US Politics

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**cuda1179**

Pouncey wrote:
[And Trump has no experience of any sort in any kind of government office.

[,

And people wanted an outsider, which is what he billed himself as. Unlike Clinton, who billed herself several times as an "outsider", despite being one of the most inside people to ever consider the Presidency.

If Obama was given a chance to do a learn-on-the-job study program, then give the same chance to Trump. At least let the guy try the job first before throwing out criticism.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pouncey wrote:
[
Well, the scientists studying this stuff all seem to think humanity's role is pretty significant and we have to get the situation under control.

I'm gonna trust the experts' opinions.

Nice strawman argument there. I never stated manmade emissions weren't a problem. I just corrected someone that incorrectly stated the amount man makes, which is also stated by the experts.

**Ahtman**

Just Tony wrote:
It may have been because Karl Marx himself said that Socialism logically leads to communism. Did nobody read the actual texts that Marx and Weber put out?

If you read any of it you also know Marx said that Capitalism logically leads to Communism as well.

**godardc**

So, if manmade co2 is so low, how could it be responsoble for gobal warming ?

**Spinner**

cuda1179 wrote:
Pouncey wrote:
[And Trump has no experience of any sort in any kind of government office.

[,

And people wanted an outsider, which is what he billed himself as. Unlike Clinton, who billed herself several times as an "outsider", despite being one of the most inside people to ever consider the Presidency.

If Obama was given a chance to do a learn-on-the-job study program, then give the same chance to Trump.

He's not really an outsider, though. He's just as tied to the seedier side of Washington as any career politician, it's just that he didn't have a government job before. Obama had some political experience and was more than willing to learn the new stuff; Trump seems aggressively uninterested in figuring out how to do the job.

Can you imagine the conservative outragesplosion if the Democrats nominated someone who didn't know how many articles the Constitution had?

At least let the guy try the job first before throwing out criticism.

Hell with that. I'll criticize him all I like; I'll criticize him on his shady business tactics, I'll criticize him on his racism and misogyny and bigotry, I'll criticize him on his normalization of conspiracy theories and endorsement of torture, I'll criticize him for the screwed-up way he ran his campaign and the screwed-up way he's talking about running the country.

There's plenty to criticize already, and the fact that he's still President-Elect and not President doesn't wipe that away.

**Ahtman**

cuda1179 wrote:
And people wanted an outsider

Choosing an outsider for merely being an outsider isn't a very considered idea. What they wanted is a good outsider but what they got, and what they voted for, was a terrible outsider. In their desperation it would seem people choose a man they don't fully understand. One man isn't going to destroy the USA or anything that goofy, but he sure is going to try his damnedest and appoint people who will do the same.

**Pouncey**

Just Tony wrote:
As a footnote, since most pro-Socialist politicians/voters are also big fans of the single payer healthcare system, we fortunately have one in existence right here in the US of A to give you an example of what the US would be like if we went that road.

The VA.

I want that to sink in: the biggest push from the socialized healthcare crowd is to essentially ape the VA. I've been dealing with the VA since 2008 for a back injury during my deployment. I've seen firsthand how bad the system runs, and that it took until 2013 for them to simply process paperwork stating my physical limits so I could continue my military career. That's not even counting the hoops one has to go through for medication. Ever dealt with ExpressScripts? Try it some time. My wife has to go through them to get her diabetes medicines, along with her other long term medication. One prescription went unfilled for over 2 months, and we had to go out of pocket to keep her alive essentially. And if that is spread to every place universally, what is the likelihood of us being able to actually GET things when the socialized medical service fails as it routinely does?

And don't get me started on incompetence within the system. WITHOUT any sort of MRI or Xray to go off of, they sent me to a chiropractic session in their hospital. Thankfully the Dr. or whatever he was refused to administer care without knowing the extent of the injury.

You could make the system work better, you know. Improving things is a thing you can do if you want to.

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cuda1179 wrote:
Pouncey wrote:
[And Trump has no experience of any sort in any kind of government office.

[,

And people wanted an outsider, which is what he billed himself as. Unlike Clinton, who billed herself several times as an "outsider", despite being one of the most inside people to ever consider the Presidency.

If Obama was given a chance to do a learn-on-the-job study program, then give the same chance to Trump. At least let the guy try the job first before throwing out criticism.

Yeah, uh, pretty much every President never had experience being President before. It's a job only one person can have at a time. Even Hillary Clinton didn't have experience being President.

**d-usa**

The vast and overwhelming number of people utilizing the VA are happy with it and want it improved where it needs to be improved rather than having it privatized.

**Pouncey**

godardc wrote:
So, if manmade co2 is so low, how could it be responsoble for gobal warming ?

Is man-made CO2 the only contribution humanity is making toward climate change?

