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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#252026: Aug 13th 2018 at 9:52:04 PM

@Captain Capsase: The weakness in your argument is that there's only so far that Republicans can go into "blatantly fucking illegal" before the military and civil service refuse to obey. Outright mass electoral fraud and refusing to obey elections are not things that you can get away with in the US.

Republicans can expect the support of 30% of the population - the "basket of deplorables." In a situation where they're pissing off enough people that Democratic enthusiasm equals Republican enthusiasm, then they need to cheat enough to swing 20% of the vote, disenfranchise 40% of the vote, or a mix of that. Once Democrats take power for a significant time period, they can take aggressive action to make it harder to cheat (including, y'know, packing the federal bench with as many loyalists as possible and kicking down Republican gerrymanders, as well as funnelling massive funds to the Attorney General for the purpose of crushing Republican criminal activity, and maybe applying asset forfeiture to white-collar crimes).

Once the Republicans' cheat codes are patched out, and as demographics increasingly skew away from Republican (in particular, we need an aggressively pro-immigration President who can tag illegal immigrants and get them moving towards citizenship simply to generate voters and flip Texas), the "crisis" Yglesias warns about will be a long period of one-party Democratic rule. Which is a bad thing, but better than letting Republicans anywhere near the government.

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#252027: Aug 13th 2018 at 10:22:35 PM

[up]In many ways the dems are kinda lucky of republicans being so incompetent, if they have someone with the cunning of putin thing would be very diferent.

But granted having a strong democratic tradition also helps.

"I've noticed the Republican party seems to have a We Have Reserves mindset when it comes to our soldiers, they only stick up for them when they can fight their wars but discarded afterwards. "

Kinda, the republicans see the tropes as rot of rock and roll singer: they are great and they put a good show for the night and that it, considering how much of a chickenhawk they have it feel they project their desires on them.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#252028: Aug 13th 2018 at 11:07:13 PM

<Looks at the bit where Zinke blames California's wildfires on logging limits instead of climate change>

...I still hate Devos more, but Zinke's becoming a close second on my "list of Cabinet critters I hate."

Disgusted, but not surprised
Raptorslash Since: Oct, 2010
#252029: Aug 13th 2018 at 11:28:27 PM

Zinke is a creep. He and Pruitt's replacement are doing some very long-term harm, between deregulation and their willingness to open protected land to corporations.

Edited by Raptorslash on Aug 13th 2018 at 2:28:08 PM

TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#252030: Aug 14th 2018 at 12:59:07 AM

And yet if someone calls themselves "anti-GMO" due to distrust of Monsanto then yes they're being anti-science, there is no reason to let the actions of a specific company influence whether or not you support a type of technology.

GMO's have no credible safety issues and have been reliably and extensively studied and tested, thus opposition to them is anti-science.

I have no objection to the existence of GMOs especially since via breeding and such we've been genetically modifying everything from our pets to our foods for as long as our species has been around.

What I am extremely concerned about is the scientifically ignorant ways that the companies that make GMOs will utilize them. Specifically, GMO fruit, grains, and vegetables are being made to be far more resistant to pesticides, largely so that a far higher dose of ever more powerful pesticides can be sprayed on them and all around them to kill any kind of growths and creatures that would endanger the crops while leaving the crops undamaged.

Except anyone who has a basic knowledge of science and has put more than two seconds worth of thought into this realizes that inevitably some of those fungi and insects and such will inevitably survive due to a resistance, and within a short time only resistant fungi and insects and such will be left, starting the cycle over.

Do I believe the corporate bigwigs at these companies have some sort of plan beyond simple short term profit and believing that they can simply throw a new pesticide at the problem or tinker with a new GMO? Not for a single goddamn second. And in the meantime, what are sort of carcinogens are we getting in our food and all over our environment? Especially since these same companies can bribe... er, sorry, I mean lobby officials to constantly have regulations relaxed and allow these companies ever more leeway?

So I have no problem with GMOs, but I have a big problem with the industry that produces them. Now, I may be wrong about some of the things I've heard about this issue and my knowledge of these industries, but it's not because I'm anti-science.

