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with a filibuster rule that ensures this old guard can block progress.
History suggests one should be very cautious about changing the Senate rules for short-term gain. The filibuster is a perfect example. In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid implemented the "nuclear option" that reduced the required supermajority of 60 votes to confirm nominees below the Supreme Court level to a simple majority of 51.
What Harry Reid either ignored or didn't care about was the inevitable political truism that "what goes around, comes around." Sure enough, in 2017, with Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader, the Senate abolished the remaining supermajority of 60 required to confirm Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority of 51. Having initiated the "nuclear option" in 2013, the Democrats were hardly in a position of moral or ethical superiority to condemn the Republicans' action when they were in a similar position.
This is not a case of how one defines "progress," or of which side is blocking "progress" however one defines it. It is a case of being hoisted on one's own petard. The Democrats had better be very careful about attempting to abolish the filibuster, as some are threatening to do. Moderate Democrats like Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia's Joe Manchin realize this.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
These relatives were hearing my thoughts on global warming as early as 1988 when I came back from a semester in Micronesia and realized some atolls will have to be evacuated of human habitation.
Having spent much time in the Freely Associated States (FAS) on US State Department business, I would say that both Palau and Micronesia are, relatively speaking, high island groups. It is the Marshall Islands that are in the most precarious position with regard to climate change driving the rise in sea level. The Marshalls consist of nothing but atolls, with an average elevation of six feet above sea level.
Our close relationship with the Marshalls since the end of World War II, suggests we will have an obligation to accept the entire population of 59,000 people into the United States as their island atolls gradually are inundated. The entire population could fit into many college football stadiums.
Although the Marshallese have largely wasted the huge amounts of money they have received as a result of the Compact of Free Association, the US Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA) facility on Kwajalein, and the Marshalls' (along with Micronesia and Palau) denial of an entire swath of the Western Pacific to any potentially hostile power, have without question been in our national interest. Removal to the United States is a debt we will owe them when the time comes.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
History suggests one should be very cautious about changing the Senate rules for short-term gain. The filibuster is a perfect example. In 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid implemented the "nuclear option" that reduced the required supermajority of 60 votes to confirm nominees below the Supreme Court level to a simple majority of 51.
But the nuance is what matters. The filibuster merely means that a senator can have a staff member run a card down to the floor of the senate which says I’m filibustering. The don’t even have to be on the floor, they even have to be in the building. The old rules dictated that the senators had to speak with some relevance on the topic at hand to hold a filibuster, but those rules gradually changed. By the time Reid became Senate majority leader the republicans were filibustering all of the Obama admin judicial appointments and Democrats couldn’t fill seats on judicial benches. Naughty naughty republicans blocked everything and wouldn’t let the O admin do it’s job.
Fast forward to McConnell as senate majority leader and he used the same technique, plus his flat out refusal to allow a hearing for Merrick Garland who was Obama’s pick to replace Scalia. So hey hey, McConnell abused his power and then used the whatever cheating and filibustering he could to steal a seat on the Supreme Court. It’s a case of Reid not having much of a choice and McConnell just being a thief who turned the Trump era senate into nothing more than a body that rubber stamped trumps unqualified selections for the courts. The Democrats were using a bad situation to try to work and under McConnell they cheated to appoint their political operative judges. Brett Cavanagh was a Republican Party hack and his seat was a reward because he did the dirty work they asked of him.
McConnell abused his power to seat Federalist Society judges to stack the court with ultra conservative judges.
There’s a huge difference in how each side wielded the power and now it’s the republicans who’ve created the partisan warfare. McConnell is successor to Newt Gingrichs inter party warfare and the fillibuster is abused by the republicans who don’t use it responsibly. They just sit on their fat old butts and have a staff member literally phone in the filibuster for any old thing they dislike, they don’t use it strategically to make better deals, they use it render the senate dead in the water.
The party that started the war is the GOP and without the aggression the filibuster wouldn’t be abused.
One can disagree with the way McConnell ran the Senate as Majority Leader, whether the issue was his refusal to grant Merrick Garland a hearing or his seating of Federalist Society judges, but that is irrelevant when considering Reid's "nuclear option" abolishing the filibuster in order to seat judges below the SCOTUS level and McConnell's response in kind in abolishing the filibuster in order to seat SCOTUS nominees. It all depends on whose ox is being gored.
