The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

Donald Trump is closer to being a John Gotti (I would not be surprised if they knew each other) than to being a Warren Buffett.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-19-2020, 04:56 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are not attracted to scum, Classic Xer? Anyone paying attention knows that Trump is worse than scum.

Democrats don't necessarily choose their candidates based on their group identity, as you claim. Kamala Harris lost because she was not a good candidate. The people of either party choose the candidates that they connect best with and seem ready for the job. If the gay guy is the one, the Democrats will choose him. According to my reckonings though, they won't.

YOUR party is the one that chooses candidates based on group identity. That's what social conservatives such as you Republican voters DO. Only white guys are allowed.

Nope. I'm not attracted to scum or borderline scum. I'm sure that your not picky about scum as long as the scum is on your side. I'm not picky about scum either as long as the scum left on our side are willing to cross over and fuck up your side. Hell, if the scum does a good job they can live and keep the spoils.

[David Horn]

(02-20-2020, 04:34 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-19-2020, 04:56 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are not attracted to scum, Classic Xer? Anyone paying attention knows that Trump is worse than scum.

Democrats don't necessarily choose their candidates based on their group identity, as you claim. Kamala Harris lost because she was not a good candidate. The people of either party choose the candidates that they connect best with and seem ready for the job. If the gay guy is the one, the Democrats will choose him. According to my reckonings though, they won't.

YOUR party is the one that chooses candidates based on group identity. That's what social conservatives such as you Republican voters DO. Only white guys are allowed.

Nope. I'm not attracted to scum or borderline scum. I'm sure that your not picky about scum as long as the scum is on your side. I'm not picky about scum either as long as the scum left on our side are  willing to cross over and fuck up your side. Hell, if the scum does a good job they can live and keep the spoils.

And there it is!  Your side doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about anything other than fucking over people who you believe are out to get you. Here’s a hint: If we fall, so do you, and probably harder. It may take a while, but it will happen.  Society exists to create synergy. Synergy’s just another way of saying, four pulling together is greater than ten pulling alone. Kill synergy, and watch modernity collapse.

Oh, and on that “out to get you” issue, that’s more a case of “conservative” policy making, shifting gains up and pain down. We’re getting screwed, just like you and yours, just in different ways. Quit whining.

[pbrower2a]

(02-20-2020, 04:34 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-19-2020, 04:56 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You are not attracted to scum, Classic Xer? Anyone paying attention knows that Trump is worse than scum.

Democrats don't necessarily choose their candidates based on their group identity, as you claim. Kamala Harris lost because she was not a good candidate. The people of either party choose the candidates that they connect best with and seem ready for the job. If the gay guy is the one, the Democrats will choose him. According to my reckonings though, they won't.

YOUR party is the one that chooses candidates based on group identity. That's what social conservatives such as you Republican voters DO. Only white guys are allowed.

Nope. I'm not attracted to scum or borderline scum. I'm sure that your not picky about scum as long as the scum is on your side. I'm not picky about scum either as long as the scum left on our side are  willing to cross over and f--- up your side. Hell, if the scum does a good job they can live and keep the spoils.

Convincing evidence suggests that right-wing authoritarians like you are far more likely to accept as leaders rogues who tell you exactly what you want to hear. And, yes, you area right-wing authoritarian, as shown in your assumption that someone who fails to believe as you do is truly American. I may despise such scum as David DuKKKe or Frazier Glenn Miller, but I recognize both as American. Evil can be American, just as it can be... Norwegian (Vidkun Quisling, Anders Breivik). 

Your side voted for a man who has divorced twice to get younger wives. Your side voted for a serial bankrupt who has burned business associates. Your side tolerated someone who mocks the handicapped and other unfortunate people -- evidence of low maturity. (I was told while in early elementary school to respect the disabled veteran; I too might end up a soldier who loses a limb in combat or gets PTSD in service to my country). Your side voted for a chicken-hawk, a draft-dodger who subsequently became a warmonger. Your side voted for someone who encouraged a dictatorial regime to get dirt on an opponent.    

Oh, so it isn't the old Soviet Union? The Russian Mafia, to which our President has ties, is far more dangerous than the KGB. Get this clear about me: I may be a liberal, but I hate criminality of any kind. We liberals abandoned Harvey Weinstein, once a loud supporter of liberal causes and a huge provider of funds. He since showed himself as a sexual predator,and we liberals abandoned him.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-20-2020, 01:02 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump is closer to being a John Gotti (I would not be surprised if they knew each other) than to being a Warren Buffett.

Well, I know of an Iranian general that he authorized a hit on not to long ago.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-19-2020, 02:35 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-19-2020, 01:55 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(02-19-2020, 09:46 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: My GI father had a favorite saying, one he uttered to his Boomer son it seems far too often.  “The problem is, you feel like the world owes you a living.”  He knew better.  He grew up in such bad times that he knew the world owed him nothing.  He would have to seize it.  That thought eventually stuck.  Like much of my generation, I put enough into school to get a decent job and saved for retirement.  Today I get flack for it.

