I listened to my conservative brother grouse about the terrible unions for decades. He is a highly educated, highly skilled ex-military pilot with a masters degree in aerospace engineering.

And then he got his dream job, doing exactly what he wanted on a military contract, teaching Air Force pilots to fly a new plane in a simulator.

He was in hog heaven, making great money doing the thing he loved.

Then he found out that the wages he was getting paid were "low for the area." The "prevailing wage" was much higher.

He was thiiiis close to being the union shop steward.

When I mocked him (I had to, mean come on!!!) about joining a union, he said -- you don't understand. We have some government agency negotiating our contract and they did a crappy job.

Yeah, so, what you are saying is you want to band together and get a better wage? As a group? You want to have some power?

It still cracks me up. The side benefit is -- he can never ever grouse about unions again. Because when it was HIS paycheck, suddenly he got all socialist.

Because it isn't socialism -- it is the height of capitalism, really. Except the "capital" isn't money, it is information and time and skill of the worker.

I do not understand why labor is held as such low regard, while we all bow down to the God of Capital. It is such a one-sided way to look at a complicated, entwined economic system. And as I said above, it will be death of corporations. They need healthy prosperous workers as part of the engine of the economy.

Nothing is perfect in this world. But the vilification of labor is a bad bad thing.

I was thinking the same thing before I watched the video. Then I watched the video.

Jon "Steward" isn't saying Obama is a big swing to the left in response to Bush's extreme right-itude; he's saying Obama is a big swing toward intellectualism in response to Bush's arrogant ignorance.

If a people 50 years ago looked at Obama's record they would probably guess he was centrist right. Sometime's I wonder about Steward's complete lack of historical perspective. Especially when he's slurping the Democratic party. If he was the Liberal he claims to be, he should lambast Obama for his ideological comprimises. One thing's for sure, Obama's reflective autobiography will be a great read.

Let's take things in stride here.
1. Al Gore has the highest electricity useage in the entire country in Tennessee. That kinda tells you all you need to know about what he says and does.

2. Super Storm Sandy doesn't mean anything is necessarily happening anymore than the fact that California hasn't had any major earthquakes or storms for approximately 5 years. The south aka Katrina and such largest storms were in CA and the East got almost nothing

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0211/Behind-mid-Atlantic-snowstorms-a-rare-weather-pattern

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/index.html

Please realize there are many other articles out there that point this pattern out.

None of that means that we shouldn't be good stewards of the land and such. However, Mr. Chomsky and anyone over the age of 40 has been alive for the death by heat in the 60's, the ice age of the 70's, the Sagan predictions of over population death of us all, to the Al Gore death of climate change heat, to the newly recognized studies put out in Europe about how the temperature actually declining and the high's were 13 years ago.

The simple fact of the matter is this: We have many more safeguards in place and to say that our rivers, streams, automobiles hell, even airplanes don't burn cleaner and more efficiently is just plain not paying attention.

LOL at them thinking they aren't going to SUPER HELL for what they've done to those chickens... i dont think the part about being a good steward involves warehousing living things and killing them for profit... but I'm no Jesus.

DAve Steward & Annie Lennox.
One the best team-ups in Music.

Pascal's wager assumes there is (or is not) only a single god. It doesn't factor in that if you happen to believe in the wrong god, then you are damned for eternity. So it's not just a yes /no question.

Global warming isn't so straight forward either. One thing is to figure out whether or not it is happening and what causes it, another is what to do in response. It seems the scientific community has all but reach a consensus about it, but what we do in response is really the important thing. Again, the response is not "nothing or everything", it's "how much do we need to do".
>> ^vaire2ube:

Holy shit (no pun) but isnt this Pascal's Wager turned around on the religious?
Game Theory ... the Payoff for believing in (being a disciple of) God if there was no God ? Doesn't matter... no God. Payoff for believing in (being a disciple of) God and there is a god? Infinite.
Therefore, the smart money is to behave as though God exists.
so
Should we behave as good stewards and attempt to minimize our impact, betting on the outcome that it matters?
Or should we bet that it doesn't matter, and have it matter, which is a position that is unwise according to the payout.... given of course we all have the same opinion of the value of the payout which i guess we dont but perhaps could quantify in terms of energy consumption/production..

Holy shit (no pun) but isnt this Pascal's Wager turned around on the religious?

Game Theory ... the Payoff for believing in (being a disciple of) God if there was no God ? Doesn't matter... no God. Payoff for believing in (being a disciple of) God and there is a god? Infinite.

Therefore, the smart money is to behave as though God exists.

so

Should we behave as good stewards and attempt to minimize our impact, betting on the outcome that it matters?

Or should we bet that it doesn't matter, and have it matter, which is a position that is unwise according to the payout.... given of course we all have the same opinion of the value of the payout which i guess we dont but perhaps could quantify in terms of energy consumption/production..

