ComradeKayAdams

My short and honest reply: I’m not entirely sure yet! At the moment, my best guess is that the move to a fiat currency has had a relatively minimal impact on the specific problem we’re discussing (real wages versus costs of living over the past 40 years) compared to other factors I’ve mentioned, but that it could potentially have a very major future impact during this 2020’s decade. I included this factor in my group of 12 causes because we know that one of the Federal Reserve’s main jobs is to manage inflation and deflation (setting interest rates and preventing bank panics are relevant too). So I didn’t want to exclude the possibility that the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 (a critical event in U.S. economic history!) and the beginning of our defined problem soon after wasn’t entirely coincidental. Nevertheless, inflation seems to have been relatively free of volatility all these years, while the particular price-versus-time plots for housing and higher education expenses and health care differ greatly from the comparably more stable plots of most other goods and services. This is partly why I suspect other factors have had greater influences on our problem: mainly comorbid neoliberal policies suppressing suitable wage growth-versus-time plots, in addition to consumer demand behavioral changes and government interventions into these 3 specific cost-of-living markets. My thoughts on the gold standard are that moving away from it was an overall positive and necessary decision. A fiat currency gives our country so many more options for solving big problems, whether they be ending economic recessions or funding major wars or managing major natural disasters. I do MOSTLY believe in Modern Monetary Theory which supports “artificially” pouring money into the economy during the bad times, without getting so worked up over austerity measures and balanced budgets. Having said that, Ron Paul proponent types are also correct when they warn us that fiat currencies make us more susceptible to certain dangerous forms of government economic mismanagement. Fiat currencies do also tend to encourage reckless government spending. So we are right to be bothered by the fact that our national debt is about $26.3 trillion when our average annual federal tax revenue is about $3.3 trillion. Any policy of running deficits must have limits. I’m concerned that Modern Monetary Theorists haven’t defined what that approximate limit may be for the U.S. or what the economic signs would look like if we start to approach our debt limit. We are likely not anywhere close to something like a Weimar Republic hyperinflation danger zone, but I also need to hear from our political leaders some outline of a plan to pay off the debt during the good economic times, such as ideally the time immediately following the pandemic. By the way, I’m open to all sorts of ideas for proper oversight of our national banking system and of the management of our fiat currency, even outside-the-box ones like a fourth branch of government for the Federal Reserve with similar checks-and-balances appointments as the Supreme Court. I‘m less into Jefferson versus Hamilton “end the Fed” types of debates that challenge the worthiness of the very existence of our national banking system, but I’ll have ‘em if the people want ‘em! I think automation of many blue-collar jobs and some white-collar jobs is inevitable. But at what pace should we allow the process to proceed? And what are the displaced workers to do with their lives? My answer to the first question is “at a slow pace.” My answer to the second question is “dunno, but probably more careers relying on human creativity (tech innovation, creative arts, etc.) until AI advancements replace that too, at which point we will need to go to war with our robot overlords. In the meantime, major across-the-board changes in our nation’s education infrastructure would be wise.” I doubt globalization is anywhere close to being dead! The globalists are the ones currently pulling the strings on the Biden puppet’s carcass. On the Republican side, the globalist rats (McConnell, Bush, Romney types) are also biding (Bidening??!!) their time for the day Trump can be replaced, be it this November or November 2024. From a nationalist’s perspective, it might be wise to begin thinking about uniting the populist anti-establishment wings of each main party. The Trump people and the Bernie people, as soon as they can settle a few of their other policy differences… I like the comment about not providing free security for Europe and the rest of the world. That money badly needs to be redirected toward domestic matters.

Some questions to think about (but no need to actually answer them here): what estimated percentage of the looters and rioters were Bernie supporters? What percentage of the looters and rioters were politically motivated? What estimated percentage of the Bernie campaign’s army of volunteers participated in the looting and rioting? What percentage of the paid Bernie campaign staff participated in the looting and rioting? Most importantly, what actual data are these estimates based on? And what are the sources providing this data? I’m not at all implying that Antifa types weren’t involved. What I’m suggesting is that I don’t think the numbers were very large, nor do I think many of these idiots were ever active in the actual political process. I doubt very many rioters even put in the effort to vote for Bernie, nor do I think these people ever had the aptitude for rising through the political ranks and obtaining political power over the rest of us. We should be careful before attempting to paint a very large and complex political movement in one fell stroke. I doubt many here would appreciate it, for example, if I used that same broad brush and began similar painting of my own. A sample of my artwork: “I think I heard someone mention that they heard about a bunch of Proud Boys who volunteered for Trump’s campaign and posted on Stormfront about showing up to Charlottesville with tiki torches and MAGA hats. The Trump administration is a dangerous burgeoning white nationalism movement that will inevitably ethnically cleanse all blacks and cage all Mexicans from coast to coast if Trump secures a second term. A friendly reminder to vote Biden on November 3 and avoid genocide.” Please take a deep breath and relax, TakeYouToTasker. I almost won Right-Wing Fearmongering Bingo with this single post of yours! I had Trotskyite, gulag, re-education camp, communist, democratic socialist, Scandinavia, Soviet Union, and Chavez all on my card. All I needed was a combination of Marx and comrade, Lenin and Engels, or Stalin and KGB to win (I could have also won with just Menshevik or Khrushchev or Sputnik or Bolshevik, though that would have been unusual to see these mentioned in a post…). What are the policy prescriptions that make Bernie a communist? I know he calls himself a democratic socialist and has praised the Nordic model numerous times. But he also wants to abolish democracy along with socializing the production AND consumption of our entire economy?! If you can point to evidence from Bernie’s campaign website or from his 30-year Congressional voting record, that would help. If you cite particular speeches or writings of his, can you provide links or full quotes so we can examine the context for ourselves?

