Oh it's just grass on a loop! I thought grass would surge forward and backward through time forever when I started the video up.

Touche' "infinite" grass...

dannym3141:

Claiming that people should stop burning fossil fuels would HEAVILY dent the income of just about every country because of how much tax they can charge from it. Britain's economy is almost based on fossil fuel tax. How can you possibly argue that they are a politically influenced source over fossil fuel use when they criticise such a money earner?

Politics aside, fossil fuels remain the cheapest, most abundant source of energy, and new supplies of it are being discovered all the time. I never said people should stop burning them.

I hesitate to even mention that "science" as a global community is above reproach in ways that hardly anything else can be due to the method of a scientist. If you are not performing science for truth and discovery, you are not a scientist, so you're not part of the community anymore. That's why it's above reproach. I'm sure you'll argue with me about that, but i know that you'd argue about the time of day if you were proven to be wrong.

I'm not arguing, but I am astonished you would believe scientists are above politics (and reproach), not because the scientific method is flawed, but because scientists are fallible humans with their own beliefs and interests. As W. Pennypacker said in so many words, governments reward scientists which confirm a pre-determined outcome (like secondhand smoke killing 100 billion people a year). Junk science is real; it may not be everywhere, but it's out there. And not just "the oil companies" which have "scientitians" in their corner.

Another thing, gang. Over the last few years, global warming hysteria has been relentless. It's the alarmists who declared, "The debate is over." There was even one smug a-hole who compared "climate deniers" to Holocaust deniers. Classy! There was the faked data scandal. These are not the actions of scientists confident in their conclusions. Yet the lazy media continues to back the alarmists without question.

100 storylines blaming climate change as the problem:

1. The deaths of Aspen trees in the West
2. Incredible shrinking sheep
3. Caribbean coral deaths
4. Eskimos forced to leave their village
5. Disappearing lake in Chile
6. Early heat wave in Vietnam
7. Malaria and water-borne diseases in Africa
8. Invasion of jellyfish in the Mediterranean
9. Break in the Arctic Ice Shelf
10. Monsoons in India
11. Birds laying their eggs early
12. 160,000 deaths a year
13. 315,000 deaths a year
14. 300,000 deaths a year
15. Decline in snowpack in the West
16. Deaths of walruses in Alaska
17. Hunger in Nepal
18. The appearance of oxygen-starved dead zones in the oceans
19. Surge in fatal shark attacks
20. Increasing number of typhoid cases in the Philippines
21. Boy Scout tornado deaths
22. Rise in asthma and hayfever
23. Duller fall foliage in 2007
24. Floods in Jakarta
25. Radical ecological shift in the North Sea
26. Snowfall in Baghdad
27. Western tree deaths
28. Diminishing desert resources
29. Pine beetles
30. Swedish beetles
31. Severe acne
32. Global conflict
33. Crash of Air France 447
34. Black Hawk Down incident
35. Amphibians breeding earlier
36. Flesh-eating disease
37. Global cooling
38. Bird strikes on US Airways 1549
39. Beer tastes different
40. Cougar attacks in Alberta
41. Suicide of farmers in Australia
42. Squirrels reproduce earlier
43. Monkeys moving to Great Rift Valley in Kenya
44. Confusion of migrating birds
45. Bigger tuna fish
46. Water shortages in Las Vegas
47. Worldwide hunger
48. Longer days
49. Earth spinning faster
50. Gender balance of crocodiles
51. Skin cancer deaths in UK
52. Increase in kidney stones in India
53. Penguin chicks frozen by global warming
54. Deaths of Minnesota moose
55. Increased threat of HIV/AIDS in developing countries
56. Increase of wasps in Alaska
57. Killer stingrays off British coasts
58. All societal collapses since the beginning of time
59. Bigger spiders
60. Increase in size of giant squid
61. Increase of orchids in UK
62. Collapse of gingerbread houses in Sweden
63. Cow infertility
64. Conflict in Darfur
65. Bluetongue outbreak in UK cows
66. Worldwide wars
67. Insomnia of children worried about global warming
68. Anxiety problems for people worried about climate change
69. Migration of cockroaches
70. Taller mountains due to melting glaciers
71. Drowning of four polar bears
72. UFO sightings in the UK
73. Hurricane Katrina
74. Greener mountains in Sweden
75. Decreased maple in maple trees
76. Cold wave in India
77. Worse traffic in LA because immigrants moving north
78. Increase in heart attacks and strokes
79. Rise in insurance premiums
80. Invasion of European species of earthworm in UK
81. Cold spells in Australia
82. Increase in crime
83. Boiling oceans
84. Grizzly deaths
85. Dengue fever
86. Lack of monsoons
87. Caterpillars devouring 45 towns in Liberia
88. Acid rain recovery
89. Global wheat shortage; food price hikes
90. Extinction of 13 species in Bangladesh
91. Changes in swan migration patterns in Siberia
92. The early arrival of Turkey’s endangered caretta carettas
93. Radical North Sea shift
94. Heroin addiction
95. Plant species climbing up mountains
96. Deadly fires in Australia
97. Droughts in Australia
98. The demise of California’s agriculture by the end of the century
99. Tsunami in South East Asia
100. Fashion victim: the death of the winter wardrobe


