You need to draw a line somewhere. Humans, from the very beginning of humanity, always tried to get wasted, so you won't be able to pull of another prohibition era. On the other side you can legalise everything and decriminalise everybody (I see no reason why a methcook shouldn't go to jail, fuck Heisenberg). However, the US government is extremely shitty at drawing lines as they give the chalk away to lobbyists and other people whose job depends on prohibition and criminalisation. Maybe we should let actual drug and addiction experts in on this.

And so are Republicans and Democrats. The problem is dumbass voters who vote for pawns of lobbyists that actively work to undermine our country. And the only way to break that cycle is to elect the one motherfucker who flips them the bird. Ron did that. Dennis Kucinich did that. Bernie Sanders does that. It doesn't matter what side of the isle we vote--it matters that we vote out the special interests.

Is this seriously not a parody? Holy shit. @:48 "A group of anti-energy activists..." - really? Anti-energy? "I hate energy!" "Yeah, me too! "Fuck energy!"

Edit: Apparently the group that made this is run by / connected to one Rick Berman, who I'd not really known anything about previously. Found a post with some info on the guy, sounds like a winner: "a Washington lobbyist and arch-enemy of other lobbyists and do-gooders who would have government control—and even ban-a myriad of products they claim are killing us, products like caffeine, salt, fast food and the oil they fry it in. He's against Mothers Against Drunk Driving, animal rights activists, food watchdog groups and unions of every kind..."

I used to be a pretty strong "doubter", if not a denier. I made a gradual shift away from that, but one strong instance of shift was when Neil Degrasse Tyson presented it as a (relatively) simple physics problem in his new Cosmos series. Before we started burning fossil fuels, x% of the sun's energy was reflected back into space. Now, with a higher concentration of CO2, x is a smaller number. That energy has to go somewhere, and at least some of that is going to be heat energy.

Still, I don't think that anything on the level of "average individual citizen/household of an industrial country" is really where anything needs to happen. Yes, collectively, normal people in their daily lives contribute to Climate Change. But the vast majority of us, even as a collective single unit, contribute less than industrial / government / infrastructure sources.

Fossil fuels have been a great source of energy that has massively contributed to global advances in the past century. BUT, although we didn't know it in the beginning, they have this associated cost/downside. Fossil fuels also have a weakness in that they are not by any means inexhaustible, and costs rise as that becomes more and more obvious. In turn, that tends to favor the status quo in terms of the hierarchy of industrial nations versus developing or 3rd world countries -- we've already got the money and infrastructure in place to use fossil fuels, developing countries can't afford the costs.

All of this makes me think that 2 things need to happen:
A) Governments need to encourage the development of energy sources etc. that move us away from using fossil fuels. Tax breaks to Tesla Motors, tax incentives to buyers of solar cells for their homes, etc. etc.
B) If scientists/pundits/whoever really want people to stop using fossil fuels (or just cut down), they need to develop realistic alternatives. I'll bring up Tesla Motors again for deserving huge kudos in this area. Americans (and in general citizens of developed countries) have certain expectations about how a car should perform. Electric cars have traditionally been greatly inferior to a car burning fossil fuels in terms of living up to those expectations, but Tesla threw all that out the window and made a car that car people actually like to drive. It isn't just "vaguely functional if you really want to brag about how green you are", it is actually competitive with or superior to a gas-engine car for most users/consumers (some caveats for people who need to drive long distances in a single day).

We need to get more companies / inventors / whoever developing superior, functional alternatives to fossil fuel technologies. We need governments to encourage and enable those developments, NOT to cave to lobbyist pressure from big oil etc. and do the opposite. Prices will start high (like Tesla), but if you really are making a superior product, economy of scale will eventually kick in and normalize that out.

Outside of the consumer level, the same thing goes for actual power production. Even if we did nothing (which I would certainly not advocate), eventually scarcity and increased difficulty in obtaining fossil fuels (kinda sad that the past 2 decades of pointless wars 95% driven by oil haven't taught us this lesson yet, but there it is) will make the more "green" alternatives (solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, whatever) more economically practical. That tipping point will be when we see the real change begin.

Yes, that's the comparison I was making. If every man, woman, and child in the U.S. spends $3 per week on pizza by themselves, how upset should you be that your federal government spent $1.66 for each of you on the f-35 program?

There are a lot of other things to be more upset about, like the way lobbyists direct federal spending, tax breaks for the rich, or the cost of housing 25% of the world's prison population.

