in our database.
Do you actually know that or are you just parroting what you heard?
Assistant Director of the FBI Michael Steinbach testified before Congress that we don't have much of a database to check Syrian refugees against. That's been coorobated by DHS testimony as well.
So what would our biometric database tell us about a bunch of hypothetical Iraqis if they needed to seek refuge in our country exactly? What percentage of them were measured? Would it give you any more comfort to know that we in some way measured them at one point? Im curious to know what sort of measuring device would allow you to sleep comfortably at night with an influx of refugees.
CptJake wrote: We don't have access to that type or quantity of data for the Syrian refugees. We will compare them to biometric holdings, but most Syrian bad guys we are worried about will not be in our database.
Do you actually know that or are you just parroting what you heard?
Assistant Director of the FBI Michael Steinbach testified before Congress that we don't have much of a database to check Syrian refugees against. That's been coorobated by DHS testimony as well.
do we, or have we ever had much of a database on a foreign county's population to know whether or not they want to kill other people in refugees of the past?
Gordon Shumway wrote: So what would our biometric database tell us about a bunch of hypothetical Iraqis if they needed to seek refuge in our country exactly? What percentage of them were measured? Would it give you any more comfort to know that we in some way measured them at one point? Im curious to know what sort of measuring device would allow you to sleep comfortably at night with an influx of refugees.
They could tell you many things.
- Does their current ID match the ID that we have on file for them or are they using a different name?
- Have they been detained before?
- Are they in any criminal databases?
- Are the same fingerprints found on IEDs?
Do I think that a lack of a comprehensive biometric database for Syrians means that we cannot have meaningful screening of Syrian refugees? Nope.
But I also don't think that biometric databases are useless and that if we have that information we should certainly use it.
You interview Refugee A. He says he is from town B and was a baker. You collect his bios and send them up. A hit comes back from a guy with a different name in town C (or even in town B). You now know to focus hard on him to work out the discrepancies. Or you get a hit where his bios were collected after an attack on coalition forces from one of the perps. Or you get hit that matches exactly what he told you. Or you DON'T get a match at all but you know your guys collected in Town B when this guy allegedly lived there.
And we collected a lot of samples in Iraq, actual percentages/numbers are going to be difficult to get open source, but the PDF I linked to above mentions 500+k and that was in 2007 before we really ramped up the collection efforts.
But as I've mentioned, the reality is this screening at best filters out actual DaIsh members. It does nothing to stop the influx of a population that will be targeted and susceptible to future radicalization (as in the Tsarnaevs). And that is the real threat.
CptJake wrote: But as I've mentioned, the reality is this screening at best filters out actual DaIsh members. It does nothing to stop the influx of a population that will be targeted and susceptible to future radicalization (as in the Tsarnaevs). And that is the real threat.
Good to know we will now be passing judgement on people for things they might do (We think. Maybe. Could happen. Might not. W/E they'll probably just throw up tacky curtains and wear too much cologne anyway).
CptJake wrote:I know that. The data collected in Iraq was done by our guys on patrols and collected over a period of years using BATS/HIDE (and a couple other systems).
We cataloged neighborhoods/villages/towns/regions and so on. It let you track people moving (get a hit on a guy who was collected in a different province and it can be an indicator...)
We have not done (had a chance to do) anything near that in Syria. It requires LOTS of boots on the ground over a period of time. We'll collect biometrics on them as they process through, but that is not as helpful when your doing this as part of a screening process as there is nothing to screen the new data against.
Is there any evidence that those handful of refugees that are chosen for processing by the United States are let in without proper vetting?
Prestor Jon wrote:Assistant Director of the FBI Michael Steinbach testified before Congress that we don't have much of a database to check Syrian refugees against. That's been coorobated by DHS testimony as well.
I'm aware of the Steinbach's testimony from earlier this year, but others, such as Francis Taylor, the DHS under secretary for intelligence and analysis, said in that same hearing that the screening is adequate and has the full power of the US intelligence community behind it.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Sean Hannity that President Obama is endangering the lives of Americans by allowing thousands of Syrian refugees to enter the country.
"This president is so driven by radical ideology, by political correctness," Cruz said. "The president insists we have to endanger the safety and security of our nation."
The Republican presidential contender pointed out that Obama attacked him during recent speeches in Turkey and Manila.
"Obama, instead of defending this nation, just attacks you and me and every American who wants to keep this nation safe," Cruz said.
He noted that Sen. Pat Leahy echoed President Obama’s attacks on the Senate floor, calling Cruz's opposition to accepting refugees "anti-American."
"He said, gosh, his ancestors were Irish and Italian and we didn’t block him. And I responded to Pat Leahy and I said, 'You know what, on my mother’s side, my ancestors were Irish and Italian. The difference was, they weren’t coming here to blow up and murder civilians.'"
Is this not the same guy who said this:
CptJake wrote: But as I've mentioned, the reality is this screening at best filters out actual DaIsh members. It does nothing to stop the influx of a population that will be targeted and susceptible to future radicalization (as in the Tsarnaevs). And that is the real threat.
The Tsarnaev family was admitted into the United States as asylum seekers, not refugees. There is a big difference in how those two categories of people are vetted by the government.
Also, are you trying to make the case for a PreCrime Division equipped with precogs in order to stop people that might become radicalized? Anyone can be radicalized (as evidence by our owncitizenswhohavecommittedacts of terror and violence) when subjected to the right conditions.
And that is really the crux of the matter. The amount of vetting, and biometric data collection doesn't really amount to much. I would guess we have a heck of a lot more data on any individual in the US, but that doesn't exactly stop violent crimes from happening every day.
Gordon Shumway wrote: So what would our biometric database tell us about a bunch of hypothetical Iraqis if they needed to seek refuge in our country exactly? What percentage of them were measured? Would it give you any more comfort to know that we in some way measured them at one point? Im curious to know what sort of measuring device would allow you to sleep comfortably at night with an influx of refugees.
I can tell you as someone who operated the BATS/HIIDE systems, that from 07-09 or so, 100% of iraqis who entered a US/coalition base (provided the coalition people had them of course) were entered into the system. Wanted a contracting job? You got entered. Detained? You get entered.
The caveat here, is that the system does rely on good reporting in the database. For instance, that 07-09 tour, we had to force a number of people to stop reporting people by their nicknames, because it was already leading to problems within the biometric databases.
Hey *you* brought up the fact that these states are mostly republicans andof course, they'd band together.
In a matter which enables the GOP to take a what is essentially a free shot at Obama? Yeah, you would expect Republican governors to band together. That's hardly a controversial claim.
Gordon Shumway wrote: So what would our biometric database tell us about a bunch of hypothetical Iraqis if they needed to seek refuge in our country exactly? What percentage of them were measured? Would it give you any more comfort to know that we in some way measured them at one point? Im curious to know what sort of measuring device would allow you to sleep comfortably at night with an influx of refugees.
I can tell you as someone who operated the BATS/HIIDE systems, that from 07-09 or so, 100% of iraqis who entered a US/coalition base (provided the coalition people had them of course) were entered into the system. Wanted a contracting job? You got entered. Detained? You get entered.
The caveat here, is that the system does rely on good reporting in the database. For instance, that 07-09 tour, we had to force a number of people to stop reporting people by their nicknames, because it was already leading to problems within the biometric databases.
Obviously, that was before Trump starting saying the things he's said, and probably before the campaign really kicked off...
I'm not sure if Syria uses a version of Tazkeras like in Afghanistan. What database is the State Department using to verify who the individual who's submitted refugee I-9. I highly doubt Syria has a reliable database even if they share what data they might have on the Individual
NEW ORLEANS — With a victory that defied political geography and near universal predictions from just months earlier, a previously little-known Democrat, State Representative John Bel Edwards, soundly defeated United States Senator David Vitter in a runoff election on Saturday to become the next governor of Louisiana.
Mr. Edwards won 56 percent of the vote with virtually all of the ballots counted.
A more promising red state Democrat could hardly have been found than Mr. Edwards, a Catholic social conservative from a family of rural law enforcement officers who graduated from West Point and served eight years of active duty in the Army.
Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, celebrated with his wife, Wendy, after reaching a runoff with John Bel Edwards, a Democratic state representative, on Saturday in Kenner, La.David Vitter Ekes Out a Place in a Runoff for Governor of LouisianaOCT. 25, 2015
Senator David Vitter, center, at a stop last week in Bossier City. Long thought a lock for the governor’s office, Mr. Vitter hopes to win a runoff Saturday.David Vitter Wages Uphill Bid for Governor in Solidly Red LouisianaNOV. 19, 2015
Mr. Vitter, for his part, was a problematic candidate for Republicans, even though he had been widely seen as the favorite for months. A prostitution scandal from 2007, the baggage of an unpopular Republican incumbent, Gov. Bobby Jindal, and a series of state political foes with long memories dragged Mr. Vitter down before an Oct. 24 primary. He never recovered.
Not only did he lose this race but Mr. Vitter told supporters Saturday night that he would not run for re-election to the Senate in 2016. Republican strategists in Washington had expressed reluctance to put money behind him, preferring a candidate who would be an easier sell in a tricky election year for Senate Republicans. A line of Republicans interested in the seat has already formed.
In a state that has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2008, and in a part of the country where Democratic campaigns for governor are mostly suicide missions, a Republican was assumed to have an easy path to victory. Mr. Vitter was thought to be that Republican, given his overwhelming fund-raising advantage, unquestioned conservative reputation and proven skill at crushing challengers.
But last month’s nonpartisan primary, among Mr. Edwards, Mr. Vitter and two other Republicans, began to sizzle in its closing weeks. Mr. Vitter attacked the other Republicans as free-spending liberals while they labeled Mr. Vitter “vicious” and “a liar,” bringing up the prostitution scandal in debates. Something of an “Anybody but Vitter” movement began to form, powered in part by two “super PACs” formed expressly to seek his defeat.
Still, it was in the last days before the primary that the carnival tradition of Louisiana politics began to truly assert itself.
An investigative blogger published an interview with a former escort who claimed to have carried on a yearslong affair with Mr. Vitter. Soon after, a private investigator working for the Vitter campaign was arrested after surreptitiously filming a group of men at a cafe outside New Orleans — a gathering that included another private investigator, one who had tracked down the escort in the online video.
Mr. Vitter, 54, limped into Saturday’s runoff after finishing far behind Mr. Edwards, 49, in the primary, and became the standard-bearer for a Republican Party splintered by infighting.
In the weeks between the two elections, Mr. Vitter tried various tactics against Mr. Edwards: warnings that he was an “Obama liberal” in Blue Dog clothing; provocative attack ads accusing him of wanting to release “thugs” from prison or of being dangerously uncommitted to keeping out Syrian refugees; and personal ads in which Mr. Vitter obliquely addressed the prostitution scandal by saying he had been forgiven by his family.
Mr. Edwards, in turn, tried to keep the focus away from party or ideology and on his military background, Mr. Vitter’s scandal and the increasingly unpopular Mr. Jindal, who after two terms was barred by term limits from seeking re-election.
In his victory speech, Mr. Edwards alluded to the nasty campaign, saying that Louisianans had “chosen hope over scorn, over negativity and over the distrust of others” He pledged to work with Mr. Vitter during his remaining time in the Senate and to “work together regardless of party” — something he will be forced to do with a Republican-controlled Legislature.
Still, Mr. Edwards returned to a theme he had emphasized in contrasting himself with his opponent. “I will always be honest,” he said. “I will never embarrass you. I will get up every day fighting to put the people of Louisiana first.”
A few months back, I had a rather interesting debate with CptJake and Jihadin, when I accused the USA of being in decline, as a result of their reluctance to get involved in the fight against ISIS, preferring instead to outsource the fighting to the Kurds and other rebel groups.
This Syrian refugee crisis, is, IMO, further proof of the USA in decline. It is a nation that no longer seems to know its values, or what it stands for, anymore.
Years ago, when Harry Truman faced down Communism, he knew exactly what the USA was - leader of the free world, a nation steeped in democracy, and built with the blood and sweat of immigrants. It was the land of the American dream where hard work and enterprise could get you to the top.
Unfortunately, that seems to have gone out the window. Fear and paranoia have replaced courage and enterprise. The USA of old wouldn't be citing security risks over a few Syrian refugees, the USA of old would have welcomed them in with open arms, encouraged them to embrace American values of freedom and democracy, and told the refugees that one day, they too, could become a success...
That the USA is suffering a crisis of confidence is not unique in the western world. My own country, the UK, no longer seems to know what it is, or what it stands for, but this effect seems to be more pronounced in the USA.
Too be fair, we also had the Red Scare in those days (Truman), and a whole gak ton of attempt to create thought police. Sticking to lofty principals only when it suits us is something we've been doing for at least a century now
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: A few months back, I had a rather interesting debate with CptJake and Jihadin, when I accused the USA of being in decline, as a result of their reluctance to get involved in the fight against ISIS, preferring instead to outsource the fighting to the Kurds and other rebel groups.
This Syrian refugee crisis, is, IMO, further proof of the USA in decline. It is a nation that no longer seems to know its values, or what it stands for, anymore.
Years ago, when Harry Truman faced down Communism, he knew exactly what the USA was - leader of the free world, a nation steeped in democracy, and built with the blood and sweat of immigrants. It was the land of the American dream where hard work and enterprise could get you to the top.
Unfortunately, that seems to have gone out the window. Fear and paranoia have replaced courage and enterprise. The USA of old wouldn't be citing security risks over a few Syrian refugees, the USA of old would have welcomed them in with open arms, encouraged them to embrace American values of freedom and democracy, and told the refugees that one day, they too, could become a success...
That the USA is suffering a crisis of confidence is not unique in the western world. My own country, the UK, no longer seems to know what it is, or what it stands for, but this effect seems to be more pronounced in the USA.
Asking that we make sure we do not import people hostile to freedom and democracy is a sign of decline?
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: A few months back, I had a rather interesting debate with CptJake and Jihadin, when I accused the USA of being in decline, as a result of their reluctance to get involved in the fight against ISIS, preferring instead to outsource the fighting to the Kurds and other rebel groups.
This Syrian refugee crisis, is, IMO, further proof of the USA in decline. It is a nation that no longer seems to know its values, or what it stands for, anymore.
Years ago, when Harry Truman faced down Communism, he knew exactly what the USA was - leader of the free world, a nation steeped in democracy, and built with the blood and sweat of immigrants. It was the land of the American dream where hard work and enterprise could get you to the top.
Unfortunately, that seems to have gone out the window. Fear and paranoia have replaced courage and enterprise. The USA of old wouldn't be citing security risks over a few Syrian refugees, the USA of old would have welcomed them in with open arms, encouraged them to embrace American values of freedom and democracy, and told the refugees that one day, they too, could become a success...
That the USA is suffering a crisis of confidence is not unique in the western world. My own country, the UK, no longer seems to know what it is, or what it stands for, but this effect seems to be more pronounced in the USA.
Asking that we make sure we do not import people hostile to freedom and democracy is a sign of decline?
If that were all that the issue is about, then there'd be no problem but the people running in the streets with their collective hair on fire about Syrian ISIS refugees (there have been none, anywhere to date) have no problem with continuing to allow refugees from other areas of the world that are experiencing similar issues (N. Africa). Let's cut off Mali now too and Samolia and .....
Running scared doesn't do us any favors, especially when it's all based on nothing.
agnosto wrote: If that were all that the issue is about, then there'd be no problem but the people running in the streets with their collective hair on fire about Syrian ISIS refugees (there have been none, anywhere to date) have no problem with continuing to allow refugees from other areas of the world that are experiencing similar issues (N. Africa). Let's cut off Mali now too and Samolia and .....
Running scared doesn't do us any favors, especially when it's all based on nothing.
Have any groups in Mali or Somalia stated their intent to commit terrorist acts on US soil?
agnosto wrote: If that were all that the issue is about, then there'd be no problem but the people running in the streets with their collective hair on fire about Syrian ISIS refugees (there have been none, anywhere to date) have no problem with continuing to allow refugees from other areas of the world that are experiencing similar issues (N. Africa). Let's cut off Mali now too and Samolia and .....
Running scared doesn't do us any favors, especially when it's all based on nothing.
Have any groups in Mali or Somalia stated their intent to commit terrorist acts on US soil?
Based in nothing and exactly what ISIS wants us to do. ISIS propaganda states openly their intent to radicalize Western Nationals, and we've already seen plenty of evidence on how they can do that. What. While we're on this spree of shutting the door on people because "they could be dangerous some day maybe" how bout we just throw out all the people already here. That'll show ISIS.
agnosto wrote: If that were all that the issue is about, then there'd be no problem but the people running in the streets with their collective hair on fire about Syrian ISIS refugees (there have been none, anywhere to date) have no problem with continuing to allow refugees from other areas of the world that are experiencing similar issues (N. Africa). Let's cut off Mali now too and Samolia and .....