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#252031: Aug 14th 2018 at 1:22:46 AM

It certainly doesn't help when anti-GMO people spout things like "Monsanto caused farmer suicides in India!" Which is bullshit.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Imca (Veteran)
#252032: Aug 14th 2018 at 3:24:23 AM

I used to be pro nuclear energy but the drawbacks are increasingly heavy versus the increased success of solar and other renewable energy.

The problem is renewable alone can never sustain humanity, as in they physically can not.

Even if you some how invented a solar panel with a 100% efficiency rate, which by the laws of physics... CAN NOT be done, you would need to cover more of the earth in them then we have land to power humanity at this point... we use that much energy compared to the amount we take in from the sun....

Renewable are important to OFFSET our power intake, especially from residential and commercial areas which can almost be fully offset... but the thing is the scale of energy consumption from industry is a whole other beast all together.

A single steel mill, can drain as much as 1/3rd of an entire gas turbine plants output, and that's just for one mill of a relatively easy to produce metal.

Titanium and aluminum both consume orders of magnitude more electricity, to the point that a common way to "export" your energy surplus as a nation is to import bauxite and then export refined aluminum.

Which means that if we want to keep up with modern society, which consumes metals at an astronomical rate... our options are fossil fuels, or nuclear piles... of the two one poses a very real threat of destroying the planet, and it isn't the glowing rocks.

Second, Jhon Olivers video only talks about old style reactors, ones like Light-water Breeders and Molten Salt produce trivial amounts of waste... Because get this, the old ones? The waste? Its because they were inefficient as hell, only extracting ~4% of the potential energy from the nuclear material... That's like complaining about the pile of water bottles that you get out of a guys house where he is just taking one sip from the bottle and then tossing it in the bin. Sure the proper disposal of bottles is a concern, but you cant base your argument around him when he shouldn't be doing that in the first place.

I love Oliver, I really do, but a lot of his nuclear pieces tend to ignore critical points of information.... which honestly leads me to see Capsaces' point, between that and the sheer amount of "Anti-GMO" campaigning you see in more liberal areas.

And its never "No Monsanto" if it was Monsanto themselfs, hell sign me up, its big signs for "No GMOs"

Edited by Imca on Aug 14th 2018 at 3:30:07 AM

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#252033: Aug 14th 2018 at 3:30:41 AM

It's not even "No GMO industry" either. It's pretty clear that the loudest voices protesting GM Os just hate GMO in general. Usually for the most asinine anti-scientific reasons. It's homeopathy level stupidity. It's Green Party stupid.

Seriously, how the hell can I respect anyone willing to use a bullshit unfounded claim like "Monsanto is driving up farmer suicides in India!" in an attempt to make their point?

Edited by M84 on Aug 14th 2018 at 6:33:47 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#252034: Aug 14th 2018 at 3:36:23 AM

Yes, the poor GMO corporations who produce crops that require you to buy their expensive fertilizer and drive already starving and impoverished farmers to even more desperate financial straights so they can pad their bottom line.

Oooh, those poor victims of the anti-science Luddites.

Mind you, I have nothing but contempt for corporate farming and think the people who support them are evil. Farmers are some of the most vulnerable people to corporations in the world and they need to be protected against predatory merchantile forces.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Imca (Veteran)
#252035: Aug 14th 2018 at 3:37:38 AM

As an addendum to the the above post I made, since I am about to sleep and want to address a possible point before I vanish for some hours.

Recycling both helps and doesn't help with the energy consumption that comes from our metal consumption, some metals like Aluminum save energy by being recycled... Others like steel take more energy to recycle then they do to produce raw, due to how the recycling process works.

Which for steel is mostly arc recycling any more, where they take large chunks of the metal, throw it in a crucible and then drop huge graphite rods with insane voltages running between them down in after it... melts the steel down in seconds, and maintains its quality better then re-smelting it.... buuut it also uses large amounts of electricity on account of using pure voltage to melt steel.