Do you really expect free people to surrender to THIS?

I understood his surge in Afghanistan was merely a redeployment of forces perviously deployed in Iraq, leaving a no net change in military commitment.

For me, the disappointment with Obama is exactly this - that it seems the US is about as deep as it was before, while I thought his plan was to be significantly less by now. Obama's failure to get out finds me actually worried, like conspiracy theory worried; like, what if the President (and, by extension, the democracy that chose that President) just isn't capable of making something like that happen?

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^bcglorf:
The only expansion Obama really made was into Libya.
Not true. He expanded the war effort in Afghanistan. Continued the Bush Doctrine in Iraq. And of course Libya. And he hasn't ended any military occupations, nor did he close GITMO, etc. etc.


I understood his surge in Afghanistan was merely a redeployment of forces perviously deployed in Iraq, leaving a no net change in military commitment. Am I wrong or incorrect to take expanding military efforts to mean increasing troop deployments, and to say that as a whole, the only increase in deployment outside the existing ones Bush started is in Libya?

And my prior questions re: Libya are still ones I'm curious on, I hope they don't seem snide, I just meant to be direct.

>> ^spoco2:

You can quote as many people as you like going 'Yeah, there is a possibility that there may be some small subgroup of people that are already predisposed to become autistic who may get a fever (from vaccines or not) that may then trigger it'. You can quote as many 'investigations' by biased groups who are looking for these links in the first place as you like.
Vaccines do not cause Autism in anyone who isn't already predisposed to get it. All they've currently said is that it's possible that these kids could be triggered into Autism by a fever, from any source, and that a vaccine can bring on a fever being that it's making you mildly sick.
So, even if you didn't have the vaccine, and then got sick, you'd still have the Autism triggered.
And if enough people stopped getting vaccines because they were afraid that they'd get a fever from it that may trigger autism, then the diseases that are being vaccinated for will re-surge back into being, start hurting and killing children in and of themselves, and on top of that causing sickness and fever that will trigger the darn Autism in those predisposed to it anyway.
It's people who don't understand medicine, science, causation, etc. etc. trying to find one thing to pin the pain of having their child be Autistic on.
Heaven forbid they look at their own genetics for f ck's sake.

"It's people who don't understand medicine, science, causation, etc. etc."


Brilliantly put.

You can quote as many people as you like going 'Yeah, there is a possibility that there may be some small subgroup of people that are already predisposed to become autistic who may get a fever (from vaccines or not) that may then trigger it'. You can quote as many 'investigations' by biased groups who are looking for these links in the first place as you like.

Vaccines do not cause Autism in anyone who isn't already predisposed to get it. All they've currently said is that it's possible that these kids could be triggered into Autism by a fever, from any source, and that a vaccine can bring on a fever being that it's making you mildly sick.

So, even if you didn't have the vaccine, and then got sick, you'd still have the Autism triggered.

And if enough people stopped getting vaccines because they were afraid that they'd get a fever from it that may trigger autism, then the diseases that are being vaccinated for will re-surge back into being, start hurting and killing children in and of themselves, and on top of that causing sickness and fever that will trigger the darn Autism in those predisposed to it anyway.

It's people who don't understand medicine, science, causation, etc. etc. trying to find one thing to pin the pain of having their child be Autistic on.

Heaven forbid they look at their own genetics for f*ck's sake.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, then I suppose it isn't worth it, is it? Because this all started because of US interventionism, I'd probably take steps to close out US hegemony in that area of the world, and then seek a diplomatic dialog in the hopes of having Osama turned over for trial.

The Pakistani say they don't know where he is. Jumping back to the real world, they still insist they didn't know he was there, even now.

So...you'd tell the American people what, exactly? Never mind about bin Laden. Yes, we know where he is, no we're not going to try to capture him, because I'm afraid we might kill him accidentally, and I'm definitely not going to kill him, not because it'd be illegal, but because I think I'm some sort of saint?