Running scared doesn't do us any favors, especially when it's all based on nothing.
Have any groups in Mali or Somalia stated their intent to commit terrorist acts on US soil?
Al-Shabaab threatens malls, including some in U.S.; FBI downplays threat
Second paragraph;
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told CNN Sunday that there's "no credible or specific evidence" suggesting a U.S. mall attack is in the works.
Further in the article
The FBI and Homeland Security issued a joint written statement saying local law enforcement and first responders have been told the agencies are not "aware of any specific, credible plot against the Mall of America or any other domestic commercial shopping center."
The police department in Bloomington, Minnesota, which regularly patrols the mall, also said there was no credible threat against it, describing the mall as a "very safe place."
Another U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the situation also told CNN that there is no actual working threat against any mall in the country and added that no one should avoid going to a mall because of the online threat.
Not the same league as ISIS. Al-Shabaab has almost no force projection outside their area.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Moving the goalposts; you asked if there was a Somali military group that's threatened to attack the US and there is.
I apologize for not including the word "credible" in my post. I had assumed that it would be implicit and that we were not going to discuss spurious threats, I see now I was mistaken and will endeavor to be clearer in future.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Moving the goalposts; you asked if there was a Somali military group that's threatened to attack the US and there is.
The problem with moving these goalposts is compounded by the fact that all of these disparate radical groups are flocking to the ISIS banner so though they are from different regions, it will be easier, going forward, so just lump them all together as ISIS.
The danger that we face is in not acting morally to save as many innocent people as possible from these regions. The more entrenched these groups become, the higher probability that people will become radicalized in that region AND here; lest we forget the millions of Muslim people already residing in the US.
Radicalization, as we saw in the Paris attacks, is a danger regardless of nationality. So unless you plan on placing US citizens in concentration camps, you'd better be seen as doing something proactive to help people in the larger community or you're in danger of opening doors to extremism HERE. We've already had cases of US citizens becoming radicalized but so far it's been relatively minor compared to what if would be if we just turned our collective backs on people from regions of the world where these citizens have roots.
http://www.newsweek.com/its-radicalized-americans-we-need-worry-about-refugees-not-so-much-396730
People like this guy: https://www.rt.com/usa/310333-general-clark-radicalized-camps/ need to be slapped down, hard and fast; what he's proposing would have such negative repercussions as to make Paris look like a cakewalk. If you start rounding up Americans and putting them in internment camps, these days, you would basically be declaring war on a segment of your own population and that never ends well, anytime in history it's been done has ended in tears.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Moving the goalposts; you asked if there was a Somali military group that's threatened to attack the US and there is.
I apologize for not including the word "credible" in my post. I had assumed that it would be implicit and that we were not going to discuss spurious threats, I see now I was mistaken and will endeavor to be clearer in future.
So Americans going to Somalia to fight for Al Shabab isn't a credible threat? Of course the FBI downplays the threat, it's their job to keep us all from running around like chickens while they try to contain any possible outcome.
agnosto wrote: So Americans going to Somalia to fight for Al Shabab isn't a credible threat? Of course the FBI downplays the threat, it's their job to keep us all from running around like chickens while they try to contain any possible outcome.
They, and the CIA, both said that ISIS was a credible threat on US soil. Does that mean that they were not doing their jobs?
From your own link;
the group stepped up its insurgency against Somalia's transitional government and its Ethiopian supporters
So their conflict is regional, and their force projection limited. Compare and contrast that with ISIS who have blown up an airliner in Egypt, carried out attacks in Paris and Sydney, and hold territory in multiple countries. The threat level is not the same.
As part of a broad national security plan to defeat ISIS, Republican Presidential candidate John Kasich proposed creating a new government agency to push Judeo-Christian values around the world.
The new agency, which he hasn't yet named, would promote a Jewish- and Christian-based belief system to four regions of the world: China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East.
"We need to beam messages around the world" about the freedoms Americans enjoy, Kasich said in an interview with NBC News Tuesday. "It means freedom, it means opportunity, it means respect for women, it means freedom to gather, it means so many things."
He defended creating a new government agency at a time when fellow Republican presidential candidates discuss eliminating government agencies to making the government smaller.
"There's nobody who's spent more time shrinking government and cutting budgets than I have," Kasich, the former head of the House Budget Committee said, adding that not all government programs are equal.
The United States already has a government-funded broadcast system in Voice of America, which broadcasts American news and programming abroad. The radio, television and digital audience reaches up to 188 million people per week.
The focus on foreign policy has sharpened on the campaign trail since the deadly terror attacks in Paris killed at least 129 people.
Another issue that has sparked controversy is what to do about Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war there. The United States has said it will accept 10,000 refugees but more than half of the country's governors, mostly Republicans, have expressed concern about refugees coming into their states.
Kasich, who said just two months earlier that the U.S. should accept refugees from Syria, sent a letter to President Barack Obama Monday urging the federal government to not send any more Syrian refugees.
Tuesday he acknowledged that as governor he does not have the ability to prevent refugees from moving to his state.
"We don't have the authority ... we can only express our concerns," Kasich said at a speech focusing on foreign policy at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
"I'm criticized for having a big heart but I also have a big brain," he said.
He urged the federal government to "pause," and put in place stringent background checks before allowing Syrians to enter the U.S.
He said refugees should be relocated to "safe zones" located on the borders of Turkey and Jordan and are protected by no fly zones.
One of the Paris attackers was a Belgium citizen but Kasich refused to say if Belgiums - or all Muslims - should also be excluded from coming to the United States.
"Look, I think we're talking about the refugee issue as it relates to Syrians," he told NBC News.
As for his policy to defeat ISIS, he proposed leading a coalition that includes soldiers fighting on the ground in both Syria and Iraq. He would not indicate a number and said the coalition should not be involved in Syria's civil war.
"Civil wars do not work out well for the U.S.," he said. "Nation building. Count me out."
Some crazy person wrote:The new agency, which he hasn't yet named, would promote a Jewish- and Christian-based belief system to four regions of the world: China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East.
Why are we still top of the list of the United States enemies? The cold war has been over for years and you buy all of your cheap toys from us.
Some crazy person wrote:The new agency, which he hasn't yet named, would promote a Jewish- and Christian-based belief system to four regions of the world: China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East.
Why are we still top of the list of the United States enemies? The cold war has been over for years and you buy all of your cheap toys from us.
Because there are groups in the US that survive by convincing Americans to be afraid of everything.
Yeah it sucks for us too.
You could just say "Separation of Church & State". The benefits he is touting can be promoted outside of a religious context.
This sounds to me like trying to sneak the cake in the back door by calling it pie.
the Signless wrote: Why are we still top of the list of the United States enemies? The cold war has been over for years and you buy all of your cheap toys from us.
All those cyber intrusions may play a wee teensy tiny part in it.
LordofHats wrote: This sounds to me like trying to sneak the cake in the back door by calling it pie.
Well now I am hungry.
Isn't creating an agency to promote a certain outlook based on one idea of religious dogma the kind of thing that the people we fight against would do?
Isn't creating an agency to promote a certain outlook based on one idea of religious dogma the kind of thing that the people we fight against would do?
Trump is an idiot, but his comments on Muslims have shown him to be a dangerous idiot.
I've said this before, but if the USA goes down the hold of treating its Muslim citizens as a fifth column, an enemy within, then it will be a disaster for the USA.
History has shown that no outside force can defeat America. If American falls, then it will be because its citizens abandoned their values of freedom and democracy.
the Signless wrote: Why are we still top of the list of the United States enemies? The cold war has been over for years and you buy all of your cheap toys from us.
All those cyber intrusions may play a wee teensy tiny part in it.
Nah, it isn't the intrusions themselves, it's because they're better at it than we are. Every nation spies on each other, and every nation tries to hack each other, too. We're just annoyed because Russia and China are doing a better job on the cyber front than us.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Trump is an idiot, but his comments on Muslims have shown him to be a dangerous idiot.
I've said this before, but if the USA goes down the hold of treating its Muslim citizens as a fifth column, an enemy within, then it will be a disaster for the USA.
History has shown that no outside force can defeat America. If American falls, then it will be because its citizens abandoned their values of freedom and democracy.
well we did whip them in 1812
the scary thing is, americans are trying to pain ISIS as the next Nazi's, when they're just an election away from that fate. Trump is acting like Hitler reincarnate.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Trump is an idiot, but his comments on Muslims have shown him to be a dangerous idiot.
I've said this before, but if the USA goes down the hold of treating its Muslim citizens as a fifth column, an enemy within, then it will be a disaster for the USA.
History has shown that no outside force can defeat America. If American falls, then it will be because its citizens abandoned their values of freedom and democracy.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Trump is an idiot, but his comments on Muslims have shown him to be a dangerous idiot.
I've said this before, but if the USA goes down the hold of treating its Muslim citizens as a fifth column, an enemy within, then it will be a disaster for the USA.
History has shown that no outside force can defeat America. If American falls, then it will be because its citizens abandoned their values of freedom and democracy.
well we did whip them in 1812
the scary thing is, americans are trying to pain ISIS as the next Nazi's, when they're just an election away from that fate. Trump is acting like Hitler reincarnate.
Leaving aside Canadian military supremacy against the USA
I was making the point that what America is, and what it stands for, can only be destroyed from within.
Rarely are great powers/empires defeated from without.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Trump is an idiot, but his comments on Muslims have shown him to be a dangerous idiot.
I've said this before, but if the USA goes down the hold of treating its Muslim citizens as a fifth column, an enemy within, then it will be a disaster for the USA.
History has shown that no outside force can defeat America. If American falls, then it will be because its citizens abandoned their values of freedom and democracy.
Tannhauser42 wrote:Nah, it isn't the intrusions themselves, it's because they're better at it than we are.
It really isn't even that they are better at it than us, it's our official stance/policy. When it comes to cyberwarfare, we have repeatedly stated that our policy is one of defense, and defense only. And this kind of bears out in the structure of much of our cyber warfare arm of the military.
Tactical_Spam wrote:
The War in Vietnam would beg to differ
Do you even history bro?? Lol, we "lost" Vietnam because of the dirty hippies and the overall loss of political willpower.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Trump is an idiot, but his comments on Muslims have shown him to be a dangerous idiot.
I've said this before, but if the USA goes down the hold of treating its Muslim citizens as a fifth column, an enemy within, then it will be a disaster for the USA.
History has shown that no outside force can defeat America. If American falls, then it will be because its citizens abandoned their values of freedom and democracy.
well we did whip them in 1812
the scary thing is, americans are trying to pain ISIS as the next Nazi's, when they're just an election away from that fate. Trump is acting like Hitler reincarnate.
Leaving aside Canadian military supremacy against the USA
I was making the point that what America is, and what it stands for, can only be destroyed from within.
Rarely are great powers/empires defeated from without.
who needs military might, canada has been infiltrating the states for years. We have Shatner in charge of a horde of trekies, Beiber has gained control of all the teenage girls. So in 2020 when the tweens grow up, beiber makes a new song so they vote for Cruz. Get this he's a canadian/cuban, the son of a refugee, hows that for some irony Florida & Arizona have so many sleeper agents they're basically provinces. Then if it needs to come to blows, we'll attack in the winter so we have the homefield advantage, we'll blow up the niagra falls power plant, which will kill off millions of americans in new york as they freeze leaving all the canadians alive.
sirlynchmob wrote: Then if it needs to come to blows, we'll attack in the winter so we have the homefield advantage, we'll blow up the niagra falls power plant, which will kill off millions of americans in new york as they freeze leaving all the canadians alive.
I think you'll find people from Buffalo a bit tougher than that.... And I'd positively avoid Boston if you've managed to cut the power. They're pissed enough as it is. Ohh, and word of advice on the PsyOps: don't be putting Tom Brady down in the NE, that message may be useful in California for recruiting new allies though.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Trump is an idiot, but his comments on Muslims have shown him to be a dangerous idiot.
I've said this before, but if the USA goes down the hold of treating its Muslim citizens as a fifth column, an enemy within, then it will be a disaster for the USA.
History has shown that no outside force can defeat America. If American falls, then it will be because its citizens abandoned their values of freedom and democracy.
well we did whip them in 1812
the scary thing is, americans are trying to pain ISIS as the next Nazi's, when they're just an election away from that fate. Trump is acting like Hitler reincarnate.
Leaving aside Canadian military supremacy against the USA
I was making the point that what America is, and what it stands for, can only be destroyed from within.
Rarely are great powers/empires defeated from without.
who needs military might, canada has been infiltrating the states for years. We have Shatner in charge of a horde of trekies, Beiber has gained control of all the teenage girls. So in 2020 when the tweens grow up, beiber makes a new song so they vote for Cruz. Get this he's a canadian/cuban, the son of a refugee, hows that for some irony Florida & Arizona have so many sleeper agents they're basically provinces. Then if it needs to come to blows, we'll attack in the winter so we have the homefield advantage, we'll blow up the niagra falls power plant, which will kill off millions of americans in new york as they freeze leaving all the canadians alive.
When you put it like that the genius of Canada reveals itself
I can think of one well known Texan on this site who would betray the USA to Canada in exchange for a lifetime supply of maple syrup and Canadian ham
If ever Canada and Vietnam joined forces, then the USA would fall
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Trump is an idiot, but his comments on Muslims have shown him to be a dangerous idiot.
I've said this before, but if the USA goes down the hold of treating its Muslim citizens as a fifth column, an enemy within, then it will be a disaster for the USA.
History has shown that no outside force can defeat America. If American falls, then it will be because its citizens abandoned their values of freedom and democracy.
well we did whip them in 1812
the scary thing is, americans are trying to pain ISIS as the next Nazi's, when they're just an election away from that fate. Trump is acting like Hitler reincarnate.
Leaving aside Canadian military supremacy against the USA
I was making the point that what America is, and what it stands for, can only be destroyed from within.
Rarely are great powers/empires defeated from without.
who needs military might, canada has been infiltrating the states for years. We have Shatner in charge of a horde of trekies, Beiber has gained control of all the teenage girls. So in 2020 when the tweens grow up, beiber makes a new song so they vote for Cruz. Get this he's a canadian/cuban, the son of a refugee, hows that for some irony Florida & Arizona have so many sleeper agents they're basically provinces. Then if it needs to come to blows, we'll attack in the winter so we have the homefield advantage, we'll blow up the niagra falls power plant, which will kill off millions of americans in new york as they freeze leaving all the canadians alive.
Nah, we already planned for your attempts at invasion. Your invaders are Americans, that is why they can live so comfortably here and why they choose to stay. Its their native country.100 years ago the US sent northern American sleeper agents into Canada. The mission was to out breed the Canadians. Canada used to have British accents, now they most have northern American accents. The last enclave is the stubborn French Canadians.
Ever wonder why the US and northern US look and act mostly the same. Every wonder why when a Canadian thinks their country is different an American is incapable of noticing it? Or how Canada is infested with 'Muricans?
We already won, were just waiting to change the flag to the Stars and Stripes and declare Canada a state.
Tannhauser42 wrote:Nah, it isn't the intrusions themselves, it's because they're better at it than we are.
It really isn't even that they are better at it than us, it's our official stance/policy. When it comes to cyberwarfare, we have repeatedly stated that our policy is one of defense, and defense only. And this kind of bears out in the structure of much of our cyber warfare arm of the military.
Tactical_Spam wrote:
The War in Vietnam would beg to differ
Do you even history bro?? Lol, we "lost" Vietnam because of the dirty hippies and the overall loss of political willpower.
As I recall, Vietnam had been going quite well until the political willpower dried up. Basically people at home were so outraged over a few deaths and the draft that the politicians pulled us out of a situation we were actually winning.
Tannhauser42 wrote:Nah, it isn't the intrusions themselves, it's because they're better at it than we are.
It really isn't even that they are better at it than us, it's our official stance/policy. When it comes to cyberwarfare, we have repeatedly stated that our policy is one of defense, and defense only. And this kind of bears out in the structure of much of our cyber warfare arm of the military.
Tactical_Spam wrote:
The War in Vietnam would beg to differ
Do you even history bro?? Lol, we "lost" Vietnam because of the dirty hippies and the overall loss of political willpower.
As I recall, Vietnam had been going quite well until the political willpower dried up. Basically people at home were so outraged over a few deaths and the draft that the politicians pulled us out of a situation we were actually winning.
50,000 American deaths for an irrelevant proxy war seems more than just a few don't you think?
We seem to be trying to sign a free trade treaty with communist Vietnam. So I'm not sure as to what the point of that war was supposed to be.
50,000 American deaths for an irrelevant proxy war seems more than just a few don't you think?
We seem to be trying to sign a free trade treaty with communist Vietnam. So I'm not sure as to what the point of that war was supposed to be.
