Republicans to block EPA on regulating Greenhouse Gases

Here is a link http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2011/02/02/environment-republicans-greenhouse-gas.html

So basically the Republicans want to start off this year with blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases or in fact doing anything with regards to global warming.

Discuss!

So let's see...greenhouse gases...redefining rape...repealing healthcare...

What happened to that jobs thing?

You happy, independent voters? Get ready to reap what you sow, idiots.

Voting Democrat isn't all that rosy either. As an Independent voter, I don't see any option that I like, at least not one that has a snowballs chance in hell of winning.

Your only choice as an independent is to either not vote, or take a huge bite of a big shit sandwich, the only difference is which side of the sandwich you take a bite of.

Oh for fuck's sake.

But you have to admit Barkey, these are not the promises they made to get elected. This is pretty clearly a continuation of the agenda that helped get them forced out of control.

@Ultra: parties doing the opposite of what the people voted them in for is nothing new or unique.

Even Fox News (Megan Kelley, anyway) is saying "You've been strongarmed into supporting legislation that will never pass [in the Senate]."

I think that's the point. IMHO, the Republicans' real goal is not to defang the EPA, but to be able to claim the Democrats let the EPA get out of control.

I have to agree with Barkey on this one. The U.S. Party system is pretty much crap. With mixed government less crap gets done.

edited 2nd Feb '11 11:22:31 AM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

Well I know I'll never be a politician. I'd probably throw a chair at whoever presented this crap to the Senate.

The dems have been rendered ineffectual, and a disenheartening proportion of the GOP seems to be hell bent on getting us all killed one way or another.

If they would admit that maybe its possible that sometimes big corporations might not always know whats best for the country and ditched all this religious stuff, I'd be more inclined to cast a vote their way.

I say we genocide both parties, and rebuild them from the ground up with nice, educated, wise people.

Who agrees?

I'd rather go with the Heinlein version.

But you have to admit Barkey, these are not the promises they made to get elected. This is pretty clearly a continuation of the agenda that helped get them forced out of control.

Yeah, I agree. I stopped listening to what they have to say since I know both of their agendas. It's more that I think to myself "Hmm, what are the actual effects of these folks being in power.. What do I know they will actually support?" and I vote based on my predictions of that.

It's really sad that I might just stop voting for a while, I'm tired of feeling guilty whenever a stupid Democrat idea pops up since I voted Obama. But at the same time stupid shit like this hogs up the air time while the Republicans are tardin' out, so you don't hear much about the Dems at the moment.

^^You go back to the same issue within 20 years tops, if not like 4 years. I think you have to look deeper as to why your government is so damn corrupt.

Off the top of my head I could say you do the following things:

• Ban corporate donations to political parties
• Ban anonymous donations to political parties
• Limit individual private donations to political parties
• Introduce tax funding for political campaigns based on number of votes received, to assist third parties
• Introduce a strict flat spending limit on political campaigns (a simple single number, no exceptions, forget whatever previous rules you had on limits)
• Introduce a budgetary watch dog, a single guy with some staff to look over the budget and forecast projections
• Introduce an agency to compile any and all statistics, individual departments/bureaus are not allowed to do statistics on their own, they have to ask Statistics America to do it (ie. Justice Bureau can't make up the crime stats anymore and "juke" the numbers)
• Switch to a simpler and more clear, single auditing agency to perform general audits on the federal government

edited 2nd Feb '11 12:03:33 PM by breadloaf

didn't we already do some of that?

nice, educated, wise people

1. Good luck finding one.
2. Well, in that case I nominate myself.

edited 2nd Feb '11 12:05:10 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

.-. I'm crying at stupidity.

Also interesting how invested CBC is invested in American politics. I can't even name a Canadian politician.

I'm with you Anonym.

Yes well, that's the usual joke isn't it? Canadians learn about America because you're a neighbouring country and important to trade, politics, economy and all. Americans just don't bother to learn anything. The number of Americans I've met who didn't even know we deployed thousands of soldiers alongside USA in Afghanistan is quite high and made only more infuriating with their offhand comments about how we don't do anything after we've the highest deaths per capita over there being a thankless ally. Wait... really off topic.

Uhh... and that's why I dislike republicans and their climate change denying ways!

^

Troops know. Served with a few Canadians myself, really fun folks. Then again my home unit does an exchange program with the Canadian Air Force, at any time there's at least 10 or so of them here working with our planes while we have people over there, the people doing it get rotated out every 6 months.

I'm so jealous, enlisted can be pilots and they can have more facial hair than us.

edited 2nd Feb '11 12:18:06 PM by Barkey

Well I'm not that bad. I'll admit that I didn't know about the death rate but I knew you deployed a sizeable force.

At least the Democrats are a modicum less insular, but not enough to make a difference.

Oh, and next time you meet an American like that give 'em a good slap up-side the head. From me.

There are troops from a lot of countries fighting in all sorts of conflicts a lot of people don't know about. Did you know a Canadian in Afghanistan holds the world record for longest distance for a rifle shot hitting a target?

Canada also came through for the world big time on 9/11 when the U.S. closed its airspace.

edited 2nd Feb '11 12:27:26 PM by FrodoGoofballCoTV

That was just an off-rant by me, I should say that I also know plenty of Americans who are much more knowledgeable. I'm sure I don't know of all the conflict zones in the world, but I figure Americans should know about the conflict zones they send their soldiers into, after all they vote on it.

But to be more on topic here, the whole greenhouse gas thing is just another thing about the congress that simply amazes me. Americans will get angry about a corrupt government, or that they were lied to, or whatever, but when it comes to the polls what do they do? They go vote back in the same people screwing them. They can call themselves tea party, democrat, republican, or whatever but in the end, they're the same group of people going back into power, with their kids and friends making up the next generation of politicians afterward.

The whole tangent on the lack of knowledge of our alliance in Afghanistan is just an example of this behaviour. I mean, what if tomorrow, congress started a discussion on reworking America's relations with NATO? If 50% of Americans don't even know what NATO allies are doing then how can they make a sound decision at the polls?

Ah, but the polls do a lot less than you'd expect.

What we need is a big shake up of the current parties. Unfortunetly our best bet is the Tea Party eliciting a Newtonian response from the left.

Your only choice as an independent is to either not vote,

That's the choice I made. It's not a rational act, since you can't change the outcome.

I like to think I helped keep CT blue.

Although I voted Republican for Governor. He lost.

Now this is getting comical...are Republicans trying out for Captain Planet villains or something? First flipping off healthcare, then trying to change the definition of rape, now this?!

What next, blue prints for a planetary deathray?

edited 2nd Feb '11 12:54:22 PM by Signed