Reid implemented the "nuclear option" because if he hadn't, Obama's nominees would never have been confirmed by the Senate. McConnell did the same thing because if he hadn't, Trump's nominees would never have been confirmed by the Senate. This is not a question of whose nominees one supports or not. It's a question of both parties using the Senate rules to create conditions favorable to each.
The Democrats cannot pull the "nuclear option" when they have the power to do so in their own interest, as Harry Reid did, and then complain that it's "unfair" for the Republicans to do so when they have the power to do so in their own interest. Maybe Reid should have thought about that before doing it. There were even Democrats who warned him that when the Republicans regained the Senate at some point, they could do the very same thing, but Reid was hard-headed and wouldn't listen. So he chose short-term gain over long term consequences. And now there are Democrats who wish to do away with the filibuster entirely. Some people never learn.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
ne can disagree with the way McConnell ran the Senate as Majority Leader, whether the issue was his refusal to grant Merrick Garland a hearing or his seating of Federalist Society judges, but that is irrelevant when considering Reid's "nuclear option" abolishing the filibuster in order to seat judges below the SCOTUS level and McConnell's response in kind in abolishing the filibuster in order to seat SCOTUS nominees. It all depends on whose ox is being gored.
There is a point here that refutes most of this argument. That is McConnell did not use the fillibuster to block Merrick Garland, he refused to even allow Garland to have pre hearing private meetings with republicans. The reason he held up Garland is because he was estimated to pass a confirmation hearing by 90 votes. Merrick Garland is a National legal hero who was the US Attorney who prosecuted the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing. He was onsite in the city right after the bombing investigating and compassionately interviewing victims and first responders. Garland was a fair and just selection for the court and he’s not a flaming liberal. He’s not as liberal as RBG was. He’s closer to the Chief Justice.
McConnell cynically played the rules of the Senate just for the raw power of being able to manipulate how many decisions would be handed down by an 8 member court. Then he reasoned publicly that he couldn’t allow a court appointment hearing in an election year, so he cheated the voters out of their choice of president who would appoint justices.
Next Ruth Baden Ginsburg died shortly before the 2020 election and he did not hold up hearings on now Justice Barrett. In fact he ramrodded it through just before an election, whereas when Scalia died ( ironically RBG’s good friend) it was four times as long before an election than RBG died.
The Fillibuster hardly plays into the situation in McConnell’s nihilistic approach to holding confirmation hearings. And while you certainly can say Democrats shouldn’t bitch about the fillibuster, the fact is it’s a flawed system. The fact is McConnell stole a seat on the Supreme Court without using it. Merrick Garland would have sailed though with more bipartisan support than any justice since a Reagan appointment, back in the days when appointments were picked on bipartisan appeal. Obama followed that dictum with his last pick. The republicans supported Trump appointments who were never had bipartisan appeal.
The fillibuster as its formulated now is a bad idea, it needs to be reformed to force filibustering as a stand up before congress action, not a card or phone call that’s used to be obstinate. And any arguments that there is an equivalence between McConnell and Reid using it are pretty thin. Why I’d say that argument is about as thin as piss on a rock.
If you look at the margins by which justices are voted on in confirmation hearings you see most of them have bipartisan appeal. This is normal. The radical breaks from this are Trumps appointments. And Robert Bork- he was a weird dude, I don’t think republicans even liked him.
The numbers tell a story, the judges that sailed through are RBG and Scalia. Both of Obama’s selections were easily passed and Garland was much farther off of the liberal spectrum than Kagan or Sotomayor, whom everyone but arse heads like Ted Cruz didn’t like, but show me anyone with a brain that thinks Cruz is a human being. Everyone hates him.
I digress, but there is no equivalence between the way the Obama era hearings were conducted and the way McConnell didn’t conduct them, or cheated. Obama’s court appointments sailed, Trumps were extremely unpopular with politicians and the public, but under threat of being trashed by trump media bullying they coerced them to comply with his federalist ideological picks. The federalist society is a group of GOP insider operatives who are rewarded for having opinions that lean in favor of big business and authoritarian ideology in legal actions.
Not even the same Reagan’s or Bush 41 and 43 better judgment on scotus appointments. Trump is an outlier who was assisted by McConnell’s cheating.
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99 to zero Reagan made three appointments who were court stalwarts that most of the public trusted even if they didn’t always agree. Reagan ultimately made four justices three of which passed by more than 90 votes.
