FL & TX account for 40% of all the new hospitalizations. Yet, they are against mask mandates. Against their fellow lawmakers, citizens, and school administrators who KNOW masks are necessary. FOR THE GOP it is a political weapon.

What is poignant is all the teachers that have and will die. IF given a thought for a moment, the flu season was unusually low last season. In our area, it was almost non-existent. We know masks check the spread of the COVID virus but now there is a possibility it could cut the flu infection risks, too!

Now isn't it worth it? Because COVID attacks the lungs and has already spun off a lambda variant. Why double up the chance parents, teachers, and their children could get at a double shot of respiratory illnesses?!

THINK OF IT: all those immune-compromised folks who got their shots. If it was so dangerous, then where was the storm for Gramma? If it doesn't work- who is in the hospitals? If it's a 'freedom' issue then what freedom will be there for those infected? Didn't we just come from a shutdown? Why is this EVEN A DEBATE?!!! Why is doing so OBVIOUSLY right so anti-right?

Don't let what you don't know to keep you from doing what you do know is the right way to go.

After all, folks like myself have to live w/the risk of new GOP members living to vote, to make more awful laws, and how many of them will mirror what we have now? The horror...the horror...

*doublepromote someone else finally telling the truth, even if it is just a fictional tv character. I’ve been saying the same thing since around 2000. If we went all in, halted all co2 emissions and all methane emissions 20 years ago, and invested in methods to catch and sequester what we already emitted, we might have avoided the tipping point where we are no longer in control….but instead we increased emissions every year, flooring it towards that cliff and hitting the nitrous button.
*quality if inconvenient truths

That tipping point was reached well over a decade ago when methane started to melt out of permafrost and the deep ocean where it has been frozen for eons. It’s capable of causing warming >80 times as much as co2 short term, >25 times as much long term, and is boiling out at rapidly increasing rates. Pre 2006 it’s estimated around .5 million tons per year…2006 it was measured at 3.8 million tons…by 2013 that was up to 17 million tons with the trend increasing. More recent estimates are hard to find, but it’s agreed that as temperatures climb not only are hydrates melting much more rapidly, bacteria are also accelerating decomposition in the thawed permafrost, and they emit methane. The Arctic is warming up to 5 times faster than the average global temperature. It’s likely over 50 million tons per year by now if not much higher.

Shakhova et al. (2008) estimate that not less than 1,400 gigatonnes (Gt=1 billion tons) of carbon is presently locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic submarine permafrost, and 5–10% of that area is subject to puncturing by open taliks. They conclude that "release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time". That would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a factor of twelve in one shot….game over.

Bear in mind, 1 cubic meter of hydrate contains >160 cubic meters of methane gas at atmospheric pressure.

The amount of increase from bacterial emissions in rotting permafrost is debatable, but even the lowest estimates are insurmountable.

This is only one of dozens of KNOWN feedback loops already in action, and there are definitely unknown feedback systems we can’t predict.

This does not mean there’s nothing to be done, we can still mitigate the damage somewhat, maybe slow the rate of change enough that some animals and plants more advanced than bacteria survive long term. It does mean a massive >99% culling of humanity, a total shift in civilization from a money based civilization to one focused on survival, and likely an unavoidable mass extinction rivaling any previous extinctions.

Unbelievably *terrible idea.

Never in a million years, and it shouldn’t happen, and wouldn’t help. Trump would show for the money and do nothing but bash Obama as a foreigner Muslim illegitimate “so called president” (who won two more presidential elections than Trump), would blame all his failures on either Obama or Biden, and would interrupt Obama’s every thoughtful point with rambling, self congratulatory nonsense. Trump has no interest in unification unless that means everyone unify behind him and he’s emperor. Trump is a divider, his entire platform is “blame the libs for everything wrong, take credit for anything that’s working, even if he opposed it”. He has nothing to offer but hateful lies.

Trump is incapable of having a nice discussion. If the other people speaking aren’t just praising him, he thinks they should just shut up and let him praise himself. It’s an impossibility for him to sit and have a productive conversation with a non sycophant, especially one as intelligent and knowledgeable as Obama that would outshine him like a supernova beside a black hole of ignorance. He wouldn’t make it 5 minutes before his first temper tantrum.

