The Gore-ites just told us we've got to spend $43 TRILLION dollars on the environment! All based on the half-assed, politically-driven, pseudo-scientific research that is mired in the assumption (to say nothing of PREsumption) that WE as a species are solely responsible for every slight change in the climate.
And, I'm sorry Walter, but the whole "directly responsible" has never really flown. Bush didn't plant bombs in cars abandoned on Bagdad streets, and neither did our soldiers. If they did, then they're guilty of war crimes and should be punished to the full extent of the law. Neither are they guilty of the sectarian violence that swept the country following the Sunnis' fall from power. Well, in all fairness, their actions DID cause the upset in the power structure. Then again, the power structure that was there WAS directly responsible for the deaths of over 250,000 Kurd civilians. In terms of karma, do you think the scales are even yet? I shudder to think.
Of course, I'm not gonna argue the fact that we shouldn't be in Iraq right now. Problem is, we keep making more mistakes trying to fix the ones we've already made. We made the mistake of GOING there in the first place without solid intelligence (of any form), and then we WENT there without a plan of what to do afterward. I realize things have gotten better now (which is a very relative term), but we shouldn't have put up with the idiocracy of the provisional Iraqi government and their "police force" for NEARLY as long as we did. And now, the only solution we have is known as "Mission: Just LEAVE," which wouldn't solve anything either other than make the whole country implode. Then, and only then, would you be able to apply the term "directly responsible."
As for John Kerry, sorry, can't give you anything on that one straight away. I'd actually have to do some research first. Maybe it was from the 2004 presidential race that spoiled it, but every time he opens his mouth, the words are lost under the subtitles I see across the bottom of the screen that read "ASININE COMMENT." Bush may be a moron, but Kerry has no excuse. Its weird. I actually had a specific occurrence in mind when I wrote this, and now it's gone. *sigh* Maybe I'll remember it later.
I hope that all this shite gets fixed when Bush is out of office. Then again, all I hear from presidential would-bes is "what we should do" rather than an actual "solutions." At this stage, I don't care about the topics; I only care about coming up with actual SOLUTIONS for them. We're supposed to be delegating the authority to deal with situations to an individual who is capable of doing so. Why is that so hard to find?
*sigh* Okay, I'm not gonna argue with you. It's late and I've probably been a bit ass-hatted in this reply. Sorry 'bout that. Let's debate as all civilized people should, then maybe we'll get somewhere. Robert Heinlein said that politics, though undesirable at times, are civilization's way of handling conflicts in order to avoid war. However, when politics fail (and they have) there is little other choice.
The damage to the political system is bad enough, but no one has any suggestions to FIX it, only rebuild it in THEIR favor, which is no different. All we have on the Hill are two groups of useless politicians taking diametrically opposing positions for the sake of doing so and then refusing to budge an inch while the rest of us keep getting hanged by the rope we're handing them at every general election.
Hmm, so I guess in short, I can't prove anything. You can't prove what WOULD have happened. It is impossible. I won't even try. All I can do is look at the character of the individuals that WE have seen fit to put on a pedestal and realize that WE have failed gloriously by the same token. In fact, this has nothing to do with Bush, Gore, and Kerry, so I don't know why I brought it up. Its all water under the bridge. Now there is the water coming OVER the bridge and threatening to drown all of us.
Angel had a good point: the only people who are intelligent and capable enough to do the job and do it well are far too smart to ever take on the job in the first place.
You're a smart fellow. I'd be interested to hear if you've got any good ideas. Beyond that, I bid you good evening.
What's your reference for the $43 trillion figure? A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation (done a month ago, so I don't have the figures still; sorry) says that we could mothball every coal plant in the USA, India, and China (which is most of them in the world) and replace them with clean nuclear for ~2 trillion with the current price of fission plants from GE. The long-term cost will be lower than that, because the problem with nuclear is the up-front cost; fission plants cost less than coal to operate over time. This also ignores economies of scale from building that much nuclear (ask the French about that), the fact that it would be far more cost-efficient to gradually switch over as existing equipment fails, and the fact that in many areas wind/solar thermal/tidal power is a cheaper alternative.
Many environmental measures are actually a net benefit to the economy; driving smaller and more efficient cars, for instance, reduces our expenditure on oil. If this were done across the board there'd be no safety concerns; as we will observe a week from now in my freshman physics class, at the end of the problem all of the masses cancel.