How did you win the election in the first place?

>> ^blankfist:
I think what's important here are the things I wouldn't do. I wouldn't continue to kill people with drone planes. I wouldn't continue to create more wars in that part of the world. I wouldn't seek to radicalize more militants by making their families casualties of war. I wouldn't occupy sovereign countries.

I'd withdraw from Afghanistan, if I'd replaced Obama from the start I'd have never surged there. I'd never have gone into Libya. I'm not so mad about the drones, but I'd mostly been giving them a pass because I thought they were the only force we were truly applying to Al Qaeda. If they're not even doing that, I'm all for stopping them.

Oh, and nobody's "seeking to radicalize" anyone. Nor are we occupying a sovereign nation.

In the cop's defense, I don't think he planned to hit her nearly as hard as he did.

I know there's been a couple times playing basketball where I'm accelerating and a guy in front of me decelerates (exactly what was happening here), you can end up really rolling someone over. It's much worse if you're bigger, and especially if you're a bit out of shape (and thus can't respond quickly).

I think he thought she was going to run and surged forward to grab her (or shove her forward off balance a bit so she couldn't run - a move you see fairly often in low-level tackle football), and then when she turned he didn't react fast enough. You can see afterward the cop is pretty off balance - if he had intended a painful tackle he would have followed through differently I think.

Anyways, I'm not saying he didn't do anything wrong - but I do think it turned out much worse (ie. he hit much harder) than he intended.

QM,
To answer a few points of yours.

Here's the difference between you and I. I'm not a liberal. I'm not a conservative. I do not judge an idea's worth by its age. I determine its worth by rational thought. If you want to just be opposed to every new idea just because its new, and freeze your brain in the now, go ahead, but it's rationally absurd. The founding fathers you worship were considered RADICALS in their day by conventional thought. Some new ideas are good ideas. It makes no sense to say one idea is better because it's been around longer. If that were true, the world is flat instead of round.

I'm tired of conservatives acting as if the "will of the people" solely determines what is right and wrong, what should be legal and what shouldn't be. The founding fathers themselves did not believe in mob rule, never did. Legal implications of court decisions don't mean "legislating from the bench" automatically every time. Constitutional review was established for a reason. What do you want - courts to be completely neutered?!

The entire idea of inalienable rights implies that we, as a society, do NOT try to impose a unified moral code on everyone forcibly by law. We forcibly impose everyone to respect the rights of others. That's the entire point of a right. The US has never, EVER, had a unifying moral code. Most of us do share some of the same values, but those are generally vague, and when they conflict, people generally disagree about they believe is right or wrong. The point is the gov'ts job is not to impose the specific answers. Our gov't exists to solely protect rights, and to preserve a healthy society for everyone. That would include things like "you can't dump toxic sludge into land that you even own" kinds of questions.

To say that gay people cause more health problems is preposterous. So now we're gonna legislate that people can't have sex before marriage, or have unprotected sex?! It's ridiculous. You know what the unforeseen consequence is of gays being allowed to marry? More people who are gay will be honest about it, and have a chance at a happy existence instead of living a repressed miserable life. For states that allow gay marriage now, I haven't seen any significant unforeseen issue that has arisen they have to deal with. To suggest that infant mortality will rise, or suicide rates will mysteriously surge because gay marriage is now legal is absolutely preposterous.

Most families are composed of one main racial color. Does that mean interracial marriages are immoral? Most families believe in some religion. Does that make atheism immoral? Does that make the world's most predominant religion the only true one? Of course not.

And one last point - the 3% of the population is not telling the other 97% how they must define marriage. A bigoted portion of the 97% is imposing their definition of marriage on the 3% for no reason other than "we don't like your definition - we don't have a single rational reason that doesn't involve religion, which can't be used as a reason because of the 1st Amendment". If you think marrying someone from the same sex is wrong, then don't marry someone of the same sex.

I think Satanism is wrong, but I'm not out there trying to stop Satanists from worshiping. It's ridiculous!

And the surge of emotion I got when a saved you. Taught me an even bigger lesson. Where Caroline lives in my brain. "Caroline Deleted"

>> ^blankfist:

I post one Thoreau quote and the statists go apeshit. I love it.


That's what I thought. You're just as bad as the alcoholic welfare deadbeats who mock education and spit out 10 kids. They're all action and no philosophy, and you're all philosophy and no action.

You, like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and other conservatives, make the mistake of thinking your concept of liberty is objective. It isn't. And, until you understand this, you will always be at its mercy.

