Forum for discussing local and world politics and issues. All views are welcomed. Let your opinions be heard on current news and politics.
All standard guidelines apply to this board, No Flaming, No Taunting, No Foul Language,No sexual innuendos,etc..
As politics can be a volatile subject, please consider how you would feel if your comment were directed toward yourself.
Any post deemed to be in violation of guidelines will be deleted or edited without warning or notification. Any continued misbehavior will result in a ban or hidden status, so please play nice!!!
*"Moderators are here for a reason. If a moderator (or Global Moderator or Fencer) requests that a discussion on a certain subject to cease - for whatever reason - please respect these wishes. Failure to do so may result in being hidden, or banned."
"The Obama administration's limitation on lobbyists isn't a direct ban. Lobbyists are still allowed to be a part of the administration working on areas that they have not lobbied on."
Artful Dodger: 50 out of how many operating in Washington that are employed by corporations?? I still remember the story of how Nixon delayed the law on seatbelts due to pressure by the car manufacturers who were complaining that it would cost more to make cars.
I am sure people really, really believed that our western capitalist systems could change; specially with somebody like a "liberal" president in the United States.
The fact that for the last 150 years the same two political streams (centre-right liberals and right wing conservatives) have ruled the world really points to how easily and how well western society can change.
In most countries middle class men would rather cut off their left nut rather than do anything that would change the status quo. I am sure the rich will give up their wealth and power and help the poor and the dispossed out of the goodness of their hearts. After all, Christian values and love for one's fellow man are the guiding principles of western society!
Artful Dodger: Some of those are in jail, or at least prosecuted and found guilty. But, probably like over here.. they claim it's within the rules.
My point is, it's no good making out the Democrats to be worse then the Republicans, or nit pick over little things. In the end, it's how much good generally they achieve.
... If JFK was in power today, would his womanising be appreciated, or that he steered the world away from a nuclear war that no one would have won.
Artful Dodger: I hear talk that the Tea party movement could either be a bonus to the GOP or a curse. As votes could be deflected.
You don't need a third party, you guys from both main just need to join and say "we want change".. this fighting between parties tends to forget one thing.
You are all Americans.
March together. Protest together. But as long as there is "us and them" you'll let those who are gravy training this constant infighting win and the American people will lose out.
btw.. what is conservatism? It seems to be different from the UK variety.
Artful Dodger: You will always get the extremists saying the world is going to end, we've had it off the religious element for years.. The anti-christ is coming, end of the world..etc, etc, etc..... ... year 2k.. I worked for a firm making sure that computer systems of various companies would not cave by the 00 digit problem of old mainframe systems, yet some guy had the idea that toasters would stop working.. even though they had no chips in them.
Regardless of those extremists on all sides, we cannot deny mankind's impact. I saw a documentary on the British coast remarking on how when someone thought it was a bright idea to turn salt marsh into farmland it ruined a natural harbour which dried up through it's sea water supply being disturbed by the new farmland.
It's no good saying quoting the doom and gloomers and saying Global warming is wrong because their figures were inaccurate.
btw... that story is two years old and from what I gather to do with a few weeks of cold weather in one part of the arctic.
As the source says I'm looking at...
"It's called freaky Arctic weather.
"All of the action is in the Bering Sea," Serreze said.
"For the past several weeks, we've been under a rather unusual weather pattern, a cold pattern, that's given us this late spurt in ice growth in the Bering Sea. If you look at the rest of the Arctic Ocean proper, it is very warm."
The Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia, is caught between two low-pressure systems.
"This is weather," said Serreze. "Don't conflate this with climate."
Serreze notes that on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, ice is low.
However, online climate change sceptics have seized on the data as proof that global warming is a hoax. By Thursday morning, hundreds of Twitter posts were referencing Serreze's graph - many linking to a Sydney Morning Herald blog that displays the graph without explanation or context.
"An inconvenient fact," reads one post. "Arctic sea ice back to normal - oops."
Another asked: "Will the hysterical eco-nuts be called out? NO!"
Right-wing think-tanks such as the U.S.-based Heartland Institute had stories on the graph, but without comment from Serreze. Other online articles quoted climate skeptics as if they were the authors of the research."
Artful Dodger: If you mean the extreme Climate worriers are probably going to be proves wrong.. you are probably right.
If you are saying that mankind's impact on the planet is insignificant then I must remind you of a thing called combined effect. One instance of this is in India, where a certain area that produces much food is having problems now with it's wells used for irrigation. They just keep having to dig deeper.
Why... more farms.
The dustbowl of USA history was caused by bad farming practices that ended up with the topsoil blowing away. Nature had some part.. but the removal of hedgerows was a bad idea.
Artful Dodger: The carbon credit was/is and always be a farce is true. That we should keep the planet clean is true... have you ever heard of acid rain?
> Man's overall impact on the planet and climate IS insignificant.
I guess the destruction of forests, the disappearance of thousands of species, the pollution of the oceans, all those garbage dumps, those clouds of emmissions visible from satellites in outer space, the high incidence of cancer and other diseases, etc. All that is "insignificant". The fact that deforestation and desertification have been out of control for decades is insignificant. Anything as long as we can justify continuing to burn fossil fuels. I am sure that "Climategate" has now made it OK to destroy our planet. Who cares anyway? It is the poor who live in deserts and die of hunger. As long as the middle class can keep consuming, "environmental concerns" are "insignificant". It is all lies spread by left-wing socialist scientists anyway. The planet is OK and our grandkids will live in an eternal oasis.
Don't you think the "immediate" environment is part of the planet too? When CO2 is released, where does it go? Outer space? Into a cave? We have removed 2/3 of the world's forests, that means 66% less CO2 consumption by plants. At the same time we have pumped tons and tons of CO2 that was trapped in fossil fuels. It took nature millions of years to transform that CO2 into hydrocarbons. We have changed the balance literally overnight.
We look at the problem from a purely consumerist point of view. We want to keep consuming fossil fuels, plastics, consumer products, etc. The pollution that comes in the process is going somewhere, and it is not outside this planet. What you call "immediate" environment is the planet itself. All it comes down to is the fact that the middle class wants to consume and not feel guilty about it. So we make excuses. Scientists are wrong (now, there is something really, really new in history) so let's keep the status quo. Let's drill some more, release a bit here and there. In 300 years, it will be somebody else's problem. We will be dead by then, so the resposibility is not ours anyway.
Artful Dodger: Ever heard of how butterfly's can cause hurricanes. How our natural species of squirrel has been nearly replaced by an American import.
I don't call a countrywide event .... "immediate". The Black plague killed .. .. lots and lots due to ships carrying rats. Back then no-one knew what was causing it through ignorance of medical matters.
We are part of this planet I believe.. our bones being made from it.
".....is a mud volcano[1] in the subdistrict of Porong, Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia that has been ongoing since May 2006. Approximately 2,500 m³ (88,000 cubic feet) of mud — equivalent to the contents of a dozen Olympic-size swimming pools — are expelled per day.[2] It is expected that the flow will continue for the next 30 years.
...There was controversy as to what triggered the eruption and whether the event was a natural disaster or not. According to PT Lapindo Brantas it was the May 2006 earthquake losers that triggered the mud flow eruption, and not their drilling activities.....
...In June 2008, a report released by British, American, Indonesian, and Australian scientists [13] concluded that the volcano was not a natural disaster, but the result of oil and gas drilling..."
Snoopy: No justice, those 3 MPs ought to be denied seeing as I thought the whole idea of Legal aid was for low wage folk. if they want to fight their cases, pay it out of their savings, re-mortgage their houses.