Clinton appointee RBG just below SD O’Connor in votes with 97 - 3
Clinton - Blackmun 87 votes Bush 41 - Souter 90 votes Bush 43. - Roberts 78 votes
The outliers with the lowest passing margins are the ultra conservative federalist judges- Thomas, Alito, and Trumps picks. They were not working to create a dynamic court, they were working to make the court biased toward big business. And to set up a culture war for the religious freaks to challenge Roe v Wade- even Reagan, or especially Reagan knew better than to create kangaroo courts.
I think I make my point
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Just to belabor the point of McConnell’s utter lack of ethics - March 16 2016 Merrick Garland nominated by Obama- 2016 election is 8 and a half months away in November 6th.
Amy Barrett nominated September 29th five weeks before November 2020 election. And McConnell blocked the body of RBG lying in state in the capitol rotunda which is the ultimate honor.
I mean we really have a right to our grievances against republicans. McConnell is a disgrace and a stain.
My posts on this issue demonstrate that I don't disagree with many of your arguments regarding McConnell's actions as Senate Majority Leader. He clearly did not grant Garland a hearing (which I did not associate with a filibuster, as it wasn't in play), and your comments on nominees Ginsberg, Scalia, O'Connor et al, while uncontroversial and with which I largely agree, are nevertheless irrelevant to my basic point. I will restate my thesis by repeating a couple of my comments above which are the nub of the issue I have raised..
What Harry Reid either ignored or didn't care about when he abolished the filibuster for sub-SCOTUS Judicial nominees was the inevitable political truism that "what goes around, comes around." Sure enough, in 2017, with Mitch McConnell as Senate Majority Leader, the Senate abolished the remaining supermajority of 60 required to confirm Supreme Court nominees to a simple majority of 51. Having initiated the "nuclear option" in 2013, the Democrats were hardly in a position of moral or ethical superiority to condemn the Republicans' action when they were in a similar position.
One can disagree with the way McConnell ran the Senate as Majority Leader, whether the issue was his refusal to grant Merrick Garland a hearing or his seating of Federalist Society judges, but that is irrelevant when considering Reid's "nuclear option" abolishing the filibuster in order to seat judges below the SCOTUS level and McConnell's response in kind in abolishing the filibuster in order to seat SCOTUS nominees. It all depends on whose ox is being gored.
Reid implemented the "nuclear option" because if he hadn't, Obama's nominees would never have been confirmed by the Senate. McConnell did the same thing because if he hadn't, Trump's nominees would never have been confirmed by the Senate. This is not a question of whose nominees one supports or not. It's a question of both parties using the Senate rules to create conditions favorable to each.
The Democrats cannot pull the "nuclear option" when they have the power to do so in their own interest, as Harry Reid did, and then complain that it's "unfair" for the Republicans to do so when they have the power to do so in their own interest. Maybe Reid should have thought about that before doing it. There were even Democrats who warned him that when the Republicans regained the Senate at some point, they could do the very same thing, but Reid was hard-headed and wouldn't listen. So he chose short-term gain over long term consequences.
Again, my argument is solely concerned with the Republicans (McConnell) responding in kind to the Democrats (Reid) in the matter of abolishing the supermajority required for the confirmation of judicial nominees. It has nothing to do with whether one likes or dislikes McConnell or Reid, and it certainly has nothing to do with whether or not one likes or dislikes the judicial nominees facing confirmation.
By the way, I fully support amending the rules regarding the filibuster to require actually standing before the Senate chamber and talking a la Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." If something is worth filibustering, it's worth taking the time and effort to oppose it, both physically and mentally.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
But Bill, we agree that the filibuster should be reset to the Mr. Jimmy Goes to Washington style of talking on your feet. That would prevent stupid old Chuck Grassley or Jim ‘Snowball’ Imhofe from protesting things they don’t grasp. Ok- yeah but there’s no equivalence between how McConnell abuses the senate bylaws and Reid’s grand faux pas. There’s trust that McConnell has dynamited and he’s turned the senate into a dysfunctional body. At least now that he’s not running it some work can get
We’ll disagree on this, but I guarantee you McConnell will go down in history as an enormous stinking crap on the heel of America’s shoes and Harry Reid ( whom I know you personally loathe) will be a lightweight foot note.
Harry Reid ( whom I know you personally loathe) will be a lightweight foot note.
Nah. I don't loathe Harry Reid, The only politician I personally loathe is that lying, Putin-kissing lout Donald Trump.
By the way, did you know that Harry Reid was a decent amateur boxer in his youth? Because of that and his career representing Nevada in the Senate, Reid is in the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame. I'll give Reid this, he had a lot of grit and went far for a guy who grew up in the tiny town of Searchlight, Nevada.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
For me the observation that "what goes around comes around" is a strong argument for caution against tampering with the filibuster, independent of what my views of the current political situation may be.
