***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[leavemeglazzies]

Also, while listening to the BBC coverage of that decision, I couldn't help but think how stupid we must sound to the rest if the world. They had a farmer essentially say on the radio that he didn't believe in climate change because he has been working outside for 40 years and he just didn't see it.

Must be one of those flat earthers as well, because the earth is flat as far as he can see, therefore it must be flat entirely.

 

[Mr.Guy]

Ninja about to cop da hemi now. Props bro.

 

[jimmypiff]

I just got around to watching trumps speech on leaving the Paris Agreement. Republicans just wont analyze the facts sincerely anymore, they all need investigating lol

2016 was the hottest year in recorded history...2015 was the hottest before that, then 2014, 2013 etc. I don't get where theres room to argue, facts simply are not facts anymore...The head of exxon is at the whitehouse how is this not conflict of interest at the expense of not only American lives but just humanity in general? With what he's doing to health care and now this, its beginning to feel like some new form of globalized genocide. I hate to feed into "conspiracy" agendas but this is taking a sharp turn for sinister

 

[frink85]

Because weather is cyclical and the ice age coming in a few years will balance everything out

 

[jimmypiff]

Because weather is cyclical and the ice age coming in a few years will balance everything out

Nature will not balance increasing levels of carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, and other man made pollutants lol that's just ridiculous

 

[frink85]

Because weather is cyclical and the ice age coming in a few years will balance everything out

Nature will not balance increasing levels of carbon dioxide, carbon emissions, and other man made pollutants lol that's just ridiculous

Lol try explaining that to people who don't believe in science

 

[rexanglorum]

I know we do a lot of ******** on Trump and his defenders in here, but...

Fickle swing voters can be convinced to vote Dem again, the Alt-Right can be beaten can and take enough Ls that their votes will be suppressed. We can enfranchise minority voters and appeal to enough rural voters to swing elections. Those areas are important and things the left seem to be focusing on, which is good.

But what gets ignored in white evangelicals. These people are the real foundation of the GOP. Barry Goldwater of all people were right, these people are a cancer to American progress and to what has driven the right so crazy. They don't care what the GOP does as long as they attack abortion rights, homosexuals, and keep minorities in their place. They voted for someone that was seemingly an affront to everything they stand for just because they could not handle the possibility of 4 more years of social liberalism.

And these people are in every level of the political structure. They are Senators, congressmen, lobbyist, sheriffs, local bureaucrats, state legislators, they control your local school board. Bernie Sanders is absolute right when he says that people need to wake up and get involved wherever they can. Evangelicals learned this lesson in the 1980s and been winning ever since.

So the left doesn't need a left wing Tea Party, it needs a left wing equivalent to White Evangelicals. It doesn't have to be religious, but what is has to be is a movement that is focus and committed to drag the entire country into the future, the same why white evangelicals try to drag the country back to the 1950s. Vote in every election you can, grab power no matter how small wherever you can.

Don't look for the fix in 2 or 4 years. Fight for a decade, beat back your opposition at every turn. In municipals election all the way to primaries and you will see progress.

Because white evangelicals will not stop, these people act like extending economic rights to any groups besides them is theft, and any sort of social progressive for a minority group change is oppression.

The left gotta start acting real Jesus like to these people. But not the Jesus that says turn the other cheek, but the Jesus that ran up in the temple flipping tables on fools.

Yes, all this.

The Tea Party is just a front for the Koch brothers and others like them. The Evangelicals are more organic and their coalition is durable.

The Evangelicals vote for Republicans in every election, at every level, without fail. They have made themselves indispensable for the GOP and the evangelicals exert influence over the entire GOP.

I tell my fellow progressives that if we voted reliably Democratic in every general election, the DNC would have to take us much more seriously and that the Dems would win much more often and then they would implement strong progressive policies when they do so.