Well, at the time, it was the whole "We can't let the Commies win!" and the prevention of the spread of communism thing.... And yes, we suffered 50k deaths and I dont know how many severely wounded, but GT is correct, we brought grievous injuries to them as well. If it weren't for the fact that the PRC was aiding them, things would probably have gone much quicker, especially as Russia didn't particularly care about Vietnam and was focusing more of it's attention in other gakhole SE Asian countries.
Tannhauser42 wrote:Nah, it isn't the intrusions themselves, it's because they're better at it than we are.
It really isn't even that they are better at it than us, it's our official stance/policy. When it comes to cyberwarfare, we have repeatedly stated that our policy is one of defense, and defense only. And this kind of bears out in the structure of much of our cyber warfare arm of the military.
Tactical_Spam wrote:
The War in Vietnam would beg to differ
Do you even history bro?? Lol, we "lost" Vietnam because of the dirty hippies and the overall loss of political willpower.
As I recall, Vietnam had been going quite well until the political willpower dried up. Basically people at home were so outraged over a few deaths and the draft that the politicians pulled us out of a situation we were actually winning.
50,000 American deaths for an irrelevant proxy war seems more than just a few don't you think?
We seem to be trying to sign a free trade treaty with communist Vietnam. So I'm not sure as to what the point of that war was supposed to be.
Militarily we did well in Vietnam, politically we lost the will to continue the fight. Considering our system of governance is set up to help make sure that the govt can't wage a war that the people don't support, our withdrawal from Vietnam was good but unfortunately the political failure got conflated with a military failure. The Tet Offensive played a big part in that perception. We were always going to have trouble locating the enemy in the jungle and highlands, and their strongholds of tunnels and bunkers were tough to crack but in direct battles we did really well. When the NVA launched the Tet Offensive it went horribly for them, attack urban centers and US bases resulted in massive casualties for the NVA and VC. Unfortunately for us, all the journalists and correspondents were in the cities and the large scale surprise attack freaked them out and they reported it as a military calamity when really it was great for us. Having the enemy show themselves and attack us where we were strongest resulted in us killing a feth ton of them. Having the battle reported as We can't control the cities the war effort is doomed instead of reporting it as, They finally attacked us head on and we beat the crap out of them, resulted with a PR win for the NVA even though their military never recovered. Ultimately the fact that the govt of South Vietnam that we were propping up militarily never gained the confidence, trust or support of the people meant that we were going to have to either stay there for decades or pull out and have the country fall apart and we went with the latter choice.
Except for the whole country falling apart thing. Yeah, we had some political unrest, duly so, but we could have had it much worse, as the soviet did after their Afganistan blunder.
Emails show DOD analysts told to 'cut it out' on ISIS warnings; IG probe expands
Analysts at U.S. Central Command were pressured to ease off negative assessments about the Islamic State threat and were even told in an email to “cut it out,” Fox News has learned – as an investigation expands into whether intelligence reports were altered to present a more positive picture.
Fox News is told by a source close to the CENTCOM analysts that the pressure on them included at least two emails saying they needed to “cut it out” and “toe the line.”
Separately, a former Pentagon official told Fox News there apparently was an attempt to destroy the communications. The Pentagon official said the email warnings were "not well received" by the analysts.
Those emails, among others, are now in the possession of the Pentagon inspector general. The IG’s probe is expanding into whether intelligence assessments were changed to give a more positive picture of the anti-ISIS campaign.
The former Pentagon official said there were “multiple assessments” from military intelligence and the CIA regarding the “rapid rise” of ISIS in Iraq and North Africa in the year leading up to the group’s territory grab in 2014.
Similar intelligence was included in the President’s Daily Brief, or PDB – the intelligence community’s most authoritative product -- during the same time period. Yet the official, who was part of the White House discussions, said the administration kept "kicking the can down the road." The official said there was no discussion of the military involvement needed to make a difference.
The IG probe started earlier this year amid complaints that information was changed to make ISIS look more degraded than it really was.
Among the complaints is that after the U.S. air campaign started in August 2014, the metrics to measure progress changed. They were modified to use measures such as the number of sorties and body counts -- a metric not used since the Vietnam War -- to paint a more positive picture.
Critics say this "activity-based approach" to tracking the effectiveness of strikes does not paint a comprehensive picture of whether ISIS is being degraded and contained.
The New York Times first reported on Sunday that the IG investigation was expanding and adding more investigators, and that the office had taken possession of a trove of documents and emails as part of that probe.
Asked about the report, House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said Sunday that his committee and others are involved in the investigation.
“We heard from a lot of whistle-blowers and other informants who have given us information. And not just … related strictly to the latest allegations,” Nunes said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Citing the renewed focus on ISIS after the Paris terror attacks, he added: “So the president, to have a successful strategy, is going to admit that they've got it wrong and they need to relook at a larger strategy that deals with north Africa, the Middle East, all the way over to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and then work closely with our NATO allies with what appears to be a command and control structure that ISIS has created successfully in Europe.”
President Obama, speaking at a press conference in Malaysia over the weekend, said he expects to “get to the bottom” of whether ISIS intelligence reports were altered – and has told his top military officials as much.
“One of the things I insisted on the day I walked into the Oval Office was that I don’t want intelligence shaded by politics. I don’t want it shaded by the desire to tell a feel-good story,” Obama said Sunday. “I believe that the Department of Defense and all those who head up our intelligence agencies understand that, and that I have made it repeatedly clear to all my top national security advisers that I never want them to hold back, even if the intelligence or their opinions about the intelligence, their analysis or interpretations of the data contradict current policy.”
At the same time, he said, “As a consumer of this intelligence, it’s not as if I’ve been receiving wonderfully rosy, glowing portraits of what’s been happening in Iraq and Syria over the last year and a half. … [I]t feels to me like, at my level at least, we’ve had a pretty clear-eyed, sober assessment.”
The president’s call for a thorough investigation was greeted with cynicism by those involved in the 2014 intelligence assessments, since the administration did not act on the earlier raw intelligence that painted a dire picture of developments, especially in Iraq.
That's a pretty damning leak. This is the kind of stuff the WhiteHouse shouldn't want to get into...
LordofHats wrote: Based in nothing and exactly what ISIS wants us to do. ISIS propaganda states openly their intent to radicalize Western Nationals, and we've already seen plenty of evidence on how they can do that. What. While we're on this spree of shutting the door on people because "they could be dangerous some day maybe" how bout we just throw out all the people already here. That'll show ISIS.
Refugees
Under United States law, a refugee is someone who:
•Is located outside of the United States
•Is of special humanitarian concern to the United States
•Demonstrates that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group
Is not firmly resettled in another country
•Is admissible to the United States
A refugee does not include anyone who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
For the legal definition of refugee, see section 101(a)(42) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Do we have a database at our disposal that allows us to determine with reasonable accuracy that Syrians seeking refugee status don't have current or previous ties to ISIS? A connection to ISIS would make them ineligible for refugee status and the inability to determine if they are/were associated with ISIS can't be taken as proof that they weren't. Our legal process for applying for refugee status has existed prior to the emergence of ISIS and the flight of people from Syria so applying it to those people is just equal application of the law. The same rules apply to anyone from anywhere seeking refugee status, it's not our fault its difficult to determine if a given Syrian applicant has any association with ISIS.
It is our fault for allowing people to believe the lunacy that refugees are dangerous and that we need to be guarded against them. The French, who actually suffered a recent attack are still allowing refugees in because feth ISIS, they don't get to set an agenda and scare people off. As far as I know only one of the attackers might...might...have been a refugee. It is fear mongering for votes from all sides. We should be better than that.
The same rules apply to anyone from anywhere seeking refugee status...
As they should, but there seems to be a push to create special rules for people from a special place.
Indeed. Isn't innocent until proven guilty still a thing, too?
So if the US cannot prove that syrian refugees are connected to ISIS then it should let them in. The legal requirement is not on the refugees to prove their innocence.
Prestor Jon wrote: The same rules apply to anyone from anywhere seeking refugee status, it's not our fault its difficult to determine if a given Syrian applicant has any association with ISIS.
Then why did the GOP make a show of it? If the rules are uniform and sufficient, I can only conclude that it wanted to strike at Obama and Hillary.
Ahtman wrote: It is our fault for allowing people to believe the lunacy that refugees are dangerous and that we need to be guarded against them.
Nobody rational believes that. It's the idea of infiltrators posing as refugees that is the center of concern. Even if an ISIS supporter doesn't come in and begin tossing bombs around, he may well be helping to radicalize muslims in order to instigate domestic attacks or sending more recruits to Iraq to fight. That's just as bad.
Ahtman wrote: It is our fault for allowing people to believe the lunacy that refugees are dangerous and that we need to be guarded against them.
Nobody rational believes that. It's the idea of infiltrators posing as refugees that is the center of concern. Even if an ISIS supporter doesn't come in and begin tossing bombs around, he may well be helping to radicalize muslims in order to instigate domestic attacks or sending more recruits to Iraq to fight. That's just as bad.
Exactly. I don't think anyone hates the genuine refugees. Its the impostors using them as a convenient cover to enter the US that are the problem.
We should balance helping the refugees with looking to root anyone attempting to infiltrate the US and radicalize people living here or carry out attacks directly.
Ahtman wrote: It is our fault for allowing people to believe the lunacy that refugees are dangerous and that we need to be guarded against them.
Nobody rational believes that. It's the idea of infiltrators posing as refugees that is the center of concern. Even if an ISIS supporter doesn't come in and begin tossing bombs around, he may well be helping to radicalize muslims in order to instigate domestic attacks or sending more recruits to Iraq to fight. That's just as bad.
Ahtman wrote: It is our fault for allowing people to believe the lunacy that refugees are dangerous and that we need to be guarded against them.
Nobody rational believes that. It's the idea of infiltrators posing as refugees that is the center of concern. Even if an ISIS supporter doesn't come in and begin tossing bombs around, he may well be helping to radicalize muslims in order to instigate domestic attacks or sending more recruits to Iraq to fight. That's just as bad.
Exactly. I don't think anyone hates the genuine refugees. Its the impostors using them as a convenient cover to enter the US that are the problem.
We should balance helping the refugees with looking to root anyone attempting to infiltrate the US and radicalize people living here or carry out attacks directly.
there are so many easier ways to get into the country, impersonating a refugee just calls attention to yourself. so the 9/11 pilots, refugees? nope
and people in the US are already being radicalized before the refugees are even here, so clearly impersonating a refugee isn't required.
Not really. A refugee is actually a good cover. It wraps all your reasons to enter in a nice little package.
Unless you are suggesting they try to get across the border with Mexico, which itself presents a bunch of other problems. Like "why is this Arab guy here?". Plus its not actually easy to cross the border. People die doing it all the time.
Grey Templar wrote: Not really. A refugee is actually a good cover. It wraps all your reasons to enter in a nice little package.
Unless you are suggesting they try to get across the border with Mexico, which itself presents a bunch of other problems. Like "why is this Arab guy here?". Plus its not actually easy to cross the border. People die doing it all the time.
The two year wait and extensive screening by both the UN and US intelligence agencies would make it a rather poor choice. That, and refugees don't get to pick their host country. Tourist visas are a lot easier to get, with virtually no screening. Same goes for business visas.
Grey Templar wrote: Not really. A refugee is actually a good cover. It wraps all your reasons to enter in a nice little package.
It's a wonder they haven't done it yet and have instead chosen to target nationals. Right? Riiiight?
Plus its not actually easy to cross the border. People die doing it all the time.
Oh, so we can drop this border wall nonsense then? Sweet.
Laughing Man wrote: The two year wait and extensive screening by both the UN and US intelligence agencies would make it a rather poor choice. That, and refugees don't get to pick their host country. Tourist visas are a lot easier to get, with virtually no screening. Same goes for business visas.
Seriously this^ We're less strict with incoming immigrants and students and tourists than we are with refugees before all this started. And everyone's cowering in the corner of the mean refugees who must be an evil plot, despite no evidence to suggest they're anymore of a risk than any other foreign national. There's a corner of US politics that gets ridiculed for making something out of nothing and this is another example of why that corner of politics is a laughing stock.
Prestor Jon wrote: The same rules apply to anyone from anywhere seeking refugee status, it's not our fault its difficult to determine if a given Syrian applicant has any association with ISIS.
Then why did the GOP make a show of it? If the rules are uniform and sufficient, I can only conclude that it wanted to strike at Obama and Hillary.
Because high ranking federal officials in the FBI and DHS testify to Congress that we don't have enough data at our disposal to ascertain if any of the Syrians seeking refugee status are ISIS members or supporters. Giving credence to legitimate concerns regarding the identity of the Syrian refugees.
Exactly. I don't think anyone hates the genuine refugees. Its the impostors using them as a convenient cover to enter the US that are the problem.
We should balance helping the refugees with looking to root anyone attempting to infiltrate the US and radicalize people living here or carry out attacks directly.
Well, I think we all know there's that lunatic fringe in the US... You know the type: they hate Mexicans cuz they are ALL illegal rapist killers and they eat babies! And in a wider context, are pretty damn xenophobic regardless of reality/current events.
Ironically (or not), you can find the bulk of those clicking the 'Yes' option on polls asking if they'd vote for Trump
LordofHats wrote: Based in nothing and exactly what ISIS wants us to do. ISIS propaganda states openly their intent to radicalize Western Nationals, and we've already seen plenty of evidence on how they can do that. What. While we're on this spree of shutting the door on people because "they could be dangerous some day maybe" how bout we just throw out all the people already here. That'll show ISIS.
Refugees
Under United States law, a refugee is someone who:
•Is located outside of the United States
•Is of special humanitarian concern to the United States
•Demonstrates that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group
Is not firmly resettled in another country
•Is admissible to the United States
A refugee does not include anyone who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
For the legal definition of refugee, see section 101(a)(42) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Do we have a database at our disposal that allows us to determine with reasonable accuracy that Syrians seeking refugee status don't have current or previous ties to ISIS? A connection to ISIS would make them ineligible for refugee status and the inability to determine if they are/were associated with ISIS can't be taken as proof that they weren't. Our legal process for applying for refugee status has existed prior to the emergence of ISIS and the flight of people from Syria so applying it to those people is just equal application of the law. The same rules apply to anyone from anywhere seeking refugee status, it's not our fault its difficult to determine if a given Syrian applicant has any association with ISIS.
So process them in Europe and let them wait till we reopen Ellis Island. Remember it takes one Jihadist to ruin a bunch of people days. A bunch of Jihadist in a concerted attack will outrage a Nation who then will seek revenge on the General Muslim population. Its a two edge sword here. Damn if you Damn if you don't. As to accuracy of Syrian refugee's....it has to be taken at face value. Syria is not/cannot confirm ISIS association. One has better luck confirming who the individual is by Facebook. Run a biometric......never mind...invasion of privacy
Jihadin wrote: So process them in Europe and let them wait till we reopen Ellis Island.
That's exactly what we do. Refugees aren't admitted to the US until they've already been vetted over and over again by a wide variety of agencies. Even once they've been vetted, with only 10,000 refugees being admitted to the States and 4 million refugees, a refugee only has a 0.25% chance to be sent here. On top of that, 67% of those we accept are women and children. The chance a terrorist could make it through the vetting and THEN get sent to the United States is infinitesimally small. It's a ridiculous choice to try to get into the US that way when visitor visas are incredibly easy to get with little more than an interview at a consulate.
ISIS is in Syria and Isis is so bad everyone else in Syria is either fighting them or trying to run away. Oh, you're from Syria? Well sorry, ISIS is there and ISIS is so bad everyone else in Syria is either fighting them or trying to run away, so we're going to send you back. We don't want any of those ISIS types over here.
Syrian Refugee;
Once again, last time I checked (to admit I last checked like, a few hours ago) we weren't big in this country on punishing people for things we can't prove they did, let alone things they might maybe do later.
ISIS is in Syria and Isis is so bad everyone else in Syria is either fighting them or trying to run away. Oh, you're from Syria? Well sorry, ISIS is there and ISIS is so bad everyone else in Syria is either fighting them or trying to run away, so we're going to send you back. We don't want any of those ISIS types over here.
Syrian Refugee;
Once again, last time I checked (to admit I last checked like, a few hours ago) we weren't big in this country on punishing people for things we can't prove they did, let alone things they might maybe do later.
ISIS is in Syria and Isis is so bad everyone else in Syria is either fighting them or trying to run away. Oh, you're from Syria? Well sorry, ISIS is there and ISIS is so bad everyone else in Syria is either fighting them or trying to run away, so we're going to send you back. We don't want any of those ISIS types over here.
Syrian Refugee;
Once again, last time I checked (to admit I last checked like, a few hours ago) we weren't big in this country on punishing people for things we can't prove they did, let alone things they might maybe do later.
well it does seem to be in americas nature to turn away those who need help the most. We learned nothing from the jews trying to escape Germany.