I'm sure many of the Founders were keen students of the British parliamentary system. As far as I know (which is not very far) it has no requirements for super majorities. Yet the Founders set such requirements in certain cases: 2/3 majority for conviction in impeachments, 3/4 majority of the states for amendments to the Constitution.
Among other viewpoints I see the Senate's filibuster from an engineer's perspective. Throughout a 43 year career I dealt with self-regulating systems. A familiar one might be a thermostatically controlled heating system. If you set the thermostat for 68F, it doesn't turn on the heat the moment the temperature falls below the set point. It waits for the temperature to drop a little lower, maybe a degree or two. Likewise, when the heater brings the temperature up to 68, the thermostat may allow it to overshoot a bit before cutting off the heater.
The window around the set point of 68 F is called the "dead zone" it keeps the system from rapidly and continuously cycling between "on" and "off."
With razor thin majorities and frequent shifts of the party in power in the Senate, the filibuster serves as a dead zone to deter rapid countervailing shifts in legislative policy.
This serves much the same purpose as the priniciple of stare decisis in the courts. Judges are very reluctant to overturn precedent, even when they may disagree with it to some extent. Stability in the legal system helps to make clear the legal boundaries, and allows people to predict the legal consequences of their actions.
Stability in legislation is desirable for the same reasons. But of course, both the filibuster and stare decisis can be abused by mistaken or malevolent actors.
When the atmosphere of the earth evaporates off we’ll know who to hold responsible. We can point to old Joe Mansion out in West Virginia for saving the filibuster.
I guess we just see it differently, I see the filibuster as it is currently configured as a tool of intransigence. The House gets more real work done, the Senate is hobbled. The point that there are razor edge majorities valid however and in our current minority/ majority situation it’s stopping the trump world view from totally prevailing over how the US works with climate change. But my point is that primarily republicans have adopted an immoral and unethical stance. They are the party of Trump and they shouldn’t have the power they have.
Hell, I cannot agree with George F. Will in how he sees the availability of advancement and social equality in the US, he’s more or less an unreconstructed Will Buckley, he’s wrong on so many things. But I’d have dinner and drinks with him anytime because we both know republicans have become immoral and unfit to lead. How they responded to the Fox News hot take on COVID response is a moral failure. The Texas governor is going to the Supreme Court of Texas to shut down the opinions of educators who call for masks in schools. He’s literally asking for people to be exposed to a deadly disease and making it mandatory educational practice. He’s a murderer.
George F Will rejected the republicans because trump encouraged this kind of madness, and we agree on it. The filibuster needs to be reformed so that it cannot be used as a weapon to block the decisions made by moral and just legislators. The filibuster is supposed to a be a tool to hold space and force legislation to be amended into bipartisan sausages. Not to block the progress of funding saving the country and the planet.
They are the party of Trump and they shouldn't have the power they have.
Ever since November, 2016 I have often been reminded of something that happened in 1979. In June the Mexican oil well Ixtoc I blew out in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in a catastrophic oil spill second only to the British Petroleum spill of 2010. Ixtoc was drilled by Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil company.
In December 1979 my wife, kids and I boarded the train at Nuevo Laredo, bound for Mexico City. At a stop somewhere on the central plain the next day a small group gathered in the vestibule between our car and the next one. Ixtoc was still spewing oil at a huge rate, polluting Mexican and Texas beaches, kiling fish and birds wholesale. My wife and I were the only gringos in the discussion. The Mexicans were complaining about their goverment's ineffectual response.
The Pullman conductor spoke up. "We have the government we deserve. We let them lie and steal and do nothing about it."
When 46% of the popular vote goes to someone like Trump, the Pullman conductor’s definition of "We" at least borders upon accuracy.
A while back a poster here said he was disappointed with the United States. I replied that if you arrived at the age of 70 without being disappointed in the entire human race at least a couple of times, you simply weren't paying attention.
At present the majority of Republican Senators fall into the category of mistaken or malevolent actors who are abusing the filibuster.
Making it harder for them to do it would be a good thing. Abolishing the filibuster altogether would be unwise, in my opinion.
My engineering analogy is imperfect, given the present thin majorities. Long before I got involved with self-guided missiles and big radars 55 years ago it was well understood that the parameters of feedback mechanisms had to be precisely adjustable in fine increments. Now with the Senate at 50-50 the filibuster is all or nothing. It has been evaded for judicial confirmations and the "budget reconciliation" process, but it serves to wreck the Senate otherwise.
