The Rs have everything they need to pass an actual budget. They can't agree on one. They can't come up with a compromise that will get nine Democratic Senators to go along for a continuing resolution, even when the compromise is to allow something most of the country wants.
I don't know if it was covered in UK news, but the House has a Republican majority, the Senate has a Republican majority, and the President is a Republican. Budget bills can't be filibustered, although continuing resolutions can be. If the Republicans running the US got off their asses, they could pass a budget that would pay for everything, and the Democrats could do nothing about it.
You're baselessly assuming that supporting this particular bill was the right thing to do. If Democrats don't want it, they don't have to vote for it. The Republicans can pass a budget all by themselves, with no Democratic help. They didn't. They couldn't agree on a budget.
However, I also would like the filibuster to be restored to require actual action. I thought that made sense: if a sizable minority really really wanted to block legislation, they could.
However, the budget surpluses were the only years I can remember when the budget was able to be balanced with smoke and mirrors. In no other years were intake vs. outflow of money that close.
Check out deficits under Republican and Democratic Presidents. You have to go back a long way to find a Republican that reduced the deficit, or a Democrat who increased it.
Obviously, having a lot of guns doesn't lead to bloodbaths. Obviously, most gun owners are more or less responsible. However, more guns leads to more gun violence.
People who try to commit suicide and don't succeed tend to regret the attempt, and don't repeat it. Providing people with an easy and effective way to kill themselves does increase the number of suicides.
Could not function well without teleprompter, as evidenced on multiple occasions.
So all intelligent people are good at off-the-cuff public speaking? In my experience, some are, some aren't.
irrational: Giving Iran a secret load of unmarked bills and gold, and expecting they would actually honor a deal made
You do realize that that was Iranian money we'd sequestered, right? Sanctions weren't working. Iran was working on nuclear weapons with them in effect. Direct engagement and diplomacy couldn't do worse, and had prospects of doing better.
Pulling out of Iraq without leaving behind support, so we had to go back in and clean it all up again - SO STUPID. And again irrational, like what did he expect to happen to a nation just freed?
There's a lot of stupid in that comment, sure. What did we expect of a nation just freed? I expected about what we got. The only way to avoid that was to never free Iraq, and that wasn't in the cards. Bush negotiated the pull-out with the Iraqis, and Obama stuck to that schedule. Obama tried to negotiate a longer stay, but the Iraqis were not budging on their insistence that US soldiers in Iraq be subject to Iraqi law, which I don't think anyone in the US wanted to have happen. Given that Bush negotiated the pull-out, the Iraqis would not offer acceptable terms, and Iraq was going to have to be freed sometime, I don't see what Obama could have done much better.
Obama was simply not capable of thinking of long-term consequence for actions.
Then cite some actual examples. You don't seem to have any grasp of what the consequences of doing something different would be, but Obama did. I'm not saying he necessarily made the right choices, but that they were made while considering the consequences, and were reasonable decisions. You seem to think Obama could have kept things the same without adverse consequences.
Not going to debate it further, but it is clear Trump is way smarter and more rational than Oabma, as Trump has accomplished a lot more over his life - he also not only thinks about consequences of actions, but plans around them (like trash talking with NK with the ultimate goal of peace talks).
Excuse me? Trump couldn't even issue a reasonable executive order when he tried to block immigration from the Middle Eastern Muslim nations that hadn't participated in the 9/11 attack. His Presidency has been one screw-up after another, since he can't pick decent people and doesn't foresee the problems he creates. As far as trash-talking North Korea, you're pulling that justification out of your ass (or it was pulled from someone else's ass - either way, I'm not touching it). Whatever intelligence and foresight Trump had, he doesn't show it now.
The Germans went mostly on defense when they occupied almost all of Belgium and a good chunk of northern France. They were winning, so why risk more? They launched an offensive in the Verdun area in 1916, and took heavy losses. Britain and France had to defeat Germany to recover the occupied areas, so they attacked. These attacks resulted in heavy casualties, but took a toll on the German Army. (The Somme offensive may have inflicted as many German as Allied casualties, due to the German persistence in mounting counter-attacks to regain territory. The numbers I've seen vary.)
