Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[Todd]

It's quite a surprise to hear that the anti-vaxers are from the left.

Assuming you're really a New Yorker, all I can say is come on over to the Left Coast.  Anti-vaccine jibber jabber here is even more prevalent among lefties than right-wing fools.  Here in Oregon, the state with the highest vaccine exemption rate in the US, the city of Ashland - of the Shakespeare festival and two colleges and a pot festival - has a 26.4% non-vaccination rate in its schools.  Some individual schools, and here the culprits are private religious schools, go all the way up to 70%+.  Oregon is not alone, just extreme; increased vaccine exemption rates are being witnessed in communities all over, and quite often it is in better educated, more affluent areas.  Lefty neo-hippies rail against Big Pharma and the terrible chemicals put into modern vaccines.  Sure right wing nuts have their own, usually religion-based anti-vaccine rationales, but lefties have joined them in good, by which I mean terrible, numbers.

Sure, but "anti-science" sounds much better than "against unquestioned use of dangerous technologies not sufficiently tried out or with a track record of environmental desasters and unsolved problems for dealing with waste products". The latter obviously applies to nuclear energy and while debatable it is not absurd to claim that the former applies to genetic engineering.

The problems for storing nuclear waste are solved: it is settled science.  Vitrification, for instance, turns nuclear waste into a safely and easily manageable substance (ie, nuclear glass).  It cannot be turned into new weapons, it will not leak into groundwater.  The technology has been around for decades.  The movement to prevent it from being stored on a large scale is purely emotional in nature - it's NIMBYism mixed with lefty splutter.  As to safely generating power, the US has a strong track record in this regard - and remains the single largest producer of nuclear power if the DOE and IAEA are to be believed - and safety can improve further, and all while not building new plants.  Imagine what could happen if the US government poured even more money into R&D here.

As to anti-GMO arguments, to imply that GMOs are dangerous or not sufficiently tried out is to ignore current practice and results.  Around 90% of cotton, corn, canola, and soy grown in the US are genetically modified, for instance.  Scientific publications are basically uniformly pro-GMO.  GMOs also provide the only way to affordably feed the next three billion new mouths that will be born.  Anti-GMOers are anti-science in that they refute published scientific findings and rely more on emotional appeals.  Of course anti-science lefties are keen on differentiating themselves from creationists, but that doesn't render lefty anti-science arguments any more sophisticated or accurate.

[Ken B]

Sure, but "anti-science" sounds much better than "against unquestioned use of dangerous technologies not sufficiently tried out or with a track record of environmental desasters and unsolved problems for dealing with waste products". The latter obviously applies to nuclear energy and while debatable it is not absurd to claim that the former applies to genetic engineering.

Twaddle. Todd's response above is good. If your opinion is that GMOs are dangerous then I'd say you are proving my point about ignoring what the science actually says.

(I agree that "anti-vaxxing" and some other things do merit the label "anti-science")

The anti-vaxxers are a diverse lot but they definitely skew left:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/22/vaccine-deniers-stick-together-and-now-theyre-ruining-things-for-everyone/

There has been some recent inroads of this nonsense on the Libertarian right too.

[Gurn Blanston]

I'm sure Rand Paul will take that 'left-veering' stuff rather personally....

[Ken B]

I'm sure Rand Paul will take that 'left-veering' stuff rather personally....

Let's head off a confusion before it starts. It is not anti-science to hold any policy in particular. It is only anti-science to reject the scientific evidence. So you can object to mandatory vaccinations on principled grounds about the role of government without being anti-science as long as you don't dispute that vaccinations work and don't peddle that autism crap.  Similarly you can be anti-GMO because you find them icky or hate the poor and not be anti-science as long as you don't peddle Frankenfood fears. There are more ways to be wrong than just being anti-science.

[Gurn Blanston]

Let's head off a confusion before it starts. It is not anti-science to hold any policy in particular. It is only anti-science to reject the scientific evidence. So you can object to mandatory vaccinations on principled grounds about the role of government without being anti-science as long as you don't dispute that vaccinations work and don't peddle that autism crap.  Similarly you can be anti-GMO because you find them icky or hate the poor and not be anti-science as long as you don't peddle Frankenfood fears. There are more ways to be wrong than just being anti-science.

Not that I disagree with your statement above, but I'm not sure this fits into it:

Mr Paul, a Duke University-trained ophthalmologist, favors vaccination. But he questioned the wisdom of vaccinating infants and worried aloud about "tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines". Mr Paul earned a lot of flack for this remark, which flouts the medical consensus about the risks of vaccination.

That isn't 'Libertarianism', it's anti-science. Geez, Ken, I'm libertarian myself, don't you think I would be pleased to see a candidate out there who wouldn't be construed as a nutjob?

[Todd]

That isn't 'Libertarianism', it's anti-science.

True, Rand Paul utters anti-science jibber jabber.  There are righty anti-science folks, and lefty anti-science folks.  What many of them share in common is reliance on dubious anecdotal evidence and personal feelings in reinforcing their pre-existing, politically informed views of science. 

You can rest easy knowing that Rand Paul will never be President.  You can be unhappy at the reality that there will almost certainly never be a Libertarian President.

[Ken B]

Not that I disagree with your statement above, but I'm not sure this fits into it:

That isn't 'Libertarianism', it's anti-science. Geez, Ken, I'm libertarian myself, don't you think I would be pleased to see a candidate out there who wouldn't be construed as a nutjob?

I'm not defending Paul. But I can see confusion creeping into this thread ...
As for Paul, I lean noticeably more to the gop than the dems in general, and will usually support the gop candidate (92, 96 were the only exceptions in the past 25 years) but I did mention that if Paul gets the nomination I would campaign for Hillary ...