Because it's not.

**A Town Called Malus**

Also, you wouldn't try that "let him try the job before we criticise" thing in any other job of this level.

"Sure this guy has no experience but he's told us that he's going to be the best neurosurgeon there is so we figured we'd let him do your surgery."

"Sure this guy has no engineering or architectural experience but he's going to design us the best and tallest skyscraper in the world."

"Sure this guy has no experience but he's told us that he's got just the best plan for winning this war as long as he's given absolute control over our entire armed forces."

"Sure this guy has no experience but if he says that this new nuclear reactor design is perfectly safe I believe him."

And so on. Sometimes you don't need to wait until someone tries the job to see that letting them try out that job is a really dumb thing to do.

**Pouncey**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
Also, you wouldn't try that "let him try the job before we criticise" thing in any other job of this level.

"Sure this guy has no experience but he's told us that he's going to be the best neurosurgeon there is."

"Sure this guy has no engineering or architectural experience but he's going to design us the best and tallest skyscraper in the world."

"Sure this guy has no experience but he's told us that he's got just the best plan for winning this war as long as he's given absolute control over our entire armed forces."

"Sure this guy has no experience but if he says that this new nuclear reactor design is perfectly safe I believe him."

And so on. Sometimes you don't need to wait until someone tries the job to see that letting them try out that job is a really dumb thing to do.

Things Trump would not do:

Take some guy spouting outrageous nonsense, who's never had any sort of management experience in a business, and give him the job of CEO of his company.

Things Trump would do:

Be that guy, when it applies to politics.

**cuda1179**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
Also, you wouldn't try that "let him try the job before we criticise" thing in any other job of this level.

"Sure this guy has no experience but he's told us that he's going to be the best neurosurgeon there is so we figured we'd let him do your surgery."

"Sure this guy has no engineering or architectural experience but he's going to design us the best and tallest skyscraper in the world."

"Sure this guy has no experience but he's told us that he's got just the best plan for winning this war as long as he's given absolute control over our entire armed forces."

"Sure this guy has no experience but if he says that this new nuclear reactor design is perfectly safe I believe him."

And so on. Sometimes you don't need to wait until someone tries the job to see that letting them try out that job is a really dumb thing to do.

On the other hand we have bicycle repairmen inventing the airplane. I'll be honest, I'm not a Trump fanboy, and I disagree with many aspects about him. That being said, I do like his plans for limiting lobbyists. I like his idea for making concealed carry permits nationally recognized.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

godardc wrote:
So, if manmade co2 is so low, how could it be responsoble for gobal warming ?

And this is part of the argument. Man is definitely contributing to Climate Change, but exactly how much is man and how much is naturally occurring? Is man THE driving force, or is man "helping" the same way your child "helps" on "bring your daughter to work" day. Back in 2004 I peed in the Missouri River. Technically I contributed to the flooding of New Orleans.

**d-usa**

Update from the land of capitalism:

Wife went to her part time gig at the local Catholic Church affiliated non-profit hospital.

They gave employees a raise to bring them above the thresholds for having to pay them overtime, and due to a recent court ruling now decided to take all those raises away since they are not needed anymore.

**Peregrine**

cuda1179 wrote:
On the other hand we have bicycle repairmen inventing the airplane.

That's a rather misleading way of looking at it. They may have started as bicycle repairmen, but by the time they succeeded in "inventing" the airplane they had gone through an extensive process of testing and development and were no longer "outsiders". And they were also working in the context of existing research into the subject. Gliders were already a thing, and the biggest remaining challenge to building a successful airplane was getting an engine with a high enough power to weight ratio. And that prior work went into the final design, the "bicycle repairmen" didn't come in as ignorant outsiders and reinvent the entire concept of flight.

**cuda1179**

Peregrine wrote:
cuda1179 wrote:
On the other hand we have bicycle repairmen inventing the airplane.

That's a rather misleading way of looking at it. They may have started as bicycle repairmen, but by the time they succeeded in "inventing" the airplane they had gone through an extensive process of testing and development and were no longer "outsiders". And they were also working in the context of existing research into the subject. Gliders were already a thing, and the biggest remaining challenge to building a successful airplane was getting an engine with a high enough power to weight ratio. And that prior work went into the final design, the "bicycle repairmen" didn't come in as ignorant outsiders and reinvent the entire concept of flight.

So are you insinuating that Trump hasn't been looking at the political policies that preceded him? That he will be going in with no plan?

**Peregrine**

cuda1179 wrote:
So are you insinuating that Trump hasn't been looking at the political policies that preceded him? That he will be going in with no plan?

Based on the chaos of his president-elect process so far, I'd say that's a good bet.