Also note that ending fossil power generation is far more ambitious than the plans being put forth by many environmentalists for addressing climate change.
Even if the figure were in fact $43 trillion (which I doubt it is), that's still money spent for someone's benefit -- namely, all of us, especially those of us who live on the coast (and in Arizona, for that matter). Is the city of New York worth $43 trillion? Some might argue that New York, and Amsterdam, and Lagos, and so many coastal cities around the world are worth that price tag. Some might argue that, no, that's too expensive -- we ought to just pack them up and move inland. There is room for intelligent people to discuss how to spend our nation's resources to best benefit the USA and the world: should we improve infrastructure, educate the young, do scientific research, address social problems like poverty and disease, or simply lower taxes and let the individual decide how best to use those resources. But the Iraq war benefits nobody other than those in power, their cronies/business partners, and their political allies. The Iraq war has provided no benefit to the average American citizen. (It certainly has made us no safer; there are far more people who hate Americans and are willing to die to kill them around than there were before the war.)
A married couple might debate whether to spend their money on a new car or an improvement to their house or to save for their child's education, with both parties having valid points. But no sane person would suggest lighting their money on fire... yet we've done exactly that in Iraq.
Regarding responsibility for the war in Iraq: Yes, the Bush administration is quite clearly responsible for the expenditure of money. They are also responsible for the loss of American life: a country invaded by another has the right to defend herself, and this includes planting bombs to kill the invading army. If I go to the desert and start poking rattlesnakes with sticks, it's my own damn fault when they bite me. If I go to the desert and start invading countries, it's my own damn fault when they fight back.
The Sunni-Shi'ite violence is indirectly our responsibility as well. Iraq under Saddam was a shitpile, but Iraq currently is far worse. A New England Journal of Medicine study (Brownstein and Brownstein, 2008) reports 151,000 deaths by violence directly since the US invasion; the indirect death rate from the decline in the standard of living since 2003 is estimated on the order of one million, but I don't have a reliable citation for that at the moment.
Whether you believe we are morally responsible for this isn't as clear-cut; I submit that $2-3 trillion, 4000 American dead, 25000 Americans seriously wounded, and our international reputation shattered is sufficiently weighty a cost.
Hey, please don't bite my head off about the $43 trillion figure. I just heard it on the news the other day. It was some sort of report sent to Congress either by Al Gore or someone who works for him. However, one thing I forgot to mention was the fact that this was, I believe, a world-wide bottom-line dollar amount for their plan to "save the environment." Unfortunately, as the media usually goes, they didn't really go into the specifics of it.
That's a world wide bottom line... Not how much we would be shelling out.
But at least its for someone's benefit. Making power and cars and what not more eco-friendly is a winning situation for all, unlike the war in Iraq which is only friendly to Bush's cock.
Bringing environmentalism into the American mainstream would not only make for a healthier and more self-sustaining society, but it would also provide new jobs. Even if it costs more than the war in Iraq, how is this a bad thing in the end? Iraq hasn't given us -anything- of use like the Bush administration said it would.
-no cheap gas. -no stable democratic ally in the Middle East -no end or stemming the tide of terrorism
At least taking care of the environment gets us somewhere both on the local and global scale. If we had spent all our time and energy on hybrid cars and nuclear power, as a country we'd be in a much better place in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Actually, flip the sectarian part around. Sunnis were killing Shi'ites without reprisal due to the fact that there was a Sunni dictator in power. When he and his power structure were removed, a democratic government set up in its place, the Sunnis basically threw a fit and left themselves out of the process. Now, with the Sunnis no longer in power, the militant Shi'ites are going around getting revenge for what happened under Saddam's rule. Then, WE step in to try to stop the Shi'ites, and the Sunnis start attacking them again.
And don't be down on yourself for the technical solutions. I like technical solutions, because they're ones that people can't argue with without showing their hand, showing their greed for money and power. That's my major problem with Al Gore's environmentalist group. Not only are they using half-baked science to support their "realizations" about the state of the environment, they are also using intimidation (as in mafia) to make sure that no one with enough know-how will argue with them.
