Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[BasilValentine]

Harry Reid killed that, remember?  An amendment for the same purpose is a non-starter.

Not true for SCOTUS

[SimonNZ]

"You don't hand matches to an arsonist, and you don't give power to an angry left-wing mob. Democrats have become too EXTREME and TOO DANGEROUS to govern. Republicans believe in the rule of law - not the rule of the mob. VOTE REPUBLICAN!"

- President Not-At-All-Extreme

...which I take to mean that if it looks like Democrats might gain power he'll be obliged to "save" the country from this "danger".

[SimonNZ]

'Trump doesn't measure up': Doris Kearns Goodwin on leadership

"The Team of Rivals author has brought Lincoln together with Johnson and two Roosevelts to produce a timely study of what makes a great president"

[Todd]

Not true for SCOTUS

It's true that the superior parliamentarian Mitch put the nail in the coffin of judicial filibusters (yet another reason to love the guy), but credit where credit is due, 'twas Harry Reid who demolished the long-standing practice for lower courts for the sake of political expediency, something that members of his own party warned at the time would be extended all the way to the top.

[Sydney Nova Scotia]

Trump is Dumbf

[milk]

It's true that the superior parliamentarian Mitch put the nail in the coffin of judicial filibusters (yet another reason to love the guy), but credit where credit is due, 'twas Harry Reid who demolished the long-standing practice for lower courts for the sake of political expediency, something that members of his own party warned at the time would be extended all the way to the top.

So is it generally a good thing or a bad thing? Or does the answer change depending on who's in the majority?

[71 dB]

This +1
Pushing Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court could allow the GOP, and Trump, the ability to act more unconstitutional and get away with it. Shrink women's rights, limit voting rights, LGBTQ rights... basically act more bigoted, racist, and sexist just to own the LIBS!

A lot of women on the right (e.g. bz) WANT their rights taken away. 2000 years of patriarchy wasn't enough for them. They want another 2000 years. That's the power of religious brainwashing. I don't understand it and I never will, but that's how it seems to be. I am fed up with this anti-progress of the US and other countries. The only thing that seems to progress is technology. Civilization itself is walking backwards back to the middle ages and I don't want nothing to do with it! We all should be united instead on divided, but what can you do when half of the people are insane? Everyone should be half-crazy? No. The crazy ones should be helped to become sane.

Humanity need to progress with technology. How can we know how to use the technology of tomorrow if we are intellectually living the middle ages? The bibble doesn't tell us how to use A.I. and other technology that is emerging fast. LGBTQ rights should have been handled DECADES ago! People are intellectually so behind technology it's crazy!

[Karl Henning]

So, no evidence then.

"Investigation that didn't investigate anything doesn't find what it wasn't looking for."

[Karl Henning]

You too: why?

I'll venture a guess:  they both like the protective opacity?

"Senators have been muzzled. So I will now say three things that committee staff has explained are permissible to say without violating committee rules. ... One: This was not a full and fair investigation. It was sharply limited in scope and did not explore the relevant confirming facts. Two: The available documents do not exonerate Mr. Kavanaugh.

And three: the available documents contradict statements Mr. Kavanaugh made under oath. I would like to back up these points with explicit statements from the FBI documents — explicit statements that should be available for the American people to see. But the Republicans have locked the documents behind closed doors."

[Jo498]

LGBTQ rights should have been handled DECADES ago! People are intellectually so behind technology it's crazy!

Until about 5 decades ago (in a technologically and scientifically far more dynamic time), the officially "scientific" verdict was that homosexuality was a mental illness and the "technological" answer was electric shocks (or at least psychotherapy). Then we got about 15 year of "gay liberation" which  led to the HIV epidemic that of course was only caused by straight people's homophobia, not at all by "cruising" and similar behavior. It is quite remarkable that compassion and charity prevailed and eventually led to the stabilization of "gay rights" etc. And even then, only in the late 1990s "gay marriage" was a fringe issue and mainstream politicians (and most people) were either against it or did not really think it an important topic at all. Now everybody either expressing doubts or admitting that s/he shared a utterly uncontroversial position only 20 years ago is a backwards bigot.
The relation between science and technology and society is far more complex as you should know. Furthermore while "progress" is somewhat clear in science/tech is obviously far more disputable what kind of development is societal progress (or simply "good", regardless of being progressive or regressive).
Screaming "progress" or "it is 2018!!!" is really very naive and you are more intelligent than that.

[SimonNZ]

The Trump administration has entered Stage 5 climate denial

"If we're already doomed to disastrous climate change, then there's no reason to cut carbon pollution, argues the Trump administration"


We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN

"The world's leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C."

Nobel prize in economics goes to Nordhaus and Romer for climate change and growth

[BasilValentine]

Until about 5 decades ago (in a technologically and scientifically far more dynamic time), the officially "scientific" verdict was that homosexuality was a mental illness and the "technological" answer was electric shocks (or at least psychotherapy). Then we got about 15 year of "gay liberation" which  led to the HIV epidemic that of course was only caused by straight people's homophobia, not at all by "cruising" and similar behavior. It is quite remarkable that compassion and charity prevailed and eventually led to the stabilization of "gay rights" etc. And even then, only in the late 1990s "gay marriage" was a fringe issue and mainstream politicians (and most people) were either against it or did not really think it an important topic at all. Now everybody either expressing doubts or admitting that s/he shared a utterly uncontroversial position only 20 years ago is a backwards bigot.
The relation between science and technology and society is far more complex as you should know. Furthermore while "progress" is somewhat clear in science/tech is obviously far more disputable what kind of development is societal progress (or simply "good", regardless of being progressive or regressive).
Screaming "progress" or "it is 2018!!!" is really very naive and you are more intelligent than that.