 

[aepps20]

WHAH, WHAAAAAAH, WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAH is all I hear from Da LIBBIES IN here. DRY UP Da Tears B. Da Don making things ALL better B. Da Climate is Always changing B. Da Paris Climate Change Deal was a DISASTER B. ANY deal that limits Da AMOUNT OF COAL SMOKE I CAN BREATHE IS AWFUL. I want to EARN Da Black Lung like so many of my COAL Brothers in here. First comes fall, then winter, then spring, then SUMMER B. EACH season has changing climates B. ELEMENTARY DEAR WATSON LIBBIES. For example, in Da game of Basketball, Da playoffs start after Da regular season. Too many Libbie SNOWFLAKES fall for Da conjecture and junk science surrounding climate change B. Da Don knows best. STOP TRYING to discredit him B. VROOOOOOOOOM, VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOM LIBBIES.

 

[osh kosh bosh]

 

[ksteezy]

If Obama wanted a lasting treaty he should've took it to Congress & got it ratified.

if "green energy" is gonna win its gonna do it on its own merits, not da US handcuffing its arms from our natural resources.

let da games begin.

Tell em b! Da Don just indirectly blessed me with a prosperous future as a respiratory therapist, someone is gonna have to help treat Da Black Lung in a couple of decades and I'll be here for ya....btw I just had an epiphany, Ninja can't be racist, he likes da black lung.

 

[ksteezy]

Hopefully we create time travel within the next 100 years and send a man back to the day the Cheeto had the bright idea to run and pitch him a better idea for a new reality show that didn't end up leading us into Armageddon....lol

 

[hipstermike]

Lol try explaining that to people who don't believe in science

Yeah if there are people who still think the earth is flat, explaining climate change is a big step for them

 

[AEA18]

Lol try explaining that to people who don't believe in science

Yeah if there are people who still think the earth is flat, explaining climate change is a big step for them

Don't forget about the religious nuts who think weather is controlled only by some guy in the clouds.

 

[hipstermike]

It's sad that the best hope to get people to vote was to bring back manufacturing jobs and coal jobs that are not even good jobs anymore. Automation and clean energy are killing those faster than legislation.

we need a smarter, healthier workforce and citizenship. otherwise the wealth gap will just increase even more and more.

 

[rolaholic]

@spectatorindex: EUROPE: Juncker says the European Union's relationship with China is 'becoming more and more important' because of Trump's policies

Like I said right after the election,outside of Russia,China is the country that has the most to gain from an orange presidency and all the withdrawal of American leadership it brings.

It wasn't that long ago that they were on the climate denial tip before their cities really started suffering from its effects and now they're a got the forefront of the fight against it,for practical and most definitely strategic reasons as well

 

[EddieDoyers]

It's sad that the best hope to get people to vote was to bring back manufacturing jobs and coal jobs that are not even good jobs anymore. Automation and clean energy are killing those faster than legislation.

we need a smarter, healthier workforce and citizenship. otherwise the wealth gap will just increase even more and more.

BUT DA HEMI B

Seriously though, we been saying what you been saying for years, but sometimes it falls upon deaf ears.

 

[gry60]

It's sad that the best hope to get people to vote was to bring back manufacturing jobs and coal jobs that are not even good jobs anymore. Automation and clean energy are killing those faster than legislation.

we need a smarter, healthier workforce and citizenship. otherwise the wealth gap will just increase even more and more.

BUT DA HEMI B

Seriously though, we been saying what you been saying for years, but sometimes it falls upon deaf ears.

I'll tell you why: the people in those jobs are comfortable and they can't see past tomorrow, let alone a couple of years. There is a widespread assumption that things will stay the same until they die, mostly because in many manufacturing plants, the non-management workforce is completely isolated from the daily measures taken by the corporate side of companies to increase efficiency.

Efficiency is what drives the corporate world and many workers just don't get it.

 

[Belgium]

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/...ersight-requests-democrats-white-house-239034

 
The White House is telling federal agencies to blow off Democratic lawmakers' oversight requests, as Republicans fear the information could be weaponized against President Donald Trump.