We made the mistake of GOING there in the first place without solid intelligence (of any form), and then we WENT there without a plan of what to do afterward.
We went there based on fabricated intelligence, deliberately "sexed up" (to use the British term) to make a case for war that did not exist. This is the opinion of the Senate Intelligence Committee (including 2 of the 6 Republicans), anyway, along with many analysts who have sufficient credentials to know what they're talking about.
The Iraqi Provisional Government was put in by us.
If we were to "just leave", as you put it, sure -- the country would implode. (It's already doing that, of course, just more slowly). However, if this implosion would be our "direct responsibility", then so is everything else that has happened post-invasion. (If it's not our responsibility that Sunnis, fed up with the lack of a functioning government, are killing Shi'ites while American troops are in Iraq, how is it our responsibility if this happens after they leave?)
This concern for the Iraqis seems to be the standard neoconservative response to any proposal for leaving Iraq: "But if we leave, the country will deteriorate!" I note that such concern for the wellbeing of Iraqis seems strangely absent at other times; it's only trotted out as a "But there'll be a civil war if we leave!" argument to say we should stay. Even this doesn't hold water: there already is a civil war, and there's a good argument to be made that the only reason the Sunnis and Shi'ites aren't killing each other more actively is because they both hate the Americans more.
I don't want my countrymen used as bullet-decoys.
So Bush's asinine comments are forgiven because he's lacking in the simple intelligence that Nature gave your more intelligent barnyard animals, but Kerry's asinine remarks[citation needed] are condemnable because he's more intelligent?
Then again, all I hear from presidential would-bes is "what we should do" rather than an actual "solutions."
I agree that the proposals are a little vague (I'd like to hear something like "We're going to tax carbon emissions from coal plants at rate X; we anticipate that this will cause Y GW of capacity to shut down, and are prepared to replace it with Z GW of fission, A GW of wind, and so on, and that can be paid for using the taxes on the remaining coal along with $B out of the general budget." But sadly the American political system makes precise proposals like this political suicide.)
We're supposed to be delegating the authority to deal with situations to an individual who is capable of doing so. Why is that so hard to find?
Because Bush systematically fired or chased off those individuals with said capacity (numerous science advisors, Colin Powell, numerous top military brass, and several top counterterrorism officials) because they didn't tell him what he wanted to hear. When you fire your capable subordinates and hire cronies, don't complain when you get bad help.
Neither Obama nor McCain is my ideal next president. Obama's not really said much about what he intends to do; perhaps I agree with him, perhaps not, but he's not said much. McCain will be an utter disaster, as he's not only encumbered with a Texan albatross around his neck but is currently taking a plaster cast of its head to use as a mask if he gets elected.
But none of our leaders have been paragons of wisdom; the best in recent memory, I believe, was Eisenhower. Just because neither Obama nor McCain is perfect doesn't mean that they're both terrible, however; I'd prefer water, but if it's between Kool-Aid and horse piss I know which I'd choose.
I do have ideas for fixing some of our problems. Many of them are technical in nature, because that's what I do; my only idea for fixing our nation's political problems is a sincere desire that greedy bastards who put their own gain ahead of the good of the nation get the Prague treatment, and be thrown out of windows. (Well, that, and fix the voting system to one that can be shown, in a rigorous mathematical manner, to be superior.) Perhaps I shall make a post about them someday.
All you've demonstrated here is that Bush is an asswipe. We elected this person TWICE!!! And have let him rampage unchecked all over our country's reputation. He lied to not only his own people, but to the rest of the world, so he could go play G.I. Joe in Iraq. No wonder the rest of the world hates us.
And I'm still not seeing that Gore or Kerry would have been worse. Sure, neither are great (hell, I'm a Libertarian who usually swings Democrat and I'll be honest and tell you I didn't really care for either of them) but while they might not have done anything extraordinarily good while in office, they certainly can't do worse than Bush, which is the original argument. So that makes them better by default. Gore wouldn't have gotten us into Iraq, and Kerry would have had the troops home by the end of his first term. We'd be in less debt, and in less of a hole in the eyes of the rest of the world and maybe have a few more models of hybrid cars.