<< TLDR Summary: Trump’s pre-pandemic economy was overrated. Wage growth isn’t keeping pace with the increase in costs of living. I mostly blame years and years of neoliberalism, but that’s oversimplifying the problem. I’ll discuss proposed solutions at another time. >> Really nice post, Cinga! From my worldview, you’ve just asked the most important political question one can ask in contemporary American politics. Your question is specifically related to housing, but let me rephrase and broaden it slightly: “Why hasn’t wage growth kept pace with the costs of housing and education and health care, and how do we fix this problem?” I say this is so important because it relates to economic metrics for upwards social mobility, i.e. the American Dream. If this dream is more myth than reality, great social and political instability shall ensue… But before thinking about causes and solutions to this defined problem, we first need to acknowledge that there IS in fact a greater problem. Many will describe the pre-pandemic Trump economy as excellent (or at least good enough) and will point to traditional conventional economic numbers like GDP and unemployment to assert that case. My claim is that the Trump economy has actually been performing at unacceptably sub-optimal levels and that we’ve been looking at the wrong economic metrics (such as wage growth and costs of living that we’re discussing here), ignoring an entire socioeconomic class of people, and allowing for a certain acceptance of low socioeconomic standards to seep through the collective American consciousness. And just to reiterate, this isn’t intended to be a “Trump=bad economy, Obama/Biden=good economy” diatribe in disguise. I view the fundamental economic problems as having transcended the Rep-Dem political duopoly for decades now. From a generation-to-generation perspective, we are seeing an alarming decline in net wealth accumulation (that is, relative to chronological life stages and adjusted for population size and inflation) for Millenials. The Great Recession and the Coronavirus Recession (Depression?!) didn’t exactly help matters, but I don’t think these alone can explain the complete story. Generation Z is on deck now, so the economic landscape needs to change course soon or we may be looking at years of serious political and social uprisings ahead. Ok, so what has caused this problem? Let’s ignore boring technical supply and demand curves of housing, education, and health care and think about more relatable history lessons. So the 1970’s were a chaotic and very critical transition era for our economy. Look beyond the obvious energy crisis and think about the end of the Bretton Woods monetary system, the mass emergence of women in the workforce, and the beginning of major trade deals with China. This era also fueled the 1980’s Reagan Revolution policies that would follow but had been brewing during the preceding two decades (Ayn Rand popularity, 1964 Goldwater). The 1990’s NAFTA deal was an important development as well (Ross Perot campaigns!). Oh yeah and the 2008 Great Recession which was also kind of relevant to the housing market (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, subprime mortgages, Dodd-Frank, financial derivatives). So with history now on everyone’s mind, let me just list the 12 possible causes that I’ve identified and see what people wish to discuss later: 1. Major paradigm shifts and evolutions in American consumer spending habits. 2. Specific government policy interventions into the housing, education, and health care markets. 3-4. Reaganomics policies that Trump has prioritized fighting the libertarian corporate wing of the Republicans over: loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization, illegal immigration. 5-7. Reaganomics policies that Trump has not addressed, much to the chagrin of the progressive left: no social safety net, decline of labor unions, business/bank/Wall Street financial deregulatory practices. 8. A Reaganomics policy on which the Democrats recently have successfully shifted the Overton window leftward: insufficient/nonexistent minimum/living wage laws. 9. A Reaganomics policy that I believe could be related to the problem at hand in subtle ways and that everyone can actually agree with (in principle): minimizing government waste and government program inefficiencies. 10. A major issue that both political parties have contributed to and which strikes at the heart of laissez faire economics: corporate socialism and crony capitalism and government corruption and the general macroeconomic effects from absurd wealth concentration. 11. A super technical but super important underlying issue: Federal Reserve monetary policies, including the national debt and austerity policies. 12. A rapidly emerging concern that no one really knows what to do with: technological automation of manual labor jobs. As for how we go about solving the problem? Yikes I will definitely need more time and caffeine to answer that one. First, I’ll probably have to take us on brief side tours into the wonderful subjects of political philosophy and economic theory before I begin proposing practical solutions here that we can debate. Look for Chapter 1 of my Kay-munist Manifesto in the weeks ahead!

Oh by perks I mostly meant health care coverage while working in the US. Maybe certain benefits for housing and education, too. Just stuff to help them navigate their temporary lives in our country without major hardship.