The over all offset is to save power with recycling since the higher demand metals are the ones that save power the second go around, but its not enough to reduce heavy industrys power consumption to manageable levels.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#252036: Aug 14th 2018 at 3:41:14 AM

[up][up]I don't give two shits about Monsanto. But if one wants people to take their criticism of GMO seriously, they should not peddle inflammatory horseshit. Otherwise I will treat their arguments with the same level of respect I give homeopathy supporters and anti-vaxxers. That is to say, none.

Disgusted, but not surprised
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#252037: Aug 14th 2018 at 3:46:24 AM

The reason its inflammatory is they want to put a face on the suffering of farmers because so many people don't care as long as they get their food in the store.

Screw you, I've got mine.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#252038: Aug 14th 2018 at 3:50:22 AM

[up]Doesn't matter. Their "putting a face on it" uses outright lies to sell the story.

The better attacks are the ones that call Monsanto out on its business practices toward said farmers (such as suing random dudes who have Monsanto genes in their wheat due to the wind blowing seeds where it will), which is as it should be.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#252039: Aug 14th 2018 at 3:55:19 AM

[up][up]If you've got a strong case, you shouldn't need to rely on myths.

Stuff like this is more or less why the USA Green Party commands so little respect from others, even the Green Parties of other countries.

Edited by M84 on Aug 14th 2018 at 6:56:41 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#252040: Aug 14th 2018 at 4:41:50 AM

What we need is a reliable method to store raw energy. With it, we can easily control the energy flow and can indeed produce enough energy just by using the sun alone (but there is also wind energy, thermo energy aso).

TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#252041: Aug 14th 2018 at 5:48:31 AM

ICE triples the number of immigrants arrested without criminal records, does so by "sweeping the streets and rounding up likely immigrants"

The consensus in recent years in immigration policy has been that law-enforcement resources should be focused on people with criminal records — particularly involving violent crimes — while the country figures out what to do with the vast majority of the undocumented who have committed no crime other than crossing the border illegally. Yes, Republicans, and Donald J. Trump, have tried to roll back some of the categorical protections certain classes of the undocumented enjoyed during the Obama administration, most notably the DACA program for Dreamers. But the administration has largely denied any intention of undertaking mass deportations of people living peacefully in their communities.

On the other hand, Trump doesn’t want undocumented immigrants to be under the impression they are safe, and that seems to be the motive behind a noted upsurge in ICE arrests in cases those with no criminal records, as NBC News reports:

Federal arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record have more than tripled under President Donald Trump and may still be accelerating, according to an NBC News analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data from his first 14 months in office.

The surge has been caused by a new ICE tactic of arresting — without warrants — people who are driving or walking down the street and using large-scale “sweeps” of likely immigrants, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in June by immigration rights advocates in Chicago.

CE “administrative” arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions have spiked 203 percent in the first full 14 months of his presidency compared to the final 14 months of the Obama administration, growing from 19,128 to 58,010, according to NBC’s review of ICE figures. During the same time period, the numbers show that arrests of undocumented immigrants with criminal records grew just 18 percent.

Much of this trend has come right from the top of an administration that boasts it has “unleashed” ICE. And it has merged with the administration’s war on “sanctuary cities” as ICE agents are sent into urban neighborhoods to hunt down recently arrested immigrants and then “sweep” up others in the area through “collateral” arrests of people who have been minding their own business. It all seems contrived to strike fear in the hearts of the undocumented generally:

In a class-action lawsuit filed against ICE by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Organized Communities Against Deportations, the groups argued that some immigrants in the Chicago area were “taken into immigration custody after pretextual traffic stops” and that “others were taken into custody after ICE came to their home or neighborhood purporting to look for someone else.” The groups allege that from May 18-24 this year, 156 individuals were arrested during a week-long intensified ICE enforcement in the city. Sixty-eight percent of those arrests were made without a warrant.

It’s been a particularly big issue in California, where sanctuary policies have encountered an especially belligerent reaction from the Trump administration, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Arrests of noncriminals by agents in the L.A. field office rose from 4% in 2016 to 12% in 2017. This has increased anxiety around the L.A. area since President Trump took office. To Trump’s supporters, there is nothing wrong with picking up those in the country illegally if agents come across them.

But critics have cited such arrests as a clear sign of the administration’s overexuberance to deport immigrants and make their lives miserable, whether they have criminal records or not.