The captain then steered the St Louis towards the Florida coast, but the US authorities also refused it the right to dock, despite direct appeals to President Franklin Roosevelt. Granston thinks he too was worried about the potential flood of migrants.
which directly resulted in:
Two-hundred-and-fifty-four other passengers from the St Louis were not so fortunate and were killed as the Nazis swept across Western Europe.
Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
Ouze wrote: Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
Why argue about the second coming of Hitler when there's Terrorists to talk about
Ouze wrote: Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
I think most rational people have lost interest in him, but he still seems to be the republican front runner.
Ouze wrote: Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
What scares me is the fact there was any interest in him in the first place. My worst nightmare is the thought I'd have to choose between him or Clinton.
Because high ranking federal officials in the FBI and DHS testify to Congress that we don't have enough data at our disposal to ascertain if any of the Syrians seeking refugee status are ISIS members or supporters. Giving credence to legitimate concerns regarding the identity of the Syrian refugees.
Why was there a need to testify before Congress in the first place? Does the GOP consider the process of being admitted to the US as a refugee generally problematic?
Ouze wrote: Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
Hopefully. He's moved firmly into "making gak up" territory now.
Because high ranking federal officials in the FBI and DHS testify to Congress that we don't have enough data at our disposal to ascertain if any of the Syrians seeking refugee status are ISIS members or supporters. Giving credence to legitimate concerns regarding the identity of the Syrian refugees.
Why was there a need to testify before Congress in the first place? Does the GOP consider the process of being admitted to the US as a refugee generally problematic?
You may not like the outcome, another tempest in a teapot that attracts attention that would best be served forcused on policies and events that are more pressing and important, but the process was absolutely correct.
The federal govt decides to admit Syrian refugees. People question whether or not it's safe to do so. Congress, as representatives of the people, respond to that concern and question high ranking federal officials under oath in regards to the level of danger, if any, in admitting Syrian refugees. Multiple officials testify before Congress that there is no reliable database that would enable them to ascertain if any Syrian refugees were ISIS members/supporters. That's how govt is supposed to be held accountable.
If the administration had it's ducks in a row and controlled the message and federal officials had told Congress that any fears of sleeper cells masquerading as refugees were unfounded due to the screening process, the impractical nature of using refugee status as a cover for terrorists and the fact that the vast majority of refugees don't commit acts of terrorism then the wind would have been taken out of the sails of opponents of admitting the refugees. But that didn't happen. Congress asked the FBI and DHS if they could be sure that refugees weren't ISIS members and the answer Congress was given was no. That fueled the fears of the public and legitimized them.
You can always argue about the motivation for the questioning, but congress does have the authority and responsibility of oversight when it comes to federal agencies.
Ouze wrote: Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
I think most rational people have lost interest in him, but he still seems to be the republican front runner.
Ouze wrote: Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
Hopefully. He's moved firmly into "making gak up" territory now.
You mean, when he *saw* on TV the thousands of palestinians having a block party in New Jersey celebrating 9/11?
Ouze wrote: Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
Hopefully. He's moved firmly into "making gak up" territory now.
You mean, when he *saw* on TV the thousands of palestinians having a block party in New Jersey celebrating 9/11?
Ouze wrote: Are we going to talk about Donald Trump saying it was OK a protester got roughed up at his rally, or have we pretty much lost interest in Donald Trump?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Cause if so, awesome.
Hopefully. He's moved firmly into "making gak up" territory now.
You mean, when he *saw* on TV the thousands of palestinians having a block party in New Jersey celebrating 9/11?
The gist of it is that people seemed to confuse footage of Palestinians celebrating on the West Bank...because the WB looks like NJ?
There was a verified instance of 6-12 teenagers doing what looked like a celebration for a very short period of time in Paterson NJ. The FBI apparently looked into a report of celebration but never found anything nor did reporters who followed the story or a researcher who worked in the neighborhood. Obviously 6-12 people is thousands.
There's obvious bias in the article but they do a credible job of following-up all of the potential leads on what in the potential blue-blazes Trump was talking about.
You may not like the outcome, another tempest in a teapot that attracts attention that would best be served forcused on policies and events that are more pressing and important, but the process was absolutely correct.
I can't help but notice that you didn't answer either of my questions, so I'll pose a third: Why is that?
Congress, as representatives of the people, respond to that concern and question high ranking federal officials under oath in regards to the level of danger, if any, in admitting Syrian refugees. Multiple officials testify before Congress that there is no reliable database that would enable them to ascertain if any Syrian refugees were ISIS members/supporters. That's how govt is supposed to be held accountable.
By "the people" you mean the sort who rally around "feth Obama!" right? Because that was almost certainly the impetus for the relevant "inquiry".
If the administration had it's ducks in a row and controlled the message and federal officials had told Congress that any fears of sleeper cells masquerading as refugees were unfounded due to the screening process, the impractical nature of using refugee status as a cover for terrorists and the fact that the vast majority of refugees don't commit acts of terrorism then the wind would have been taken out of the sails of opponents of admitting the refugees. But that didn't happen. Congress asked the FBI and DHS if they could be sure that refugees weren't ISIS members and the answer Congress was given was no. That fueled the fears of the public and legitimized them.
Congress would have asked the same question regardless of the position taken by the Administration. A GOP House will take every opportunity it has to snipe at the Democrats.
If the administration had it's ducks in a row and controlled the message and federal officials had told Congress that any fears of sleeper cells masquerading as refugees were unfounded due to the screening process, the impractical nature of using refugee status as a cover for terrorists and the fact that the vast majority of refugees don't commit acts of terrorism then the wind would have been taken out of the sails of opponents of admitting the refugees. But that didn't happen. Congress asked the FBI and DHS if they could be sure that refugees weren't ISIS members and the answer Congress was given was no. That fueled the fears of the public and legitimized them.
Congress would have asked the same question regardless of the position taken by the Administration. A GOP House will take every opportunity it has to snipe at the Democrats.
You may not like the outcome, another tempest in a teapot that attracts attention that would best be served forcused on policies and events that are more pressing and important, but the process was absolutely correct.
I can't help but notice that you didn't answer either of my questions, so I'll pose a third: Why is that?
Congress, as representatives of the people, respond to that concern and question high ranking federal officials under oath in regards to the level of danger, if any, in admitting Syrian refugees. Multiple officials testify before Congress that there is no reliable database that would enable them to ascertain if any Syrian refugees were ISIS members/supporters. That's how govt is supposed to be held accountable.
By "the people" you mean the sort who rally around "feth Obama!" right? Because that was almost certainly the impetus for the relevant "inquiry".
If the administration had it's ducks in a row and controlled the message and federal officials had told Congress that any fears of sleeper cells masquerading as refugees were unfounded due to the screening process, the impractical nature of using refugee status as a cover for terrorists and the fact that the vast majority of refugees don't commit acts of terrorism then the wind would have been taken out of the sails of opponents of admitting the refugees. But that didn't happen. Congress asked the FBI and DHS if they could be sure that refugees weren't ISIS members and the answer Congress was given was no. That fueled the fears of the public and legitimized them.
Congress would have asked the same question regardless of the position taken by the Administration. A GOP House will take every opportunity it has to snipe at the Democrats.
I thought I did. I'll try to be more clear.
Congress asked federal officials in DHS and the FBI about the ability to determine if Syrian refugee applicants were ISIS members/supporters because, rightly or wrongly, the Paris attacks for which ISIS claimed responsibility, raised fears that ISIS members/supporters were trying to covertly enter the US disguised as Syrian refugees. Having Congress call in federal officials in charge of domestic security and immigration to address/assuage those fears is perfectly reasonable and is well within the remit of Congress. The fact that the testimony of those officials did not do much to allay such fears, however legitimate or illegitimate they are, is not the fault of Republicans. The Republicans in Congress couldn't know what the FBI and DHS officials would answer until they asked the questions and the Republicans did not do anything to influence those answers.
Apparently, Republican and Democrat members of Congress do believe there is cause for concern regarding the security of our immigration and refugee process for applicants from Syria and Iraq.
The push from Senate Democrats to divert attention from the refugee system came as top House Democrats were scrambling to limit defections on a House GOP bill that would enact more rigorous screening requirements for refugee applicants from Iraq and Syria. The House passed that bill, from House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), on a 289- 137 vote on Thursday afternoon. The final tally included 47 Democratic yes votes, offering a rebuke for the White House which had lobbied against the measure, and giving Republicans a bipartisan victory.
I've noticed that Trump worshipers have begun to refer to him in almost messianic tones. Lots of, "I have been battling for Trump on the internet" or "TRUMP IS ALWAYS RIGHT!" And other such things that people are saying over and over again with the same words just different caps.
The thousands of celebrating Muslims thing is particularly interesting. Worshipers are now believing they saw it too or that they know somebody that saw it. Always seen on tv or internet never in the real world. When called out for evidence they usually site youtube as in go look for it on youtube or my favorite, which is linking a video of Palestinians in Palestine celebrating. The best part about that is when the journalists say in the video that it is in Palestine.
I'm upgrading Trump to full blown fascist with a cult of personality worshipping him.
BrotherGecko wrote: I've noticed that Trump worshipers have begun to refer to him in almost messianic tones. Lots of, "I have been battling for Trump on the internet" or "TRUMP IS ALWAYS RIGHT!" And other such things that people are saying over and over again with the same words just different caps.
The thousands of celebrating Muslims thing is particularly interesting. Worshipers are now believing they saw it too or that they know somebody that saw it. Always seen on tv or internet never in the real world. When called out for evidence they usually site youtube as in go look for it on youtube or my favorite, which is linking a video of Palestinians in Palestine celebrating. The best part about that is when the journalists say in the video that it is in Palestine.
I'm upgrading Trump to full blown fascist with a cult of personality worshipping him.
The media would be better served by ignoring Trump rather than trying to take him down. The hit pieces on Trump only give Trump more media attention and encourage his supporters to embrace their perceived persecution complex. They don't need to devote the majority of their coverage to Trump, they only do it for ratings and page views, when the primary elections start being held next year, Trump isn't going to be winning any and he'll be irrelevant.
Prestor Jon wrote: The Republicans in Congress couldn't know what the FBI and DHS officials would answer until they asked the questions and the Republicans did not do anything to influence those answers.
They knew that there was no political risk in any potential response. At worst the FBI and DHS officials say that everything is alright, and the GOP Congressmen still look tough on security.
I think he's implying that because the "other side" did it too, that somehow makes it right.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and "they started it" is an excuse that belongs on the school playground, not in D.C.
Not implying that it "makes it right".
Only that's the nature of the opposing party.
Sure, not actually no. The actual truth is that during the GWB presidency, there wasn't an organized legislative agenda to block any single thing that "might give the other side a victory" - for example, No Child Left Behind, which was proposed by GWB, passed with 384 votes in congress and 91-8 in the Senate. Even the hotly-contested Medicare expansion - which barely passed! - garnered plenty of Democrat votes. Compare that with the ACA.
Before President Obama took office, there had been 68 nominees filibustered - this includes the judicial ones Republicans so bitterly complained about during the GWB administration. During the Obama's first term, there were 79 nominees blocked, more than in every president ever combined.
But yeah, "both sides are bad", If you pretend enough and disregard any facts that disprove that narrative. The worst part about typing all of that out was that I know, and you know, and everyone reading this knows, that you're just going to ignore all of it and keep repeating it anyway which is why this thread is logic cancer.
I think he's implying that because the "other side" did it too, that somehow makes it right.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and "they started it" is an excuse that belongs on the school playground, not in D.C.
Not implying that it "makes it right".
Only that's the nature of the opposing party.
Sure, not actually no. The actual truth is that during the GWB presidency, there wasn't an organized legislative agenda to block any single thing that "might give the other side a victory" - for example, No Child Left Behind, which was proposed by GWB, passed with 384 votes in congress and 91-8 in the Senate. Even the hotly-contested Medicare expansion - which barely passed! - garnered plenty of Democrat votes. Compare that with the ACA.
Before President Obama took office, there had been 68 nominees filibustered - this includes the judicial ones Republicans so bitterly complained about during the GWB administration. During the Obama's first term, there were 79 nominees blocked, more than in every president ever combined.
But yeah, "both sides are bad", If you pretend enough and disregard any facts that disprove that narrative. The worst part about typing all of that out was that I know, and you know, and everyone reading this knows, that you're just going to ignore all of it and keep repeating it anyway which is why this thread is logic cancer.
Sure... actually... no.
Don't put the boogey-man squarely on the Republican's lap when the likes of Nancy "You have to pass it to read it" Pelosi and Harry "feth you Republicans, I ain't allowing these bills on the floor" Reid had control of both houses in Obama's first term.
Don't put the boogey-man squarely on the Republican's lap when the likes of Nancy "You have to pass it to read it" Pelosi...
That isn't what she said. She said "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy." Which is bad enough on its own, there is no need to put words in her mouth.
Don't put the boogey-man squarely on the Republican's lap when the likes of Nancy "You have to pass it to read it" Pelosi...
That isn't what she said. She said "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy." Which is bad enough on its own, there is no need to put words in her mouth.
Except when put into context with what she said before Fox News grabbed onto that 10 second snippet, it actually makes sense:
Nancy Pelosi wrote:You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.
Which she followed up with the now-famous line:
Nancy Pelosi wrote:But we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it.
To anyone that knows how to put things into context, it's pretty clear that she was saying that all of the controversies (like 'death panels') were not real and if the Senate passes the bill it would be proven true. (Still waiting for those death panels...).
Now I know Whembly is going to accuse me of being 'Team Blue' or whatever, but as I've said time and time again, I'm anti-bull gak, no matter what form it takes. (For the record, I don't like Pelosi because of her anti-gun bull gak).
Don't put the boogey-man squarely on the Republican's lap when the likes of Nancy "You have to pass it to read it" Pelosi...
That isn't what she said. She said "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy." Which is bad enough on its own, there is no need to put words in her mouth.
Except when put into context with what she said before Fox News grabbed onto that 10 second snippet, it actually makes sense:
Nancy Pelosi wrote:You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.
Which she followed up with the now-famous line:
Nancy Pelosi wrote:But we have to pass the [health care] bill so that you can find out what’s in it.
To anyone that knows how to put things into context, it's pretty clear that she was saying that all of the controversies (like 'death panels') were not real and if the Senate passes the bill it would be proven true. (Still waiting for those death panels...).
Now I know Whembly is going to accuse me of being 'Team Blue' or whatever, but as I've said time and time again, I'm anti-bull gak, no matter what form it takes. (For the record, I don't like Pelosi because of her anti-gun bull gak).
Then you need to re-calibrate that "anti-bull gak" detector scooty. Because, if I'm not mistaken, that's the same spin pushed by media matters.
The context doesn't help at all... She is still saying, "The law is good, and the benefits will prove themselves worthy... TRUST US".
Whatever happen to careful deliberation and informing the public?
The Democrats made their bed and will take their beating until the PPACA is repealed or reformed to look nothing like as it is now.
Your BS meter needs calibration, because it appears to be stuck at:
The context doesn't help at all... She is still saying, "The law is good, and the benefits will prove themselves worthy... TRUST US".
Isn't that what Politicians always say about every bill? I mean how do you know any bill is good until it is passed and the effects measured?
Not with the amount of deception that went into this...
There's a reason why politicians, especially the democrats, tried to avoid their townhalls.
We got Gruber'ed here.
Yeah. Of course politicians would want to avoid talking to the voterbase that would come to "townhalls".
The people who generally tend to care enough to go to those things? They're people who generally have their minds made up and are interested in "gotcha!' moments that will get them even a brief few minutes of air time on a news network, not actually having a reasonable discussion.
You might as well call "townhalls" to be "thunderdomes".
You say that, but a couple posts up you misquoted Nancy Pelosi. People that want to be informed generally like to be accurate when attributing statements to others.
Anyway, responding to sensation and affirmation is easy, but being informed and carefully deliberating on the basis of that information is difficult. This is part of why the majority of people (the public) avoid the latter two. The other part centers on the fact that some people got there first, and are better at the game as a result. This can make the process of becoming informed, such that one might deliberate carefully, intimidating; rendering the easy option all the more attractive. This is not to say the people who got there first bear no responsibility, they most assuredly do, but from my experience as a TA I can confidently state that the old adage about horses and water holds true.
They are not reporting. This is no reporting any more if there ever was. They are selling a product for a profit. In this instance that is minimovies: stories with as much blood, sex, and righteous outrage as possible. If there were Baysplosions on top, that would be the best.
Frazzled wrote: They are not reporting. This is no reporting any more if there ever was. They are selling a product for a profit. In this instance that is minimovies: stories with as much blood, sex, and righteous outrage as possible. If there were Baysplosions on top, that would be the best.