That seems to me to be the biggest difference between the GIs and their supposed heirs as civics, the Millennials.  The Millennials are so used to daddy as an individual and the boomers in general taking care of them that they really do believe the world owes them a living.  If they can’t save for retirement, no big deal.  The world owes them a living.  It must be a nice belief to have, the idea that the cliff they are speeding towards must not exist seems neat.

There's every evidence that the GIs were the exact same way until reality hit them in the form of WWII.  Before that, the Missionaries were taking care of them with the New Deal, WPA, etc., as if the world did owe them a living.

I’m not sure I really want to go down this road, but here goes anyway. Flash: the Millennial generation is saving like crazy. That’s particularly true, considering their tendency to be underemployed. What they aren’t doing is buying houses. Other than that, they are AOG in comparison to both Gen-X and their mostly Boomer parents. I know that runs counter to accepted wisdom but it’s true nonetheless. 

We can also discuss deficit financing in the age of too much savings. The old rules are collapsing and the new ones are counterintuitive. But the math doesn’t lie. It’s one of the main reasons the stock market keeps going up when it is clearly overvalued. FWIW, I haven’t adjusted to the new economy either.

I think people underestimate how much the spiral is not cyclical. The Gilded Age was much worse than the conservative era, and not to be confused with after the New Deal started. They used to collapse the economy into depressions, where we have recessions. Progressives get upset today with a pipeline in the remnants of where the Native Americans are allowed. Back in the day, they clear cut the Appalachian Mountain chain. Not even a seed tree. Industry did not count basic ecological perspectives for anything when put against profits. Things were really ugly back in the day, but it is getting outside of living memory, so people depreciate how bad it was.

The stocks are going up? The Republicans are stimulating in good times and bad, and if the pattern holds that lasts until late in the second term. I figure the elites are counting on the pattern holding, and are collecting while the getting is good. But, the new economics is the same as the old economics. I remember a tale of a son telling his father to invest invest invest. His father said no thank you. You will see. The story was set in 1927.

[pbrower2a]

(02-20-2020, 12:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-20-2020, 01:02 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump is closer to being a John Gotti (I would not be surprised if they knew each other) than to being a Warren Buffett.

Well, I know of an Iranian general that he authorized a hit on not to long ago.

I also know about the minor injuries (as someone capable of making medical diagnoses from thousands of miles away despite having no medical training) that are best described as unforeseen consequences. PTSD and concussions are real. 

But what the Hell? As in foreign policy, military matters, and law, the President is uniquely free from the 'corruption' of education and expertise. He is right due to his naïveté.

Il Duce ha sempre raggione!

[Bob Butler 54]

You know, there are times, especially when I am covering the 2nd Amendment or the Middle East, when I advocate against trying to change a culture by force.  There is a reason why cultures exist.  Many who live in that culture believe those reasons quite valid still.  Outside ways are strange and new.

And I wind up advising against butting one’s head against the wall.  One just isn’t going to get there from here within a reasonable time.

And there are other times, say racism and environmentalism, when I will invoke the arrow of progress.  The conservative side of the US Civil War wanted to continue a system with agriculture supreme economically, and depreciating the abilities of blacks.  You just knew that against the forces of industrialization and equality, they were not only going to lose but they were wrong.  The positions the conservatives took on how things had been would become untenable in the future.

That is when I’m at my most Whiggish.  What were the conservatives thinking?  You just know how it is going to go.  You know what the values of the future will be.

And that may be the partisan divide right there.  Clinging to how things have always been against seeing what they have to become.

My niece earned an oceanic and environmental degree.  One of her job offers on graduation was for an Appalachian coal company renowned for putting profit over the environment.  She just made up her mind not to work towards yesterday.  She wanted to do something else with her degree, and passed up on the job.  It sort of illustrates the progressive perspective.

Now I was thinking a bit about clearcutting the Appalachians during the Guilded Age.  Not only profits above environmentalism, but profits on steroids.  I’d like to think that wouldn’t happen today.  Even the most conservative elite running a wood company for profit would have some sort of environmental forestry team making sure the operation was sustainable a generation or so downstream.  

And even a KKK sheet head wouldn’t be advocating slavery today.  A conservative of 4 or 8 turnings ago is very different in advocating his position than those of today.

But that is where I am mostly progressive.  

Yes, there are times when butting your head against a wall is stupid.  There are times to state which way the wind is blowing, and admit that it is not blowing hard enough.

But there are times when you listen to the conservatives, shake you head at what they adhere to, and ask how they can be so wrong.  The lack of morality of slavery.  The greed of the robber barons of the Gilded Age.  The lack of getting it about the environment today.

You want to be on that side of history?  Really?

[Classic-Xer]

(02-20-2020, 01:01 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: As Sanders said tonight, calling him a communist is a "cheap shot." Sanders is not poison, he is a cure. If you reactionaries get your way, the nation and world will not survive. Your red nation believes that no further progress toward a just and workable society should ever be made. I think the next 8-9 years are a time of choosing, whether we go forward again after 40 years of the stagnation, decline and regression that you have supported, or whether we decline into a banana-republic, oligarchic tyranny dominated by a cultist, crazy authoritarian dictator, and the world suffers irreversible climate damage. The blues will not go along with you. Demographic changes are on our side, while the blocks you guys have erected are on yours. 