Obama doesn’t need the money, he’s a real, successful, happy, self made multi millionaire...no doubt he would donate any payments to the needy ….Trump does need the money, he’s an unhappy failed businessman and broke trust fund baby with dozens of criminal court cases pending and hundreds of millions in unpaid bills...no doubt he would pocket every penny...and Trump is considered by most Americans as personally responsible for the worst attack on Washington since 1812 as an attempted coup....and the idea is to give him another high profile platform from which he can try again to make his baseless and highly divisive case that he's not a loser, like he does at his shrinking rallies and random paid events at his properties.

If you want to unify America, you need to remove Trump from the equation, he divided America more than slavery. Division is his only real accomplishment….how does this guy think he’s the one to help unify?

It's like saying Jim Jones or David Koresh should be publicly debating the Dalai Lama to unify people around religion in positive ways, they both just had that one little slip up and their remaining people still believe in them for the most part.

"Two weeks ago a 30 year old came into my hospital perfectly healthy dead....dead from the swine flu."....really?! What kind of nonsense is this? How often does he treat perfectly healthy dead people? Wasn't he surprised when a dead man walked in?

Bill is 100% correct that the average American diet leads to a large percentage of American health issues across the board, and exacerbates others.

Islam today is largely fundamentalist. Any religion practiced like Islam is practiced by many today is bad and evil. That is Bill's position. Christianity had it's fundamentalist period....we call it the dark ages....it's seeing a resurgence in America.

Milo on Bill was not a platform, more an expose. He didn't look intelligent at all. Bill's show is about getting both sides of a debate, even when one side is abhorrent. It's about exposing Nazis, not pretending they're right.

Compared to right wing talking heads, Bill is 100% right about everything....which is to say, those who complain about his mistakes and odd opinions AS A COMEDIAN are invariably the same people who back outrageous nutjobs like Beck, Jones, Limbaugh, Trump, and all the other feckless and feculent right wing propagandists who never honestly explain positions they disagree with and always create paper tigers and windmills to fight. Bill has them on to have their say in their own words to expose the insanity, and often goes on to contradict them.

BTW, Bill did get fully vaccinated for Covid....and one month ago he contracted it anyway. This broke his perfect attendance record of never missing a show since 93. He is not a crazed anti vaxer, he simply believes in America that the health crisis and poor overall health of Americans comes mainly from our diets since >70% of us are overweight and >42% are clinically obese. He's right.

I used to have a VCR tape of old-timey newsreels from the 30s and one of them was a story about a dude who did this kinda thing to his car. He's showing this backward-car shit off in the city and some cop walks up to him, looks at the car, WHACKS THE DUDE WITH A FUCKING BATON, then points for him to GTFO with a "ged da fuck odda hehr!" expression. The best part is that everyone looks like they're having a great ol' time, including the dude who just got brained by Boston's finest. The guy's smiling while O'Malley the Copper looks like he's debating taking another swing.

If that dude with the car had been black, the tone of that newreel would have been a weeeeee bit different, especially the ending.

That cop's alternative being what, letting the rampaging mob have their way with the legislators he was duty-bound to protect? It's not like the officer was just wandering around and randomly shot her - she was at the front of a violent mob that had just broken through a barrier. By shooting her, he kept the mob at bay for a bit longer, which may very well have saved lives. When people on this site decry police violence, it tends to be in a context where that violence was unnecessary and excessive for the situation. The fact that more of the insurrectionists weren't shot actually illustrates incredible restraint and professionalism, on the part of the Capitol police.

I'd like to add: fucking stop with the "unarmed" bullshit. They were a RAMPAGING MOB. They were chanting their wish to kill the Vice President, who they believed to be in the building. Do you really believe a group of people with only bludgeoning weapons are incapable of causing massive amounts of harm? They had violently broken into one of the core seats of power in the US, in a direct effort to stop the democratic process and what has in *every other instance* been a peaceful transition of power.

Seriously - if you support the 1/6/2021 insurrection, you support an attempted fascistic overthrow of the US government. It isn't up for debate, that's what happened on that day. It wasn't a fucking protest, they weren't a goddamned tourist group. They smashed their way into the Capitol, at the behest of a man seemingly incapable of admitting defeat (gracefully or otherwise), with the goal of keeping him in power against the will of the voters of this country. That shit is not at all acceptable, and I hope the lot of them serve sufficient time in prison to act as a warning to all other fascists.

Depends on your definition of "need", and your definition of "stopping" climate change.

Because I'm convinced enough natural feedback loops are in effect that there's no chance at all of stopping further climate change, and only a slight chance of slowing the rate of change and only if humanity fundamentally changes first, I find the question flawed.