A ray of hope is the $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill. For the first time in 12 years we have a president trained and experienced in legislative compromise.
Trump wasn't trained in anything about government, and never will be. He reminds me of the exclamation of a frustrated math professor I overheard in the 1950s: "Students, you are like the geese! You wake up in whole new world every day!" Except Trump wakes up every day in a fresh new version of the same deluded nightmare.
For the Obamacare bill Obama kept insisting that they get at least a handful of Republicans to go along with it. However, as the handful of Republicans diminished toward zero, his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel's view prevailed: "F--- 'em. We've got the votes."
Maybe if the infrastructure bill actually passes, a few more Republicans may begin to suspect there could be a little profit in constructive action, rather than deception, fear and malice.
When the atmosphere of the earth evaporates off we’ll know who to hold responsible. We can point to old Joe Mansion out in West Virginia for saving the filibuster.
This attitude is what is creating the division. Exaggerating the issue and pointing fingers at political individuals is a constant resetting of the bowling pins for the opposition. A non condescending approach to the conservative solutions that benefit all parties is the correct direction, and the sooner the Democrats accept this the faster we can move forward with viable solutions. The blame goes back to al gore and other righteous democrats for first setting up the bowling pins via a political platform. “We have moral high ground here to save the earth and give women choices”….”you mean to tax working class people for rich people mistakes and murder babies?”…. On and on it goes, when it should not be a platform issue, or rather it is claimed by the wrong platform. My favorite amusement is when I see gun loving Democrats caught in limbo.
When the atmosphere of the earth evaporates off we’ll know who to hold responsible. We can point to old Joe Mansion out in West Virginia for saving the filibuster.
This attitude is what is creating the division. Exaggerating the issue and pointing fingers at political individuals is a constant resetting of the bowling pins for the opposition. A non condescending approach to the conservative solutions that benefit all parties is the correct direction, and the sooner the Democrats accept this the faster we can move forward with viable solutions. The blame goes back to al gore and other righteous democrats for first setting up the bowling pins via a political platform. “We have moral high ground here to save the earth and give women choices”….”you mean to tax working class people for rich people mistakes and murder babies?”…. On and on it goes, when it should not be a platform issue, or rather it is claimed by the wrong platform. My favorite amusement is when I see gun loving Democrats caught in limbo.
I would include among the authors of division over climate change the Koch brothers, for example, and people like them. Apparently they saw scientific evidence of human-caused climate change and proposals to mitigate it as immediate attacks on their pocketbooks. They organized a campaign of disinformation and paid people, including Republican politicians, to propagate confusion and falsehood.
A consistent line you hear from these people is that mitigating climate change will destroy the economy. Please allow me to doubt that they are unaware of potential opportunities for profit. But wouldn't they fear that people with different skills from theirs might be the ones to profit, while the "old economy" people lose money?
I'm not arguing that there are no capitalist solutions to the climate crisis, just pointing out that capitalists of the "old economy" are among the authors of division.
A consistent line you hear from these people is that mitigating climate change will destroy the economy. Please allow me to doubt that they are unaware of potential opportunities for profit.
But the video I linked before shows that it WAS a surprise to the big companies that were forced to comply (in Australia). Also was admitted that smaller companies also did collapse because of the carbon tax, but it is suggested that those were on the verge anyway. So it is not totally fair to pretend that that all parties opposed that actually have financial power to potential benefit rather than collapse, are pushing the agenda with full knowledge. If you go through the videos of Potholer54 to find exactly who, (like Koch if you say so), are exposed as malicious parties acting with full knowledge only wanting to both NOT benefit from energy conservation due to laziness, AND KNOWINGLY SUPPRESS the understood science (either do the extra cherry picking work or waste money paying others to do it for you), it becomes clear that those individuals are QUITE FEW. In almost all cases, including the Austrailian company mentioned before, it is based on SIMPLE IGNORANCE OF GEOLOGICAL HISTORY AND CO2.
My feeling is that people just keep pushing back because of the way the information is getting thrown at them, and the ignorance of the consequences of making changes to their lives and outlook. The political platform and social media self constructing bubbles are making it all much much worse than it should be. It makes no sense for companies to knowingly suppress simple truth about CO2, spending money to do THAT, AND jeopardizing their own economic future (left behind the competitors), unless they are simply ignorant about the actual problem at hand. Koch included, but I don’t actually know their story and reasons, but I would bet it points to the same ignorance of the higher ups have that your family thanksgiving dinners also reveal.
