All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[Malvolio]

The US should not negotiate with foreign agent hostage takers.

I like what you did here.

[JCAll]

Who's gonna tell Jon?

Poor reading comprehension is the root of so many bad opinions.

[Jack Dracula]

I think it's important that we are finally talking about the 2016 primaries on this thread. We clearly moved on way too fast back then and did not address the grievances of Sanders and Stein supporters sufficiently.

Well, I caucused for O'Malley so I'm mad at everyone!

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Who's gonna tell Jon?

Feel free, homeslice. Knock yourself out.

[Ragged Maw]

Your guess is as good as mine. However, Trump still has support among Republican voters who are still demanding the wall and won’t accept anything less. As long as Trump has his base who’ll have his back come hell or high water, he’ll stick to his guns, ignore polls (unless they’re on Faux News) and continue holding federal workers hostage.

Then he may be going full "Ahab" for the next election cycle as public sentiment mounts against him. He's gonna have to end the shutdown soon (via compromise or otherwise) if he's to have a chance at getting re-elected.

Now that I think about it, if he felt he HAD to pull a stunt like this, then he should've done it near the beginning of his term instead of more than halfway through. At least then, success or no, he'd have more time to damage control and/or let it fade from public consciousness to an extent. Now, it's a matter of how many potential voters he's going to lose, depending on how long this impasse keeps up.

[worstblogever]

Who's gonna tell Jon?

I'm not sure if that's a bot, but if it isn't, it's someone who's not smart enough to realize that about half the people following him are bots.

[worstblogever]

Americans blame Trump and GOP much more than Democrats for shutdown, Post-ABC poll finds

A CNN poll out today also has Trump with a 37% rating, shows that a majority blame Trump and the GOP more for the shutdown... and for the first time, Trump's approval ratings are now underwater with uneducated white voters.

Sen. Ted Cruz defends Trump's record on Russia as 'tougher' than Obama's

There goes Lyin' Ted again.

[mogwen]

Then he may be going full "Ahab" for the next election cycle as public sentiment mounts against him. He's gonna have to end the shutdown soon (via compromise or otherwise) if he's to have a chance at getting re-elected.

Now that I think about it, if he felt he HAD to pull a stunt like this, then he should've done it near the beginning of his term instead of more than halfway through. At least then, success or no, he'd have more time to damage control and/or let it fade from public consciousness to an extent. Now, it's a matter of how many potential voters he's going to lose, depending on how long this impasse keeps up.

You seem to assume he thinks he can do another stint as a president, I think what he wants now that he knows it will not end well for him is to be as disruptive as he can and create the most chaos possible. Remember he loves chaos, the power it gives him (you're fired!) and for him it's me or the highway.
sorry for the mistakes, I'm french and fascinated by american politics but english is not my native language.

[PaulBullion]

A CNN poll out today also has Trump with a 37% rating, shows that a majority blame Trump and the GOP more for the shutdown... and for the first time, Trump's approval ratings are now underwater with uneducated white voters.

The right leaning RCP polling aggregation site has actually not posted new polls since Wednesday, so they also missed that Trump has been crashing in his favorite poll, Rasmussen, as well. It's like they're waiting for the storm to be over, when it will only get worse.

[KOSLOX]

Well, I caucused for O'Malley so I'm mad at everyone!

That was who I originally planned for, but when I got to the site there were literally four people there, so I just walked over to Sanders' section.

[Gray Lensman]

Who's gonna tell Jon?

That is the dumbest thing I will likely read all day.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Who's gonna tell Jon?

The dumbest thing about this is that it's actually a poll slanted to favor the Republicans. People on the left can choose between Trump or congressional Republicans to split the vote. Pretty much everyone on the right can vote congressional Democrats

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Then he may be going full "Ahab" for the next election cycle as public sentiment mounts against him. He's gonna have to end the shutdown soon (via compromise or otherwise) if he's to have a chance at getting re-elected.

Now that I think about it, if he felt he HAD to pull a stunt like this, then he should've done it near the beginning of his term instead of more than halfway through. At least then, success or no, he'd have more time to damage control and/or let it fade from public consciousness to an extent. Now, it's a matter of how many potential voters he's going to lose, depending on how long this impasse keeps up.

There was no reason for Trump to play the shutdown card back then when Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate, it was only after Democrats reclaimed the former two months ago that Caramel Caligula decided that he REALLY had to get tough on illegal immigration. And, let’s not minimize the likelihood that the Mueller investigation is counting down to its inevitable conclusion and it’s unhinging Trump because he knows he’s guilty as hell and the hounds are closing in on him.