JetsFan20, it looks like the fellas at PPP roughed you up a little bit yesterday, so I’ll try to be more gentle. Buuuuuuut…every sentence in this post of yours looks wrong to me: 1. Our moral standing in the world will NOT skyrocket with Biden. It repeatedly plummeted with every international military misadventure Biden openly supported. One prominent example among many: the 2015 European migrant crisis, on Joe’s VP watch, following the total destruction of Syria. 2. I doubt Joe will ever accede to the progressive wing during his waning few political years. Look at his extensive Congressional voting record and his list of campaign donors. Or for that matter, many of his relatively recent quotes: “nothing will fundamentally change,” “I will veto M4A if it passes through Congress,” “I have no empathy for the plight of younger people.” 3. Joe Biden is not a man of integrity. His entire career has been plagued with racism (1994 crime bill, working with segregationists), plagiarism (1988 campaign), inappropriateness with females (all the recorded touching, Tara Reade), and corruption (gosh where do I start? Ukraine Hunter scandal, for one). 4. Bernie, AOC, and Warren will be working with Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi for sure…but it will not be to improve the well-being of the people and their communities. Neoliberalism and crony capitalism don’t help a large majority of the “people.” All 6 are proud to work together as team blue, but in practice have transformed into political WATERMELONS…green on the outside, mostly red on the inside (note: I’ve been dying for a while now to slip this term in somewhere). I’m referring specifically to the career Congressional voting records for Biden and Schumer and Pelosi, Warren’s for the past several years, and Bernie’s and AOC’s especially within the past few months. The latter 3 have quite suddenly morphed into complete establishment Dem lapdogs once it became apparent Biden had the nomination. Look at all of their votes and efforts on the coronavirus bailout bills, for example. Notice the continued lack of pushback for greater transparency on the businesses that receive federal bailouts? Bernie also forgot to show up for his crucial Freedom Reauthorization Act vote, presumably because he was too busy talking up his “good friend” Joe to gullible prog voters. Have Bernie, AOC, and Warren adequately supported fellow progressive Dem candidates this November? Not really, no, and this is especially true if these are candidates who have been primarying establishment Dem incumbents. Here in NYC, AOC has apparently decided to endorse Jerry Freaking Nadler. My single litmus test for so-called Dem “progressives” is that you either enthusiastically support Shahid Buttar right now over Pelosi or you are a political fraud and stop talking to me ever again. 5. Hmmm, actually I think your last sentence is correct! We WILL be able to visit Europe soon again and hold our heads up high. Is the pandemic travel ban still a thing? P.S. I don’t recommend handing out any more $1000 bills to Joe. Why not take that money and donate instead to a local private charity of your choice? One that works directly with inner city minority communities? Neoliberalism is my happy word. I LOVE seeing it used on this message board forum. It means more people are waking up! I think you and I may be the only Bernie supporters on PPP who have ditched the Democrats. I call us the Briahna Joy Gray voters. I’ve seen a couple other Bernie supporters here too, but I think they’re sticking with the Dems for the Supreme Court selections. I call them the Jeff Weaver voters. Then you have a dozen or so PPP liberals who are either proud moderates or just hate the Orange Man and want him out at all costs. Most of them may in fact be one guy with multiple user names. And then finally you have the sea of conservatives, libertarians, Republicans, and general right wingers at PPP who dominate discussion but are ultimately all very decent people (I think). Most of them (I think) are older, white, financially secure males from the professional/managerial classes, so the eclectic Bernie movement is more likely to come off as a strange and unfamiliar and potentially threatening political phenomenon to them. Do handle them as you would a box of fine dining room china. I know what you were intending to say about older southern blacks. My observation from the Dem primaries was that the black vote actually mirrored the white vote in terms of the generational divide. Millenials of both skin colors preferred Bernie by a giant margin, while Boomers of both skin colors preferred Biden by a giant margin. This was true across all regions of the country and not just in the South. It turns out that the Bernie campaign had major structural flaws with both African American outreach and Boomer outreach. So the blame for the movement’s demise should be distributed in many directions. I’d start with cable news media who disproportionately brainwash older Americans. Your thoughts on prog left strategy moving forward? Mine is to completely break off from the Democrats immediately, continue organizing (peaceful) worker strikes and protests, vote Green in November to get above the 5% national threshold, build up the Greens (or any new third party) beyond November, quash the super PC SJW woke movement and prioritize neoliberalism/environment/military-industrial-complex issues from a populist anti-establishment perspective, fully destroy either one of the two big parties from the outside by 2024 (I prefer to take down the Dems but a post-Trump neocon Rep resurgence could be ripe for destruction as well), and begin restructuring American society into a European-style social democracy by 2028 as soon as Millenials/Gen Z up their voting reliability. Phew.