When the atmosphere of the earth evaporates off we’ll know who to hold responsible. We can point to old Joe Mansion out in West Virginia for saving the filibuster.
This attitude is what is creating the divisio
This attitude is called hyperbole and sarcasm, it’s not policy.
When republicans stop getting their policy from one stop shopping on Fox News we can have policy discussions. The conservatives who used to debate policy have been shut out by extreme conservative populists in media. You won’t hear the conservatives who want to engage in policy debate that’s unattached and dispassionate from populist conservative media because they can’t win election without going on Fox News and trashing coastal democrats as socialist elitists who want to hold down conservative whites.
The Fox machine tells conservative whites that they don’t have to share anything with non whites and that when ever money goes into the pocket of non whites that that money is coming out of white pockets. Ultra conservative Republicans political hacks perpetuate this lie. The facts are exactly opposite, the coasts are not elite, and racism is exponentially more expensive to the country than sharing mentality.
It’s not that people don’t want to talk policy, it’s that conservative media has grabbed policy and won’t accept any view other than their own.
It’s not that people don’t want to talk policy, it’s that conservative media has grabbed policy and won’t accept any view other than their own.
Right, but that situation has naturally evolved as push back to how democrats have been operating over the years. That monster is created over time, and only getting worse by exaggerating the concept of “whites telling whites bla bla”. Yes a minority are racist but as discussed earlier you can’t pretend that party has the monopoly, as hypocrisy is revealed across the board again and again. So by pointing fingers of affiliation with non racists, insisting they must be if they watch a certain news station, you just dump gas on the push back fire that was already going on, and then the assumption that all democratic ideas are gross exaggerations, and the divide just widens.
About Koch bros., I was trying to see what happened specifically (regarding climate data) and I believe it has to do with certain individuals of the Cato institute. Around 13 minutes, the specifics are addressed. Basically a prediction margin of error (3 scenarios) were exploited in order to show prediction failure, and it was done knowingly and deliberately. Again, my point is it shows a lot of ignorance rather than malicious intents IN GENERAL , and ignorance is found on both sides of the argument, hence continuing pointless exaggeration and push back.
In general I don’t watch videos posted as a support for an argument. You then have to take into consideration the politics and biases of the video makers and what their intent is. What is their agenda and how they evaluate evidence and facts to make a piece. Even an institution hosting a discussion has a political interest in how the video is seen.
I usually do research over a long period of time and write from what I’ve synthesized of many primary sources. Books, interviews etc. I don’t tend to base policy thinking on media hot takes either.
That said, the idea that the RNC and GOP are merely reacting to democrats is a vast stretch of what we already know about US political history. Beginning in the late Nixon era the RNC -GOP implemented ‘The Southern Strategy’ and that developed in the 1980’s. The 90’s saw Newt Gingrich with the Contract With America and the 2000’s were super saturated with Republican nationalism via using wars in Mid East as a litmus test of patriotism. Then Mitch McConnell vowed to obstruct anything and everything Obama wanted to do, Trump used a jingoistic bully tactic to beat down his political opponents, people in his own party and random citizens who dared call him wrong.
Now all of these political movements were tactically offensive, not defensive. I’m not seeing the part where democrats dismantle the goodwill for inter-party shop talk. That was Newt Gingrich’s baby, he punished anyone in his caucus that wanted to act out bipartisan work, he forbid his caucus members to socialize with democrats.
It’s been consistently republicans being aggressive with the tools to break bipartisanship. This is US political history 101
Case in point some background on Cato institutes policy positions:
‘Formerly called Charles Koch Foundation; Cato Foundation The Cato Institute is libertarian in its political philosophy, and advocates a limited role for government in domestic and foreign affairs as well as a strong protection of civil liberties. This includes support for the lowering or abolishing most taxes, opposition to the Federal Reserve system, the privatization of numerous government agencies and programs including Social Security, the Affordable Care Act and the United States Postal Service, demilitarization of the police, along with adhering to a non-interventionist foreign policy.’
Yeah, these guys are not in anyway objectively working with science and it’s been proven and documented that anything Charles Koch touched is highly biased if not gamed against science that interferes with his libertarianism.
Among the things C. Koch wanted to do was privatize the US penal system. We’ve seen over and over what happens when private companies run prisons. Some judge who is a virulent racist starts packing the prison with minority and poor citizens who get a punishment that’s not commensurate with the crime. Then the judge gets a kick back for playing the game if demonizing and incarcerating the poor.