So, no, in other words. I won't back off from that one. Bush is an ass-tastic president and there hasn't been a worse president at least in living history. How are hybrid cars, windmills and nuclear power more terrifying than spending 4 -MORE- years spending billions letting our soldiers and the people of another country get blown up by the thousands for no damn reason? I'd argue about Kerry yet, but you haven't argued first. I still don't know what your actual problem with him is yet.
And sure... I'm not just falling all over myself for either of the current candidates, but it's the same situation. What do we have to choose from? Someone who guarantees at least 4 more years masturbating in Iraq (he actually said that he'd be willing to have us stay there for the next 100 years), wasting money better spent for domestic gain, both indirectly and directly killing civilians, and driving our economy and global reputation into the shitter? Or someone who probably won't do anything spectacular, but will at least work to repair our country, reevaluate our priorities domestically, get the economy somewhere near the upswing all while give some of the best State of the Union addresses ever?
Door number 2 please.
I do agree that politics is broken beyond the telling of it and that leads to the majority of the problems here but right now, it's about damage control on all fronts.
The Gore-ites just told us we've got to spend $43 TRILLION dollars on the environment! All based on the half-assed, politically-driven, pseudo-scientific research that is mired in the assumption (to say nothing of PREsumption) that WE as a species are solely responsible for every slight change in the climate.
And, I'm sorry Walter, but the whole "directly responsible" has never really flown. Bush didn't plant bombs in cars abandoned on Bagdad streets, and neither did our soldiers. If they did, then they're guilty of war crimes and should be punished to the full extent of the law. Neither are they guilty of the sectarian violence that swept the country following the Sunnis' fall from power. Well, in all fairness, their actions DID cause the upset in the power structure. Then again, the power structure that was there WAS directly responsible for the deaths of over 250,000 Kurd civilians. In terms of karma, do you think the scales are even yet? I shudder to think.
Of course, I'm not gonna argue the fact that we shouldn't be in Iraq right now. Problem is, we keep making more mistakes trying to fix the ones we've already made. We made the mistake of GOING there in the first place without solid intelligence (of any form), and then we WENT there without a plan of what to do afterward. I realize things have gotten better now (which is a very relative term), but we shouldn't have put up with the idiocracy of the provisional Iraqi government and their "police force" for NEARLY as long as we did. And now, the only solution we have is known as "Mission: Just LEAVE," which wouldn't solve anything either other than make the whole country implode. Then, and only then, would you be able to apply the term "directly responsible."
As for John Kerry, sorry, can't give you anything on that one straight away. I'd actually have to do some research first. Maybe it was from the 2004 presidential race that spoiled it, but every time he opens his mouth, the words are lost under the subtitles I see across the bottom of the screen that read "ASININE COMMENT." Bush may be a moron, but Kerry has no excuse. Its weird. I actually had a specific occurrence in mind when I wrote this, and now it's gone. *sigh* Maybe I'll remember it later.
I hope that all this shite gets fixed when Bush is out of office. Then again, all I hear from presidential would-bes is "what we should do" rather than an actual "solutions." At this stage, I don't care about the topics; I only care about coming up with actual SOLUTIONS for them. We're supposed to be delegating the authority to deal with situations to an individual who is capable of doing so. Why is that so hard to find?
*sigh* Okay, I'm not gonna argue with you. It's late and I've probably been a bit ass-hatted in this reply. Sorry 'bout that. Let's debate as all civilized people should, then maybe we'll get somewhere. Robert Heinlein said that politics, though undesirable at times, are civilization's way of handling conflicts in order to avoid war. However, when politics fail (and they have) there is little other choice.
The damage to the political system is bad enough, but no one has any suggestions to FIX it, only rebuild it in THEIR favor, which is no different. All we have on the Hill are two groups of useless politicians taking diametrically opposing positions for the sake of doing so and then refusing to budge an inch while the rest of us keep getting hanged by the rope we're handing them at every general election.
Hmm, so I guess in short, I can't prove anything. You can't prove what WOULD have happened. It is impossible. I won't even try. All I can do is look at the character of the individuals that WE have seen fit to put on a pedestal and realize that WE have failed gloriously by the same token. In fact, this has nothing to do with Bush, Gore, and Kerry, so I don't know why I brought it up. Its all water under the bridge. Now there is the water coming OVER the bridge and threatening to drown all of us.
Angel had a good point: the only people who are intelligent and capable enough to do the job and do it well are far too smart to ever take on the job in the first place.