I find it odd that tidal energy (different from hydro) is never considered in these debates. It's simple, relatively cheap, easy to maintain, and best of all predictable and consistent. All you need is a shoreline with a relatively large tide swing, a small inlet, and a tidal flat.

At best, nuclear is a stop gap measure that trades one planetary poison for another.....largely because we aren't responsible with it....building on shores in earthquake zones for convenience, banning fuel recycling, having no long term waste plan and handling waste insanely (Japan, I'm looking at you and your plans to dump Fukushima irradiated water into the ocean)....It's far from "green" the way we do it.

Measuring the efficiency of "investment" into social programs is.. debatable.

This was the best 20 minutes on national debt I can remember to have seen or heard or read.

National debt is one of the hardest (yet closest to the skin) things to explain to people who have a lay attitude to economics. Right up there with Annual percentage rate and secondary effects of raising minimum wage.

What do you think about removing the automatic filibuster and returning to requiring a senator to stand and speak?
I don't think the minority should have the unbridled ability to effortlessly stop debate and voting on any bill they like, no matter which party they belong to, but I have no problem with them actually extending debate so long as they actually debate (or at least speak). Killing bills and debate because supporters don't have a super majority as the norm has paralyzed government and is rapidly getting worse. It makes compromise unnecessary and obstructionism a platform, and that's not working.

The whole point of the Section 230 debate is that Youtube has no liability, just like Videosift is not liable for any of our comments. Youtube would have been sued out of existence long ago if that wasn't the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

In 1968, Buckley debated Gore Vidal. Here's the most famous part of that debate:

BUCKLEY: No, I won’t. Some people were pro-Nazi and, and the answer is they were well treated by people who ostracized them. And I’m for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American Marines and American soldiers. I know you don’t care—

VIDAL (loftily): As far as I’m concerned, the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that—

SMITH: Let’s, let’s not call names—

VIDAL: Failing that, I can only say that—

BUCKLEY (snarling, teeth bared): Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddam face, and you’ll stay plastered—

Vidal was right about the Right, only he was about 50 years ahead of his time.

Wait, you said clearly that if the truth doesn’t help your case, it’s the right thing to do to lie, even under oath, only stupid people would tell the truth if it hurts their case. Now you think you have a leg to stand on calling someone a liar? Get a grip.

This points out in great clarity how biased and untrustworthy Rand Paul and most republicans are.

Investigations galore, multiple recounts, signatures were compared, over 60 cases tossed for lack of evidence, a few for lack of standing, only about what, +-70 votes actually in question for fraud now that the dominion lie has been quashed, far fewer prosecuted, and they were Trumpsters voting twice or more, the rest are cases of minor technicalities that Republicans thought meant since two people in one Republican county weren’t afforded the same help some people in other counties got like ballot curing or a chance to fix a signature that was missing or considered different from the one on file before election day (because the republicans in that county specifically disallowed it) they think those other counties must be discarded completely, a few million votes should be discarded to make up for two republicans that Republicans screwed over.

How many times did Paul lie about what Stephanopilous had just said? I lost count.

We had the debate, repeatedly. Paul is lying again.

We had thorough examinations in every state, full recounts in some, multiple in Georgia. Republicans are all liars who want to rehash the election in different ways and venues until they win, then stop the process. Too bad you lost so badly, in such a massive landslide with such a clear mandate across the board that no amount of rehashing, not an ocean of their tears could change the outcome.

The conservative Supreme Court heard umpteen challenges to election rule changes and found NONE to be illegal, Paul is just lying again.
If every single claim thrown out of court for lack of evidence was won by the right, Trump still would have lost bigly.

You are such a willing tool for the lying right. If lying were a crime, republicans would all be in prison for felony level dishonesty. Where you go one, you go all....into the mouth of madness.

I do like that you tagged this ridiculous lie fest from Paul as “lies”, and the reporting by Stephanopolis “news”. That’s a step back towards sanity.

They like to pretend to fight, I've decided.

They don't want to fight any real enemy, they don't want to fight in an actual war. You don't want to have a real debate with real facts. Just want to pretend to do all those fucking things.

Add to that you don't want to have a real election where you might have an outcome that you don't like.

So much fraud in so many states.
Just because fake news say it isn't so does not fake them correct.

Because of all the fraud, Congress will have to debate the validity of the electors and probably will end up choosing the POTUS,per law. At least this isn't the first time. It has happened befor.

I'm open to debate on the channels. Travel didn't really seem to fit in spite of their name, as the video has little to do with actual travel. Love seemed to fit, as this felt nothing like a commercial venture and more like a giant bromance.