[Mister Mets]

Jim Geharty of the National Review looked at the text of the Green New Deal. He is skeptical of its viability, as it proposes eliminating nuclear, natural gas, oil and coal in the next eleven years (which is about 88 percent of America’s current energy sources) and also calls for firing over a million military personnel, as well as replacing "non-essential individual means of transportation" (ie-cars) with public transit.

The United States military currently has 1.3 million active-duty troops, with another 865,000 in reserve, and 680,000 civilian employees. Green New Deal advocates haven’t laid out exactly how many fewer personnel the U.S. military would have if spending was cut in half, but a military that was half the size of the current one would leave about 1.4 million personnel out of work. And remember, advocates of the Green New Deal pledged to cut military spending in “at least half.”

When there are no U.S. forces stationed in Europe, South Korea, Japan, or the Middle East, how much safer do you think those places get? Do you think conflict is more likely or less likely once all U.S. military personnel leave? Do you think China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia become more aggressive or less aggressive? I thought warfare and explosions and firebombing generated a lot of carbon emissions, but maybe Green New Deal advocates think people being killed in a war on a massive scale would balance it out in the long run.

Under the Green New Deal, within eleven years, the United States would be required to eliminate not merely nuclear power — which does not directly produce any carbon dioxide or air pollution — but all natural gas. Natural gas currently provides about 32 percent of America’s energy, and nuclear power produces another 10 percent. The “Green New Deal” would also eliminate coal, which provides almost 18 percent of America’s energy, and liquid natural gas and oil, which generates another 28 percent.

In other words, within eleven years, the United States would need to replace about 88 percent of its current energy sources. This is not possible short of a societal collapse to agrarian subsistence. (At least the Renaissance fairs will remain the same.)

It would effectively nationalize the entire energy industry and shut down non-renewable energy companies, with workers given a vague promise to “provide resources to workers displaced from the fossil fuel industry.”

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, roughly 1.1 million work in coal, oil, and gas production; 2.3 million jobs in transmission, distribution, and storage; and 2.4 million workers in motor vehicles and component parts (not counting dealerships). The vast majority of these 5.8 million jobs would be eliminated under the Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal calls for “replacing non-essential individual means of transport with high-quality and modern mass transit.” This is a wonky way of calling for a ban on cars. Who decides whether your car is a “non-essential individual means of transport”?

The Green New Deal also declares, “along with these steps, it will be necessary to electrify everything else, including transport.”

Your gasoline-powered car would be banned. You would only be allowed an electric one, if you were allowed a car at all.

The Green New Deal calls for the federal government would become the “employer of last resort,” contending:

Other economists also estimate the cost of a program for the federal government as employer of last resort (ELR) would be relatively small, around 1-2% of GDP, because it corresponds with huge savings in unemployment insurance in a way that pays people to work rather than paying them to not work.

One percent of our $19.4 trillion GDP would be $194 billion; 2 percent would be $388 billion.

Let’s split that in half and say having the federal government hire everyone without a job would cost $291 billion. For perspective, all U.S. corporate taxes in one year generate $225 billion. (Remember we’re running close to trillion-dollar deficits now, in economic good times.)

Did you notice, by the way, that the Green New Deal would eliminate unemployment benefits? If you lost your job, your alternative would be to go to work for the government.

The Clean New Deal declares, “a British think tank recently put out a study saying that all fossil fuels could be eliminated in 10 years.”

But if you actually go and read that study, you’ll find near the end some glaring caveats:

The experience of tiny, affluent countries such as Denmark and Kuwait may be relevant for countries in a similar class (such as Belgium, Brunei, or Qatar), but less so for an India or Nigeria. Moreover, the sociocultural or political conditions behind transitions in Brazil and China, at the time military dictatorships and communist regimes (respectively), are incompatible with the governance norms espoused in modern democracies across Europe and North America. Furthermore, history seems to suggest that past transitions—including many of the case studies presented here—are based on discoveries of new, significant, and affordable forms of energy (usually carbon-intensive) or technology, leading to abundance. Yet in the future, it may be scarcity and “stranded assets,” rather than abundance, which influences decisions.

The fact that enacting these changes would probably require a dictatorship or other authoritarian regime to suppress resistance seems like a pretty important detail, don’t you think?

The Green New Deal was posted on the Green Party website four months ago.

http://www.gp.org/gnd_full

[Darkspellmaster]

It's probably not very popular to say this but I liked Rahm as mayor of Chicago and I'm curious to see where he ends up next.

Agreed. He's not terrible Mayor, not great but compared to other Mayors he wasn't the worst.