You're a smart fellow. I'd be interested to hear if you've got any good ideas. Beyond that, I bid you good evening.
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Many environmental measures are actually a net benefit to the economy; driving smaller and more efficient cars, for instance, reduces our expenditure on oil. If this were done across the board there'd be no safety concerns; as we will observe a week from now in my freshman physics class, at the end of the problem all of the masses cancel.
Also note that ending fossil power generation is far more ambitious than the plans being put forth by many environmentalists for addressing climate change.
Even if the figure were in fact $43 trillion (which I doubt it is), that's still money spent for someone's benefit -- namely, all of us, especially those of us who live on the coast (and in Arizona, for that matter). Is the city of New York worth $43 trillion? Some might argue that New York, and Amsterdam, and Lagos, and so many coastal cities around the world are worth that price tag. Some might argue that, no, that's too expensive -- we ought to just pack them up and move inland. There is room for intelligent people to discuss how to spend our nation's resources to best benefit the USA and the world: should we improve infrastructure, educate the young, do scientific research, address social problems like poverty and disease, or simply lower taxes and let the individual decide how best to use those resources. But the Iraq war benefits nobody other than those in power, their cronies/business partners, and their political allies. The Iraq war has provided no benefit to the average American citizen. (It certainly has made us no safer; there are far more people who hate Americans and are willing to die to kill them around than there were before the war.)
A married couple might debate whether to spend their money on a new car or an improvement to their house or to save for their child's education, with both parties having valid points. But no sane person would suggest lighting their money on fire... yet we've done exactly that in Iraq.
Regarding responsibility for the war in Iraq: Yes, the Bush administration is quite clearly responsible for the expenditure of money. They are also responsible for the loss of American life: a country invaded by another has the right to defend herself, and this includes planting bombs to kill the invading army. If I go to the desert and start poking rattlesnakes with sticks, it's my own damn fault when they bite me. If I go to the desert and start invading countries, it's my own damn fault when they fight back.
The Sunni-Shi'ite violence is indirectly our responsibility as well. Iraq under Saddam was a shitpile, but Iraq currently is far worse. A New England Journal of Medicine study (Brownstein and Brownstein, 2008) reports 151,000 deaths by violence directly since the US invasion; the indirect death rate from the decline in the standard of living since 2003 is estimated on the order of one million, but I don't have a reliable citation for that at the moment.
Whether you believe we are morally responsible for this isn't as clear-cut; I submit that $2-3 trillion, 4000 American dead, 25000 Americans seriously wounded, and our international reputation shattered is sufficiently weighty a cost.
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But at least its for someone's benefit. Making power and cars and what not more eco-friendly is a winning situation for all, unlike the war in Iraq which is only friendly to Bush's cock.
Bringing environmentalism into the American mainstream would not only make for a healthier and more self-sustaining society, but it would also provide new jobs. Even if it costs more than the war in Iraq, how is this a bad thing in the end? Iraq hasn't given us -anything- of use like the Bush administration said it would.
-no cheap gas.
-no stable democratic ally in the Middle East
-no end or stemming the tide of terrorism
At least taking care of the environment gets us somewhere both on the local and global scale. If we had spent all our time and energy on hybrid cars and nuclear power, as a country we'd be in a much better place in the eyes of the rest of the world.
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And don't be down on yourself for the technical solutions. I like technical solutions, because they're ones that people can't argue with without showing their hand, showing their greed for money and power. That's my major problem with Al Gore's environmentalist group. Not only are they using half-baked science to support their "realizations" about the state of the environment, they are also using intimidation (as in mafia) to make sure that no one with enough know-how will argue with them.
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We went there based on fabricated intelligence, deliberately "sexed up" (to use the British term) to make a case for war that did not exist. This is the opinion of the Senate Intelligence Committee (including 2 of the 6 Republicans), anyway, along with many analysts who have sufficient credentials to know what they're talking about.
The Iraqi Provisional Government was put in by us.
If we were to "just leave", as you put it, sure -- the country would implode. (It's already doing that, of course, just more slowly). However, if this implosion would be our "direct responsibility", then so is everything else that has happened post-invasion. (If it's not our responsibility that Sunnis, fed up with the lack of a functioning government, are killing Shi'ites while American troops are in Iraq, how is it our responsibility if this happens after they leave?)
