Nominal - 2016-07-23
I know a Sanders supporter who said his reason for supporting Bernie was that he was the only one who would take action to fix climate change...
...using magic, I guess. Considering Sanders' record of not working with anyone and rejecting any solution that wasn't 100% perfect (i.e. 100% of what perfect Bernie wants). Same delusion as the radical progressives who turned on Obama, thinking the presidency was some Emperor god king office.
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Oscar Wildcat - 2016-07-23 Without binding commitments, it's just a bunch of politicians gladhanding their constituents.
Hell, even with them, it's a poor bet that they'll be honored. We're talking about the human animal en masse here. Greed and shortsighted selfishness are baked right in.
That said, individual humans can be remarkable and farsighted indeed. Any actual solution will come from that quarter, and no other. If there is any role for the political process, it would be to not interfere on behalf of the established energy interests as it always has in the past. It's a lot to ask: to not keep strangling the baby in it's crib, but I think it possible for our politicians to rise to that occasion and distinguish themselves from the toenail fungus and subprime loans whose company they ordinarily keep. I'm an optimist.
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Bort - 2016-07-23 We've tried firm commitments before, and that doesn't work, because the commitments are almost always imposed from without and are unrealistic. Initial commitments where individual nations come up with what they can commit to, are much more likely to achieve results. At least it's not already known to be a failed strategy.
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Oscar Wildcat - 2016-07-23 Then why bother at all? Climate change isn't a voting bloc you can pay lip service to and expect it to come around. What's actually going to solve the problem is a technology to replace fossil fuels, and the political protection to prevent vested interests from destroying the competition. The government has actually been surprisingly good on the former point but just absymal on the latter. Here, in fact, is exactly where The Bern would be expected to enter the picture. Say what you will about the guy, but I suspect if the situation presented itself to him he'd fall on the right side of the issue. Ms. Clinton? Not so much. Just sayin'
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Bort - 2016-07-23 You start where you can start, do what you can when you can, and build upon success as you can. I honestly don't see where your objection comes from.
You're right that Congress doesn't do a great job of standing up to the oil lobby, but Hillary's Web site claims that she intends to work options that won't require Congress. Unlike Bernie, I believe that she actually understands Congress and government enough to know what she's talking about. (Nope, I'm still not feeling the Bern.)
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SolRo - 2016-07-23 "Why bother at all?"
That perfectly demonstrates the reason sanders and his supporters are utterly fucking useless.
It's always 'perfect solution or fuck this I'm staying home'
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Oscar Wildcat - 2016-07-23 You missed the part where I wrote "solution is a technology to replace fossil fuels". Solution is not a tax on carbon, or cap and trade, or endless negotiations taken in bad faith.
Here's my thought, and objection I suppose. Apply the fuckton of money that would otherwise be spent on junketing and career building for the middle class that we call these negotiations and directly fund small to mid sized industrial and scientific projects to conserve and create new energy. That's eminently doable, don't you think? And has a much higher chance of success. It's never really been done, outside of small and sporadic efforts by DARPA and NASA.
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Bort - 2016-07-24 Climate change remains an international problem, though, and an international forum for sharing solutions is likely to lift technological breakthroughs to an international scale pretty damn quickly. That's a good outcome, I think.
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Robin Kestrel - 2016-07-23
Bernie would have taken the Water of Life and become the Kwisatz Haderach, though.
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Nominal - 2016-07-23 He would have turned into a tyrannical slug?
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Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2016-07-23
More educated americans seem really really deeply cynical about their government, I noticed it particularly with the Bernie thing. Your attitude seem to be: we are powerless to ever to do anything good or improve anything ever, or even take steps towards that or even try. People who do are derided for their naivety.
Its like ye have stockholm sydrome from decades of your massive government and various 'complexes' using fearmongering as a political tool to control ye.
Just fyi this is a very strange sitution, most goverment / citizenship relationships are not like this and adopting your correct cooly cynical stance is not going to ever help.
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Oscar Wildcat - 2016-07-23 Perhaps because in the US a vast majority of us don't actually have much if any say in how our local, state and federal government is run. It asks for increasing amounts of money, and provides reduced services and benefits each year. Our politicians lie to us as a matter of course and policy, and they have to, because our population is so poorly socialized and educated that simply communicating with them precludes you from using more than a second grade vocabulary. Consequently, there is no accountability and no need for anyone in power to do anything but line their own pockets.
If you want a better analogy, think of Americans as a badly abused spouse. Will put up with great hardship and indignities to
preserve some semblence of the dream which once was, but at some undeterminate point in the future snaps and does something extreme and self destructive.
It's not such a stretch to imagine. A lot of countries are run this way. But perhaps yours isn't? Tell us of your utopia, then.
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William Burns - 2016-07-23 Did anybody even watch the video? Terrible. Then I scroll down and everybody's still yelling about Bernie Sanders for some reason. What is happening.
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Bort - 2016-07-24 Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - the Right has spent 35 years now trying to prove that government doesn't work (including deliberately sabotaging the system to help make their case), the Left feels that their job is to be outraged (actually accomplishing things: not so important) and it is a betrayal to ever say that a politician ever accomplished anything positive, and as you observe any hope in the system is considered "naive".
I would not say "a plague on both their houses" though. Each side deserves a different plague: the Right deserves a mass misunderstanding with guns and blackface, the Left deserves a long mid-winter swim in the Flint River for letting Rick Snyder into power and then complaining about him.
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Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2016-07-23
If your more typical American is like a mindless baby who simply consumes unthinkingly then the educated Americans are like abused teenagers who are going through a 'dark' sulky period.
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