To be fair, they are still "reporting" the news.
They're just doing so with a heavy case of sensationalism as well.
Frazzled wrote: They are not reporting. This is no reporting any more if there ever was. They are selling a product for a profit. In this instance that is minimovies: stories with as much blood, sex, and righteous outrage as possible. If there were Baysplosions on top, that would be the best.
To be fair, they are still "reporting" the news.
They're just doing so with a heavy case of sensationalism as well.
And to be fair, for clarity's sake I am agreeing with you on this post and your earlier one.
You say that, but a couple posts up you misquoted Nancy Pelosi. People that want to be informed generally like to be accurate when attributing statements to others.
She wasn't "misquoted"... she.said.those.words.
i'm sure you're arguing that's it's taken out of context...
Anyway, responding to sensation and affirmation is easy, but being informed and carefully deliberating on the basis of that information is difficult. This is part of why the majority of people (the public) avoid the latter two. The other part centers on the fact that some people got there first, and are better at the game as a result. This can make the process of becoming informed, such that one might deliberate carefully, intimidating; rendering the easy option all the more attractive. This is not to say the people who got there first bear no responsibility, they most assuredly do, but from my experience as a TA I can confidently state that the old adage about horses and water holds true.
In a general sense, you're right.
However, there were HEIGHTENED interests in reforming healthcare. There were OPPORTUNITIES abounds for politicians, interest groups and constituents to engage in a method to debate and define what needed to be fixed.
Unfortunately, the democrats flubbed this... even hired Jonathan Gruber to help mislead the public.
You say that, but a couple posts up you misquoted Nancy Pelosi. People that want to be informed generally like to be accurate when attributing statements to others.
She wasn't "misquoted"... she.said.those.words.
She also said other words before and after them.
i'm sure you're arguing that's it's taken out of context...
Taking something out of context is the same thing as misquoting someone, but misquoting them is not necessarily the same thing as taking something out of context.
Anyway, responding to sensation and affirmation is easy, but being informed and carefully deliberating on the basis of that information is difficult. This is part of why the majority of people (the public) avoid the latter two. The other part centers on the fact that some people got there first, and are better at the game as a result. This can make the process of becoming informed, such that one might deliberate carefully, intimidating; rendering the easy option all the more attractive. This is not to say the people who got there first bear no responsibility, they most assuredly do, but from my experience as a TA I can confidently state that the old adage about horses and water holds true.
In a general sense, you're right.
However, there were HEIGHTENED interests in reforming healthcare. There were OPPORTUNITIES abounds for politicians, interest groups and constituents to engage in a method to debate and define what needed to be fixed.
When idiots are believing crap about the government having a group of people who are going to kill your lil' ol' granny?
No. There was absolutely not "OPPORTUNITIES abounds for politicians, interest groups and constitutents to engage in a method to debate and define what needed to be fixed".
Unfortunately, the democrats flubbed this... even hired Jonathan Gruber to help mislead the public.
And?
The American public IS stupid, whembly. The fact that we have to write bills to hide the actual content from morons who THINK they're smart but in reality shouldn't be trusted with the keys to their own cars much less the right to vote is sadly true.
There were OPPORTUNITIES abounds for politicians, interest groups and constituents to engage in a method to debate and define what needed to be fixed.
The opposition created the "Death Panels" scandal while setting Obama up as history's greatest monster. There were abundant political opportunities, but they mostly entailed appealing to voters who like sensation and affirmation.
When idiots are believing crap about the government having a group of people who are going to kill your lil' ol' granny?
You mean when republicans play this game?
When I said republicans... i meant the democrats.
And?
The American public IS stupid, whembly. The fact that we have to write bills to hide the actual content from morons who THINK they're smart but in reality shouldn't be trusted with the keys to their own cars much less the right to vote is sadly true.
There were OPPORTUNITIES abounds for politicians, interest groups and constituents to engage in a method to debate and define what needed to be fixed.
The opposition created the "Death Panels" scandal while setting Obama up as history's greatest monster. There were abundant political opportunities, but they mostly entailed appealing to voters who like sensation and affirmation.
Hence why attacking these problems peicemeal would garnered more bipartisan collaboration, rather than a one-size-fit-all mindset.
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Ahtman wrote: While I don't think people are as bad as Kanluwen says, it seems Whembly is doing his best to prove Kan right.
Bless your heart.
And only if you believe Congress-critters "knows best" for everyone.
I guess you don't understand the difference between "climate change could be a security threat in the future" and "we blame climate change, don't bother with any other explanations"?
I guess you don't understand the difference between "climate change could be a security threat in the future" and "we blame climate change, don't bother with any other explanations"?
The former is something we should hedge our actions... not dictate.
The latter is, unfortunately, the rhetoric of the current Climate Change hysteria.
whembly wrote: The former is something we should hedge our actions... not dictate.
The latter is, unfortunately, the rhetoric of the current Climate Change hysteria.
So you oppose taking actions based on reasonable predictions and think we should just wait until we actually have a problem before we do something about it? You call it "hysteria", but I think the label much more accurately applies to your obsessive skepticism and denial about the subject.
whembly wrote: The former is something we should hedge our actions... not dictate.
The latter is, unfortunately, the rhetoric of the current Climate Change hysteria.
So you oppose taking actions based on reasonable predictions and think we should just wait until we actually have a problem before we do something about it? You call it "hysteria", but I think the label much more accurately applies to your obsessive skepticism and denial about the subject.
None of the so called "reasonable predictions" has panned out.
I'm all for the whole kitchen sink method*... and yes, I'm very skeptical on this subject since people still push that whole "97% of scientist agreed" scam.
*me and my wife are looking to buy hybrid vehicles (I've drooled after telsa long enough) and to augment heating our house with solar radiant heating kits.
This is what you claimed Pelosi said: "You have to pass it to read it". This statement was false. I corrected you, and you became defensive. I am not certain why.
whembly wrote: None of the so called "reasonable predictions" has panned out.
{citation needed}
I would love to know how you can say this, given the fact that we're talking about long-term climate predictions, not "it's going to be warmer next year".
I'm very skeptical on this subject since people still push that whole "97% of scientist agreed" scam.
{citation needed}
Do you have any evidence for a significant percentage of legitimate and relevant* scientists disagreeing with climate change? And I mean significant, not merely nitpicking and trying to claim that the actual number is 95%, not 97%.
*IOW, scientists in unrelated fields or "scientists" with credentials from far-right diploma mills do not count.
whembly wrote: None of the so called "reasonable predictions" has panned out.
{citation needed}
I would love to know how you can say this, given the fact that we're talking about long-term climate predictions, not "it's going to be warmer next year".
I'm very skeptical on this subject since people still push that whole "97% of scientist agreed" scam.
{citation needed}
Do you have any evidence for a significant percentage of legitimate and relevant* scientists disagreeing with climate change? And I mean significant, not merely nitpicking and trying to claim that the actual number is 95%, not 97%.
*IOW, scientists in unrelated fields or "scientists" with credentials from far-right diploma mills do not count.
I will say one thing... the believers/deniers need to stop castigating the scientific community as a whole. It's getting pretty bad.
I'm simply an IT dude specializing data analytic in the healthcare industry who dabbles in many-scientific stuff. I need to change jobs so that I can afford this:
Whembly, you did not provide evidence that not even one single reasonable prediction projected the reality. A list of theories that did not turn out to be true won't provide any support for the argument you made unless it constitutes a reasonable sample size of all reasonable predictions. You also did not produce any support for your argument that there isnt a ~97% consensus among scientists.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Whembly, you did not provide evidence that not even one single reasonable prediction projected the reality. A list of theories that did not turn out to be true won't provide any support for the argument you made unless it constitutes a reasonable sample size of all reasonable predictions. You also did not produce any support for your argument that there isnt a ~97% consensus among scientists.
IPCC has had to revised it's projection six times.... downward.
As to the 97% bs...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303480304579578462813553136 ... The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make. ... In 2013, John Cook, an Australia-based blogger, and some of his friends reviewed abstracts of peer-reviewed papers published from 1991 to 2011. Mr. Cook reported that 97% of those who stated a position explicitly or implicitly suggest that human activity is responsible for some warming. His findings were published in Environmental Research Letters.
Mr. Cook's work was quickly debunked. In Science and Education in August 2013, for example, David R. Legates (a professor of geography at the University of Delaware and former director of its Center for Climatic Research) and three coauthors reviewed the same papers as did Mr. Cook and found "only 41 papers—0.3 percent of all 11,944 abstracts or 1.0 percent of the 4,014 expressing an opinion, and not 97.1 percent—had been found to endorse" the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. Elsewhere, climate scientists including Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir J. Shaviv and Nils- Axel Morner, whose research questions the alleged consensus, protested that Mr. Cook ignored or misrepresented their work. ...
Revisions of IPCC predictions similarly do not sufficiently represent "all reasonable predictions" and this does not adequately support your argument on its own.
One article that debunks one supporting study similarly does not constitute sufficient enough evidence to state that there is not a strong scientific consensus; far more evidence than that study is used to support the argument that the consensus is strong.
You have still failed to provide sufficient support for your arguments to render them valid.
I'm simply an IT dude specializing data analytic in the healthcare industry who dabbles in many-scientific stuff. I need to change jobs so that I can afford this...
NinthMusketeer wrote: Revisions of IPCC predictions similarly do not sufficiently represent "all reasonable predictions" and this does not adequately support your argument on its own.
http://www.ipcc.ch/]IPCC is *the* organization that forecasts future climate. This is the organization that has been challenged and is currently working on it's sixth assessment report (it's 6th downward revisions).
What other "reasonable predictions" are you referring to?
One article that debunks one supporting study similarly does not constitute sufficient enough evidence to state that there is not a strong scientific consensus; far more evidence than that study is used to support the argument that the consensus is strong.
You have still failed to provide sufficient support for your arguments to render them valid.
I provide the source of the 97% consensus... which is thoroughly debunked.
I'm simply an IT dude specializing data analytic in the healthcare industry who dabbles in many-scientific stuff. I need to change jobs so that I can afford this...
You stated that none of the reasonable predictions thus far have panned out. Do you intend to say that only predictions made by the IPCC are reasonable? In that case, I request that you provide the reasoning for why predictions from any other source are unreasonable. If you do not mean to say that, then the IPCC making incorrect predictions does not mean that other reasonable predictions were also incorrect. You will also need to provide evidence as to why predictions that have proven correct are unreasonable or actually incorrect.
Peregrine wrote: And I mean significant, not merely nitpicking and trying to claim that the actual number is 95%, not 97%.
This is what I am referring to in regards to the 97% argument. Please provide evidence to support that there is not a very strong consensus among scientists, in support of the idea that it is at least below 90%. Note this will need to stand against the large body of evidence that does suggest there is such a consensus. For reference, here are a few sources in support of the scientific consensus:
Spoiler:
1. Oreskes, Naomi (2007). "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?". In DiMento, Joseph F. C.; Doughman, Pamela M. Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren. MIT Press. pp. 65–66. ISBN 978-0-262-54193-0.
2. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level." IPCC, Synthesis Report, Section 1.1: Observations of climate change, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007.
3. IPCC, "Summary for Policymakers", Detection and Attribution of Climate Change, «It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century» (page 15) and «In this Summary for Policymakers, the following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood of an outcome or a result: (...) extremely likely: 95–100%» (page 2)., in IPCC AR5 WG1 2013.
4. IPCC, Synthesis Report, Section 2.4: Attribution of climate change, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007."It is likely that increases in GHG concentrations alone would have caused more warming than observed because volcanic and anthropogenic aerosols have offset some warming that would otherwise have taken place."
5. [Notes-SciPanel] America's Climate Choices: Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change; National Research Council (2010). Advancing the Science of Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. ISBN 0-309-14588-0. (p1) ... there is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities. While much remains to be learned, the core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious scientific debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations. * * * (p21-22) Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.
6. "Summary for Policymakers", 1. Observed changes in climate and their effects, inIPCC AR4 SYR 2007
7. "Summary for Policymakers", 2. Causes of change, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007
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10. "Synthesis report", Ecosystems, in: Sec 3.3.1 Impacts on systems and sectors, inIPCC AR4 SYR 2007
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15. ^ Jump up to:a b Oreskes 2007, p. 68
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• Adger, W.N.; et al., Ch 17: Assessment of Adaptation Practices, Options, Constraints and Capacity, in IPCC AR4 WG2 2007
• Barker, T.; et al., Technical summary, in IPCC AR4 WG3 2007
28. ^ Jump up to:a b 2009 Joint Science Academies’ Statement
29. Doha Declaration on Climate, Health and Wellbeing. This statement has been signed by numerous medical organizations, including the World Medical Association.
30. Arnold, D.G., ed. (March 2011), The Ethics of Global Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781107000698
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36. 2008 Joint Science Academies’ Statement
37. "Stanowisko Zgromadzenia Ogólnego PAN z dnia 13 grudnia 2007 r" (PDF) (in Polish). Polish Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2009-06-16. Note: As of 16 June 2009, PAS has not issued this statement in English, all citations have been translated from Polish.
38. ^ Jump up to:a b AAAS Board Statement on Climate Change www.aaas.org December 2006
39. FASTS Statement on Climate Change (PDF), 2008 "Global climate change is real and measurable. Since the start of the 20th century, the global mean surface temperature of the Earth has increased by more than 0.7°C and the rate of warming has been largest in the last 30 years. Key vulnerabilities arising from climate change include water resources, food supply, health, coastal settlements, biodiversity and some key ecosystems such as coral reefs and alpine regions. As the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases increases, impacts become more severe and widespread. To reduce the global net economic, environmental and social losses in the face of these impacts, the policy objective must remain squarely focused on returning greenhouse gas concentrations to near pre-industrial levels through the reduction of emissions. The spatial and temporal fingerprint of warming can be traced to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which are a direct result of burning fossil fuels, broad-scale deforestation and other human activity."
40. ^ Jump up to:a b Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Division on Earth and Life Studies, National Research Council (2001). Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. Washington DC: National Academy Press. ISBN 0-309-07574-2.
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47. European Academy of Sciences and Arts Let's Be Honest
48. European Science Foundation Position Paper Impacts of Climate Change on the European Marine and Coastal Environment — Ecosystems Approach, 2007, pp. 7–10"There is now convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases have become a major agent of climate change. These greenhouse gases affect the global climate by retaining heat in the troposphere, thus raising the average temperature of the planet and altering global atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns. While on-going national and international actions to curtail and reduce greenhouse gas emissions are essential, the levels of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere, and their impact, are likely to persist for several decades. On-going and increased efforts to mitigate climate change through reduction in greenhouse gases are therefore crucial."
49. Panel Urges Global Shift on Sources of Energy
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54. American Chemical Society Global Climte Change "Careful and comprehensive scientific assessments have clearly demonstrated that the Earth’s climate system is changing rapidly in response to growing atmospheric burdens of greenhouse gases and absorbing aerosol particles (IPCC, 2007). There is very little room for doubt that observed climate trends are due to human activities. The threats are serious and action is urgently needed to mitigate the risks of climate change. The reality of global warming, its current serious and potentially disastrous impacts on Earth system properties, and the key role emissions from human activities play in driving these phenomena have been recognized by earlier versions of this ACS policy statement (ACS, 2004), by other major scientific societies, including the American Geophysical Union (AGU, 2003), the American Meteorological Society (AMS, 2007) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 2007), and by the U. S. National Academies and ten other leading national academies of science (NA, 2005)."
55. American Institute of Physics Statement supporting AGU statement on human-induced climate change, 2003 "The Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics has endorsed a position statement on climate change adopted by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Council in December 2003."
56. American Physical Society Climate Change Policy Statement, November 2007"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes. The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now. Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
57. AIP science policy document. (PDF), 2005 "Policy: The AIP supports a reduction of the green house gas emissions that are leading to increased global temperatures, and encourages research that works towards this goal. Reason: Research in Australia and overseas shows that an increase in global temperature will adversely affect the Earth’s climate patterns. The melting of the polar ice caps, combined with thermal expansion, will lead to rises in sea levels that may impact adversely on our coastal cities. The impact of these changes on biodiversity will fundamentally change the ecology of Earth."
58. EPS Position Paper Energy for the future: The Nuclear Option (PDF), 2007 "The emission of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, among which carbon dioxide is the main contributor, has amplified the natural greenhouse effect and led to global warming. The main contribution stems from burning fossil fuels. A further increase will have decisive effects on life on earth. An energy cycle with the lowest possible CO2 emission is called for wherever possible to combat climate change."
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77. AMQUA "Petroleum Geologists’ Award to Novelist Crichton Is Inappropriate"
78. ^ Jump up to:a b INQUA Statement On Climate Change.