@bcglorf, I've skimmed through this conversation, and I think that this is the most succinct expression of your position on global warming:
>> ^bcglorf:

Rapidly cutting CO2 emissions before we have the replacement technology in place would be costly, not just financially but world history shows big financial impacts generally spill over into violent impacts. Battery technology is getting very close to making electric cars that are superior in every way to their gas guzzling brethren. I truly do believe that the enormous CO2 contribution made by burning gasoline is rapidly on it's way out for purely economic rather than environmental reasons. Another reason I don't feel the need for panic.
As I stated above, I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O dominates the greenhouse effect. It is the uncontested scientific fact.
I am NOT being a skeptic in declaring that H2O's role in climate models and forcing/feedbacks is very poorly understood. It is an uncontested scientific fact, some models even disagree on whether to assign it as a positive or negative feedback.
Think about those two for a good long while before thinking everything Al Gore said should trump peer reviewed science.


I think John Cole still has the perfect description of the conservative/denier shtick on global warming:

You know the drill: global warming isn’t happening, if it is happening then it’s not caused by human behavior, if it is caused by human behavior then we can’t do anything about it, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it, then that something is too expensive, if it is caused by human behavior and we can do something about it that is not too expensive, then that something is not what Democrats are proposing. And Al Gore is fat, he flies too much, look at his electricity bill, and sometimes when he goes somewhere it snows there, which is very ironic.

Now, to your credit, you have executed this script in a more thoughtful, reasoned, honestly skeptical way than most do, but ultimately you're following it to a tee. Hell, you even made a swipe at Al Gore along the way.

I think this comment of criticalthud's is pretty much speaking to why I posted the video in the first place:
>> ^criticalthud:

and I would add:
we have a psychological issue at hand.
the human species thinks it's entitled, and it's OUR planet. We think we're special.
This kind of psychological issue hides reality from us.
We have shown ourselves to be very poor stewards of the planet. How many species have we wiped out? How else have we affected our environment? What sort of poisons have we created, what scale of trash heap? Mindlessly fattening ourselves.
This makes me think it is quite likely that we are the frogs in the slowly boiling water.
So, we can argue about this and that, and whether our governments should act. But in actuality, it is up to each and every one of us to stop being energy and consumer gluttons, feasting during the oil orgy.


Human psychology isn't wired properly for dealing with things like climate change. We have trouble with making connections between our actions in the here and now, and consequences to people elsewhere in space, and in time. We're also weird about our assessment of risk. Some people are deathly afraid of flying, but have no problem driving around in a car, even though driving a car is vastly more likely to result in your death than flying on a plane.

The science isn't certain on exactly what's happening, but then science isn't certain about anything. Everything has a fucking error bar on it. We won't be certain it's gonna kill the human race until the human race dies. We won't know it's not going to be a big problem until it's already stopped...and it's showing no signs of stopping on its own.

Environmentalism at its most basic level is about trying to lessen the impact humanity is having on the natural systems we rely on for the basic necessities of life. It's about not felling forests, not poisoning our water, not blighting our soil, and in this case, it's about trying to get people to stop giving a big fucking shove to the equilibrium of our atmosphere when we don't know exactly how it works (and what we do know suggests doing that could possibly be very bad for us).

The basic disagreement here is about what our default position should be in the absence of certainty. Mine is that we should be humble, and curtail our CO2 emissions rather severely. Yours seems to be that as long as the science isn't yet 100% definite, we should just ignore the problem and just wait until scarcity of coal and oil pushes us off them.

and I would add:
we have a psychological issue at hand.
the human species thinks it's entitled, and it's OUR planet. We think we're special.

This kind of psychological issue hides reality from us.

We have shown ourselves to be very poor stewards of the planet. How many species have we wiped out? How else have we affected our environment? What sort of poisons have we created, what scale of trash heap? Mindlessly fattening ourselves.

This makes me think it is quite likely that we are the frogs in the slowly boiling water.

So, we can argue about this and that, and whether our governments should act. But in actuality, it is up to each and every one of us to stop being energy and consumer gluttons, feasting during the oil orgy.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Kristen Steward, twilight, Christmas, Nativity Story' to 'Kristen Stewart, twilight, Christmas, Nativity Story' - edited by bareboards2

>> ^quantumushroom:

...government employees should never, ever be allowed to organize. The need for a union comes down to this question: Do you have a boss who wants you to work harder for less money? In the private sector, the answer is yes. In the public sector, the answer is a big, fat NO.
Government unions have nothing in common with private sector unions because they don't have hostile management on the other side of the bargaining table. To the contrary, the "bosses" of government employees are co-conspirators with them in bilking the taxpayers.
Far from being careful stewards of the taxpayers' money, politicians are on the same side of the bargaining table as government employees -- against the taxpayers, who aren't allowed to be part of the negotiation. This is why the head of New York's largest public union in the mid-'70s, Victor Gotbaum, gloated, "We have the ability to elect our own boss."