The cosmic tides make clear that the new America will rise up and blast through your dams, walls and roadblocks and make America truly American again. So you will have to decide what to do as the waters rise literally rise around you. Will you secede? To that I say, go ahead, and don't bother to close the door on your way out. We don't need you. Will you violently rebel? If so, we will crush you, jail you, and take away your guns for good.

True. Communism ain't democratic like Democratic socialism but it is what is. So, how close are New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and LA being Venezuela's? Does Richmond want to be a Venezuela too? I don't know, we'll have to ask the people of Richmond and Virginia. I dunno, would you prefer to be Chinese or Venezuelan. Personally, I would want to be either these days. I wouldn't want to be Mexican either. I prefer to remain American myself. Could you ask him what the difference is between the so called Democratic Socialists running Venezuela into the ground and Democratic Socialists like him? I realize that most Democratic Socialist types aren't quite as well educated as the typical American taxpayers who pay the balk of the taxes in this country these days. Do you know that I spent my early years fixing equipment and assisting with complicated installations of equipment in Governors mansions, ex governors homes, famous hockey coaches homes, Presidents of major banks homes, a couple of country music stars homes while touring, professional sports players homes and so forth. Oh, I also spent a lot of time in regular peoples homes too. You know, the folks you overlook and talk a lot about but tend to screw a lot because Progressive values ignores traditional American values. Have you ever watched a blue try to hammer a nail into a board, it's funny. I know, me do what, fuck that, you do it or find someone else or I quit. So, how do you employ that attitude or your obtuse attitude or pompous upper middle class attitude. Now, I don't know shit about you personally. I don't know if you in a really nice condo, a decent condo or apartment or a cracker jack apartment tailored for one old left wing believer who didn't have to worry about profit. Bernie Sanders is an old white man that has no special protections to worry about that I'm aware of these days and Donald Trump is an old white with very few limitations placed on him. Does that sound fair to you? The new America won't rise as you say. The new Germany rose and the new Russia rose and the new Japan rose as you say and what happened to every one of them. American will continue moving forward with or with you because that's the way America works.

Hey, is it ok that Omar married her brother so he can stay in America? Does American law apply to her in this country or not? Did you know she was married to a Christian and the religious marriage was never legally filed with the State of Minnesota? Does Minnesota law apply her either? You can't blame the Democrats in my area for her own stupidity? Are the liberals in Minneapolis going viewed it as something a young dumb negro woman from another country and let it slide? I mean, they might as well, that is what the liberals in high places tend do right? What's one more fuck up right? How many Democratic fuck ups have we seen lately? I'd say the Democratic party is leading Trump in fuck ups by a quite a few right now. I mean, the one minor fuck up wasn't as bad as Biden's fuck up while he was Vice President. One must assume, the Bernie sisters wanted to get him out of the way too.

[pbrower2a]

(02-19-2020, 12:16 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-18-2020, 08:37 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I disagree with you on what the Mueller probe showed. Mueller put together a strong case that makes me believe that President Trump at the least is a fellow traveler of the dictatorial Russian Federation.  The military, CIA, or FBI would prosecute him if he were such a fellow traveler of a country hostile to American democracy and foreign policy.

Lets see, you have a Soviet believer as an option and an oligarch who places himself and his values above all in importance as an option. Are you cool with that? I'm cool with it because that seem to be your choices? You can pick your poison and determine your own fate at this point. I figure half the country has already decided that its moving on without the Progressives at this point. The Progressives haven't come to grips with that yet. So, do we really need win a nasty war with Progressives to make sure that happens or are you and every other liberal smart enough to go along and allow that to happen at this point. I'm sure the Progressives will have enough crumbs to keep you alive for a while but I can't guarantee whatever crumbs you get won't be taken away by some foreigner who is viewed as being more valuable or more preferential than you.

The first priority is in defeating Donald Trump. At this point I have come to regret that Obama won in 2012 because, although it was not obvious at the time, it made Donald Trump possible as President. Unintended consequences happen all the time. 

As for American Progressives being in what Lev Trotsky called the "dustbin of history"... it might take a meltdown as severe as the one of 1929-1932 or a catastrophic war to make us relevant again. I hope not; we Progressives may have a vital purpose in rooting out the rot in our system. 

I may have to resort to retail sales-clerking to survive until I can take the hypocrisy of deprivation in the midst of elite indulgence no longer and off myself when I give up all hope. Gilded economy with a secret police and numbing propaganda? That's how I see the legacy of Donald Trump's similarly-right-wing,  but evangelical successor who pushes the idea that the prole exists to suffer in This World for elites in This World so that God can reward them in Heaven -- where the rapacious overlords of economic sadism get to be bosses again.      

Quote:I'm sure the blue world loves you enough to help you survive.