79. AAWV Position Statement on Climate Change, Wildlife Diseases, and Wildlife Health"There is widespread scientific agreement that the world’s climate is changing and that the weight of evidence demonstrates that anthropogenic factors have and will continue to contribute significantly to global warming and climate change. It is anticipated that continuing changes to the climate will have serious negative impacts on public, animal and ecosystem health due to extreme weather events, changing disease transmissiondynamics, emerging and re-emerging diseases, and alterations to habitat and ecological systems that are essential to wildlife conservation. Furthermore, there is increasing recognition of the inter-relationships of human, domestic animal, wildlife, and ecosystem health as illustrated by the fact the majority of recent emerging diseases have a wildlife origin."
80. AIBS Position Statements "Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver."
81. Scientific societies warn Senate: climate change is real, Ars Technica, October 22, 2009
82. Letter to US Senators (PDF), October 2009
83. Global Environmental Change — Microbial Contributions, Microbial Solutions (PDF),American Society For Microbiology, May 2006 They recommended "reducing net anthropogenic CO2 emissions to the atmosphere” and “minimizing anthropogenic disturbances of” atmospheric gases. Carbon dioxide concentrations were relatively stable for the past 10,000 years but then began to increase rapidly about 150 years ago…as a result of fossil fuel consumption and land use change. Of course, changes in atmospheric composition are but one component of global change, which also includes disturbances in the physical and chemical conditions of the oceans and land surface. Although global change has been a natural process throughout Earth’s history, humans are responsible for substantially accelerating present-day changes. These changes may adversely affect human health and the biosphere on which we depend. Outbreaks of a number of diseases, including Lyme disease, hantavirus infections, dengue fever, bubonic plague, and cholera, have been linked to climate change."
84. Australian Coral Reef Society official letter (PDF), 2006, archived from the original(PDF) on 22 March 2006 Official communique regarding the Great Barrier Reef and the "world-wide decline in coral reefs through processes such as overfishing, runoff of nutrients from the land, coral bleaching, global climate change, ocean acidification, pollution", etc.: There is almost total consensus among experts that the earth’s climate is changing as a result of the build-up of greenhouse gases. The IPCC (involving over 3,000 of the world’s experts) has come out with clear conclusions as to the reality of this phenomenon. One does not have to look further than the collective academy of scientists worldwide to see the string (of) statements on this worrying change to the earth’s atmosphere. There is broad scientific consensus that coral reefs are heavily affected by the activities of man and there are significant global influences that can make reefs more vulnerable such as global warming....It is highly likely that coral bleaching has been exacerbated by global warming."
85. Institute of Biology policy page ‘Climate Change’ "there is scientific agreement that the rapid global warming that has occurred in recent years is mostly anthropogenic, ie due to human activity.” As a consequence of global warming, they warn that a “rise in sea levels due to melting of ice caps is expected to occur. Rises in temperature will have complex and frequently localised effects on weather, but an overall increase in extreme weather conditions and changes in precipitation patterns are probable, resulting in flooding and drought. The spread of tropical diseases is also expected.” Subsequently, the Institute of Biology advocates policies to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions, as we feel that the consequences of climate change are likely to be severe."
86. SAF Forest Management and Climate Change (PDF), 2008 "Forests are shaped by climate....Changes in temperature and precipitation regimes therefore have the potential to dramatically affect forests nationwide. There is growing evidence that our climate is changing. The changes in temperature have been associated with increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs in the atmosphere."
87. SAF Forest Offset Projects in a Carbon Trading System (PDF), 2008 "Forests play a significant role in offsetting CO2 emissions, the primary anthropogenic GHG."
88. Wildlife Society Global Climate Change and Wildlife (PDF) "Scientists throughout the world have concluded that climate research conducted in the past two decades definitively shows that rapid worldwide climate change occurred in the 20th century, and will likely continue to occur for decades to come. Although climates have varied dramatically since the Earth was formed, few scientists question the role of humans in exacerbating recent climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases. The critical issue is no longer “if” climate change is occurring, but rather how to address its effects on wildlife and wildlife habitats." The statement goes on to assert that “evidence is accumulating that wildlife and wildlife habitats have been and will continue to be significantly affected by ongoing large-scale rapid climate change.” The statement concludes with a call for “reduction in anthropogenic (human-caused) sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global climate change and the conservation of CO2- consumingphotosynthesizers (i.e., plants).”
89. AAP Global Climate Change and Children's Health, 2007 "There is broad scientific consensus that Earth's climate is warming rapidly and at an accelerating rate. Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, are very likely (>90% probability) to be the main cause of this warming. Climate-sensitive changes in ecosystems are already being observed, and fundamental, potentially irreversible, ecological changes may occur in the coming decades. Conservative environmental estimates of the impact of climate changes that are already in process indicate that they will result in numerous health effects to children. Anticipated direct health consequences of climate change include injury and death from extreme weather events and natural disasters, increases in climate-sensitiveinfectious diseases, increases in air pollution–related illness, and more heat-related, potentially fatal, illness. Within all of these categories, children have increased vulnerability compared with other groups."
90. ACPM Policy Statement Abrupt Climate Change and Public Health Implications, 2006"The American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) accept the position that global warming and climate change is occurring, that there is potential for abrupt climate change, and that human practices that increase greenhouse gases exacerbate the problem, and that the public health consequences may be severe."
91. American Medical Association Policy Statement, 2008 "Support the findings of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which states that the Earth is undergoing adverse global climate change and that these changes will negatively affect public health. Support educating the medical community on the potential adverse public health effects of global climate change, including topics such as population displacement, flooding, infectious and vector-borne diseases, and healthy water supplies."
92. American Public Health Association Policy Statement ‘’Addressing the Urgent Threat of Global Climate Change to Public Health and the Environment’’, 2007 "The long-term threat of global climate change to global health is extremely serious and the fourth IPCC report and other scientific literature demonstrate convincingly that anthropogenic GHG emissions are primarily responsible for this threat….US policy makers should immediately take necessary steps to reduce US emissions of GHGs, including carbon dioxide, to avert dangerous climate change."
93. AMA Climate Change and Human Health — 2004, 2004 They recommend policies "to mitigate the possible consequential health effects of climate change through improved energy efficiency, clean energy production and other emission reduction steps."
94. AMA Climate Change and Human Health — 2004. Revised 2008., 2008 "The world’s climate – our life-support system – is being altered in ways that are likely to pose significant direct and indirect challenges to health. While ‘climate change’ can be due to natural forces or human activity, there is now substantial evidence to indicate that human activity – and specifically increased greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions – is a key factor in the pace and extent of global temperature increases. Health impacts of climate change include the direct impacts of extreme events such as storms, floods, heatwaves and fires and the indirect effects of longer-term changes, such as drought, changes to the food andwater supply, resource conflicts and population shifts. Increases in average temperatures mean that alterations in the geographic range and seasonality of certain infections and diseases (including vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, Ross River virusand food-borne infections such as Salmonellosis) may be among the first detectable impacts of climate change on human health. Human health is ultimately dependent on the health of the planet and its ecosystem. The AMA believes that measures which mitigate climate change will also benefit public health. Reducing GHGs should therefore be seen as a public health priority."
95. World Federation of Public Health Associations resolution "Global Climate Change"(PDF), 2001 "Noting the conclusions of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climatologists that anthropogenic greenhouse gases, which contribute to global climate change, have substantially increased in atmospheric concentration beyond natural processes and have increased by 28 percent since the industrial revolution….Realizing that subsequent health effects from such perturbations in the climate system would likely include an increase in: heat-related mortality and morbidity; vector-borne infectious diseases,… water-borne diseases…(and) malnutrition from threatened agriculture….the World Federation of Public Health Associations…recommends precautionary primary preventive measures to avert climate change, including reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and preservation of greenhouse gas sinks through appropriate energy and land use policies, in view of the scale of potential health impacts...."
96. WHO Protecting health from climate change (PDF), 2008, p. 2, retrieved 2009-04-18
97. Statement supporting AGU statement on human-induced climate change, American Astronomical Society, 2004 "In endorsing the "Human Impacts on Climate" statement [issued by the American Geophysical Union], the AAS recognizes the collective expertise of the AGU in scientific subfields central to assessing and understanding global change, and acknowledges the strength of agreement among our AGU colleagues that the global climate is changing and human activities are contributing to that change."
98. ASA Statement on Climate Change, November 30, 2007 "The ASA endorses the IPCC conclusions.... Over the course of four assessment reports, a small number of statisticians have served as authors or reviewers. Although this involvement is encouraging, it does not represent the full range of statistical expertise available. ASA recommends that more statisticians should become part of the IPCC process. Such participation would be mutually beneficial to the assessment of climate change and its impacts and also to the statistical community."
99. Lapp, David. "What Is Climate Change". Canadian Council of Professional Engineers. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
100. Policy Statement, Climate Change and Energy, February 2007 "Engineers Australia believes that Australia must act swiftly and proactively in line with global expectations to address climate change as an economic, social and environmental risk... We believe that addressing the costs of atmospheric emissions will lead to increasing our competitive advantage by minimising risks and creating new economic opportunities. Engineers Australia believes the Australian Government should ratify the Kyoto Protocol."
101. IAGLR Fact Sheet The Great Lakes at a Crossroads: Preparing for a Changing Climate (PDF), February 2009 "While the Earth’s climate has changed many times during the planet’s history because of natural factors, including volcanic eruptions and changes in the Earth’s orbit, never before have we observed the present rapid rise in temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2). Human activities resulting from the industrial revolution have changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere....Deforestation is now the second largest contributor to global warming, after the burning of fossil fuels. These human activities have significantly increased the concentration of “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere. As the Earth’s climate warms, we are seeing many changes: stronger, more destructive hurricanes; heavier rainfall; more disastrous flooding; more areas of the world experiencing severe drought; and more heat waves."
102. IPENZ Informatory Note, Climate Change and the greenhouse effect (PDF), October 2001 "Human activities have increased the concentration of these atmospheric greenhouse gases, and although the changes are relatively small, the equilibrium maintained by the atmosphere is delicate, and so the effect of these changes is significant. The world’s most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, a by-product of the burning of fossil fuels. Since the time of the Industrial Revolution about 200 years ago, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from about 280 parts per million to 370 parts per million, an increase of around 30%. On the basis of available data, climate scientists are now projecting an average global temperature rise over this century of 2.0 to 4.5°C. This compared with 0.6°C over the previous century – about a 500% increase... This could lead to changing, and for all emissions scenarios more unpredictable, weather patterns around the world, less frost days, more extreme events (droughts and storm or flood disasters), and warmer sea temperatures and melting glaciers causing sea levels to rise. ... Professional engineers commonly deal with risk, and frequently have to make judgments based on incomplete data. The available evidence suggests very strongly that human activities have already begun to make significant changes to the earth’s climate, and that the long-term risk of delaying action is greater than the cost of avoiding/minimising the risk."
103. AAPG Position Statement: Climate Change from dpa.aapg.org
104. "Climate :03:2007 EXPLORER". Aapg.org. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
105. Sunsetting the Global Climate Change Committee, The Professional Geologist, March/April 2010, p. 28
106. "American Geological Institute Climate Statement". 12 Feb 1999. Archived from the original on July 2012. Retrieved July 2012.
107. AIPG Climate Change Letters sent to U.S. Government Officials
108. "AIPG Climate Change and Domestic Energy Statement", The Professional Geologist, January/February 2010, p. 42
109. "The Professional Geologist publications". Archived from the original on July 2012. Retrieved July 2012.
110. "Climate Change and Society Governance", The Professional Geologist, March/April 2010, p. 33
111. billobrien.coml. "Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences (CFES)". Geoscience.ca. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
112. Graham Lloyd (June 4, 2014). "Earth scientists split on climate change statement". The Australian. Retrieved June 4, 2014.(subscription required)
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114. Doran consensus article 2009
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118. Lichter, S. Robert (2008-04-24). "Climate Scientists Agree on Warming, Disagree on Dangers, and Don't Trust the Media's Coverage of Climate Change". Statistical Assessment Service, George Mason University. Retrieved 2010-01-20.
119. ""Structure of Scientific Opinion on Climate Change" at Journalist's Resource.org".
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whembly wrote: IPCC has had to revised it's projection six times.... downward.
Do you understand the difference between refining a prediction and abandoning it? Saying "they revised the prediction downward six times" is a meaningless claim because making a -0.000001% change six times would still make the claim true, even though no substantial change has been made.
As to the 97% bs...
Oh hey, a textbook example of how to lie with statistics. Not too surprising, given the source...
The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.
This is what I mean about considering relevant scientists. The fact that it's only 79 out of 3,146 is a meaningless claim because those 79 people are the relevant experts. The purpose of discarding the other 3067 is that the positions of people who aren't specialists in a field carry much less weight. If you consider only people who specialize in climate science (and have significant published work to back up that self-identification) then you're polling the people who are most likely to have the correct answer to your question. And what we see is that those people agree, by an overwhelming margin, that the accepted theories on climate change are accurate.
The "97 percent" figure in the Zimmerman/Doran survey represents the views of only 79 respondents who listed climate science as an area of expertise and said they published more than half of their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate change. Seventy-nine scientists—of the 3,146 who responded to the survey—does not a consensus make.
This is what I mean about considering relevant scientists. The fact that it's only 79 out of 3,146 is a meaningless claim because those 79 people are the relevant experts. The purpose of discarding the other 3067 is that the positions of people who aren't specialists in a field carry much less weight. If you consider only people who specialize in climate science (and have significant published work to back up that self-identification) then you're polling the people who are most likely to have the correct answer to your question. And what we see is that those people agree, by an overwhelming margin, that the accepted theories on climate change are accurate.
Only 79 responded to that survey.
79.
Not something you'd want to pull all your eggs to push massive changes that'd cost massive amount of money (which the few connected will recieve the windfall) on only 79 people who responded to that survey.
No, 3,146 responded. 79 of them met the particular qualifications of "climate expert" used by the people who stated the 97% number.
Not something you'd want to pull all your eggs to push massive changes that'd cost massive amount of money (which the few connected will recieve the windfall) on only 79 people who responded to that survey.
Two things:
1) Nobody is doing anything just because 79 people answered a poll. People are pushing those changes based on extensive scientific work with a lot of evidence to support it. The 79 "yes" answers in the poll are just a very simple way to sum up the scientific consensus on the subject for news reports.
2) 79 people is still a significant number when you're talking about experts in a field. If you ask 79 mathematicians to tell you what the answer to 1+1 is and all of them tell say "2" then it's probably a strong hint that you have the correct answer. Instead of complaining about how it's "only" 79 people you need to consider whether you're asking for more because there's genuine uncertainty in the answers you're getting, or because you want to be skeptical.
There are essentially two studies which these claims are based around...
The first stems from an analysis in 2008 by Maggie Zimmerman of the University of Illinois. 97% cooked stats
The ‘scientific consensus’ about global warming turns out to have a lot more to do with manipulating the numbers
How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2,500 — that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2,500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position.
To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered they were mistaken — those 2,500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently.
The upshot? The punditry looked for and found an alternative number to tout: “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus, articles in the Washington Post, the U.K.’s Guardian, CNN and other news outlets now claim, along with some two million postings in the blogosphere.
This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2008 master’s thesis by student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at the University of Illinois, under the guidance of Peter Doran, an associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences. The two researchers obtained their results by conducting a survey of 10,257 Earth scientists. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers — in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.
The two researchers started by altogether excluding from their survey the thousands of scientists most likely to think that the Sun, or planetary movements, might have something to do with climate on Earth — out were the solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, astronomers and meteorologists. That left the 10,257 scientists in such disciplines as geology, geography, oceanography, engineering, paleontology and geochemistry who were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided scientific accomplishment should not be a factor in who could answer — those surveyed were determined by their place of employment (an academic or a governmental institution). Neither was academic qualification a factor — about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.
To encourage a high participation among these remaining disciplines, the two researchers decided on a quickie survey that would take less than two minutes to complete, and would be done online, saving the respondents the hassle of mailing a reply. Nevertheless, most didn’t consider the quickie survey worthy of response — just 3,146, or 30.7%, answered the two key questions on the survey:
1 When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant? 2 Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
The questions posed to the Earth scientists were actually non-questions. From my discussions with literally hundreds of skeptical scientists over the past few years, I know of none who claims the planet hasn’t warmed since the 1700s, and almost none who think humans haven’t contributed in some way to the recent warming — quite apart from carbon dioxide emissions, few would doubt that the creation of cities and the clearing of forests for agricultural lands have affected the climate. When pressed for a figure, global warming skeptics might say humans are responsible for 10% or 15% of the warming; some skeptics place the upper bound of man’s contribution at 35%. The skeptics only deny that humans played a dominant role in Earth’s warming.