Can't you see the problem with defining narrow and partisan political beliefs as the perfect embodiment of liberty? Perfection is beyond the need for criticism. By believing free markets are the perfect embodiment of liberty, it prevents you from being able to judge them critically, much like the religious are not able to judge the Bible critically because of the perceived perfection of God. This, I believe, is why you get shut down so often in our conversations. This is why you have to resort to insults, jokes, silence or changing the subject when I go beyond your framework of understanding. This is why you have that long list of unanswered questions, because you can't comprehend how anyone could criticize liberty or freedom. If I disagree, I must hate liberty - where have I heard that before?

Free markets aren't liberty, brother. They provide a certain amount of freedom to those with means, but it comes at a cost of freedom to those without. I've made this point (the subjectivity of your concept of liberty) so many times and you never address it. Care to give it a go? It would probably be easier to just call me stupid again.

http://videosift.com/talk/Gov-t-stopped-funding-charity-private-donations-surge-500?loadcomm=1#comment-1186057

>> ^blankfist:

I'd like to think you're not an idiot. But then you say things like this and how do you expect me to look at you?
Obviously you've read zero of anything I've written on here gauging by the way you try to describe me or my politics. You're head is so filled with your party's nonsense that your understanding of liberty is not an understanding at all. It's a rehearsed diatribe.
Oh and for the record it's agorist not argoist.

You, like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and other conservatives, make the mistake of thinking your concept of liberty is objective. It isn't. And, until you understand this, you will always be at its mercy.

Can't you see the problem with defining narrow and partisan political beliefs as the perfect embodiment of liberty? Perfection is beyond the need for criticism. By believing free markets are the perfect embodiment of liberty, it prevents you from being able to judge them critically, much like the religious are not able to judge the Bible critically because of the perceived perfection of God. This, I believe, is why you get shut down so often in our conversations. This is why you have to resort to insults, jokes, silence or changing the subject when I go beyond your framework of understanding. This is why you have that long list of unanswered questions, because you can't comprehend how anyone could criticize liberty or freedom. If I disagree, I must hate liberty - where have I heard that before?

Free markets aren't liberty, brother. They provide a certain amount of freedom to those with means, but it comes at a cost of freedom to those without. I've made this point (the subjectivity of your concept of liberty) so many times and you never address it. Care to give it a go? It would probably be easier to just call me stupid again.


>> ^blankfist:

I'd like to think you're not an idiot. But then you say things like this and how do you expect me to look at you?
Obviously you've read zero of anything I've written on here gauging by the way you try to describe me or my politics. You're head is so filled with your party's nonsense that your understanding of liberty is not an understanding at all. It's a rehearsed diatribe.
Oh and for the record it's agorist not argoist.

You are projecting. I'm not saying that high density metropolitan areas are superior, I'm saying that when people live in such close proximity to one another, it requires organization and management for it to function. If you live on Walden pond, not so much. Thoreau's concept of liberty was one of genuine self-reliance, not your shallow, materialist, David Koch reboot.

Like most other conservatives, you confuse wealth with self reliance. Money doesn't make you more self reliant. It makes you less self reliant. By its very definition, money relies on the existence of others for it to have value in the first place - A million dollars will buy you nothing in the wilderness.

Usually, the more money you have, the less self reliant you become, and in terminal stages of wealth, you regress to an infantile state, requiring maids, cooks, butlers, chauffeurs and other types of personal assistants to take care of you. Look at Donald Trump on the news if you want to see the infantilization caused by late stage wealthyness. The wealthy are not able or willing to do anything for themselves.

I'd respect your political views on liberty more if they were more like Thoreau's - and less concerned with materialism, greed, bling and property rights. As I've said before, the fact that you feel the need to graft radical Friedmanite conservatism to your concept of liberty tells me that you understand nothing of liberty. I wish HDT were alive and here on videosift to set you straight, but he would probably not own a laptop or have an internet connection.

Go spend a month in the wilderness with nothing but a bowie knife and a loin cloth, and you'd come back with a very different concept of liberty.

>> ^blankfist:

Like a sheltered kid who's always lived under the wing of California's warm upper-middle class. Someone who champions the working class, but speaks like the bourgeois.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

>> ^blankfist:
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
To answer your question, it is the government's duty to try and minimize the negative effects of its economic system. Planned parenthood fits well within this duty.

That's not answering my question. What is the people's duty then? What should be left to the people and what should be left to the government?

The people should be the government. That's the whole point.


But are they? When's the last time you saw a mechanic or farmer become president and not a lawyer or millionaire?