This concern for the Iraqis seems to be the standard neoconservative response to any proposal for leaving Iraq: "But if we leave, the country will deteriorate!" I note that such concern for the wellbeing of Iraqis seems strangely absent at other times; it's only trotted out as a "But there'll be a civil war if we leave!" argument to say we should stay. Even this doesn't hold water: there already is a civil war, and there's a good argument to be made that the only reason the Sunnis and Shi'ites aren't killing each other more actively is because they both hate the Americans more.
I don't want my countrymen used as bullet-decoys.
So Bush's asinine comments are forgiven because he's lacking in the simple intelligence that Nature gave your more intelligent barnyard animals, but Kerry's asinine remarks[citation needed] are condemnable because he's more intelligent?
Then again, all I hear from presidential would-bes is "what we should do" rather than an actual "solutions."
I agree that the proposals are a little vague (I'd like to hear something like "We're going to tax carbon emissions from coal plants at rate X; we anticipate that this will cause Y GW of capacity to shut down, and are prepared to replace it with Z GW of fission, A GW of wind, and so on, and that can be paid for using the taxes on the remaining coal along with $B out of the general budget." But sadly the American political system makes precise proposals like this political suicide.)
We're supposed to be delegating the authority to deal with situations to an individual who is capable of doing so. Why is that so hard to find?
Because Bush systematically fired or chased off those individuals with said capacity (numerous science advisors, Colin Powell, numerous top military brass, and several top counterterrorism officials) because they didn't tell him what he wanted to hear. When you fire your capable subordinates and hire cronies, don't complain when you get bad help.
Neither Obama nor McCain is my ideal next president. Obama's not really said much about what he intends to do; perhaps I agree with him, perhaps not, but he's not said much. McCain will be an utter disaster, as he's not only encumbered with a Texan albatross around his neck but is currently taking a plaster cast of its head to use as a mask if he gets elected.
But none of our leaders have been paragons of wisdom; the best in recent memory, I believe, was Eisenhower. Just because neither Obama nor McCain is perfect doesn't mean that they're both terrible, however; I'd prefer water, but if it's between Kool-Aid and horse piss I know which I'd choose.
I do have ideas for fixing some of our problems. Many of them are technical in nature, because that's what I do; my only idea for fixing our nation's political problems is a sincere desire that greedy bastards who put their own gain ahead of the good of the nation get the Prague treatment, and be thrown out of windows. (Well, that, and fix the voting system to one that can be shown, in a rigorous mathematical manner, to be superior.) Perhaps I shall make a post about them someday.
Until then, goodnight and good luck.
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And I'm still not seeing that Gore or Kerry would have been worse. Sure, neither are great (hell, I'm a Libertarian who usually swings Democrat and I'll be honest and tell you I didn't really care for either of them) but while they might not have done anything extraordinarily good while in office, they certainly can't do worse than Bush, which is the original argument. So that makes them better by default. Gore wouldn't have gotten us into Iraq, and Kerry would have had the troops home by the end of his first term. We'd be in less debt, and in less of a hole in the eyes of the rest of the world and maybe have a few more models of hybrid cars.
So, no, in other words. I won't back off from that one. Bush is an ass-tastic president and there hasn't been a worse president at least in living history. How are hybrid cars, windmills and nuclear power more terrifying than spending 4 -MORE- years spending billions letting our soldiers and the people of another country get blown up by the thousands for no damn reason? I'd argue about Kerry yet, but you haven't argued first. I still don't know what your actual problem with him is yet.
And sure... I'm not just falling all over myself for either of the current candidates, but it's the same situation. What do we have to choose from? Someone who guarantees at least 4 more years masturbating in Iraq (he actually said that he'd be willing to have us stay there for the next 100 years), wasting money better spent for domestic gain, both indirectly and directly killing civilians, and driving our economy and global reputation into the shitter? Or someone who probably won't do anything spectacular, but will at least work to repair our country, reevaluate our priorities domestically, get the economy somewhere near the upswing all while give some of the best State of the Union addresses ever?
Door number 2 please.
I do agree that politics is broken beyond the telling of it and that leads to the majority of the problems here but right now, it's about damage control on all fronts.
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