He wanted to de-democratize the postal system and give it to private companies. Well that worked out very well when the Trump postmaster general destroyed sorting machines that made post delivery faster and cheaper- all the while not divesting from his interests in a consortium of private post businesses.
Etc- all brought to you courtesy of the Cato/Koch philosophy.
On a personal note, when I lived in Big Sur in the 80’s a Koch family member lived there for a time. He was a white nationalist, a punk - not the endearing musician kind, but the school bully kind. And he was also a meth freak. He eventually had to be run out of town under threat the local police would harm him. They wouldn’t arrest him however when he beat people up. I saw him wrap a bandanna around his fist and punch a guy standing next to me at the gate to a ridge road because Koch didn’t like him. The cops lectured the the guy who got hit and left Koch alone.
His family conduct business the same way the errant wayward brother imagined himself a libertarian Billy Jack. Eventually he left town and everything went back to its usual innocent level of debauchery in the bars. Guys would get drunk and proclaim in front of horrified tourists that they were gonna go home and bugger their Labrador retriever, but the meth head trust fund libertarian punk was gone.
That whole family can go die.
It should noted, a priori or posteriori, I’m not in support of anything libertarian. It’s anti democratic.
In general I don’t watch videos posted as a support for an argument. You then have to take into consideration the politics and biases of the video makers and what their intent is.
I take that as admissions you did not watch any of the videos I posted in this thread? How is that different than when rednecks won’t look at scientific literature? The sources are all in the video description. The “agenda” of the video, as all of his videos, is to address the anti-science myths by tracking to the source of the miss-info. Yes that results in frustration and criticism from both sides of certain arguments, but it also adds to the knowledge of the subject at a deeper level. For example I remember as a kid a science teacher warning about the coming ice age, and it leaves the young mind burned with skepticism that climate is warming. This guy has done the leg work to track down these type of myths that average joe like myself has no time to do. Seeing more clearly why the issues persist regarding people’s general understanding (exaggerated fear vs denial of the problem) and how it can realistically be dealt with in the near future, has opened my ears to the fact it is not good guys vs bad guys as you keep insisting it is.
e that as admissions you did not watch any of the videos I posted in this thread? How is that different than when rednecks won’t look at scientific literature? The sources are all in the video description. The “agenda” of the video, as all of his videos, is to address the anti-science myths by tracking to the source of the miss-info. Yes that results in frustration and criticism from both sides of certain arguments, but it also adds to the knowledge of the subject at a deeper level. For example I remember as a kid a science teacher warning about the coming ice age, and it leaves the young mind burned with skepticism that climate is warming. This guy has done the leg work to track down these type of myths that average joe like myself has no time to do. Seeing more clearly why the issues persist regarding people’s general understanding (exaggerated fear vs denial of the problem) and how it can realistically be dealt with in the near future, has opened my ears to the fact it is not good guys vs bad guys as you keep insisting it is.
I don’t have time to watch those videos because I’m too busy watching reruns of SNL skits on YouTube.
Can’t you write an argument instead of assigning homework to other people? Instead of requiring someone to watch the video, can you synthesize an argument by creating a synopsis of several long videos? Arguments that are written are like book reports, you select three of the core or most salient ideas and lay them out in a few paragraphs. It’s unfair to require someone process several videos, as the person who wants to make a point you aught to boil it down and present a concise version in your own words. Readers can get the point in a few sentences.
And I clearly understand it’s not as simple as good guys vs. bad guys, however in US industry that’s in league with certain groups in conservative politics there are men and women who are exploiting the public’s lack of knowledge to abuse the situation. Fox News and other outlets propagandize constantly in dangerous ways. They told people that it’s ok to use livestock medicine to self treat covid. Then the Mississippi health Dept has to countermand these dangerous pronouncements because politics effect what information people believe. We are in an information war and the politics of information are unavoidable. One faction in this information gap the GOP, espouses dangerous and untrue information as official policy and calls it fact. They use political loyalty as a tool to spread misinformation. In our binary political system one side is exponentially more duplicitous than the other, and has been for decades.
For example I remember as a kid a science teacher warning about the coming ice age,
Scientific papers have never claimed coming ice age - that particular stupidity was due to "journalists" misinterpreting and exaggerating (sexifying?) whatever paper was looking at some satellite measurements and the whole media machine trumpeting coming ice age to high heaven. So average Joe (and apparently even some science teachers) heard THAT instead of what scientists actually said.