**Spinner**

cuda1179 wrote:
Peregrine wrote:
cuda1179 wrote:
On the other hand we have bicycle repairmen inventing the airplane.

That's a rather misleading way of looking at it. They may have started as bicycle repairmen, but by the time they succeeded in "inventing" the airplane they had gone through an extensive process of testing and development and were no longer "outsiders". And they were also working in the context of existing research into the subject. Gliders were already a thing, and the biggest remaining challenge to building a successful airplane was getting an engine with a high enough power to weight ratio. And that prior work went into the final design, the "bicycle repairmen" didn't come in as ignorant outsiders and reinvent the entire concept of flight.

So are you insinuating that Trump hasn't been looking at the political policies that preceded him? That he will be going in with no plan?

That's...pretty much what he's doing, isn't he?

**Pouncey**

cuda1179 wrote:
Peregrine wrote:
cuda1179 wrote:
On the other hand we have bicycle repairmen inventing the airplane.

That's a rather misleading way of looking at it. They may have started as bicycle repairmen, but by the time they succeeded in "inventing" the airplane they had gone through an extensive process of testing and development and were no longer "outsiders". And they were also working in the context of existing research into the subject. Gliders were already a thing, and the biggest remaining challenge to building a successful airplane was getting an engine with a high enough power to weight ratio. And that prior work went into the final design, the "bicycle repairmen" didn't come in as ignorant outsiders and reinvent the entire concept of flight.

So are you insinuating that Trump hasn't been looking at the political policies that preceded him? That he will be going in with no plan?

I'm not sure what he was thinking. I don't think he really understood what the President does before he applied for the job.

**Pendix**

godardc wrote:
So, if manmade co2 is so low, how could it be responsoble for gobal warming ?

It doesn't take much to destabilise an otherwise stable system. Even if that system already includes a great deal of whats being added. Take your car's engine for example; it generates a lot of heat, and it uses a great deal of cooling to keep that heat under control. When it is stable, it's hot, true, but it otherwise works fine, add enough extra heat (or, reduce the cooling enough), and the engine will over-heat, coolant will boil off, components will fail, and the engine will stop working. And that 'extra' heat, that caused the failure, was much less than the heat that is normally in the engine.

**Pouncey**

I mean, some of the things Trump has suggested... He doesn't even know international law well enough to know what things are war crimes. Because he has suggested things that absolutely would be war crimes if he actually had the US military do them.

**cuda1179**

Pouncey wrote:
I mean, some of the things Trump has suggested... He doesn't even know international law well enough to know what things are war crimes. Because he has suggested things that absolutely would be war crimes if he actually had the US military do them.

And yet we've had "experienced" presidents do similar things.......

**Pouncey**

Pendix wrote:
godardc wrote:
So, if manmade co2 is so low, how could it be responsoble for gobal warming ?

It doesn't take much to destabilise an otherwise stable system. Even if that system already includes a great deal of whats being added. Take your car's engine for example; it generates a lot of heat, and it uses a great deal of cooling to keep that heat under control. When it is stable, it's hot, true, but it otherwise works fine, add enough extra heat (or, reduce the cooling enough), and the engine will over-heat, coolant will boil off, components will fail, and the engine will stop working. And that 'extra' heat, that caused the failure, was much less than the heat that is normally in the engine.

Also, we should probably get the problem under control as soon as possible. It might not seem serious now, but if we wait too long, we might not be able to do anything about it anymore.

And our species could end up going extinct if it gets bad enough. Worst-case scenario might be that Earth could no longer support life.

We're already killing off enough species that humans are the direct cause of the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's history. One of the previous ones was when a meteorite hit the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

cuda1179 wrote:
Pouncey wrote:
I mean, some of the things Trump has suggested... He doesn't even know international law well enough to know what things are war crimes. Because he has suggested things that absolutely would be war crimes if he actually had the US military do them.

And yet we've had "experienced" presidents do similar things.......

When, exactly?

**d-usa**

Peregrine wrote:
cuda1179 wrote:
So are you insinuating that Trump hasn't been looking at the political policies that preceded him? That he will be going in with no plan?

Based on the chaos of his president-elect process so far, I'd say that's a good bet.

It appears that neither he, nor his campaign, knew that he would have to hire his own White House staff.

That really says everything about how prepared he is for the job.

**cuda1179**

Pouncey wrote:
[
When, exactly?

Well, The Aliens and Sedition Act comes to mind, President Roosevelt (teddy) actively interfering with the internal political conflicts of a sovereign nation, JFK giving guns to a bunch of Mid-easterners to overthrow the Government of Iraq that then put Sadam Hussein into power, and also George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were found guilty of war crimes.

**Pouncey**

cuda1179 wrote:
Pouncey wrote:

When, exactly?