Ann "Mad Dog" Coulter

Look for the Union Fable


As a public employee, I can assure you that no one I've ever worked alongside with or even met on the job thinks that our bosses want anything other than to make us work as hard as possible for the least amount of money possible. Not to mention the fact that, ultimately, our bosses are our citizens, and they've never wanted anything else either, especially in the current climate where attacking unions and blaming all of society's problems on them is the most popular thing to do for any elected official.

My co-conspirator bosses here in Oregon are now charging me $45 per month until I can get my waist down to 34 inches (regardless of my height). That's for the health insurance that costs me $900 per month already. And here I had spend a year trying to convince them to let me stand while I work.

If we didn't have the ability to threaten a strike this year, I'd be making 25% less wages as well, starting in January.

My favorite part of your post is that you're quoting Coulter in a time when literally every politician, including my Democratic governor, is sanctioning attacks on public employee unions across the board.

...government employees should never, ever be allowed to organize. The need for a union comes down to this question: Do you have a boss who wants you to work harder for less money? In the private sector, the answer is yes. In the public sector, the answer is a big, fat NO.

Government unions have nothing in common with private sector unions because they don't have hostile management on the other side of the bargaining table. To the contrary, the "bosses" of government employees are co-conspirators with them in bilking the taxpayers.

Far from being careful stewards of the taxpayers' money, politicians are on the same side of the bargaining table as government employees -- against the taxpayers, who aren't allowed to be part of the negotiation. This is why the head of New York's largest public union in the mid-'70s, Victor Gotbaum, gloated, "We have the ability to elect our own boss."


Ann "Mad Dog" Coulter

Look for the Union Fable

How does the scientific fact that people are contributing to climate change have to do with wrecking the American economy? What we do about it at the policy level has nothing to do with the science. They are two separate issues. Also since climate change is a global thing, not just an American thing, shouldn't we think about the global impact and not just be self centered ass holes concerned only about a few American multi-billion dollar companies? WTF is wrong with these people? I mean these idiots believe in God, who said to be a good steward of the Earth. If I left somebody in charge of something and came back and it was all messed up because they were more concerned about making money than taking care of what I told them to take care of, I would be pissed... perhaps, like Denethor, they confused stewardship with lordship and think they can do what the heck they want... of course that is perhaps one of the parts of the Bible they picked to ignore, like the parts that say the Earth doesn't move, because if they came out and said that the sun goes around the Earth because the science isn't settled on that, then they would lose all respect (at least one would hope)...

The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise. And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.

Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.

Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked. We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.

This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.

Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall. Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable. The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for that kind of claim whatsoever.

>> ^quantumushroom:

this is what we've been trying to tell you QM, the system doesn't work when only a few contribute...the system works when ALL contribute based on what they can afford.
I totally agree, so why does the bottom 50% of Americans pay NO income tax? The wealthy already pay a disproportionately high percentage of all taxes and I have yet to find a liberalsifter who admits this.
I well understand that Scrooge McDuck won't miss a few more shovelfuls of gold coins swiped by federal bulldozers, but lets review reality:
1) The "extra" money attained by "soaking" Scrooge and Rich Uncle Pennybags (from the Monopoly game) will be pi$$ed away, like the 60 billion dollars EVERY YEAR lost to fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid/Medicare. The federal mafia is composed of sh1tty stewards of our money.
2) The Hawaiian Dunce has spent 3 trillion in 3 years with little or nothing to show for it. So what magical number of dollars is going to make everything all right? A quadrillion?
3) When the socialists raise taxes, the wealthy of 2011 have their accountant press a few buttons on their computating machines, sending their $$$ overseas, invested in more stable markets. Apparently many already have, probably the moment they knew Obama was elected.
4) Liberal say, "Rich man not know difference he still rich." But there's now less money to invest and less money to create jobs. Now some liberalsifter will say, "This graph indicates that the rich don't create jobs with their ill-gotten gains."
BUT, if you're honest with yourselves, you'll know that one million dollars has a much better chance of creating jobs in the hands of entrepreneurs and investors than the government "Department of Creating Jobs" which probably spends that much just on office furniture.
5) The debt limit 'debate' is total BS, always has been. Here is what happened: taxocrats burned through tax money at an alarming rate and there weren't enough elected Republicans to stop them. THAT'S why Moody's got scared and US was downgraded. Republicans can't communicate for sh1t anyway, and so the socialists and their media lapdogs managed to blame the right for this mess.
6) Warren Buffoon likes to be liked, I get that, but he should still STFU and make a real gesture. Giving a symbolic billion dollars to the federal mafia should do it. He won't miss it.