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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Republicans like Mccain and Kasich once agreed on climate change. It wasn't such a partisan thing at all. Remember that Reagan and Bush the First backed it. Then sometime in the 2000s, they lost their collective minds.
I think Cheney and Bush II were the ones who did it, they backtracked from Kyoto Protocols and while Bush II accepted climate change he basically didn't do anything and he let denialists run roughshod on the media.
Biden's too old. He'd be 78 by the time of the next election and 86 at the end if he wins reelection. I really think we should try to find a candidate that's not in their 70s.
edit: Honestly I sometimes feel like the whining about "Liberal Elitism" is a mass version of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Uneducated people aren't willing to admit that they don't know what they're talking about so when experts tell them they're wrong they think they're being lied to because it doesn't match their opinion.
edited 5th Dec '16 6:10:15 PM by Kostya
If the new head of the EPA is a true believer hardcore denialist, then all the data in the world that doesn't fit his worldview won't change his mind about it.
Heh, maybe Thiel's pie-in-the-sky hopes of finding a way to use the blood of young people to halt aging will come true by 2020.
Yeah, there's a reason anti-elitism is usually accompanied by anti-intellectualism. To way too many people in the world, "Educated" = "Elite". Even if said educated person is an underpaid teacher, a journalist who writes and reports for a newspaper that (like so many others) is slowly going out of business, a researcher scrounging for funding, a fellow blue-collar worker who is taking night classes at the local community college, or a doctor who works at a free clinic who lives in a relatively cheap apartment.
These people are derided, mocked, and in the worst cases are murdered (see: Pol Pot and Cambodia, Mao Zedong and China) by so-called anti-elitists. All on the orders of the real "elites": the greedy oligarchs and rich people like Donald Trump.
edited 5th Dec '16 6:19:08 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedCalifornia is preparing bills to protect immigrants from Trump.
"MY LORDS!" Governor Brown shouted, his voice booming off the rafters. "Here is what I say to these red states!" He spat. "Donald Trump is nothing to me, nor Paul Ryan neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, from some swampy seat in the east? What do they know of good policies or of our deserts or Yosemite? Even their rhetoric is all wrong. The fascists take the Green Party too, I've had a bellyful of them." He reached into his pocket and drew out a constitution and a declaration of independence. "Why shouldn't we rule ourselves again? It was democracy we bowed down to, and democracy is dead!" He pointed at the ground with his finger. "This land is the only nation I mean to bow my knee to, m'lords," he thundered. "The Republic of the West!" He bent down to sign on the dotted line.
"Aye, I'll have peace on those terms," Senator Harris said. "They can keep their white house and their Trump Tower too." She eased her long pen from its sheath. "The Republic of the West!" she said, kneeling beside Governor Brown and signing on the dotted line.
Senator Feinstein stood. "The Western Republic!" she declared, and laid her signature next to the other two. And the senators and governors from other states were rising too, Oregon and Washington and Nevada, places which had never been ruled from California, yet she watched them rise and draw their pens, bending their knees, signing their names and shouting the old words that had not been heard in the realm for more than a hundred years, since Lincoln had come to make the US one… yet now were heard again, ringing from the timbers of Sacramento's hall:
Secession!
Secession!
Secession!
edited 5th Dec '16 6:13:46 PM by MadSkillz
I don't quite get the reference to Lincoln at the end...I find it disturbing because secession was a word associated with slavery and it implicitly suggests that the south's rebellion was justified.
Besides the ASOIAF analogue is that the North was independent before it acceded to the 7K, California was briefly a Republic in 1846, before acceding to the USA in the land-grabbing known as the Mexican-American War. So if you want some legal justification, you might want to tackle that.
Whereas the Confederacy never existed in any shape way or form before.
There was no American Aegon the Conqueror parallel besides Lincoln who united the US.
And tbf, I liked Aegon like I like Lincoln.
Secession was the only word that could fit that wouldn't feel too forced.
edited 5th Dec '16 6:19:08 PM by MadSkillz
The whole thing with Gore and Trump is apparently Ivanka and some of the other kids are shoving him on the issue to not go Full Robber Baron supposedly, but all details from there are hush-hush.
Gore's saying he's planning further meetings with her and her father, and claimed the discussion wasn't banal.
So.
Things would have to go to utter shit for me to seriously consider supporting California's secession. And I still think it wouldn't work without a few other nearby states onboard with it. We do need Colorado's water.
California would also need the support of foreign powers that aren't Russia, since it would need military aid to add some muscle to the secession effort and leverage to help with trade negotations.
edited 5th Dec '16 6:28:29 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedThat and supposedly, Ivanka is geting a LOT of hell from her liberal friends. So she might be using Climate Change as a shield to prevent criticism against her father knowing 4 years could end up wrecking him if he's framed as Literally The Devil.
So God only knows with what's going on with her, Gore and Trump.
As if this isn't Neo-Feudal enough already. We now have to rely on favors and access to the person of the King through his family in order to propose vital measures.
I agree that secession is a bad idea on principle. There has to be intermediary measures and context and stuff that happens between now and later.
Which is why I recommend tax protests. The Blue States are wealthier and pay more taxes than red states, and you have a justification not to pay money to a government that appears to be a kleptocracy and which in addition represents policies that are hostile to the general will. Tax protest is an ancient American principle, part of the American Revolution, the protest by Henry Thoreau, the Vietnam War protests.
This isn't tax dodging because those doing it are people who have paid taxes once but won't do so to a government whose President is flagrantly corrupt, hasn't released his taxes, has no record of public service and is considered to have been a tax cheat himself. How can one allow a tax cheat and tax dodger like Trump to have his way with public money?
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It would hurt her too since her identity and brand are so closely tied to Donald Trump as well.
I would recommend waiting until he and his administration actually propose and/or enact their disastrous policies. It would add more weight to the protests if they were only done in response to demonstrably bad fuckups on Trump's part. Don't worry, I'm fairly certain Trump and his team will give us plenty of material.
edited 5th Dec '16 6:32:08 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedWe won't need the Colorado River as much if we can figure out a way to produce more desalination plants for a cheaper price.
We have already have the biggest desalination plant in the US in San Diego with plans to build more.

Which seems stupid to me because they apparently know better than credentialed experts who for the most part agree that it is real. For all this talk of "liberal elitism" many of the people in the GOP are some of the most arrogant people imaginable.
edited 5th Dec '16 6:05:43 PM by Draghinazzo