Surprisingly, just 90% of the Earth scientists who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen — I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. But perhaps some of the responders interpreted the question to include the past 1,000 years, when Earth was in the Medieval Warm Period, generally thought to be warmer than today.
As for the second question, 82% of the Earth scientists replied that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. Here the vagueness of the question comes into play. Since skeptics believe human activity has been a contributing factor, their answer would have turned on whether they consider an increase of 10% or 15% or 35% to be a significant contributing factor. Some would, some wouldn’t.
In any case, the two researchers must have feared that an 82% figure would fall short of a convincing consensus — almost one in five wasn’t blaming humans for global warming — so they looked for a subset that would yield a higher percentage. They found it — almost — by excluding all the Earth scientists whose recently published peer-reviewed research wasn’t mostly in the field of climate change. This subset reduced the number of remaining scientists from over 3,000 to under 300. But the percentage that now resulted still fell short of the researchers’ ideal, because the subset included such disciplines as meteorology, which Doran considers ill-informed on the subject. “Most members of the public think meteorologists know climate, but most of them actually study very short-term phenomenon,” he explained, in justifying why he decided to exclude them, among others. The researchers thus decided to tout responses by those Earth scientists who not only published mainly on climate but also identified themselves as climate scientists.
“They’re the ones who study and publish on climate science,” Doran explained. “So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you’re likely to believe in global warming and humankind’s contribution to it.”
Once all these cuts were made, 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers, the master’s student and her prof, were then satisfied with the findings of her master’s thesis. Are you?
John Cook is the next big study to attempt to make that figure stick: Jose Duarte, expert in Social Psychology, Scientific Validity, and Research Methods, has actually called this paper by Cook an abject fraud.
Here's his closing:
Closure
Anyone who continues to defend this study should also be prepared to embrace and circulate the findings of Heartland or Heritage if they stoop to using a bunch of political activists to subjectively rate scientific abstracts. If ERL doesn't retract, for some unimaginable reason, they should cheerfully publish subjective rater studies conducted by conservative political activists on climate science, Mormons on the science of gay marriage, and Scientologists on the harms of psychiatry (well, if ERL weren't just an environmental journal...) This ultimately isn't about this study – it's about the method, about the implications of allowing studies based on subjective ratings of abstracts by people who have an obvious conflict of interest as to the outcome. Science is critically depends on valid methods, and is generally supposed to progress over time, not step back to a pre-modern ignorance of human bias.
I think some of you who've defended this study got on the wrong train. I don't think you meant to end up here. I think it was an accident. You thought you were getting on the Science Train. You thought these people -- Cook, Nuccitelli, Lewandowsky -- were the science crowd, and that the opposition was anti-science, "deniers" and so forth. I hope it's clear at this point that this was not the Science Train. This is a different train. These people care much less about science than they do about politics. They're willing to do absolutely stunning, unbelievable things to score political points. What they did still stuns me, that they did this on purpose, that it was published, that we live in a world where people can publish these sorts of obvious scams in normally scientific journals. If you got on this train, you're now at a place where you have to defend political activists rating scientific abstracts regarding the issue on which their activism is focused, able to generate the results they want. You have to defend people counting psychology studies and surveys of the general public as scientific evidence of endorsement of AGW. You have to defend false statements about the methods used in the study. Their falsity won't be a matter of opinion -- they were clear and simple claims, and they were false. You have to defend the use of raters who wanted to count a bad psychology study of white males as evidence of scientific endorsement of AGW. You have to defend vile behavior, dishonesty, and stunning hatred and malice as a standard way to deal with dissent.
I think many of you have too few categories. You might have science and anti-science categories, for example, or pro-science and denier. The world isn't going to be that simple. It's never been that simple. Reality is a complicated place, including the reality of human psychology and knowledge. Science is enormously complicated. We can't even understand the proper role of science, or how to evaluate what scientists say, without a good epistemological framework. No serious epistemological framework is going to lump the future projections of a young and dynamic scientific field with the truth of evolution, or the age of the earth. Those claims are very different in terms of their bodies of evidence, the levels of confidence a rational person should have in them, and how accessible the evidence is to inquiring laypeople.
Cognition is in large part categorization, and we need more than two categories to understand and sort people's views and frameworks when it comes to fresh scientific issues like AGW. If our science category or camp includes people like Cook and Nuccitelli, it's no longer a science category. We won't have credibility as pro-science people if those people are the standard bearers. Those people are in a different category, a different camp, and it won't be called "science". Those climate scientists who have touted, endorsed, and defended the Cook et al. study – I suggest you reconsider. I also suggest that you run some basic correction for the known bias and cognitive dissonance humans have against changing their position, admitting they were wrong, etc. Do you really want to be on the historical record as a defender of this absurd malpractice? It won't age well, and as a scientist, certain values and principles should matter more to you than politics.
If you're always on the side of people who share your political views, if you're always on the side of people who report a high AGW consensus figure, no matter what they do, something is wrong. It's unlikely that all the people who share our political perspectives, or all the studies conducted by them, are right or valid -- we know this in advance. We need more honesty on this issue, less political malice, better epistemology. I don't think science has been so distrusted in the modern era than it is today. When the public thinks of science, it should not trigger thoughts of liars and people trying to deceive them and take advantage of them. Journals need to take responsibility for what they do, and stop publishing politically motivated junk. Sadly, this paper is self-refuting. A paper-counting study assumes that the papers they're counting are valid and rigorous works, which assumes that peer-review screens out invalid, sloppy, or fraudulent work. Yet the Cook paper was published in a peer-reviewed climate journal. That it was sruvived peer-review undermines the critical assumption the study rests on, and will be important inductive evidence to outside observers.
So you want to know what the 97% is? You really want to know? It's a bunch of abstracts/grant applications that say: "We all know about global warming. Let me tell you about my atomic layer deposition project." "You all know the earth is melting. Let me tell you about my design for a grapeseed oil powered diesel engine." "We've all heard about global warming. Here we report a survey of the public." "...Denial of improved cooking stoves." Let's call that phenomenon A.
Now let's factor in a bunch of militant political activists rating abstracts on the issue of their activism, and who desire a certain outcome. Call that B.
Let's also factor in the fact these militant political activists are for the most part unqualified laypeople who will not be able to understand many science abstracts, who have no idea how to do a proper literature search or how to conduct a proper subjective rating study, have never heard of interrater reliability or meta-analysis, violate every critical methodological feature their study requires, and lie about it. Call that C.
Then add a politically biased journal editor who has a profound conflict of interest with respect to the findings, as he works for the politician whose aims such findings would serve, and which were widely touted and misrepresented by said politician. Call that D.
A + B + C + D = 97%
"97%" has become a bit of a meme over the past year. I predict that it will in the coming years become a meme of a different sort. "97%" will be the meme for scientific fraud and deception, for the assertion of overwhelming consensus where the reality is not nearly so simple or untextured. It may become the hashtag for every report of fraud, a compact version of "9 out of 10 dentists agree" (well, I'm abusing the definition of meme, but so does everyone else...) Because of this kind of fraud, bias, and incompetence, science is in danger of being associated with people who lie and deceive the public. Excellent. Just fantastic. Politics is eroding our scientific norms, and possibly our brains.
The laypeople who first identified the fraud in these cases and contacted the relevant authorities were roundly ignored. In the two cases I've covered, the evidence is surprisingly accessible, not rocket science, and the Australian universities who hosted the researchers have been inexcusably unwilling to investigate, at least not when asked by others. AAAS, who leaned on this fraud, has an Enron culture of denial and buck-passing. These institutions have become part of the story in a way they shouldn't have. The system is broken, at least as far as these politically motivated junk studies are concerned, and most of the responsible gatekeepers have been unwilling to discharge their ethical and scientific responsibilities, and should probably be discharged of those responsibilities. If this is science, then science is less rigorous than any plausible contrast objects we'd set it against – it would be the least rigorous thing we do. Some scientific fields are better than this. They retract papers all the time, often the authors themselves, for non-fraud reasons. Fraud is taken dead seriously, and a fraud report will be investigated thoroughly.
We've bumped into some corruption here. I'm disappointed in the extremely low quality of the arguments from the fraud-defenders and wagon-circlers (calling me a "right-wing extremist" or asking whether other people agree with me won't do it, and the latter scares the hell out of me, as it might signal that an absurdly primitive and simplistic epistemology of consensus actually enjoys a non-zero rate of popularity in academic circles). I'm also disappointed in the more common silence from the ertswhile defenders of this junk. In both cases, no one is refuting anything, presenting any sort of substantive argument. We're taking lots of risks here, potentially rupturing the classic association between science and fact, or between science and the rational mind. We can't allow science to become a recurrent source of deception and falsity, or risk the very concept science devolving into a label for an alternative lifestyle, a subculture of job security and unreliable claims. That outcome seems distant, but if we don't address behavior like the conduct and publication of this study, we'll probably see more of it.
1) You still haven't provided any credible evidence that the "real" number is significantly less than 97%. Even if the methods in this one analysis aren't quite right it doesn't mean that the opposite must be true. Maybe the actual number is 90% instead of 97%, which leads to the same conclusions.
2) You're putting on the tinfoil hat and assuming that the selective choice of people to poll is the result of a deliberate conspiracy to skew the numbers and not reasonable assumptions about who is most qualified to give an answer. Do you actually have some evidence that it was a deliberate attempt to produce a desired conclusion, or are you just assuming that anyone who disagrees with conservative ideology must be dishonest?
NinthMusketeer wrote: You stated that none of the reasonable predictions thus far have panned out. Do you intend to say that only predictions made by the IPCC are reasonable? In that case, I request that you provide the reasoning for why predictions from any other source are unreasonable. If you do not mean to say that, then the IPCC making incorrect predictions does not mean that other reasonable predictions were also incorrect. You will also need to provide evidence as to why predictions that have proven correct are unreasonable or actually incorrect.
Peregrine wrote: And I mean significant, not merely nitpicking and trying to claim that the actual number is 95%, not 97%.
This is what I am referring to in regards to the 97% argument. Please provide evidence to support that there is not a very strong consensus among scientists, in support of the idea that it is at least below 90%. Note this will need to stand against the large body of evidence that does suggest there is such a consensus. For reference, here are a few sources in support of the scientific consensus:
Spoiler:
1. Oreskes, Naomi (2007). "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?". In DiMento, Joseph F. C.; Doughman, Pamela M. Climate Change: What It Means for Us, Our Children, and Our Grandchildren. MIT Press. pp. 65–66. ISBN 978-0-262-54193-0.
2. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level." IPCC, Synthesis Report, Section 1.1: Observations of climate change, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007.
3. IPCC, "Summary for Policymakers", Detection and Attribution of Climate Change, «It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century» (page 15) and «In this Summary for Policymakers, the following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood of an outcome or a result: (...) extremely likely: 95–100%» (page 2)., in IPCC AR5 WG1 2013.
4. IPCC, Synthesis Report, Section 2.4: Attribution of climate change, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007."It is likely that increases in GHG concentrations alone would have caused more warming than observed because volcanic and anthropogenic aerosols have offset some warming that would otherwise have taken place."
5. [Notes-SciPanel] America's Climate Choices: Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change; National Research Council (2010). Advancing the Science of Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. ISBN 0-309-14588-0. (p1) ... there is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities. While much remains to be learned, the core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious scientific debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations. * * * (p21-22) Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.
6. "Summary for Policymakers", 1. Observed changes in climate and their effects, inIPCC AR4 SYR 2007
7. "Summary for Policymakers", 2. Causes of change, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007
8. ^ Jump up to:a b c Parry, M.L.; et al., "Technical summary", Industry, settlement and society, in: Box TS.5. The main projected impacts for systems and sectors, in IPCC AR4 WG2 2007
9. IPCC, "Summary for Policymakers", Magnitudes of impact, in IPCC AR4 WG2 2007
10. "Synthesis report", Ecosystems, in: Sec 3.3.1 Impacts on systems and sectors, inIPCC AR4 SYR 2007
11. ^ Jump up to:a b c "Question 1", 1.1, in IPCC TAR SYR 2001, p. 38
12. ^ Jump up to:a b Summary, in US NRC 2001, p. 4
13. ^ Jump up to:a b c Julie Brigham-Grette; et al. (September 2006). "Petroleum Geologists' Award to Novelist Crichton Is Inappropriate" (PDF). Eos 87 (36): 364.Bibcode:2006EOSTr..87..364B. doi:10.1029/2006EO360008. Retrieved 2007-01-23.The AAPG stands alone among scientific societies in its denial of human-induced effects on global warming.
14. ^ Jump up to:a b AAPG Climate Change June 2007
15. ^ Jump up to:a b Oreskes 2007, p. 68
16. Ogden, Aynslie and Cohen, Stewart (2002). "Integration and Synthesis: Assessing Climate Change Impacts in Northern Canada" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-04-12.
17. ^ Jump up to:a b "Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers" (PDF). IPCC. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
18. Nuccitelli, Dana (31 March 2014). "IPCC report warns of future climate change risks, but is spun by contrarians". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
19. ^ Jump up to:a b "U.N. Climate Panel Endorses Ceiling on Global Emissions". The New York Times. 27 September 2013. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
20. "Warming 'very likely' human-made". BBC News (BBC). 2007-02-01. Retrieved2007-02-01.
21. Rosenthal, Elisabeth; Revkin, Andrew C. (2007-02-03). "Science Panel Calls Global Warming ‘Unequivocal’". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-08-28. the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is 'unequivocal' and that human activity is the main driver, 'very likely' causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950
22. Stevens, William K. (2007-02-06). "On the Climate Change Beat, Doubt Gives Way to Certainty". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-08-28. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the likelihood was 90 percent to 99 percent that emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, spewed from tailpipes and smokestacks, were the dominant cause of the observed warming of the last 50 years. In the panel’s parlance, this level of certainty is labeled “very likely.” Only rarely does scientific odds-making provide a more definite answer than that, at least in this branch of science, and it describes the endpoint, so far, of a progression.
23. "U.N. Report: Global Warming Man-Made, Basically Unstoppable". Fox News. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
24. Downloads.globalchange.gov
25. "Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment New Scientific Consensus: Arctic Is Warming Rapidly". UNEP/GRID-Arendal. 2004-11-08. Retrieved2010-01-20.
26. "ACIA Display". Amap.no. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
27. ^ Jump up to:a b c The literature has been assessed by the IPCC, e.g., see:
• Adger, W.N.; et al., Ch 17: Assessment of Adaptation Practices, Options, Constraints and Capacity, in IPCC AR4 WG2 2007
• Barker, T.; et al., Technical summary, in IPCC AR4 WG3 2007
28. ^ Jump up to:a b 2009 Joint Science Academies’ Statement
29. Doha Declaration on Climate, Health and Wellbeing. This statement has been signed by numerous medical organizations, including the World Medical Association.
30. Arnold, D.G., ed. (March 2011), The Ethics of Global Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781107000698
31. "Editorial: The Science of Climate Change". Science 292 (5520): 1261. May 18, 2001.doi:10.1126/science.292.5520.1261.
32. ^ Jump up to:a b The Science of Climate Change, The Royal Society
33. Joint science academies’ statement: Global response to climate change, 2005
34. 2007 Joint Science Academies' Statement
35. ^ Jump up to:a b "Joint statement by the Network of African Science Academies (NASAC) to the G8 on sustainability, energy efficiency and climate change" (PDF). Network of African Science Academies. 2007. Retrieved 2012-08-28.
36. 2008 Joint Science Academies’ Statement
37. "Stanowisko Zgromadzenia Ogólnego PAN z dnia 13 grudnia 2007 r" (PDF) (in Polish). Polish Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2009-06-16. Note: As of 16 June 2009, PAS has not issued this statement in English, all citations have been translated from Polish.
38. ^ Jump up to:a b AAAS Board Statement on Climate Change www.aaas.org December 2006
39. FASTS Statement on Climate Change (PDF), 2008 "Global climate change is real and measurable. Since the start of the 20th century, the global mean surface temperature of the Earth has increased by more than 0.7°C and the rate of warming has been largest in the last 30 years. Key vulnerabilities arising from climate change include water resources, food supply, health, coastal settlements, biodiversity and some key ecosystems such as coral reefs and alpine regions. As the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases increases, impacts become more severe and widespread. To reduce the global net economic, environmental and social losses in the face of these impacts, the policy objective must remain squarely focused on returning greenhouse gas concentrations to near pre-industrial levels through the reduction of emissions. The spatial and temporal fingerprint of warming can be traced to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which are a direct result of burning fossil fuels, broad-scale deforestation and other human activity."
40. ^ Jump up to:a b Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Division on Earth and Life Studies, National Research Council (2001). Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. Washington DC: National Academy Press. ISBN 0-309-07574-2.
