12-06-2020, 03:30 AM
(12-06-2020, 01:19 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: If you think the Republicans are to blame for climate change, you're as a nuts as those who blamed the Jews for everything wrong with Germany.
The GOP during the Trump Presidency has done everything possible to frustrate efforts to mitigate existing or to prevent further climate change. Trump has been in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry.
Quote:I think Biden won the election but I don't think he won it fair and square. As a general rule, candidates don't win an election by staying home the bulk of the time.
They used to. Trump was far more reckless about going out in public to campaign, especially in venues in which people felt free to not wear masks. Trump's political rallies are super-spreader events.
You can trust that were it not for COVID-19, Joe Biden would have appeared in more places. Significantly we Democrats did not do two of the usual things that we do in electoral campaigns, which is (1) to canvass (it works -- yes, it really does), and (2) to be ready to take people to the polling place if they need a ride. That can be the difference in turnout. I trust that COVID-19 will be gone, and we Democrats will be up to our old tricks. The tricks that I just mentioned are perfectly legal.
Quote:I think you're going to regret it myself. You already lost half the country.
Half of what? Half the territory of the United States? Alaska and Montana together have huge territory -- and only seven electoral votes after the 2020 Census. Connecticut has as many electoral votes and very little territory. Cattle? Cotton? Corn? Wheat? Maybe. Cactus? Whoops! Arizona went to Biden.
Joe Biden won the popular vote, 81 million to 74 million. Of course, getting the plurality or even the majority of the popular vote might fall short, as in 2000 and 2016. This time Biden won the Electoral College 306-232. Those are the votes that count.
The Democratic side has more of the economic activity.
It's your side that has lost more than half of the country -- the thinking half.
Quote:Do you want to know what the cities are to us? The city is where we have go to see a sports event or concert or go to work for some or drive through to get some where else.
The city is where someone decides whether you have credit or not. It is where your car is manufactured. It is where people make most of the movies that you watch. It is where the books that influence your life are published. It is where your music is recorded. It is where news comes from as broadcast. It is the ports where things come into your country. It is where the renowned colleges, universities, and scientific laboratories are. It is where the cutting-edge medicine is done. The best-known hospital in Minnesota is in Rochester, and I suppose that that is a city... am I right?
The Twin Cities are the head of navigation of the Mississippi River (you can't get past St. Anthony Falls by boat), and much of its activity is grain milling. I can assure you that much of your business is done in the Twin Cities.
Quote:I don't have any slave owners in my long ancestry either.
My ancestry is long, too. I must warn you that many African-Americans have slave owners who raped some slave woman as ancestors. There's much antipathy at such ancestors... I wonder why!
I have German ancestry, and I surely have genetic connections to Holocaust perpetrators. I have ancestors named Hess (as in Rudolf, Deputy Fuhrer under Hitler and culpable for much of the crimes of the Third Reich) and Funk (as in Walter, President of the Reichsbank during World War II and effectively the fence of loot stolen from victims of the Reich). My mother's maiden name is the original surname of a Hungarian general executed by Yugoslavia after the Second World War for crimes against humanity. He was of German origin, and his ancestors came from the eastern part of the old Kingdom of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
I hate Nazis.
Quote:If there's a Civil War, we won't fighting over slavery this time around.
I have been afraid that it would be like Spain in the 1930's, where a large part of the country was as modern as any part of the world -- even the USA -- and slightly more had their bodies in the 20th century and their social attitudes in the late middle ages. The medieval mind, whose only concession to modernity was to the technology of war and repression, won in Spain.
It would be as in Spain between modernity and reaction.
Quote:You won't be able to take our guns away but you can try and see what happens as a result.
We have no plans to take away your precious guns unless you are a criminal or a lunatic or if you pose an obvious risk (like Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale) to himself or loved ones. .
Quote:So, how many US soldiers would be willing fight for their rights being taken away these days?
How many soldiers would fight to defend a dictator who extends his term as President unlawfully (which is one of the classic means of establishing a dictatorship)? How many soldiers would obey orders to kill political dissidents? How many soldiers would commit war crimes on behalf of a despotic leader?
Quote:What you don't get is that if the government has the power to remove one Constitutional right then it has the right to remove all of them at that point.
No, here is the Second Amendment:
Quote:A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.[35][/url]
It's about a militia necessary for the enforcement of the law; suppression of Indian attacks, pirate raids; and slave revolts (now of course obsolete); and formation of state equivalents of the National Guard. The right to bear arms is no more absolute than freedom of speech (I do not have the right to go into a bank or a store and say "This is a stick-up", if I am in business I have no right to do false advertising or to speak in a way in which to facilitate a fraud).
from Wikipedia:
Quote:In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendments [sic] means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government."[15] In United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment did not protect weapon types not having a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia".[16][17][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#cite_note-crs2a-17]
Apparently the government can prohibit me from possessing guns disguised as something clearly not a gun (let us say a cane or an umbrella), grenades, bombs, Katusha rockets, tanks, or nuclear warheads.
Quote:No, if you want to get rid of guns then California would have to declare it's independence and break with United States of America and the same goes for the North Eastern states as well. Personally, I think getting rid of a bunch of stinking rotten blue cities would be a good thing for the environment myself.
Uhhh... Minnesota is one of those "rotten" states which is historically one of the most reliable states to vote for Democratic nominees. It was the only state to vote against Ronald Reagan in his 49-state landslide in 1984.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