I really don't see how to defeat the German army without fighting with it, and if they weren't going to attack the Western Entente armies had to attack.
Free trade benefits the US economy. We're richer because we've shipped the less profitable parts of manufacturing to other countries. We're not bankrupted.
Now, what has happened is that almost all the benefits have gone to the upper class, but you'll find that intellectuals tend to believe in redistribution of income and the like, and are opposed to the concentration of wealth in the upper class. They aren't responsible at all for those policies.
Venezuela is not the only country ever to practice socialism. It's just one of the worst failures, and so people who are irrationally against anything like socialism trot it out as an inevitable result of anything that isn't pure capitalism.
Because almost nobody wants to just get rid of capitalism. Capitalism has some very good features and some bad features which can be ameliorated with some sort of law or regulation. One example would be revenue-neutral carbon taxes, which would reduce CO2 emissions by using the free market.
Venezuela is not the automatic result of any attempt to apply any degree of socialism. I can pick bad examples of capitalism just as easily. Venezuela was ruined by inept dictatorial rule.
I see a lot of people saying that people concerned about climate change want to abolish capitalism, and I don't see significant numbers of people concerned about climate change who do want to abolish capitalism.
Scientific consensus means that, out of a large number of intelligent people who have studied the field for years or decades, almost all have been convinced by the evidence. It's a statement about the evidence, and pretty much what we laymen have to go by.
The test of scientific theories is their predictions. They predict that, if you do X, you'll observe Y. Then scientists do X and see if they get Y. X isn't necessarily immediate. It can include "wait ten years and check mean sea level". It can include "wait until you can get the use of the LHC" or "wait until you can get some Hubble time". Predictions are at the heart of science.
Scientific consensus is a way of seeing where the evidence points, and climate scientists are indeed doing science. It's easy to understand some of the basic science. Faith in the religious sense is not needed; indeed, it's a hindrance.
Climate scientists point to the evidence, and pretty much say what they believe is true, with belief backed up by years or decades of study and measurement and model building. Deniers trot out talking points that have been endlessly refuted, malign scientists, and sometimes come up with nitpicks as if one different observation would make decades of observations irrelevant.
Go against the orthodoxy with a theory to explain what's happening better than what we have and you will be renowned. Funding for this is readily available from fossil fuel companies. The reason nobody does this is that the climate scientists are generally correct.
Al Gore is a politician and spokesperson. He's a high priest only in the eyes of deniers, who love to pounce on statements by non-scientists that turn out to be wrong and use that to accuse scientists of falsehood.
At one point, virtually all scientists believed you could create gold from iron, too.
Sure they qualify as scientists? While early chemists used alchemical equipment and some of their techniques, alchemy was not in general an experimental science. It was an attempt to apply some philosophical principles without doubting them. In general, you're been taking pre-scientific beliefs and attributing them to scientists. These beliefs are comparable to religious beliefs as being non-empirical explanations for various things. As it happens, science and empiricism have proved wildly successful.
Sure, and if major climate change took 10K years like you'd expect, we'd all adapt nicely, and so would most of the plants and animals we depend on. It's the rate of the increase that's alarming.
I haven't seen movements to make it a punishable crime. There are movements to make excess emissions expensive. There are lawsuits against companies for fraud, since they first established that AGW was happening and then lied about it for profit. There are occasional libel suits against deniers who make overly many or heinous accusations without evidence. That's about it.
Atmospheric CO2 concentration affects temperatures.
Last time we had way high CO2, the Sun was significantly dimmer. If we put all that carbon back in the air, we'll be hotter than we were then.
I'm not at all worried about Earth. It'll be around for several hundred million years until the water boils off (it'll be around after that, but I'll have lost interest in it.). I'm worried about human civilization, which has evolved in climate conditions we're getting away from.
Antarctic sea ice is growing, probably because of increased ice melt from the land ice. That makes the ocean near the continent less saline, and so it freezes easier.
Sure it is. Now, what else is it used for, and how would you figure that out? I really don't like the Android permission system. Given the "full network access", it could turn into an effective spy app within the permissions you quoted.