I rather feel that that puts the argument in a skewed light. Essentially, we are either in full awareness of the facts and long term results of fracking or we are not. If we are not yet, why on earth would we pursue it now? We have alternative forms of energy production, it's just a whole bunch of very rich people aren't quite done selling us oil yet.

The shale will still be there, and we may have developed more efficient and safer means of extracting it. And we will have to deal without oil eventually, what better time to begin, whilst we still have some that we can get if we utterly must? We are not yet in crisis but they want to take a risk, that's got to make you ask a few questions. I don't have a detailed scientific knowledge of the subject, but i would know if it was proven safe, and it isn't yet.

Incidentally or otherwise, the first earthquake that i've ever felt in my life happened very shortly after they began a new testing site for fracking nearby - one of two earthquakes that happened in short succession after the first wave of tests. I live in the north of england.. they never happen. It's worth looking into before we start doing it.. the last person i'm going to trust with the future of this planet is an oil baron.

@BoneRemake - let me know which bit of my horseshit you want me to look past and i'll attempt to look past it and see what you describe. Or was it an empty sound-bite? My criticism was valid - newt said everything that needed to be said on that subject, and yes i can in retrospect see the value of the video as a demonstration of the fracking process. But you don't have to be a hippy to try and see positive and informed decisions made in the world, but if it makes me one then i'm glad to be one. What does that make you? No need for name calling, it generally means you've not got an argument.

I'd just like to mention that it really, really suits the pro-fracking lobbyists to try and ridicule people and try to conjure mental images of the long-haired flower-child hugging trees and not showering and wearing tinfoil hats. It turns real, intelligent, professional people who care about what happens around them into caricatures, and it belittles their reasoned and sensible argument without even addressing it. It is a tactic as old as the hills.. i'm sure you're not a lobbyist, but i can't help think they're smiling knowing that the old seeds they scattered around took root somewhere..!

I used to think like this, but then I finished high school.

Seriously, anarchy is a lovely ideal. Everyone lives in peace and harmony and no-one is tramping anyone elses rights. When a job needs doing, we find someone willing to do it and compensate them (preferably with a barter system or something).

One minor problem though..

IT

DOESN'T

FUCKING

WORK.

We don't live in some kind of post-scarcity utopia. I wish we did, but that is simply not the reality of human society or history. Anarchists and libertarians seem to think that anyone who disagrees with them loves government and simply can't wait to pour their hard earned money in a military industrial complex.

I don't know anyone like that. I don't like my government, and I sure as hell don't like yours. I don't mind paying for hospitals and roads and welfare (and yeah, I don't even really give a fuck about "welfare queens" or "dole bludgers" or other mythical right wing beasties), but I fucking hate the idea that my money goes to fund the pointless "war on drugs" or on mass surveillance.

But I recognise that for all its ills, the system (for the most part) works. People today have a higher standard of living, live longer, and have more rights than at any other time in history. Some of that is down to science; some of it is because of private innovation and some of it is simply that we have changed the way our societies run through elections, etc.

What I do know is that when government becomes beholden to private interests (lobbyists in the USA) shit goes bad. But the solution to that is not to allow powerful people even more leeway to fuck over the weak.

Yeah, I wasted my time. At least you researched it on Google (the documentary obviously not). But you didnt read it.
If you really mean what you say, after a little bit of research, completely ignoring what I said, just locking your jaw on direct consequences and still saying they are completely against GMO, then so be it.
But you know, your kind is addressed in that documentary and by that 14 year old too. AKA black and white thinkers - who are most of the time simple lobbyists. And why you think I or her are completely against GMO is beyond me either. I am against idiots like you who think this is a straight forward topic and just proudly call others out on their alleged hypocrisy, while you dont even understand the points they make, since they fall out of your black and white thinking.
Right now you appear as someone who says that there is no sugar in this candy, while its packaging, its taste and even its producer makes it clear that there is sugar in it.
Yeah well... whatever you say, Mr. "scientist"...

You've just countered your own point. The "majority" of Americans (and indeed humans in general) are and have frequently wrong on just about every issue in history.

• A few hundred years ago, the majority were for slavery.


• 120 years ago, the majority believed that only white men should be able to vote.


• It's only in the last 5-10 years that the majority decided that homosexuals should have the same rights as heterosexuals (and it's only barely a majority now).

Meanwhile, as you said, the majority seem to be fine with the slow erosion of every other freedom enshrined in your constitution.

Frankly, the majority are idiots.

Each of the issues outlined above were opposed by the majority, but a few progressive intellectuals slowly changed things.

The same will happen for guns.

If it doesn't, it will be due to the triumph of lobbyists over citizenry.