At meetings with top officials for various government departments this spring, Uttam Dhillon, a White House lawyer, told agencies not to cooperate with such requests from Democrats, according to Republican sources inside and outside the administration.

It appears to be a formalization of a practice that had already taken hold, as Democrats have complained that their oversight letters requesting information from agencies have gone unanswered since January, and the Trump administration has not yet explained the rationale.

The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president.

"You have Republicans leading the House, the Senate and the White House," a White House official said. "I don't think you'd have the Democrats responding to every minority member request if they were in the same position."

A White House spokeswoman said the policy of the administration is “to accommodate the requests of chairmen, regardless of their political party.” There are no Democratic chairmen, as Congress is controlled by Republicans.

The administration also responds to “all non-oversight inquiries, including the Senate’s inquiries for purposes of providing advice and consent on nominees, without regard to the political party of the requester,” the spokeswoman said. “ Multiple agencies have, in fact, responded to minority member requests. No agencies have been directed not to respond to minority requests.”

Republicans said that President Barack Obama’s administration was not always quick to respond to them and sometimes ignored them. However, the Obama White House never ordered agencies to stop cooperating with Republican oversight requests altogether, making the marching orders from Trump’s aides that much more unusual.

“What I do not remember is a blanket request from the Obama administration not to respond to Republicans,” said a former longtime senior Republican staffer.

There are some exceptions to the Trump administration order, particularly from national security agencies, Democrats and Republicans said. Agencies will also comply if a Republican committee chairman joins the Democratic requests, but ranking members’ oversight requests are spurned.

Congressional minorities frequently ask questions of the administration intended to embarrass the president or garner a quick headline. And Democrats have fired off requests they surely knew the administration would not answer, such as asking the White House in March to make visitor logs of Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago publicly available.

But House and Senate lawmakers also routinely fire off much more obscure requests not intended to generate news coverage. And the Trump administration’s plans to stonewall Democrats is in many ways unprecedented and could lead to a worsening of the gridlock in Washington.

Austin Evers, a former Obama administration lawyer in the State Department who runs a watchdog group called American Oversight, said the Trump administration has instituted a “dramatic change” in policy from Reagan-era congressional standards in which the government provided more information to committee chairman but also consistently engaged in oversight with rank-and-file minority members.

“Instructing agencies not to communicate with members of the minority party will poison the well. It will damage relationships between career staffers at agencies and subject matter experts in Congress,” Evers said. “One of the reasons you respond to letters from the minority party is to explain yourself. It is to put on the record that even accusations that you find unreasonable are not accurate.”

One month ago, Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management asking for cybersecurity information after it was revealed that millions of people had their identities compromised. The letter asked questions about how cybersecurity officials were hired, and in Rice’s view, it “was not a political letter at all.”

"The answer we got back is, ‘We only speak to the chair people of committees.’ We said, ‘That's absurd, what are you talking about?’” Rice said in an interview. “I was dumbfounded at their response. I had never gotten anything like that … The administration has installed loyalists at every agency to keep tabs on what information people can get.”

At a House Appropriations hearing in May, Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) asked acting General Services Administrator Tim Horne about a briefing House Oversight Committee staffers had received from the GSA, in which they were informed that the “GSA has a new policy only to respond to Republican committee chairmen.”

“The administration has instituted a new policy that matters of oversight need to be requested by the committee chair,” Horne responded.

In February, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked for information on changes to healthcare.gov from the Health and Human Services Department. They’re still waiting for an answer. In early May, Murray and six other senators asked the president about why Vivek Murthy was dismissed as surgeon general. There was no response, and her staff said those are just a couple of the requests that have gone unanswered.

“It’s no surprise that they would try to prevent Congress from getting the information we need to make sure government is working for the people we represent,” Murray said when asked about the lack of cooperation.