My best hope is to win the Super Duper Megabucks Lottery or marry a rich widow at my age. Think of what I have to offer; you have seen my writing. One good thing about the recent poverty that I have endured is that I don't get the opportunity to indulge in vices readily available. Poverty can force some good habits, like buying generic merchandise when it is available cheaper, making sure that every trip has a purpose (probably several purposes) making do or doing without...

Some women actually like gentlemen who have some intellectual sophistication, renounce violence, and do not demand kinky sex.   

Quote:I mean they didn't love the Bosnian's enough or the Jews or the Assyrians enough  but I'm sure they'll love you enough because you are way more important to them  than any of those people. Once we are separated,   what you decide is best for and the country you end up with  isn't going to matter to us.

Pure bunk, not relevant to reality in America. As for what you want for America -- beware of what you ask for, as you might get it, as the fable goes. You stand for Gilded-Age politics but you cannot understand why a majority of Americans reject those. It's only a matter of time before white people of the Mountain and Deep South recognize that they have been had in voting for politicians who impose mass poverty and either initiate or bungle their way into wars for profit. To enforce the politics that you endorse the elites will need rigged elections, a secret police, torture chambers, and extrajudicial executions or concentration camps.

Don't fool yourself, Classic X'er: you need a prosperous middle class to have a desire for good HVAC systems in a place where they are desirable but not yet a necessity: greater Minneapolis. People can get away without air conditioning in the middle tier of Minnesota if it is too costly. As is true in southern Michigan, you are close to the Dfa/Dfb line that divides long summers with debilitating summers from those that are simply unleasant. Near the Cfa/Dfa line the summers are really hot and sticky -- and dangerous, as in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. People die in heat waves.

Oh, but you are in Minnesota and not Missouri, which makes a huge difference, right? Missouri weather is coming north.  Oh wait... the President says that global warming is a hoax, so it must not be happening. Well, I know what the weather is like here... and here in southern Michigan we have had a winter more typical of Kentucky this year. I saw the pattern eight years ago: we had a weak winter, the Great Lakes were not as chilled as usual, and we got a heat wave with 80 F temperatures in March. OK, 80 F in March isn't all bad -- but places that get that warm in March usually get unpleasantly hot. Dallas... Houston... Phoenix... Palm Springs?

When summer temperatures more typical of Kansas City and St. Louis become the norm where you live (and they will), you will need a prosperous community to be able to relieve them of the brutal summer heat. But if people are destitute because employers sweat them for starvation wages, people will simply die of heat-related ailments. Heat waves are the #1 climatic disaster in America from the standpoint of excess deaths -- more than hypothermia and even such storms as tornadoes and hurricanes. For the sake of the common man -- work for his prosperity and seek at the least a mitigation of climatic change.

Let's not forget something else about climate change -- food supplies. You are surely one of those city slickers who believes that food comes fully prepared, needing only a little preparation and cooking at your home. You ignore that most food grows on farms. Need I tell you that as is so in Battle Creek, Michigan (home of Kellogg's Corporation)... Battle Creek is about on the borderline between the corn belt and the wheat belt. Huge volumes of grain go into processing plants and become cereal. Minneapolis-St. Paul is a huge milling area, too... and much of your local economy depends upon it. What if the crops fail?

I once heard of something called "winter wheat" produced in the eastern High Plains; it was sown in the late summer or early autumn, germinated some, and quickly got covered by the snows that protect it from the fierce, brutally-cold and brutally-dry winter winds. After winter ends the crop grows rapidly as the sun gets higher and is up longer in the spring. 

Grain crops in Michigan and Minnesota (and the eastern Dakotas) depends upon winter blizzards to protect soil moisture and to provide moisture from the spring melt of snow. If those fail, so does much else. There is no technological fix for hunger. Hunger leads to riots and revolutions. Never count on a revolution to have gentle consequences for anyone.         
 

Quote:I mean, who knows you might end up living in Obamagrad or the former American city of Chicago or the nation of  Bloomberg with Bloomberg deciding what's best for you or god forbid the Peoples Republic of California or some Islamic State that gives itself  the power to round up and behead infidels. Yes, this sounds pretty fucked up but that's what happens when fucked up people give fucked up people power. Yes, you can point at Trump and criticize him about this or that and accuse him of being this or that as I point to your people and ask you about them and ask you why you're supporting people who represent ideologies and power mongers that you claim to hate and often claim to fear the most these days.

Yeah, sure -- Donald Trump is the wisest, most rational leader that we have ever had -- far better than Barack Obama.  Guess what?  The historical cycle suggests that Barack Obama is a portent of the sort of leadership that we will want soon after the Crisis is over. A chilly rationalist with a limited vision, someone who believes that integrity solves far more problems than does radicalism, someone respectful of science and technology, someone who honors learning? To spoof the song lead to All in the Family 

"Mister, we could use a man like Eisenhower again!"