It does seem that the ICE roundups, and particularly the collateral arrests, are part of an implicit strategy of “self-deportation,” to use the term famously coined by Mitt Romney. It means making life as miserable and dangerous for the undocumented as possible in hopes that they will choose to return to their countries of origin, without the U.S. government picking up the tab or associating itself with the terrible images of transit camps and boxcars heading south.

I'd like to be diplomatic and talk about what we have said that this is just one department of many within ICE and all, but fuck that. These assholes are making me agree that the best thing we can do is start from scratch with everyone who works in ICE currently barred from the new agency unless they can affirmatively prove that they have nothing to do these policies and arrests.

And since these arrests are without warrant or probably cause and based mostly on racial profiling, everyone who made these arrests needs to be subject to a day in court about their abuse of the law, and barred from any sort of law enforcement work ever again.

Edited by TheWanderer on Aug 14th 2018 at 8:48:13 AM

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#252042: Aug 14th 2018 at 5:49:59 AM

The problem is not with ICE, unnecessary agency as it is like the DOHS as a whole, but the fact they are Trump's campaign of racism driven Secret Police. I don't see a reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Dissolve it.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 14th 2018 at 6:13:58 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#252043: Aug 14th 2018 at 6:12:45 AM

I don't really have anything to add to that. It's so disgusting that it makes me weep.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#252044: Aug 14th 2018 at 6:17:08 AM

ICE needs to go. Whatever legitimate purpose it once served...it's not doing that anymore. It's nothing but a bunch of bigoted xenophobic bullies working for a bigoted xenophobic President. It is an antithesis of everything that makes the USA truly great.

As an atheist I don't believe in Hell on principle. But sometimes...

Edited by M84 on Aug 14th 2018 at 9:17:08 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#252045: Aug 14th 2018 at 6:26:34 AM

[up]To be honest, I never thought the USA was truly great, but to each their own.

Edited by kkhohoho on Aug 14th 2018 at 8:26:31 AM

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#252046: Aug 14th 2018 at 6:35:09 AM

I suppose it depends on how you define greatness.

What makes a nation great? Is it its wealth? Its military?

No...it's its people. The USA is only great when it embraces its nature as a land of immigrants. When it takes in the tired and huddled masses and encourages them to make their lives and the lives of their children better. When it helps them grasp their own little slice of the American Dream.

Problem is, the USA is now being run by people who would rather kill the dreams of others.

Disgusted, but not surprised
CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#252047: Aug 14th 2018 at 6:50:18 AM

The US wouldn't exist and wouldn't have succeeded without its immigrants, so ICE isn't just a deeply distasteful and immoral institution, but also a harmful one to our future prosperity. Breaking up ICE is the absolute minimum.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#252048: Aug 14th 2018 at 6:51:24 AM

[up]Hence why I consider it the antithesis of what makes the USA great.

Disgusted, but not surprised
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#252049: Aug 14th 2018 at 6:56:53 AM

What we need is a reliable method to store raw energy. With it, we can easily control the energy flow and can indeed produce enough energy just by using the sun alone (but there is also wind energy, thermo energy aso).

The only viable way to do that is through massive battery banks but these have their own set of issues and making the batteries, whose life span is around 4 years, is also a major environmental concern.

Another one is the molten salt reservoirs but these only really work for solar powered.

Renewables are great for residential areas. Wind and solar can take care of most if not all the energy needs of residential areas. However they don't really scale really well to demand peaks or supply enough energy for industrial and commercial use.

Hydro-electric is good for industrial use but is heavily limited by geography and is kinda vulnerable to droughts or long rain-less periods.

Nuclear and Natural Gas are good compromises, the former doe to having really high energy density, low emissions and a long life span for fuel rods. The latter is fairly cheap and relatively clean compared to oil and coal burning power plants, it still emits CO 2 but without the excessive amount of other pollutants compared to oil and coal.

Ideally there should be an energy matrix diversity, instead of banking everything just in renewables or nuclear, the focus should have been in both and with natural gas as a backup or for areas that either can't have either of both.

Inter arma enim silent leges
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010

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