41. Wratt, David; Renwick, James (2008-07-10). "Climate change statement from the Royal Society of New Zealand". The Royal Society of New Zealand. Retrieved 2010-01-20.
42. Gray, Louise (May 29, 2010). "Royal Society to publish guide on climate change to counter claims of 'exaggeration'". The Daily Telegraph (London).
43. ^ Jump up to:a b "New guide to science of climate change". The Royal Society. Retrieved 9 June2010.
44. Harrabin, Roger (27 May 2010). "Society to review climate message". BBC News. Retrieved 9 June 2010.
45. Gardner, Dan (8 June 2010). "Some excitable climate-change deniers just don't understand what science is". Montreal Gazette. Archived from the original on 11 June 2010. Retrieved 9 June 2010.
46. "Joint statement by the Network of African Science Academies (NASAC) to the G8 on sustainability, energy efficiency and climate change". 2007. Retrieved 22 May 2015. A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change... Although we recognize that this nexus poses daunting challenges for the developed world, we firmly believe that these challenges are even more daunting for the most impoverished, science-poor regions of the developing world, especially in Africa.
47. European Academy of Sciences and Arts Let's Be Honest
48. European Science Foundation Position Paper Impacts of Climate Change on the European Marine and Coastal Environment — Ecosystems Approach, 2007, pp. 7–10"There is now convincing evidence that since the industrial revolution, human activities, resulting in increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases have become a major agent of climate change. These greenhouse gases affect the global climate by retaining heat in the troposphere, thus raising the average temperature of the planet and altering global atmospheric circulation and precipitation patterns. While on-going national and international actions to curtail and reduce greenhouse gas emissions are essential, the levels of greenhouse gases currently in the atmosphere, and their impact, are likely to persist for several decades. On-going and increased efforts to mitigate climate change through reduction in greenhouse gases are therefore crucial."
49. Panel Urges Global Shift on Sources of Energy
50. "InterAcademy Council". InterAcademy Council. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
51. "InterAcademy Council". InterAcademy Council. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
52. "InterAcademy Council". InterAcademy Council. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
53. http://www.caets.org/nae/naecaets.nsf/(weblinks)/WSAN-78QL9A?OpenDocument
54. American Chemical Society Global Climte Change "Careful and comprehensive scientific assessments have clearly demonstrated that the Earth’s climate system is changing rapidly in response to growing atmospheric burdens of greenhouse gases and absorbing aerosol particles (IPCC, 2007). There is very little room for doubt that observed climate trends are due to human activities. The threats are serious and action is urgently needed to mitigate the risks of climate change. The reality of global warming, its current serious and potentially disastrous impacts on Earth system properties, and the key role emissions from human activities play in driving these phenomena have been recognized by earlier versions of this ACS policy statement (ACS, 2004), by other major scientific societies, including the American Geophysical Union (AGU, 2003), the American Meteorological Society (AMS, 2007) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 2007), and by the U. S. National Academies and ten other leading national academies of science (NA, 2005)."
55. American Institute of Physics Statement supporting AGU statement on human-induced climate change, 2003 "The Governing Board of the American Institute of Physics has endorsed a position statement on climate change adopted by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Council in December 2003."
56. American Physical Society Climate Change Policy Statement, November 2007"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes. The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now. Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
57. AIP science policy document. (PDF), 2005 "Policy: The AIP supports a reduction of the green house gas emissions that are leading to increased global temperatures, and encourages research that works towards this goal. Reason: Research in Australia and overseas shows that an increase in global temperature will adversely affect the Earth’s climate patterns. The melting of the polar ice caps, combined with thermal expansion, will lead to rises in sea levels that may impact adversely on our coastal cities. The impact of these changes on biodiversity will fundamentally change the ecology of Earth."
58. EPS Position Paper Energy for the future: The Nuclear Option (PDF), 2007 "The emission of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, among which carbon dioxide is the main contributor, has amplified the natural greenhouse effect and led to global warming. The main contribution stems from burning fossil fuels. A further increase will have decisive effects on life on earth. An energy cycle with the lowest possible CO2 emission is called for wherever possible to combat climate change."
59. "AGU Position Statement: Human Impacts on Climate". Agu.org. Retrieved2012-07-30.
60. "Human-induced Climate Change Requires Urgent Action". Position Statement. American Geophysical Union. Retrieved 14 August 2013.
61. ASA, CSSA, and SSSA Position Statement on Climate Change
62. "EFG Website | Home". Eurogeologists.de. 2011-08-10. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
63. EFG Carbon Capture and geological Storage
64. http://www.egu.eu/statements/position-statement-of-the-divisions-of-atmospheric-and-climate-sciences-7-july-2005.html 65. http://www.egu.eu/statements/egu-position-statement-on-ocean-acidification.html 66. "The Geological Society of America - Position Statement on Global Climate Change". Geosociety.org. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
67. "Geological Society - Climate change: evidence from the geological record". Geolsoc.org.uk. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
68. IUGG Resolution 6
69. http://www.nagt.org/index.html 70. http://nagt.org/nagt/organization/ps-climate.html 71. "AMS Information Statement on Climate Change". Ametsoc.org. 2012-08-20. Retrieved2012-08-27.
72. "Statement". AMOS. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
73. CFCAS Letter to PM, November 25, 2005
74. Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Letter to Stephen Harper(Updated, 2007)
75. http://www.rmets.org/news/detail.php?ID=332 76. WMO’s Statement at the Twelfth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
77. AMQUA "Petroleum Geologists’ Award to Novelist Crichton Is Inappropriate"
78. ^ Jump up to:a b INQUA Statement On Climate Change.
79. AAWV Position Statement on Climate Change, Wildlife Diseases, and Wildlife Health"There is widespread scientific agreement that the world’s climate is changing and that the weight of evidence demonstrates that anthropogenic factors have and will continue to contribute significantly to global warming and climate change. It is anticipated that continuing changes to the climate will have serious negative impacts on public, animal and ecosystem health due to extreme weather events, changing disease transmissiondynamics, emerging and re-emerging diseases, and alterations to habitat and ecological systems that are essential to wildlife conservation. Furthermore, there is increasing recognition of the inter-relationships of human, domestic animal, wildlife, and ecosystem health as illustrated by the fact the majority of recent emerging diseases have a wildlife origin."
80. AIBS Position Statements "Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver."
81. Scientific societies warn Senate: climate change is real, Ars Technica, October 22, 2009
82. Letter to US Senators (PDF), October 2009
83. Global Environmental Change — Microbial Contributions, Microbial Solutions (PDF),American Society For Microbiology, May 2006 They recommended "reducing net anthropogenic CO2 emissions to the atmosphere” and “minimizing anthropogenic disturbances of” atmospheric gases. Carbon dioxide concentrations were relatively stable for the past 10,000 years but then began to increase rapidly about 150 years ago…as a result of fossil fuel consumption and land use change. Of course, changes in atmospheric composition are but one component of global change, which also includes disturbances in the physical and chemical conditions of the oceans and land surface. Although global change has been a natural process throughout Earth’s history, humans are responsible for substantially accelerating present-day changes. These changes may adversely affect human health and the biosphere on which we depend. Outbreaks of a number of diseases, including Lyme disease, hantavirus infections, dengue fever, bubonic plague, and cholera, have been linked to climate change."
84. Australian Coral Reef Society official letter (PDF), 2006, archived from the original(PDF) on 22 March 2006 Official communique regarding the Great Barrier Reef and the "world-wide decline in coral reefs through processes such as overfishing, runoff of nutrients from the land, coral bleaching, global climate change, ocean acidification, pollution", etc.: There is almost total consensus among experts that the earth’s climate is changing as a result of the build-up of greenhouse gases. The IPCC (involving over 3,000 of the world’s experts) has come out with clear conclusions as to the reality of this phenomenon. One does not have to look further than the collective academy of scientists worldwide to see the string (of) statements on this worrying change to the earth’s atmosphere. There is broad scientific consensus that coral reefs are heavily affected by the activities of man and there are significant global influences that can make reefs more vulnerable such as global warming....It is highly likely that coral bleaching has been exacerbated by global warming."
85. Institute of Biology policy page ‘Climate Change’ "there is scientific agreement that the rapid global warming that has occurred in recent years is mostly anthropogenic, ie due to human activity.” As a consequence of global warming, they warn that a “rise in sea levels due to melting of ice caps is expected to occur. Rises in temperature will have complex and frequently localised effects on weather, but an overall increase in extreme weather conditions and changes in precipitation patterns are probable, resulting in flooding and drought. The spread of tropical diseases is also expected.” Subsequently, the Institute of Biology advocates policies to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions, as we feel that the consequences of climate change are likely to be severe."
86. SAF Forest Management and Climate Change (PDF), 2008 "Forests are shaped by climate....Changes in temperature and precipitation regimes therefore have the potential to dramatically affect forests nationwide. There is growing evidence that our climate is changing. The changes in temperature have been associated with increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHGs in the atmosphere."
87. SAF Forest Offset Projects in a Carbon Trading System (PDF), 2008 "Forests play a significant role in offsetting CO2 emissions, the primary anthropogenic GHG."
88. Wildlife Society Global Climate Change and Wildlife (PDF) "Scientists throughout the world have concluded that climate research conducted in the past two decades definitively shows that rapid worldwide climate change occurred in the 20th century, and will likely continue to occur for decades to come. Although climates have varied dramatically since the Earth was formed, few scientists question the role of humans in exacerbating recent climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases. The critical issue is no longer “if” climate change is occurring, but rather how to address its effects on wildlife and wildlife habitats." The statement goes on to assert that “evidence is accumulating that wildlife and wildlife habitats have been and will continue to be significantly affected by ongoing large-scale rapid climate change.” The statement concludes with a call for “reduction in anthropogenic (human-caused) sources of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions contributing to global climate change and the conservation of CO2- consumingphotosynthesizers (i.e., plants).”
89. AAP Global Climate Change and Children's Health, 2007 "There is broad scientific consensus that Earth's climate is warming rapidly and at an accelerating rate. Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, are very likely (>90% probability) to be the main cause of this warming. Climate-sensitive changes in ecosystems are already being observed, and fundamental, potentially irreversible, ecological changes may occur in the coming decades. Conservative environmental estimates of the impact of climate changes that are already in process indicate that they will result in numerous health effects to children. Anticipated direct health consequences of climate change include injury and death from extreme weather events and natural disasters, increases in climate-sensitiveinfectious diseases, increases in air pollution–related illness, and more heat-related, potentially fatal, illness. Within all of these categories, children have increased vulnerability compared with other groups."
90. ACPM Policy Statement Abrupt Climate Change and Public Health Implications, 2006"The American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM) accept the position that global warming and climate change is occurring, that there is potential for abrupt climate change, and that human practices that increase greenhouse gases exacerbate the problem, and that the public health consequences may be severe."
91. American Medical Association Policy Statement, 2008 "Support the findings of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which states that the Earth is undergoing adverse global climate change and that these changes will negatively affect public health. Support educating the medical community on the potential adverse public health effects of global climate change, including topics such as population displacement, flooding, infectious and vector-borne diseases, and healthy water supplies."
92. American Public Health Association Policy Statement ‘’Addressing the Urgent Threat of Global Climate Change to Public Health and the Environment’’, 2007 "The long-term threat of global climate change to global health is extremely serious and the fourth IPCC report and other scientific literature demonstrate convincingly that anthropogenic GHG emissions are primarily responsible for this threat….US policy makers should immediately take necessary steps to reduce US emissions of GHGs, including carbon dioxide, to avert dangerous climate change."
93. AMA Climate Change and Human Health — 2004, 2004 They recommend policies "to mitigate the possible consequential health effects of climate change through improved energy efficiency, clean energy production and other emission reduction steps."
94. AMA Climate Change and Human Health — 2004. Revised 2008., 2008 "The world’s climate – our life-support system – is being altered in ways that are likely to pose significant direct and indirect challenges to health. While ‘climate change’ can be due to natural forces or human activity, there is now substantial evidence to indicate that human activity – and specifically increased greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions – is a key factor in the pace and extent of global temperature increases. Health impacts of climate change include the direct impacts of extreme events such as storms, floods, heatwaves and fires and the indirect effects of longer-term changes, such as drought, changes to the food andwater supply, resource conflicts and population shifts. Increases in average temperatures mean that alterations in the geographic range and seasonality of certain infections and diseases (including vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, Ross River virusand food-borne infections such as Salmonellosis) may be among the first detectable impacts of climate change on human health. Human health is ultimately dependent on the health of the planet and its ecosystem. The AMA believes that measures which mitigate climate change will also benefit public health. Reducing GHGs should therefore be seen as a public health priority."
95. World Federation of Public Health Associations resolution "Global Climate Change"(PDF), 2001 "Noting the conclusions of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climatologists that anthropogenic greenhouse gases, which contribute to global climate change, have substantially increased in atmospheric concentration beyond natural processes and have increased by 28 percent since the industrial revolution….Realizing that subsequent health effects from such perturbations in the climate system would likely include an increase in: heat-related mortality and morbidity; vector-borne infectious diseases,… water-borne diseases…(and) malnutrition from threatened agriculture….the World Federation of Public Health Associations…recommends precautionary primary preventive measures to avert climate change, including reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and preservation of greenhouse gas sinks through appropriate energy and land use policies, in view of the scale of potential health impacts...."
96. WHO Protecting health from climate change (PDF), 2008, p. 2, retrieved 2009-04-18
97. Statement supporting AGU statement on human-induced climate change, American Astronomical Society, 2004 "In endorsing the "Human Impacts on Climate" statement [issued by the American Geophysical Union], the AAS recognizes the collective expertise of the AGU in scientific subfields central to assessing and understanding global change, and acknowledges the strength of agreement among our AGU colleagues that the global climate is changing and human activities are contributing to that change."
98. ASA Statement on Climate Change, November 30, 2007 "The ASA endorses the IPCC conclusions.... Over the course of four assessment reports, a small number of statisticians have served as authors or reviewers. Although this involvement is encouraging, it does not represent the full range of statistical expertise available. ASA recommends that more statisticians should become part of the IPCC process. Such participation would be mutually beneficial to the assessment of climate change and its impacts and also to the statistical community."
99. Lapp, David. "What Is Climate Change". Canadian Council of Professional Engineers. Retrieved 18 August 2015.
100. Policy Statement, Climate Change and Energy, February 2007 "Engineers Australia believes that Australia must act swiftly and proactively in line with global expectations to address climate change as an economic, social and environmental risk... We believe that addressing the costs of atmospheric emissions will lead to increasing our competitive advantage by minimising risks and creating new economic opportunities. Engineers Australia believes the Australian Government should ratify the Kyoto Protocol."
101. IAGLR Fact Sheet The Great Lakes at a Crossroads: Preparing for a Changing Climate (PDF), February 2009 "While the Earth’s climate has changed many times during the planet’s history because of natural factors, including volcanic eruptions and changes in the Earth’s orbit, never before have we observed the present rapid rise in temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2). Human activities resulting from the industrial revolution have changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere....Deforestation is now the second largest contributor to global warming, after the burning of fossil fuels. These human activities have significantly increased the concentration of “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere. As the Earth’s climate warms, we are seeing many changes: stronger, more destructive hurricanes; heavier rainfall; more disastrous flooding; more areas of the world experiencing severe drought; and more heat waves."
102. IPENZ Informatory Note, Climate Change and the greenhouse effect (PDF), October 2001 "Human activities have increased the concentration of these atmospheric greenhouse gases, and although the changes are relatively small, the equilibrium maintained by the atmosphere is delicate, and so the effect of these changes is significant. The world’s most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, a by-product of the burning of fossil fuels. Since the time of the Industrial Revolution about 200 years ago, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from about 280 parts per million to 370 parts per million, an increase of around 30%. On the basis of available data, climate scientists are now projecting an average global temperature rise over this century of 2.0 to 4.5°C. This compared with 0.6°C over the previous century – about a 500% increase... This could lead to changing, and for all emissions scenarios more unpredictable, weather patterns around the world, less frost days, more extreme events (droughts and storm or flood disasters), and warmer sea temperatures and melting glaciers causing sea levels to rise. ... Professional engineers commonly deal with risk, and frequently have to make judgments based on incomplete data. The available evidence suggests very strongly that human activities have already begun to make significant changes to the earth’s climate, and that the long-term risk of delaying action is greater than the cost of avoiding/minimising the risk."
103. AAPG Position Statement: Climate Change from dpa.aapg.org
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You have still failed to provide a response to any of this.
Florida & Arizona have so many sleeper agents they're basically provinces. Then if it needs to come to blows, we'll attack in the winter so we have the homefield advantage, we'll blow up the niagra falls power plant, which will kill off millions of americans in new york as they freeze leaving all the canadians alive. 
Terrorists 