The Senate’s Homeland Security and Government Accountability Committee, the primary investigator in that chamber, has received some responses from the Trump administration but has seen several letters only signed by Democrats ignored. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) wrote Education Secretary Betsy DeVos asking for help addressing the challenges of rural schools and joined with Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) to question the security of Trump’s use of a personal cell phone as president. Neither was answered, an aide said.

A senior Democratic aide said that of the Senate Democrats’ 225 oversight letters sent to the Trump administration since January asking for information, the vast majority have received no response.

“When it comes to almost anything we’ve done at a federal agency, very close to 100 percent of those we haven’t heard anything back. And at the White House it’s definitely 100 percent,” said a second senior Democratic aide. “This is rampant all over committee land.”

 

[rolaholic]

@spectatorindex: EUROPE: Juncker says the European Union's relationship with China is 'becoming more and more important' because of Trump's policies

Like I said right after the election,outside of Russia,China is the country that has the most to gain from an orange presidency and all the withdrawal of American leadership it brings.

It wasn't that long ago that they were on the climate denial tip before their cities really started suffering from its effects and now they're a got the forefront of the fight against it,for practical and most definitely strategic reasons as well

Just something to expand on this point,here's a former head of the EPA arguing that the US just ceded the future of energy to China...

@ForeignPolicy:
Exiting the #ParisAgreement is tantamount to shipping jobs and influence to Beijing, argues a former @EPA chief.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/31/its-time-for-the-united-states-to-lean-in-to-climate-change/

Thought the manbaby was against shipping jobs anywhere?

 

[Belgium]

I'll tell you why: the people in those jobs are comfortable and they can't see past tomorrow, let alone a couple of years. There is a widespread assumption that things will stay the same until they die, mostly because in many manufacturing plants, the non-management workforce is completely isolated from the daily measures taken by the corporate side of companies to increase efficiency.

Efficiency is what drives the corporate world and many workers just don't get it.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you."-LBJ

In short, the GOP mantra. Scientists and experts also fall in that category of somebody to look down on for their base.

 

[rolaholic]

I'll tell you why: the people in those jobs are comfortable and they can't see past tomorrow, let alone a couple of years. There is a widespread assumption that things will stay the same until they die, mostly because in many manufacturing plants, the non-management workforce is completely isolated from the daily measures taken by the corporate side of companies to increase efficiency.


Efficiency is what drives the corporate world and many workers just don't get it.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you."-LBJ

In short, the GOP mantra. Scientists and experts also fall in that category of somebody to look down on for their base.

Lol try explaining that to people who don't believe in science

Yeah if there are people who still think the earth is flat, explaining climate change is a big step for them

Don't forget about the religious nuts who think weather is controlled only by some guy in the clouds.

These kinds of folks really are the American equivalent of Wahhabists in Islam. Religious extremists/fundamentalists who oppose any innovation/progress,yearn for the mythical "old days" and look at most non-WASP's as heathens/the enemy.

 

[gry60]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/melania-trumps-coat-reminds-us-we-live-in-an-oligarchy-vgtrn

But her emails and what about Ben Ghazi?????

But the Wall Street speeches!?!?!

They out there wearing the equivalent of a US household annual income on their shoulders while cutting social programs for the needy, the veterans, the sick, and the elderly.

That's trash.

They should be addressed with the same contempt they are showing the rest of the country.

 

[rolaholic]

It's not being worn by Michelle O so there's nothing to see there...

 

[ksteezy]

So since we all on Da Coal train wether we want to or not, I better have a summer electric bill of 40$ as opposed to 300$ a month b....dem coal workers better get going, I want my return on investment b! Even though I didn't invest in Trump willingly....










Is this how it works?

 

[wballz]

It's sad that the best hope to get people to vote was to bring back manufacturing jobs and coal jobs that are not even good jobs anymore. Automation and clean energy are killing those faster than legislation.

we need a smarter, healthier workforce and citizenship. otherwise the wealth gap will just increase even more and more.

Exactly, its like revamping the textile manufacturing industry. Those days are gone, time to move on.