I’m referring directly to globalization, the weakening of labor unions, the dismal social safety net, the automation of jobs, and insufficient minimum wage laws. In a somewhat more subtle way, I’d add corporate socialism, certain business and bank deregulatory measures, a dangerous deregulatory culture specifically within Wall Street, and the general set of economic policies that jeopardize the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The latter two impact everyone, of course, and not just the working class. Meh, not really. I kind of expect everything to be politicized nowadays, even a pandemic. Sad but true that liberals would be biased toward any decision imaginable that would possibly hurt Trump, even if it’s an unnecessarily lengthened mandatory quarantine period that harms the entire economy (LA County being the most egregious to me). It’s also true, though, that liberals tend to live in urban areas where the dense populations make them more susceptible to infection, so it’s understandable why they’d be more fearful of Covid-19. Left-leaning people also tend to be more likely to trust authority figures in science and government, and they also tend to value human lives over dollar bills (hah!). I wonder if this political dichotomy would hold if the pandemic happened on Biden’s watch? I gotta admit, it’s been amusing to watch us leftists completely flip opinions on the coronavirus danger during the Floyd protests and now flip back again for Trump’s rallies. And we wonder why our opponents don’t take us seriously?! My opinion remains that all of our political leaders were embarrassingly unprepared for a pandemic, should have aggressively quarantined and paused the economy in early March, should have had the government FULLY support its citizens during that time, and then could have begun the reemergence process a short month later in staggered stages with all the proper sanitation implementations. I don’t know what exactly “cancel all rent” entails. I don’t know what English words or slogans mean anymore! All I know is that a government-mandated rent and mortgage deferment for a couple months or so would have made a lot of people’s lives a lot less stressful. I’m always happy to see people recognizing that real wage growth has stagnated for decades! But now look at line graphs of nominal wage growth from the Paul Volcker era through the first three years of Trump’s term, and then compare with the line graphs of costs of various important goods and services (try: housing, education, health care, transportation, utilities, food, clothes, insurance, etc.). See an interesting trend? Now do the same for the years between Truman and Ford. Turns out that neither Obama nor Trump look too impressive. By the way, I’m going by data compiled from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Inflation-adjusted wage growth has actually fallen in 48 of 50 states (Arizona and Louisiana are the lone exceptions) from Obama’s term to Trump’s term. You may have confused nominal wage numbers with real wage numbers. And yes, I believe the working class suffered under Obama as well. He was a below average president on the economy (on foreign policy and climate change too). Leftists praise him because he was charismatic and because he wasn’t George W. Bush. To me, Obama failed because he didn’t adequately address any of the fundamental economic issues I listed at the top of this post. I’m basing my fears of a rent and mortgage crisis on two sets of surveys. The first set describe how a frighteningly large majority of Americans (up to 80%?) were living paycheck to paycheck before March with savings only within the hundreds of dollars. The second set describe how a frighteningly significant percentage of Americans during this pandemic haven’t thought they could pay rent for the next month (off the top of my head, I remember reading that a third of American renters didn’t pay in April). Also, I believe you may be speaking way too generally when you say unemployment benefits are too generous. Unemployment benefits and costs of living vary wildly by state. If I’m (hopefully) wrong about this crisis, then either the surveys were faulty, or the unemployment benefits supported people long enough before they found new employment, or the government actually stepped in to help, or maybe people found enough gas money between couch cushions during their quarantine??

I wish I could bask in some of this economic optimism, but I’m not mentally there now. I get the desire to glom onto any positive news, and yes there is a powerful collective psychological component at play in economics that can singlehandedly fuel recoveries and that we want to nurture. But we always knew the economy would bounce back to SOME degree immediately following the quarantine, even if the details were poorly understood since an economic crisis like this has never played itself out before in our lifetimes. Ok so perhaps here is where l have major disagreements in opinion with many of y’all, but to me the basic fundamental predicament still remains in that our entire political class has quite insufficiently intervened in the economic side of the pandemic (and the health one too). Furthermore, the deep economic structural flaws that were oppressing the American working class before March have only been amplified from the effects of the quarantine. The worst very likely has yet to come and could possibly start as early as August with a renter/homeowner housing calamity. I’ll use a fun football analogy to frame the situation: the economic recovery is the Bills. The Patriots are neoliberalism. The refs are our crony capitalists and political leaders. Let’s maybe say Ernie Adams is the Federal Reserve. The Bills are losing to the Patriots 28-0 late in the first quarter. EJ Manuel (small business employers) just completed a totally sweet 20-yard post route across midfield to TJ Graham (low wage employees living paycheck to paycheck). We’re all celebrating and starting to believe the Bills can pull this off. Wait…stop. Lame football analogy. I’ll explain myself better in this thread (with facts and data!) when I have more time later this month.

I’m surprised and, quite frankly, a little disappointed that I haven’t seen any related internet memes yet that feature Will Ferrell’s character from Wedding Crashers. Ya know…the meatloaf guy! These CHAZ dorks are super embarrassing. It’s time to stop playing make-believe and start acting like adults with basic problem-solving skills. How many of the wonderful denizens of CHAZ bothered themselves to vote in the Democratic primaries? Oh right, that would only legitimize “the man.” Or something.