Well, The Aliens and Sedition Act comes to mind, President Roosevelt (teddy) actively interfering with the internal political conflicts of a sovereign nation, JFK giving guns to a bunch of Mid-easterners to overthrow the Government of Iraq that then put Sadam Hussein into power, and also George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were found guilty of war crimes.

For the first two, uh, I'm not familiar with those parts of the Geneva Convention.

For the last one, did that even happen? Are they in prison right now somewhere?

**Just Tony**

Pouncey wrote:
godardc wrote:
So, if manmade co2 is so low, how could it be responsoble for gobal warming ?

Is man-made CO2 the only contribution humanity is making toward climate change?

Because it's not.

No, but it's the one that's focused on the strongest by everyone pushing clean emissions laws currently.

And also to something you said earlier, the scientific community isn't 100% unified on climate change. There are scientists denying climate change, scientists claiming cyclical patters to climate change (ie. prep for another ice age sometime in the future), and even some that are convinced that ONLY manmade involvement can be the root cause.

And as far as fixing the system goes, why didn't they just throw effort into fixing the Edsel? Because other cars actually worked better. If you have a quantifiably inferior design and a quantifiably superior design, only an unmitigated fool would try to find some way to run with the inferior design.

**Pouncey**

Just Tony wrote:
Pouncey wrote:
godardc wrote:
So, if manmade co2 is so low, how could it be responsoble for gobal warming ?

Is man-made CO2 the only contribution humanity is making toward climate change?

Because it's not.

No, but it's the one that's focused on the strongest by everyone pushing clean emissions laws currently.

And also to something you said earlier, the scientific community isn't 100% unified on climate change. There are scientists denying climate change, scientists claiming cyclical patters to climate change (ie. prep for another ice age sometime in the future), and even some that are convinced that ONLY manmade involvement can be the root cause.

And as far as fixing the system goes, why didn't they just throw effort into fixing the Edsel? Because other cars actually worked better. If you have a quantifiably inferior design and a quantifiably superior design, only an unmitigated fool would try to find some way to run with the inferior design.

There are also scientists who deny evolution. Doesn't mean there's not a consensus.

**cuda1179**

Pouncey wrote:
[There are also scientists who deny evolution. Doesn't mean there's not a consensus.

The often quoted "consensus" really isn't though. We often hear about that study of thousands of scientists that agree.......Except that only a small portion of them are actually scientists, many of them only partially agree, many of them agree only if you cherry pick their quotes, some have been discredited, and others have been entirely misquoted and have sued to have it cleared up.

Or there's the often misquoted "97% of scientists agree" statement. It really means, 97% of papers we read, which we cherry picked, many of which are actually written by the same people, vaguely agree with it.

**Sarouan**

While you're debating about what is socialism, seems like Jill Stein says she's pushing to do a recount of the votes in the Wisconsin. And the Clinton Team doesn't seem to stop her.

Meanwhile, Trump reacted and says they must respect the election. Funny that he was the one saying the election was rigged even before people went to vote. But I guess nobody remembers that in America now, it's been far too long for their short term memory. It seems like that's what your President-elect wants to believe.

**Pouncey**

Sarouan wrote:
While you're debating about what is socialism, seems like Jill Stein says she's pushing to do a recount of the votes in the Wisconsin. And the Clinton Team doesn't seem to stop her.

Meanwhile, Trump reacted and says they must respect the election. Funny that he was the one saying the election was rigged even before people went to vote. But I guess nobody remembers that in America now, it's been far too long for their short term memory. It seems like that's what your President-elect wants to believe.

I think it'd be a good thing if the election had been rigged. It would explain why Trump ended up in power without requiring America to have lost its mind. It would also mean they could re-do the election and maybe not have Trump in office.

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cuda1179 wrote:
Pouncey wrote:
[There are also scientists who deny evolution. Doesn't mean there's not a consensus.

The often quoted "consensus" really isn't though. We often hear about that study of thousands of scientists that agree.......Except that only a small portion of them are actually scientists, many of them only partially agree, many of them agree only if you cherry pick their quotes, some have been discredited, and others have been entirely misquoted and have sued to have it cleared up.

Or there's the often misquoted "97% of scientists agree" statement. It really means, 97% of papers we read, which we cherry picked, many of which are actually written by the same people, vaguely agree with it.

Personally, I'm really only interested in what scientists in relevant fields think.

I mean, I really don't care what a biologist thinks about physics, for example.

**Co'tor Shas**

I'm not exactly sure what would happen if there was evidence of rigging. It would go to the states, and both parties would take it to court. We might see some political maneuvering from both sides, something like Obama nominates a R SCOTUS nominee, the states give H the ECs. It's not going to happen, but it would be interesting.