Well, we did have Obama, who despite a very different curriculum vitae, appealed to much the same constituencies as Eisenhower won (blatant exceptions: ranching and extractive industries) -- twice.  In 2008, Obama even violated the common wisdom that Republican voting correlates with higher income.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-22-2020, 01:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Oh, but you are in Minnesota and not Missouri, which makes a huge difference, right? Missouri weather is coming north.  Oh wait... the President says that global warming is a hoax, so it must not be happening. Well, I know what the weather is like here... and here in southern Michigan we have had a winter more typical of Kentucky this year. I saw the pattern eight years ago: we had a weak winter, the Great Lakes were not as chilled as usual, and we got a heat wave with 80 F temperatures in March. OK, 80 F in March isn't all bad -- but places that get that warm in March usually get unpleasantly hot. Dallas... Houston... Phoenix... Palm Springs?

When summer temperatures more typical of Kansas City and St. Louis become the norm where you live (and they will), you will need a prosperous community to be able to relieve them of the brutal summer heat. But if people are destitute because employers sweat them for starvation wages, people will simply die of heat-related ailments. Heat waves are the #1 climatic disaster in America from the standpoint of excess deaths -- more than hypothermia and even such storms as tornadoes and hurricanes. For the sake of the common man -- work for his prosperity and seek at the least a mitigation of climatic change.

Let's not forget something else about climate change -- food supplies. You are surely one of those city slickers who believes that food comes fully prepared, needing only a little preparation and cooking at your home. You ignore that most food grows on farms. Need I tell you that as is so in Battle Creek, Michigan (home of Kellogg's Corporation)... Battle Creek is about on the borderline between the corn belt and the wheat belt. Huge volumes of grain go into processing plants and become cereal. Minneapolis-St. Paul is a huge milling area, too... and much of your local economy depends upon it. What if the crops fail?

Global warming as it was being used and promoted was a hoax which is why it's referred to it as climate change today. Evidently I was right, it's more a natural occurrence than a man made occurrence and most of the man made damage. Well, we aren't going to stop climate change. So, I expect it will change back to environment. Yes. The Progressives know how to exploit people with the use of media. Dude, Gore walked away with a fortune.

Dude, who is better off? The typical Republican voter or the typical Democratic voter. The typical Republican voter isn't voting for more government assistance or massive changes to economic systems or constitutional systems or supporting the use of courts so they can become wealthier people or stay out of getting into trouble with the law/ So, who is the Bernie Bro? Are you a Bernie Bro? I'm familiar with the sister but who is the sisters bro? You should find one pretty quick so they can meet they're real adversary.

[pbrower2a]

(02-22-2020, 05:44 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-22-2020, 01:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Oh, but you are in Minnesota and not Missouri, which makes a huge difference, right? Missouri weather is coming north.  Oh wait... the President says that global warming is a hoax, so it must not be happening. Well, I know what the weather is like here... and here in southern Michigan we have had a winter more typical of Kentucky this year. I saw the pattern eight years ago: we had a weak winter, the Great Lakes were not as chilled as usual, and we got a heat wave with 80 F temperatures in March. OK, 80 F in March isn't all bad -- but places that get that warm in March usually get unpleasantly hot. Dallas... Houston... Phoenix... Palm Springs?

When summer temperatures more typical of Kansas City and St. Louis become the norm where you live (and they will), you will need a prosperous community to be able to relieve them of the brutal summer heat. But if people are destitute because employers sweat them for starvation wages, people will simply die of heat-related ailments. Heat waves are the #1 climatic disaster in America from the standpoint of excess deaths -- more than hypothermia and even such storms as tornadoes and hurricanes. For the sake of the common man -- work for his prosperity and seek at the least a mitigation of climatic change.

Let's not forget something else about climate change -- food supplies. You are surely one of those city slickers who believes that food comes fully prepared, needing only a little preparation and cooking at your home. You ignore that most food grows on farms. Need I tell you that as is so in Battle Creek, Michigan (home of Kellogg's Corporation)... Battle Creek is about on the borderline between the corn belt and the wheat belt. Huge volumes of grain go into processing plants and become cereal. Minneapolis-St. Paul is a huge milling area, too... and much of your local economy depends upon it. What if the crops fail?

Global warming as it was being used and promoted was a hoax which is why it's referred to it as climate change today. Evidently I was right, it's more a natural occurrence than a man made occurrence and most of the man made damage. Well, we aren't going to stop climate change. So, I expect it will change back to environment. Yes. The Progressives know how to exploit people with the use of media. Dude, Gore walked away with a fortune.

Should simply eating cost a fortune as might happen when some of the world's most productive farmland will be inundated -- King Neptune will seize land more effectively than any Stalinist commissar -- life might be miserable at best, precarious for many, and at an end for people who starve. There is no technological fix for hunger.   

Economic chaos creates exploitation as little else can. 

Quote:Dude, who is better off? The typical Republican voter or the typical Democratic voter. The typical Republican voter isn't voting for more government assistance or massive changes to economic systems or constitutional systems or supporting the use of courts so they can become wealthier people or stay out of getting into trouble with the law/ So, who is the Bernie Bro? Are you a Bernie Bro? I'm familiar with the sister but who is the sisters bro? You should find one pretty quick so they can meet  they're real  adversary.