<< TLDR Summary: please reconsider the “defund the police” slogan. >> Good post, Mr. Persons. Correct, language is constantly evolving. I’m sure Noam Chomsky and Richard Dawkins were smiling as they read your post. Unfortunately, the evolution of language is also a major contributor to miscommunication between people of different classes, generations, races, geographical regions, and even political affiliations…as we’re now seeing in real time. Today I won’t push back on the merit of “defunding” the police, to use your intended meaning of the word. We agree on many of the institutional changes that need to happen within American police forces, though I’m not convinced that your process of getting there is the best one. Maybe I will soon? The argument that this drastic method is necessary to break those irrationally intransigent police unions is a compelling one, but I need to learn more. Any specific articles you recommend I read? Should I finally finish watching The Wire series?! What I want to discuss is the merit of the marketing strategy behind the slogan, “defund the police.” Defunding only references the first of many steps that likely need to be taken. It’s a severe use of the word which has definitely captured national attention and sparked discussion, but I’m concerned about the transition from the bull-in-the-china-shop attention-capturing phase to the persuasion phase. Right now the polling numbers show roughly two-thirds of Americans do not agree in any way with the “defund the police” movement. BLM is a bottom-up grassroots organization that can’t so easily control the messaging like a top-down organization can. We may be passing a point in time where the BLM movement is losing much of its power leverage, in much the same way that additional quarantine enforcements are no longer on the political table following the public Floyd protests and the upcoming Trump rallies. Anyone with a TV or internet connection by now should be aware of the police brutality crisis toward blacks. Those who are unsure, indifferent, or outright hostile to the solution-seeking stages are probably pulling further away as each day passes with more news of protests and outbreaks of riots but inadequate discussion of solutions. This country has had plenty of race protests and riots by now. How much positive change has actually resulted from each of them? Take the infamous LA Police Department, for example: 1943 Zoot Suit riots to 1965 Watts riots to 1992 Rodney King riots to where they still are today. Why did nothing fundamentally change? I’d like the BLM movement to consider changes to their use of language. Try alternate words like “reform” the police. Or try word qualifiers like “Camden” defund the police. Or try newly invented words like “floydund” the police or whatever to change the trajectory of the public discourse. I would also reconsider recent efforts to change the Webster’s Dictionary meaning of the word “racism” into one with a unidirectional power dynamic component to it. Maybe introduce a phrase like “racially insensitive” into the vernacular to replace the “racist” label that is used so often. This isn’t about capitulation. This is about the efficacy of an activist movement’s communication. A large majority of Americans are moderate-minded people inclined to favor institutions of law and order. The reality is that more of their support is needed to force Democratic Party political leaders of all levels (local, state, national), as well as black community leaders, to enact positive change in multiple areas (police relations, economic class politics, stable black family structures…yeah yeah I know, that last one is supposed to be a white nationalist talking point…). A very personal example of how the misuse of words can derail a movement: Bernie’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. As you know, “socialism” in America is a word hopelessly laden with all sorts of residual Cold War fearmongering that the more successful American progressive/populist movements of the early twentieth century didn’t have to worry about. Bernie’s campaign was a top-down organization that had no excuse for failing to control the language in a national discussion. I would have used “social democracy” and dropped “socialism” altogether. And to be more precise, social democracy should be differentiated with a qualifier like “permanent” or “finalized” social democracy since the original meaning of this phrase is supposed to represent a transitional stage on the way to replacing capitalism for good. I once recommended rebranding with newly invented singular words like “Bolshevista” to represent transitional social democracy and “Sandernista” to represent our permanent version. These did not catch on because I was a lowest-level campaign volunteer and because no one ever listens to me. But maybe when dealing with time-sensitive political movements, sometimes it’s just best to stick with more familiar word qualifiers to convey your message. Example: I often use country qualifiers to clarify nuanced political positions I have. Sometimes I’ll call myself a supporter of German-style socialism. Hmmm but I can see how that could be misconstrued, so I should stop doing that.

Let me tell y’all something about Paw Patrol. I KNOW Paw Patrol. I’ve watched multiple episodes while babysitting my nephew and niece. I have purchased very awesome Paw Patrol toys for their birthdays. Paw Patrol is about teamwork and service to the community. I also know Chase, the dog in question. He’s no Derek Chauvin. He’s one of the many good ones. He is a natural leader with a strong moral compass. I am a firm believer that vigorous free speech is good and PC cancel culture is bad. Anyone who is given the power to determine what is considered “healthy” speech and “unhealthy” speech for everyone else’s consumption should be met with deep suspicion. And from a left-wing political strategy perspective, I also believe the PC police/cancel culture/SJW’s/super woke crowd are distracting voters from the deeper and more subtle systemic issues that plague our country: crony capitalism, media corruption, neoliberalism, the military-industrial complex, climate change, etc. Taking the serious issues of systemic racism and police brutality to such laughably absurd extremes within the free speech domain only further alienates moderates, Boomers, and the white working class from left-wing politics. I don’t know when (or if?!) the pendulum of public consensus will swing back on these PC cultural issues. All I know is that it’s time we stand up right now in defense of Paw Patrol. I think Nickelodeon’s headquarters are here in Manhattan. Anyone else with me?! Someone may also need to order a pallet of bricks. Updates to come. “Chase is on the case,” indeed. Chase has ALWAYS been on the case. And Chase WILL continue to be on the case if Kay has her say. I, too, stand with Paw Patrol. Do you? #IStandWithPawPatrol

This is such an important point you’ve made, billsfan1959 (and thank you for doing so while being respectful to Margarita). I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of modern American political discourse and why it’s apparently collapsing all around us. I could list many reasons, but two that I’ll mention have to do specifically with how we use language. We all seem to be talking over and around each other because of our propensity for making sweeping and hasty generalizations, as well as for the reason you mentioned: using words with arbitrary definitions and loose interpretations. In order to avoid confusion, we should all develop habits of specifying beforehand the meaning of a word we’re using if it differs from Webster’s dictionary, if it’s a commonly misused one, if it has multiple definitions, or if the definition has recently changed within the culture. “Defund,” “racism,” “fascism,” and even “abolish” are the most recent culprits. For me, my pet peeve has always been “socialism.”