Mostly this, although I also don't think ISPs should charge for download/upload volume or "bandwidth", since it really isn't a limited resource. They already charge you for a given max speed (which often isn't actually delivered). BUT that's another issue. About the whole "free market" angle, think about it like this:

Would a free market have so many industry powerholders embedded into the FCC or as lobbyists? I see lobbying as the antithesis of "free market". Lobbying is a corporation basically giving up on providing a product/service that people actually choose to use because it is legitimately the best choice for them, and just saying "meh, let's rig the game instead of actually trying".

Not to mention that in many places in the US there is NO competition for available ISPs in a given area. You've got option A or, well, no ... that's all there is. And even if you consider the US as a collective entity, the number of "competing" ISPs across the country is pretty small in terms of who actually owns the pipes, and getting smaller all the time with more mega-mergers etc.

The issue with telling the banks to just raise more capital, without changing the regulations....means they would just leverage that extra capital to increase their profits yet again.

It adds fuel and oxyegn to the fire, they have a feduciary responsibility to behave like this too, as they are publically listed entities.

The only way to fix this, is to regulate the leveraging ratios they can use. That FORCES them to both reduce the risky behavior, and increase their capital levels.

But good luck with that one, you think lobbyists are strong? Id like to see how much money lobbyists make trying to defend the banks from losing their profits.

Unless of course you re-enact glass steigel act, forcing the investment banking arms to separate away from the traditional banking arms....again, damaging bank corporation's overall profits (they lose the mum and pop capital in their vaults to use as investment leverage....less profit)

Wont...ever....happen. Ever.

pfft, the rich have welfare, they just call it tax breaks, and they have the lobbyists to keep them.

No one wants those on foodstamps to use them for alcohol and other frivolous items. name me one non-foodstamp-using person who does? It's a strawman that the right obsessively cling to.

As with so many things, it's not about laws or bureaucracy, it's about enforcement. laws mean nothing without enforcement. I'm getting sick of seeing more and more panhandlers downtown where I live and I completely agree that handouts are not an efficient solution.

but you know what isn't a good solution either? negative reinforcement. We've been living under the conservative idea that if we just keep punishing the poor and making their lives more miserable, then obviously that will be motivation to not be poor.

IT DOESN'T WORK. maybe it works for a small percentage of people, but those people aren't poor then. so you have a group of people that are continually being punished and devalued for no good fucking reason because if they aren't motivated to not be poor under these kinds of conditions, then they never will be.

so again, we have this situation where there are two solutions that aren't really effective, but one is slightly less bad than the other. sure some people may use their foodstamps for alcohol and other shit...but many people do actually use their foodstamps for...food. shock.

Even if you had a much more equal distribution of wealth, we're still going to have poor people and people in poverty.

I think the issue is largely mired in health, physical and mental. Even with all our technology...mental health is still unreliable and some people are so physically impaired that they can't work or work well.

Despite largely claiming to be pro-life, the right would either secretly want them to die alone in an alley or make them indentured servants to some corporation if they aren't already. That, I submit, is no life, at least not a good and healthy one.

I don't have the answer, all we can really do is point out that many of the things we've tried aren't working and will never work, and even if there are some successes, it's still largely inefficient, but what's the alternative? if you are "pro-life" then an inefficient solution is still preferable to a solution that simply doesn't work. So I call bullshit on people who like to claim they have the solution. If someone out there has the solution, they certainly haven't demonstrated it yet.

You say; "I don't think it's really religious people stifling stem cell research. I think it's more corporations like the pharmaceuticals."
Wrong. It is the religious lobbyists who blocked it - the same ones who, in some states, block the freedom of a woman to choose an abortion.If you seriously think that religion plays no part, try running for president as an atheist. No, science finds a way. It has now bypassed the need for stem cells, by using ordinary cells to the same end. Science for the win.
And btw, pharmaceutical companies exist to have the best product on the market and, therefore, make money to invest in future/better products. It's called capitalism, which you appear to be against.
Your argument is simply ill-informed, reactionary, and frivolous.

So what you are saying is that the lawmakers are bowing to NRA lobbyists and not passing laws that would disarm black youth.

I'd love to know what laws would disarm black youth.

Untrue Sage. Completely, entirely, untrue. We put term limits in Florida and guess what? We became FAR MORE corrupt. Why? Now it's a mad dash to impress lobbyists! So why should we put in term limits for more corruption?

We should disband fringe (terrorist) political parties. We should make it to where corporations cannot donate funds. We should do a lot--but not term limits. (Some of our best, sadly, were the old-school oldies who just didn't give a fuck about what others had to say.)