Incoherent and irrelevant. 

This is what the world looked like in the early part of the twentieth century:

 http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/pics/1901-1925.jpg


It didn't change much for 75 years or so. But here is a projection:




The world is definitely warmer, as shown by the expansion of the tropical zones into the lower-middle latitudes  and the pole-ward advance of hot deserts. Dry zones expand. To see it more clearly, maps dedicated to Europe and North America are available:



A place like Roswell, New Mexico or Midland, Texas goes from BSk (warm semi-desert) to BWh (hot desert), becoming much like Phoenix is now.  The High Plains become drier (or at least hotter without added rain) with semi-desert conditions expanding eastward to almost the western border of Minnesota. Genuine desert appears in eastern Colorado where it does not now exist.  r  I Europe you will note that the semi-desert expands significantly in Spain and Turkey... and appears in Romania and Hungary. Cities such as Prague,  Paris, Belin, and Warsaw start to have genuinely hot summers.

It's not worth the risk to your grandchildren. But with the warmer temperatures come food shortages, the spread of tropical diseases into places that they do not now exist (like Dallas and Pittsburgh -- or Milan and Budapest). If you have a pet dog in Cincinnati or Kansas City you might want to lock it up as alligators start appearing in the Ohio and Missouri river valleys. Alligators literally grab dogs off their current perch of the top of the food chain in much of America. 

But that is nothing compared to the wars, revolutions, and genocides that will happen when prime farmland is flooded and peasant farmers have nowhere to go.  I understand human nature far better than you do.

As for Democrats not having the means that Republicans have --  in 2008, income and Republican Voting had a negative correlation for the first time ever. Maybe that is because the Republican vote was heavily concentrated in the impoverished Mountain and Deep South . Thi said, Democrats have the advantage of more formal education.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-22-2020, 05:44 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Global warming as it was being used and promoted was a hoax which is why...

You know, it must be nice to yell hoax or fake news whenever the science or the facts are against you. It must be nice to march in lockstep with the racists and the elites, and pretend they are not there. It must be nice to go with simplistic linear thinking on a forum dedicated to a cycle theory...

I does a job on your credibility, but it must be nice.

[Eric the Green]

(02-22-2020, 05:44 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-22-2020, 01:15 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Oh, but you are in Minnesota and not Missouri, which makes a huge difference, right? Missouri weather is coming north.  Oh wait... the President says that global warming is a hoax, so it must not be happening. Well, I know what the weather is like here... and here in southern Michigan we have had a winter more typical of Kentucky this year. I saw the pattern eight years ago: we had a weak winter, the Great Lakes were not as chilled as usual, and we got a heat wave with 80 F temperatures in March. OK, 80 F in March isn't all bad -- but places that get that warm in March usually get unpleasantly hot. Dallas... Houston... Phoenix... Palm Springs?

When summer temperatures more typical of Kansas City and St. Louis become the norm where you live (and they will), you will need a prosperous community to be able to relieve them of the brutal summer heat. But if people are destitute because employers sweat them for starvation wages, people will simply die of heat-related ailments. Heat waves are the #1 climatic disaster in America from the standpoint of excess deaths -- more than hypothermia and even such storms as tornadoes and hurricanes. For the sake of the common man -- work for his prosperity and seek at the least a mitigation of climatic change.

Let's not forget something else about climate change -- food supplies. You are surely one of those city slickers who believes that food comes fully prepared, needing only a little preparation and cooking at your home. You ignore that most food grows on farms. Need I tell you that as is so in Battle Creek, Michigan (home of Kellogg's Corporation)... Battle Creek is about on the borderline between the corn belt and the wheat belt. Huge volumes of grain go into processing plants and become cereal. Minneapolis-St. Paul is a huge milling area, too... and much of your local economy depends upon it. What if the crops fail?

Global warming as it was being used and promoted was a hoax which is why it's referred to it as climate change today. Evidently I was right, it's more a natural occurrence than a man made occurrence and most of the man made damage. Well, we aren't going to stop climate change. So, I expect it will change back to environment. Yes. The Progressives know how to exploit people with the use of media. Dude, Gore walked away with a fortune.

Dude, who is better off? The typical Republican voter or the typical Democratic voter. The typical Republican voter isn't voting for more government assistance or massive changes to economic systems or constitutional systems or supporting the use of courts so they can become wealthier people or stay out of getting into trouble with the law/ So, who is the Bernie Bro? Are you a Bernie Bro? I'm familiar with the sister but who is the sisters bro? You should find one pretty quick so they can meet  they're real  adversary.