Depends on what time of the day it is. Sundowning effects from dementia tend to begin in the late afternoon (hence the name “sundowning”). All the latest polls assembled at RealClearPolitics show Biden with a strong lead over Trump. He is doing better than Trump in virtually every vital swing state and noticeably better than what Hillary was doing in early June 2016. Having said that, I suppose everyone is free to question the accuracy of the polls or worthiness of polls taken 5 months away from an election. The most recent CNN poll, however, indicates a potentially different narrative if you read between the lines. Trump remains more trusted on the economy than Biden, which is obviously quite huge because this issue alone will probably determine the fall election (barring a second dramatic coronavirus surge or a world war). Even bigger, Trump is maintaining that tremendous supporter enthusiasm gap he has long held over Biden. In terms of the overall election outlook, none of these summer polls are nearly as relevant as the summer economic data that will be pouring in. The biggest concern should be the looming rent and mortgage crisis. We should also be tracking new unemployment claims, expirations of unemployment benefits, credit card and student loan defaults, entrepreneurship and new small business formation stats, big business employee payroll retentions, and things like that (DJIA and GDP too if you insist). But while the election should come down to the economy, economic health is not at all an objective truth with objective causes and objective prospects (proof: Dems and Reps can never seem to agree on it). The winner of the November election will ultimately be the one who best frames the October economic situation in his favor. Right now I think I’m leaning toward the high-energy master salesman guy who is always tweeting, holding rallies, working the media, and spinning information to his avail. If my sobering canvassing experiences have taught me anything, it is that electoral campaigns are first and foremost about emotional psychology and human connections, with rational policy analyses and facts and data much further behind in importance. I sort of get the logic with the Biden campaign’s strategy of concealing Joe from the public. Minimize Bidenesque gaffes. Streamline campaign machine efforts and save expenses for fall advertising. Bank on Trump self-immolating. Coast on vague feelings of voter nostalgia for a more “normal” time (2009-2016, a time which wasn’t all that great for a majority of Americans anyway...). But Hillary ran a similar playbook in 2016. Feels too much like running a prevent defense in football, no? Ya can’t hide from the people forever and then expect them to be super motivated to come out and vote for you. Hmmm…the data sample seems too small for my tastes, and Biden’s numbers are too close to Hillary’s to necessitate sounding alarms. Hispanic demographic data should also be separated by geographic region to get more meaningful trends. Hispanics overall loved Bernie as of a few months ago. They will still come out to vote for Biden if he puts in a genuine effort to visit their communities, speak to them, listen to them, and not challenge them to fights or pushups. Texas becoming a swing state in 2020 could force a 2024 political realignment in the post-Trump world. Who knows how the power vacuum would be filled…maybe a left-right populism alliance versus a left-right establishment alliance?

TLDR Summary: I expect the progressive left voters from the Democratic primaries to stick with Biden at about 85%, which would be a little lower than Hillary’s approximate 90% in 2016. Tracking the African American turnout, the Trump voter defections, and the roughly 40% of apolitical independent voters in the general election will likely be far more relevant and interesting to our election analyses moving forward. Ok so now I’m going to delve a little deeper into the loyalty landscape of the particular demographic I’m most familiar with: the progressive left wing. At this point in time, I think Biden has already secured as much of this voting bloc as he can from the Democratic presidential primaries. I know the Warren suburban liberal female base is firmly in his camp. Same with the supporters of Beto, Castro, and de Blasio if you want to call these fellas progressive. Basically, any progressive who is big on social justice issues or is a believer in Russiagate has already aligned with Biden. Last I checked, the Yang Gang populist faction have mostly dissolved and will be either voting third party or staying home. The Tulsi anti-establishment crowd already defected from the Democratic Party way back in mid-March and are equally dispersed in every direction so as not to be a factor in the election. Marianne Williamson’s people have all gone Green. The much much bigger Bernie crowd appears to be falling in line with Biden at a 4-to-1 ratio right now, based on personal anecdotes and internal Bernie campaign canvassing polls and social media surveys. The emerging consensus among the “4” people is that Trump is an existential threat to the country, the Democratic Party can be reformed from within, and that incremental progress is the most realistic option. The “1” people do not believe Biden is necessarily the lesser of two evils from a long-term point of view, are done with selling out to centrists, believe the DNC is structurally incapable of reform, and feel that the Democratic Party must be burned to the ground from the outside by either voting third party or staying home. This 4-to-1 Bernie schism also seems to be reflected in the civil war within the top rungs of Bernie’s staff: the Jeff Weaver DC political careerist types happy to compromise with the establishment, versus the grassroots-based types who demand public policy purity. I figure this approximate 4-to-1 Bernie base ratio will hold into November, which means that I expect Biden to hold a very substantial portion of the overall progressive base (around 85%?) and maybe only a little worse than what Hillary rallied in 2016 (about 5% worse?). So I don’t think progressive loyalty to the Dems will be nearly as relevant to November 3 as the black turnout, the possible cadre of post-pandemic/post-protest Trump deserters, or the ever-mysterious voter pool of 40+% politically disengaged/disgusted Americans. The primaries showed me that the progressive left is likely a much smaller subset of Dems than I had initially hoped. I had also hoped that my fellow lefties would have distanced themselves from the rioting aspect of the otherwise beautiful Floyd protests. Nope! Instead at a nearly unanimous percentage, they are doubling down with calls for poorly articulated police defunding/abolition plans, downplaying property destruction, conspiracy theorizing the non-existence of Antifa, and outright lying about some of the basic realities of the crime data compiled by the DOJ. These attitudes are going to DESTROY much of the political progress I thought us Bernie folk were making with moderates, Boomers, and the country at large for the past five years. So when you situate the progressive left’s relatively small size and their unruly behavior in conjunction with their ease in bending the knee to Biden, then I believe it’s fair to say that my team conceded all relevance and power leverage in the November election (anyone who mentions the words “unity task force” in my vicinity shall receive a very intimidating scowl from me). In other words, the progressive left is in complete shambles and has been effectively subsumed as the DNC originally intended. Way to go, guys.