Slashdot Mirror
The Rs have everything they need to pass an actual budget. They can't agree on one. They can't come up with a compromise that will get nine Democratic Senators to go along for a continuing resolution, even when the compromise is to allow something most of the country wants.
I don't know if it was covered in UK news, but the House has a Republican majority, the Senate has a Republican majority, and the President is a Republican. Budget bills can't be filibustered, although continuing resolutions can be. If the Republicans running the US got off their asses, they could pass a budget that would pay for everything, and the Democrats could do nothing about it.
You're baselessly assuming that supporting this particular bill was the right thing to do. If Democrats don't want it, they don't have to vote for it. The Republicans can pass a budget all by themselves, with no Democratic help. They didn't. They couldn't agree on a budget.
However, I also would like the filibuster to be restored to require actual action. I thought that made sense: if a sizable minority really really wanted to block legislation, they could.
Wrong, but it would be nice. I'd support a Constitutional amendment that limited the House and Senate to passing bills without irrelevant riders.
Fixing what's wrong with the US would be nice, but Trump's not going to do it.
You do realize that Congressional Republicans talked about making sure Obama lost, without regard as to whether the US would win.
However, the budget surpluses were the only years I can remember when the budget was able to be balanced with smoke and mirrors. In no other years were intake vs. outflow of money that close.
Check out deficits under Republican and Democratic Presidents. You have to go back a long way to find a Republican that reduced the deficit, or a Democrat who increased it.
Obviously, having a lot of guns doesn't lead to bloodbaths. Obviously, most gun owners are more or less responsible. However, more guns leads to more gun violence.
People who try to commit suicide and don't succeed tend to regret the attempt, and don't repeat it. Providing people with an easy and effective way to kill themselves does increase the number of suicides.
So all intelligent people are good at off-the-cuff public speaking? In my experience, some are, some aren't.
You do realize that that was Iranian money we'd sequestered, right? Sanctions weren't working. Iran was working on nuclear weapons with them in effect. Direct engagement and diplomacy couldn't do worse, and had prospects of doing better.
There's a lot of stupid in that comment, sure. What did we expect of a nation just freed? I expected about what we got. The only way to avoid that was to never free Iraq, and that wasn't in the cards. Bush negotiated the pull-out with the Iraqis, and Obama stuck to that schedule. Obama tried to negotiate a longer stay, but the Iraqis were not budging on their insistence that US soldiers in Iraq be subject to Iraqi law, which I don't think anyone in the US wanted to have happen. Given that Bush negotiated the pull-out, the Iraqis would not offer acceptable terms, and Iraq was going to have to be freed sometime, I don't see what Obama could have done much better.
Then cite some actual examples. You don't seem to have any grasp of what the consequences of doing something different would be, but Obama did. I'm not saying he necessarily made the right choices, but that they were made while considering the consequences, and were reasonable decisions. You seem to think Obama could have kept things the same without adverse consequences.
Excuse me? Trump couldn't even issue a reasonable executive order when he tried to block immigration from the Middle Eastern Muslim nations that hadn't participated in the 9/11 attack. His Presidency has been one screw-up after another, since he can't pick decent people and doesn't foresee the problems he creates. As far as trash-talking North Korea, you're pulling that justification out of your ass (or it was pulled from someone else's ass - either way, I'm not touching it). Whatever intelligence and foresight Trump had, he doesn't show it now.
The Germans went mostly on defense when they occupied almost all of Belgium and a good chunk of northern France. They were winning, so why risk more? They launched an offensive in the Verdun area in 1916, and took heavy losses. Britain and France had to defeat Germany to recover the occupied areas, so they attacked. These attacks resulted in heavy casualties, but took a toll on the German Army. (The Somme offensive may have inflicted as many German as Allied casualties, due to the German persistence in mounting counter-attacks to regain territory. The numbers I've seen vary.)
I really don't see how to defeat the German army without fighting with it, and if they weren't going to attack the Western Entente armies had to attack.
You need to get out more.
Free trade benefits the US economy. We're richer because we've shipped the less profitable parts of manufacturing to other countries. We're not bankrupted.