What we need is to debunk and defeat the ideology Classic Xer displays himself to be a typical adherent of over and over again. Classic Dude, trickle-down doesn't trickle. I keep bursting your balloon, but you keep buying a new one. Trickle down doesn't trickle. The jobe creaters don't create any jobs. They send them overseas or replace them with robots or fire them through buyouts or pay them a pittance while they hog all the dough to speculate and ruin the economy with. They refuse to produce safe products unless made to do so. Sorry, but the oligarchs you so passionately support must be reined in by government. It takes Democrats and Courts to rein them in. Republicans enable them. Sorry, but the oligarchs did not earn and do not deserve their fortunes; they extorted it from their workers whom they underpay and overwork and from consumers whom they rip off. The Democrats need to make the people wealthier, because the oligarchs are not going to give them their due. It's as simple as that.

The Republicans use appealing slogans like "don't take our tax money for freeloaders," which you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Nobody really likes the government; it's an easy target. But as long as people aren't angels and have different interests, government arbiters are needed. Laissez faire is a greater evil. Free enterprise is a delusion. There is no free lunch, and no free enterprise. Sorry about your delusion.

We need to change our economic system so that there is a rising middle class and less poverty again. The last 40 years of trickle-down Reaganomics are NOT normal, but an anomaly. It is NOT all-American. It is a travesty, a scam and a hoax. And it depends on turning the races and religions against each other. The "freeloaders" are code for blacks and hispanics. Therefore trickle down economics, which you believe in, is racist, and wherever Drumpface goes and speaks, hate crimes follow. That is a statistical fact. Trump has just brought racism out into the open, where before it was a dogwhistle, and now Republicans have embraced it fully.

And again this nonsense about your concern for the "constitutional system." All it amounts to is that you guys want to keep your AR-15s so you can shoot up people in schools, restaurants, churches, theaters, etc. When it comes to a president not obeying the law and ignoring the balance of power that the constitution created, or locking up demonstrators, you guys could care less.

So YOU believe in the hoax, not we environmentalists who want a habitable planet for our grandchildren. Not we who face the proven fact that human use of fossil fuels and deforestation etc. are causing global warming and climate change.

[Bob Butler 54]

It is almost embarrassing to quote MSNBC on something these days.  They have a perspective, an agenda, almost a strong as and in opposition to Fox.  If you can win market share by telling the people what they want to hear, they are looking for market share.  

Still, Rachel Maddow has been sounding the alarm of late.  Since the acquittal, Trump is openly selling pardons to those who can afford it and seeking revenge against those who spoke truth.  The Republican Establishment put their credit behind the administration, and by credit I mean electability.  Trump is now spending it freely.  He is in power, figures the Senate will block any accountability, and going to use that power for his personal gain.  If the Republicans had any pretense of ruling for the benefit of the people, that is pretty well shot now.

I have to believe this will come into play come the general election.  There are almost two sets of issues.  One is the obvious corruption and abuse of power that is Trump.  The other is the more traditional red against blue.  On the Republican side it is small government, racism, elitism, strong defense, a belief in voodoo economics and a few other issues.  On the Democratic, the environment comes to mind.

It is easy to believe that Trump on corruption has blown the Republicans out of the water.  They have zip credibility.  The middle of the road people will flip the see saw.  2020 looks good for the Democrats.

But it is not clear that the basic red against blue divide has been resolved.  They red leaners will still look for a king alligator to drain the swamp, the people who profited from shipping the jobs abroad to ship them back, the accident that was the intact American infrastructure after World War II to repeat somehow, Voodoo Economics to continue to work after the second term…

[pbrower2a]

(02-24-2020, 04:50 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It is almost embarrassing to quote MSNBC on something these days.  They have a perspective, an agenda, almost a strong as and in opposition to Fox.  If you can win market share by telling the people what they want to hear, they are looking for market share.

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[/font]That is how capitalism operates in the media. 

Quote:Still, Rachel Maddow has been sounding the alarm of late.  Since the acquittal, Trump is openly selling pardons to those who can afford it and seeking revenge against those who spoke truth.  The Republican Establishment put their credit behind the administration, and by credit I mean electability.  Trump is now spending it freely.  He is in power, figures the Senate will block any accountability, and going to use that power for his personal gain.  If the Republicans had any pretense of ruling for the benefit of the people, that is pretty well shot now.

The GOP is becoming an authoritarian, elitist movement. All that is missing is a paramilitary and a politicized youth group -- and the permanent marginalization of opposition.  Anyone who still believes that the Republican Party is a normal political party in a democratic order is a fool. A Party that once had room for Charles Percy and Ed Brooke is no longer so. One obeys the Great and Infallible Leader or one's political career is at risk from someone who believes even more resolutely in power over principle. 

Quote:I have to believe this will come into play come the general election.  There are almost two sets of issues.  One is the obvious corruption and abuse of power that is Trump.  The other is the more traditional red against blue.  On the Republican side it is small government, racism, elitism, strong defense, a belief in voodoo economics and a few other issues.  On the Democratic, the environment comes to mind.

The big question is whether we Americans are better than this. It is not a question of whether we have more trust in Big Business than we have in a welfare state; it is a question of whether we believe in freedom or fascism. I hate seeing things in such a dichotomy, but the reality creates that dichotomy. Irresponsible leadership like that of Trump is the bane of democracy. 