I am now instituting a “too long didn’t read” (TLDR) feature at the top of my super lengthy posts. You’ll love it! I don’t quite understand your people-centered proposal. We both agree that one should first get their own affairs in order before hypocritically judging other’s affairs. I bet we also share way more in common than you think concerning authoritarian governments stepping over individual liberty. But I’m asking from a very practical perspective here: how effective can a lone individual’s actions really be on solving systemic problems at the level of large and complex societies? You might be impressed to know that I always score very highly on those sustainability quizzes and questionnaires! My biggest weakness is my water usage in the kitchen and bathroom. I could also make do with a lot fewer clothes. Sure, happy to do so. My detailed step-by-step rationale for the statement you’re challenging: 1. I defined the Republican Party by Trump’s policies and the Democratic Party by Biden’s historical policies. 2. I divided all public policy issues into 3 categories of domestic economic rights, foreign policy, and social/personal rights. 3. For each issue, I gave each political party’s stance a numerical grade on a scale ranging from most libertarian to most authoritarian. Note that this was all done intuitively in my head. I never actually sat down and methodically wrote assigned number values for every issue. That would be insane. 4. I mapped these grades to a 1-dimensional line of left versus right, with the left section being defined as economically authoritarian, non-interventionist on foreign policy, and libertarian on social/personal freedom issues. I defined the right section as having the polar opposite position for these 3 categories: economically libertarian, interventionist on foreign policy, and authoritarian on social/personal freedoms. Again, note that this was all done intuitively in my head. I did not actually draw a line on graph paper with dozens and dozens of blue and red dots. Eek! 5. I then subtracted all the personal freedom/SJW issues in my analysis. I did so partly to match up with the OP’s characterization of the two parties, since I feel the Democrats HAVE successfully shifted the Overton window left for both parties on the culture war issues, following the height of the Moral Majority/Christian Coalition and the Just Say No drug wars of the 80’s. I also eliminated this entire set of personal freedom issues because I don’t feel that a left-wing position on social issues these days so easily equates to the “less government intrusion into personal freedoms” definition on this left-right line (chief example: PC policing of free speech). 6. I then averaged all the grades out for each party, with certain issues weighted more than others depending on perceived importance, and then I mentally placed a final mark on my left-right line for both parties. Notice the high level of subjectivity here and the obvious potential for discrepancy between final grades from different graders. Your political party grades for each individual policy issue will likely be different than mine, and this is especially true for the weights given to these issues. Example: I probably place a much higher value on left-wing positions for health care, education, the environment, progressive taxation policies, and foreign non-interventionism than most other PPP members. This will skew my final assessment of the two parties to the right of the left-right line compared to others here. 7. Ok, so having acknowledged the inherent subjectivity in our grading scale on the left-right political spectrum, it’s best to normalize the two dots for context. Using the exact same grading standard from earlier, I re-centered the left-right line for all of the many different major political parties of the Western world (US, Canada, all of the EU countries, Australia, New Zealand, also Japan and South Korea and Singapore because why not). When you do this, you’ll find that the Democrats are right of center and the Republicans are far right compared to everyone else mentioned. This international context was the argument I made in my original post and isn’t at all controversial if you talk to citizens from these other countries I listed. This assessment actually still holds when you put the various social policy issues back into the equation, since the cultural grip of Judeo-Christian religious morality is comparably weaker in much of the rest of the more secularized West. If you were to include all of the countries of the world, however, then yes our Republican and Democratic parties would both shift leftward on the line and back around the center. If you’re referring to UBI, it’s often considered a peripheral GND component and is not included in a majority of GND proposals. I’m personally not in favor of any permanent form of UBI, though more on the grounds of economic inflationary technicalities instead of this idea that it will make all these people not want to work. For the vast majority of humans, work gives one’s life meaning and nobility (in addition to the increased opportunity and financial security). This is what I don’t think Andrew Yang fully appreciates, even though I’m grateful for him having brought the idea to the political fore. Dunno. I interpreted the Enlightenment moral lens comment to mean he approaches public policy issues from a classical liberal point of view. That is, he believes what a modern-day American political libertarian would believe on negative rights, positive rights, property, labor, the individual, the collective, and the social contract. But I’ll let TakeYouToTasker take us both to task(er) on what he meant.