[Gurn Blanston]

True, Rand Paul utters anti-science jibber jabber.  There are righty anti-science folks, and lefty anti-science folks.  What many of them share in common is reliance on dubious anecdotal evidence and personal feelings in reinforcing their pre-existing, politically informed views of science. 

You can rest easy knowing that Rand Paul will never be President.  You can be unhappy at the reality that there will almost certainly never be a Libertarian President.

Why, is Ralph Nader giving up? Gone totally Green?    Yes, of course you're right. This is what scares me politically, that our potential leaders and wannabe leaders are pandering to the lowest common denominator and seeing it as yet another advantage instead of as a challenge to raise up the level where it (the LCD) is currently mired. Sort of like Captains of Industry and Televangelists; a fool and his money (i.e. - vote) are easily parted. In the case of anti-vaxxing, better to pander to the (Jennifer) McCarthyites than to urge them to rise above it.

*sigh*

[Ken B]

Why, is Ralph Nader giving up? Gone totally Green?    Yes, of course you're right. This is what scares me politically, that our potential leaders and wannabe leaders are pandering to the lowest common denominator and seeing it as yet another advantage instead of as a challenge to raise up the level where it (the LCD) is currently mired. Sort of like Captains of Industry and Televangelists; a fool and his money (i.e. - vote) are easily parted. In the case of anti-vaxxing, better to pander to the (Jennifer) McCarthyites than to urge them to rise above it.

*sigh*

As I have said on several previous occasions ... dig up Barry Goldwater and run him. 

[Gurn Blanston]

I'm not defending Paul. But I can see confusion creeping into this thread ...
As for Paul, I lean noticeably more to the gop than the dems in general, and will usually support the gop candidate (92, 96 were the only exceptions in the past 25 years) but I did mention that if Paul gets the nomination I would campaign for Hillary ...

I've voted for every Republican since Nixon in '72, with the sole exception of 2012, just to get that out in the open. But I am very much not happy with the Republicans right now, nor with the Dems nor any others of them. I want to vote in someone else's election. Ours sucks.

[Todd]

I've voted for every Republican since Nixon in '72, with the sole exception of 2012, just to get that out in the open. But I am very much not happy with the Republicans right now, nor with the Dems nor any others of them. I want to vote in someone else's election. Ours sucks.

It is for these (and some other) reasons that I care less about who wins the Presidency than I do about the need for government to remain divided.  Divided Government Now, Divided Government Forever!!

(If the Republicans win the White House, the Dems had damn well better retake the Senate.)

[Ken B]

I've voted for every Republican since Nixon in '72, with the sole exception of 2012, just to get that out in the open. But I am very much not happy with the Republicans right now, nor with the Dems nor any others of them. I want to vote in someone else's election. Ours sucks.

I dread to ask ... whom did you vote for in 2012?
(I of course have never voted for president!)

[North Star]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/opinion/david-brooks-the-mobilization-error.html

I've voted for every Republican since Nixon in '72, with the sole exception of 2012, just to get that out in the open. But I am very much not happy with the Republicans right now, nor with the Dems nor any others of them. I want to vote in someone else's election. Ours sucks.

As I've said before, the thing about all US elections is that you've only got two bad choices. In Finland, we tend to have at least half a dozen.

[Gurn Blanston]

I dread to ask ... whom did you vote for in 2012?
(I of course have never voted for president!)

I skipped over the president/vice president check mark, and went right to voting against Ted Cruz and Louis Gohmert.   0:)

I couldn't have possibly voted for either 'choice'; I couldn't even think of a good write-in possibility!

(If the Republicans win the White House, the Dems had damn well better retake the Senate.)

Amen to that!

[Ken B]

I couldn't have possibly voted for either 'choice'; I couldn't even think of a good write-in possibility!

That's why I carry an embossed "CALVIN COOLIDGE" stamp.

Amen to [divided government]!

I'm all for divided government. I just wish we didn't have to divide it between democrats and republicans. 

[Florestan]

Frankly, I don't see much difference between rejecting science in the name of religion and selectively using, or actively misusing, science in the name of ideology.

have all (or most of) the nuclear scientists concluded that nuclear power plants are completely immune to accidents or terrorist attacks, and their waste can be disposed of without consequence? 

Car crashes worldwide kill every year much more people than the last major nuclear power plant incident of the Western world did --- BTW, when and where was it, I don't recall? Should we ban using cars then? Of course not, we should build safer cars and enforce stricter safe driving rules --- and that's exactly what we do.

So far terrorists have successfully attacked airports and railway/subway stations. Should we shut them down then? Of course not, we should enforce stricter security rules and checks --- and that's exactly what we do.

Yet when it comes to nuclear power plants, where the incidents are far and few between, the way to go is not to build safer ones and enforce stricter safety rules, but to shut them down altogether. Is this logical / scientific / intellectually honest?

[Todd]

Car crashes worldwide kill every year much more people than the last major nuclear power plant incident of the Western world did --- BTW, when and where was it, I don't recall?

Though not Western, and though no one died as a result of radiation exposure, Fukushima is now the incident most likely to be used by anti-nuke folks.  And of course there is Chernobyl. 

[NorthNYMark]

That's why I'm curious about opinions from within the US, to get a sharper picture of what's going on. I'm just stating how it looks from over here, folks.

Based on what I've seen of your posts on these discussions, the way it looks to you "over there" is pretty much exactly the way it looks to most of us "over here" who lean to the left.  Those who lean otherwise will of course disagree with your perspective, and will assume that you too would be more likely to agree with them if you lived here. 

[Todd]

Hot off the presses: The lean, mean cutting machine wins!

[NorthNYMark]

I'm sure Rand Paul will take that 'left-veering' stuff rather personally....

Not to mention Michelle Bachmann!