Quote:It is easy to believe that Trump on corruption has blown the Republicans out of the water.  They have zip credibility.  The middle of the road people will flip the see saw.  2020 looks good for the Democrats.

But they have what decided the Tea Party elections of 2010, 2014, and 2016: money that can buy political influence, that can buy mindless propaganda. I would like to see a separation of economic and political power, but note well that for much of American history there was no such separation. Know well: the Right has found ways in which to use Big Government -- as an enforcer and as a means of grafting. Profits from graft are no less attractive than traditional profits that come from gross exploitation as in the Agrarian Age and the early-industrial age.  

Quote:But it is not clear that the basic red against blue divide has been resolved.  They red leaners will still look for a king alligator to drain the swamp, the people who profited from shipping the jobs abroad to ship them back, the accident that was the intact American infrastructure after World War II to repeat somehow, Voodoo Economics to continue to work after the second term…

The most that the "king alligator" will do is to eat the smaller alligators. 

We have a trend that makes a return to the norms of the industrial era impossible: the end of material scarcity. This is not to say that the elites cannot impose poverty; if anything, the end of material scarcity revives what was the Great Industrial Scrap-Heap of the late nineteenth century. People can no longer get rich by meeting shortages, but elites can certainly control access to economic opportunity. If one isn't born into the Right Family these days one has little chance. Small business? Nobody can easily out-compete Wal*Mart and McDonald's. Even independent pharmacies have been dying off in favor of Walgreen's, CVS, and Rite Aid. 

A harsh reality is that the mentality of elite Boomers has been that they are masters of the universe, people entitled to everything because they have never experienced the alleged corruption of hardship. Those elite Boomers act as if those who have endured hardship deserve nothing more than more of the same. Donald Trump is the extreme expression of such a world-view.

[Classic-Xer]

(02-22-2020, 09:07 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-22-2020, 05:44 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Global warming as it was being used and promoted was a hoax which is why...

You know, it must be nice to yell hoax or fake news whenever the science or the facts are against you.  It must be nice to march in lockstep with the racists and the elites, and pretend they are not there.  It must be nice to go with simplistic linear thinking on a forum dedicated to a cycle theory...

I does a job on your credibility, but it must be nice.

What's the point, we are all dead in 12 years according to AOC.

[pbrower2a]

(02-24-2020, 02:32 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(02-22-2020, 09:07 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-22-2020, 05:44 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Global warming as it was being used and promoted was a hoax which is why...

You know, it must be nice to yell hoax or fake news whenever the science or the facts are against you.  It must be nice to march in lockstep with the racists and the elites, and pretend they are not there.  It must be nice to go with simplistic linear thinking on a forum dedicated to a cycle theory...

I does a job on your credibility, but it must be nice.

What's the point, we are all dead in 12 years according to AOC.

Completely irrelevant. AOC could be wrong -- as wrong as you are aboug global warming.

[Bob Butler 54]

(02-24-2020, 08:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: But they have what decided the Tea Party elections of 2010, 2014, and 2016: money that can buy political influence, that can buy mindless propaganda. I would like to see a separation of economic and political power, but note well that for much of American history there was no such separation. Know well: the Right has found ways in which to use Big Government -- as an enforcer and as a means of grafting. Profits from graft are no less attractive than traditional profits that come from gross exploitation as in the Agrarian Age and the early-industrial age.  

That is why I am looking for direct vote network democracy in some form come the next major shake up.  Representative government has the representatives wanting to become elites, and therefore serving the elites well.  As much as the old slave compromises (the Senate, the electoral college, the amendment system) are biased to favor the rural environment, representative government ends up by its nature favoring the elites.

The rich buying more free speech I'm not sure how to stop save by speech becoming so cheap that wealth get no special advantage.

But it is likely not time yet.  The security problem has not been worked out yet.

[David Horn]

(02-25-2020, 01:18 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(02-24-2020, 08:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: But they have what decided the Tea Party elections of 2010, 2014, and 2016: money that can buy political influence, that can buy mindless propaganda. I would like to see a separation of economic and political power, but note well that for much of American history there was no such separation. Know well: the Right has found ways in which to use Big Government -- as an enforcer and as a means of grafting. Profits from graft are no less attractive than traditional profits that come from gross exploitation as in the Agrarian Age and the early-industrial age.  

That is why I am looking for direct vote network democracy in some form come the next major shake up.  Representative government has the representatives wanting to become elites, and therefore serving the elites well.  As much as the old slave compromises (the Senate, the electoral college, the amendment system) are biased to favor the rural environment, representative government ends up by its nature favoring the elites.

The rich buying more free speech I'm not sure how to stop save by speech becoming so cheap that wealth get no special advantage.

But it is likely not time yet.  The security problem has not been worked out yet.

We need a representative democracy this is just that: representative.  Here in Virginia, the longtime overrepresented rural faction is livid at the idea that the legislature might vote to transfer the headcount of felons back to the place they lived before they were incarcerated (NOTE: All the prisons were built in the rural areas as jobs programs, so white jailers oversee mostly black inmates).  Just another example of small actions that may finally correct old wrongs.