A great source of all things climate is the blog/website https://www.realclimate.org/ which is maintained by actual scientists (there is a link to it from the video description too). Apart from all sorts of other very current content, It goes through all the types of deliberate misinterpretations, outright falsifications, logical fallacies, etc. that are the base of the typical counter-arguments from denialists/contrarians. There is no "both sides" regarding human-caused global warming, and the counter-arguments did not originate out of ignorance or mistake, but from deliberate malicious argument-crafting in bad faith.
Part of the confusion with you presenting a video is that it says Cato institute but it is not clear at first sight who originated it, who is speaking (at 13min), and who the hell is potholer54. For this and other reasons I also prefer written text - sourced to, preferably, peer-reviewed scientific papers in reputable international journals.
in US industry that’s in league with certain groups in conservative politics there are men and women who are exploiting the public’s lack of knowledge to abuse the situation
Showing exactly who and how that happens is what the guy (potholer54) has been investigating and presenting in his video series.
Yes, Kitarist you are a rare breed that manages to do the investigative work very quick and efficiently. You and Potholer54 for president, I would vote for you guys.
Yes, Kitarist you are a rare breed that manages to do the investigative work very quick and efficiently. You and Potholer54 for president, I would vote for you guys.
But I’m chopped liver because I’m cautious and also reach for peer reviewed material?
Exactly what Kitarist said: there are factions that have been proven to manipulate and falsely apply scientific data sets to mollify the parts of the public they want to influence.
Scientific papers have never claimed coming ice age - that particular stupidity was due to "journalists" misinterpreting and exaggerating (sexifying?)
I remember hearing this too in Geology class. Although the professor did say “According to historical trends we are long over due for an ice age” something like every 10k years… kids, we got to get New Brunswick feeling like Miami Beach!
there are factions that have been proven to manipulate and falsely apply scientific data sets to mollify the parts of the public they want to influence.
Right, and you keep saying. So I looked into it and found out exactly how that happened. The issue I have is the insinuation that it is knowing and malicious abuse across the board on the issue, and that is frankly NOT the case. The thing you would not watch (I gave a time stamp no need for watching entire show) showed how an individual wrongly spoke on the subject and after getting properly informed changed his stance on the subject. It really is that simple. But if he had been continuously called an “ignorant yahoo” (I know that was bills term) he never would have looked deeper into it, and that whole thing is the main problem as I see it.
The thing you would not watch (I gave a time stamp no need for watching entire show) showed how an individual wrongly spoke on the subject and after getting properly informed changed his stance on the subject.
Wait, are you saying that potholer54 claims he traced the falsifications and manipulations of the temperature record to falsely claim scientists were wrong about global warming to a single individual making a mistake at one point? I am very skeptical about this knowing what I know (I happen to have expertise on the subject) but it would be better to know specifics to be able to advance the argument in a more constructive fashion.
showed how an individual wrongly spoke on the subject and after getting properly informed changed his stance on the subject. It really is that simple. But if he had been continuously called an “ignorant yahoo” (I know that was bills term) he never would have looked deeper into it, and that whole thing is the main
Once a few years ago one of the august senior members of the guitar maker group on the Foro found my complaints about global warming to be tedious and librardish. He challenged my foggy notions of why anyone should be concerned that right wing political hacks would manipulate scientific data to discredit climate scientists consensus that it’s real.
He posted a peer reviewed paper that he lifted from a website that was aimed at downplaying the greenhouse effect on the planet. I guess the website he went to listed or excerpted portions of papers that supported their foggy notions and figured folks who wanted to believe science data was not credible wouldn’t cross reference the material or even take the effort to read the whole paper.
I went to the site he posted here and read what the authors of the site wanted you to get from the paper, then I downloaded the actual paper and read most of it. It was almost diametrically opposite of what the anti climate science website wanted you to think. Then I looked at the principal investigators of the paper and wasn’t super duper surprised to find the name of a friend of mine who is a British scientist who studies and publishes on climate. His name is Gavin Cawley and he also makes lutes in his spare time. He’s a good luthier who also collects succulent plants.
So I come back to the Foro and say to this august member that I read the paper and laid out very quickly why the site that used it is wrong and manipulative. Then pointed out that the website excerpted the paper out of context and that I knew the one of the principal investigators, adding I can invite him to clarify any if this on the Foro. The guitar maker who challenged me then said he doesn’t want to talk about climate politics online and immediately left the conversation, never to return to the Off Topic section.
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