Now, what has happened is that almost all the benefits have gone to the upper class, but you'll find that intellectuals tend to believe in redistribution of income and the like, and are opposed to the concentration of wealth in the upper class. They aren't responsible at all for those policies.
Could be, but people who study these things appear to think otherwise.
In any event, we've got global warming problems with the CO2 we have, so we know there are effects.
Venezuela is not the only country ever to practice socialism. It's just one of the worst failures, and so people who are irrationally against anything like socialism trot it out as an inevitable result of anything that isn't pure capitalism.
Because almost nobody wants to just get rid of capitalism. Capitalism has some very good features and some bad features which can be ameliorated with some sort of law or regulation. One example would be revenue-neutral carbon taxes, which would reduce CO2 emissions by using the free market.
Venezuela is not the automatic result of any attempt to apply any degree of socialism. I can pick bad examples of capitalism just as easily. Venezuela was ruined by inept dictatorial rule.
I see a lot of people saying that people concerned about climate change want to abolish capitalism, and I don't see significant numbers of people concerned about climate change who do want to abolish capitalism.
Scientific consensus means that, out of a large number of intelligent people who have studied the field for years or decades, almost all have been convinced by the evidence. It's a statement about the evidence, and pretty much what we laymen have to go by.
The test of scientific theories is their predictions. They predict that, if you do X, you'll observe Y. Then scientists do X and see if they get Y. X isn't necessarily immediate. It can include "wait ten years and check mean sea level". It can include "wait until you can get the use of the LHC" or "wait until you can get some Hubble time". Predictions are at the heart of science.
Scientific consensus is a way of seeing where the evidence points, and climate scientists are indeed doing science. It's easy to understand some of the basic science. Faith in the religious sense is not needed; indeed, it's a hindrance.
Climate scientists point to the evidence, and pretty much say what they believe is true, with belief backed up by years or decades of study and measurement and model building. Deniers trot out talking points that have been endlessly refuted, malign scientists, and sometimes come up with nitpicks as if one different observation would make decades of observations irrelevant.
Go against the orthodoxy with a theory to explain what's happening better than what we have and you will be renowned. Funding for this is readily available from fossil fuel companies. The reason nobody does this is that the climate scientists are generally correct.
Al Gore is a politician and spokesperson. He's a high priest only in the eyes of deniers, who love to pounce on statements by non-scientists that turn out to be wrong and use that to accuse scientists of falsehood.
Sure they qualify as scientists? While early chemists used alchemical equipment and some of their techniques, alchemy was not in general an experimental science. It was an attempt to apply some philosophical principles without doubting them. In general, you're been taking pre-scientific beliefs and attributing them to scientists. These beliefs are comparable to religious beliefs as being non-empirical explanations for various things. As it happens, science and empiricism have proved wildly successful.
Sure, and if major climate change took 10K years like you'd expect, we'd all adapt nicely, and so would most of the plants and animals we depend on. It's the rate of the increase that's alarming.
I haven't seen movements to make it a punishable crime. There are movements to make excess emissions expensive. There are lawsuits against companies for fraud, since they first established that AGW was happening and then lied about it for profit. There are occasional libel suits against deniers who make overly many or heinous accusations without evidence. That's about it.
Actually, a lot of the Bible is observations. Which are accurate, which are inaccurate, and which are made up is left as an argument for the reader.
Atmospheric CO2 concentration affects temperatures.
Last time we had way high CO2, the Sun was significantly dimmer. If we put all that carbon back in the air, we'll be hotter than we were then.
I'm not at all worried about Earth. It'll be around for several hundred million years until the water boils off (it'll be around after that, but I'll have lost interest in it.). I'm worried about human civilization, which has evolved in climate conditions we're getting away from.
Sure. Trump didn't invent stupidity, he simply popularized and normalized it.
Nice of you to demonstrate the effect to us.
Antarctic sea ice is growing, probably because of increased ice melt from the land ice. That makes the ocean near the continent less saline, and so it freezes easier.
According to the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it isn't gravity. It's intelligent falling, maintained by His Noodly Appendages.
Sure it is. Now, what else is it used for, and how would you figure that out? I really don't like the Android permission system. Given the "full network access", it could turn into an effective spy app within the permissions you quoted.