Ignorance combined with bigotry. ^ ^ ^ Nice.

HIV has been around now for about 120 years. Its inception is thought to have been a mutation combining genetic material from two simian retroviruses. It wasn't started by gays (more likely hunters of bush meat) and most of the spreading has not been through gay sex.

Equal rights and protection under the law replacing the denial of same based on religious prejudice and ignorance is societal progress.   

[Karl Henning]

The Mitch-lovers will dig this, too:

You cannot say a party that embraces a deeply misogynistic president who bragged about sexually assaulting women and mocked and taunted a sex-crime victim; accepted a blatantly insufficient investigation of credible sex crimes against women in lieu of a serious one that the White House counsel knew would be disastrous; repeatedly insulted and dismissed sex-crime victims exercising their constitutional rights; has never put a single woman on the Judiciary Committee (and then blames its own female members for being too lazy); and whips up male resentment of female accusers is a party that respects women. Its members resent women. They scorn women. They exclude women. They use women to maintain their grip on power. But they do not respect them.

[Karl Henning]

[...] First, Republicans believe Kavanaugh is a winning issue for them but, overall, it favors Democrats slightly in competitive House races and may well make the Republican Party's problem with women even more acute. It is difficult to remember given their ongoing temper-tantrum, but Republicans won with Kavanaugh's confirmation. Can the GOP keep voters irate about a victory for four weeks? Just as likely, if Trump keeps insulting female victims, mocking the survivors who protested and rolling out his male-grievance routine, he will wind up widening the gender gap and crank up the enthusiasm among women.

Second, battleground House seats are heavily concentrated in states where there is not a competitive Senate race. (California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York contribute 21.) It is inaccurate to say the national scene favors Republicans. Remember, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin were all won by Trump and are no longer even doable for Republicans — they're now either likely or safely Democratic. Moreover, there are five House battleground seats in Florida, which Trump carried in 2016. Recent polls have Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) slightly ahead. Likewise, three battleground seats are in Arizona, which Trump also carried, and there, Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema is narrowly ahead in the race to replace outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake. In sum, where Democrats have a lot of House opportunities, they are running very well in Senate races. States that are traditionally deep red and don't have many battleground House seats — no surprise here — are trending toward Republicans (e.g., Tennessee, North Dakota, Texas). That they are competitive at all says something about the swing away from the GOP.

Third, Trump is toxic outside his narrow base. That is why he is in places such as Mississippi and Kansas. That would be like President Barack Obama going to Massachusetts to shore up a struggling Democrat. There is a price to be paid for playing almost exclusively to his rabid base.

Finally, we are not that far from where the races stood four or five months ago — a very strong possibility the Democrats take the House and despite a map with a disproportionate number of red-state Democratic incumbents, and a slight chance to take the Senate. For all the hubbub inside the Beltway, out in the country, what has characterized the environment is consistency: An unpopular president dragging his party down among women and college-educated voters, with a favorable Senate map for Republicans a lot less favorable than it should be and less than it was in 2016. Count me skeptical that the political landscape will shift that dramatically in 4 weeks.

[drogulus]

     I think we've passed the point where reducing carbon emissions can halt climate change. There's no realistic path forward for that approach by itself to work. It's probably going to come down to new fuel technology based around atmospheric carbon capture. Will it work? It works now, so yes.

     The general rule that most people don't get is that we get richer by spending to solve problems than we ever could by not creating the dollars in order to "save" them. People luuv false economies, they are so easy to understand. It's more expensive to get richer so lets stay poor and save save save.

[SimonNZ]

To stop shitting in our own nest is a good policy even if you take climate change out of the equation and focus only on the hundreds of other benefits.

[SimonNZ]

     I think we've passed the point where reducing carbon emissions can halt climate change. There's no realistic path forward for that approach by itself to work. It's probably going to come down to new fuel technology based around atmospheric carbon capture. Will it work? It works now, so yes.

     The general rule that most people don't get is that we get richer by spending to solve problems than we ever could by not creating the dollars in order to "save" them. People luuv false economies, they are so easy to understand. It's more expensive to get richer so lets stay poor and save save save.

Also: these two who just won the Nobel economics prize - what is their likely response to this view?

[SimonNZ]

But more importantly: what happened to that gif I posted of a Chihuahua humping a Trump doll?

[drogulus]

     

Also: these two who just won the Nobel economics prize - what is their likely response to this view?

    I don't know. The view that technology fixes the problems technology creates is not my own but I'm not sure how widespread it is for economists conventional enough to win prizes. Rather than accept a limits to growth pessimism I see the worst problems as the result of the view that we don't get richer by building the new economy. Environmental degradation is something that should be a means to grow, not a reason to give up. There's more to be gained by attacking the problem vigorously. That's where future riches will be found.

     

[Karl Henning]

Why I'm Leaving the Republican Party

The Kavanaugh confirmation fight revealed the GOP to be the party of situational ethics and moral relativism in the name of winning at all costs.