The Green New Deal proposal is driven completely by the progressive left wing of the Democratic Party. The moderate establishment wing of the party only mentions it in rhetoric so to rally the base and make everyone feel good and feel like they’re actually on the path to doing something that is nebulously positive. The moderate establishment wing is far more powerful and sets the agenda for the entire party. Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer have ZERO plans to make a Green New Deal ever happen. None at all.

Did AOC say we need another party?! If so, great. She can start by cutting ties with the Democratic Party immediately and running as an independent. She has always been excellent at making impassioned speeches, but some of her behavior and her voting record this year belies her progressive credentials. I won’t go so far as to call her a sell-out like Bernie and Warren, but…I have my reservations…because she has been getting way too cozy with “Mama Bear” Pelosi recently. Some might say she’s a practical girl building her political career from within the Democratic Party establishment, so that she can later reform it down the line and use them as a vehicle to eventually become president. Cynics would say that she only cares about upgrading those bartender tips into a stable six-figure political salary. RealKayAdams will say, “don’t know about her motives, don’t care about her strategies, just deliver some mother bleeping RESULTS for the people.” JetsFan20, I do agree with you that the Dems are center-right and the Reps are far-right. Or rather, the Dems are center right if you focus on the Dem establishment’s domestic economic agenda and foreign policy record, while ignoring the social justice warrior red meat they promulgate for the base. Most of continental Europe and the West at large would agree with this characterization of American politics. But if you truly align yourself in accordance with many of AOC’s comments, then I would seriously consider making like Frank Gore this year and ditching the Red and Blue for Gang Green. Vote Green Party on November 3.

This doesn’t sound right to me. What about Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996? Or George Wallace in 1968? And if you go by percentages of total votes instead of overall third-party voting numbers, then this narrative quickly falters. Also, voting for third parties isn’t throwing your vote away. Third parties have historically played a critical role in forcing major changes with the policy platforms and internal composition of the two major American parties, even if they have rarely supplanted them. And finally, are you looking at any polling evidence that suggests people are less likely to vote third party than in 2016? Anything that I’ve seen so far implies the opposite: people in 2020 have only grown more disenchanted with the two-party duopoly. I should mention that there is still a small chance that Jesse Ventura will run as the Green Party candidate. This would be an absolute game changer to the Trump-Biden paradigm if it happens. Think 1992 Ross Perot, but less predictable because Jesse could potentially draw as many Never Trumpers and libertarians as he could progressive lefties. Most likely, however, Howie Hawkins will be the guy and will beat out Dario Hunter. Hawkins has been sharply criticized for a bunch of things like his involvement with internal Green Party corruption, his dubious campaign staff choices, and his neo-McCarthyism Russiagating. But I don’t really know if any of this will affect the Green nomination outcome and, in turn, the general November election in any pronounced way. I won’t challenge the rest of your post. You could easily be right or wrong, depending on so many variables that have yet to play out. Just look at how radically different the political landscape is now compared to a couple months ago! Trump’s pandemic response has definitely strained his older voting base, especially female Boomers and Silenters. Trump’s heavy-handed riot/protest response has also placed undue pressure on his libertarian base. From Biden’s perspective, the black vote turnout is way too chaotic to predict right now. You have to consider a host of factors like Biden’s Charlamagne tha God interview, all of his other ridiculous race-related comments, his old alliances with segregationists, his criminal law voting record, the BLM current events, his Obama friendship, and his VP choice (I’ve long suspected Kamala Harris). I also wouldn’t rely on the Millenials and Zoomers to come out for Biden. It’s a small mystery as to where Latinos will go or if they bother to come out to vote at all this time. I assume the white working class will go heavy for Trump, but I’ve also seen polling data indicating trends running in the other direction. Later I think I’ll talk more about the party loyalty status of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. I like your thread’s potential! Now that Biden clinched the primary, it should supersede some of the other threads and become the marquee November 2020 presidential election thread. I hope it doesn’t get lost among the dozen or so ones discussing the same bleeping topic of police protests…

Oops! Thanks for the advice, SoCal Deek. I was responding to 4 different people in that last post, but yes I should be more mindful of the audience whenever I sacrifice brevity for content overload. I partly blame my high caffeine sensitivity and my early morning coffee. It fires me up for PPP like a Kyle Williams locker room speech for Bills games. Instead of summarizing my last post in a few sentences, can I try summarizing the entirety of my global warming posts? That way everyone who is not interested in going back and reading my global warming novella can get on the same page. It could be a good reset and a launch point for future discussion. It’s gonna get INTENSE, so buckle up and just please let me know if y’all think I need to pare it down further… My summary of the science behind man-made global warming (MMGW): 1. It has become very difficult in 2020 to find a credible scientist or scientific paper that can debunk the fundamental scientific reasoning, the data quality, or the fidelity of the mainstream feedback control system climate models that support the MMGW consensus. 2. A good starting point for climate change skeptics would be to explain the relatively sudden atmospheric increase of carbon dioxide from 280 ppm to 415 ppm between 1750 and 2019 (with similar spikes seen in methane and nitrous oxide), using only non-anthropogenic mechanisms, when the 280 ppm number remained approximately steady for many thousands of years before. 3. The best remaining place for climate change skeptics to challenge the MMGW consensus may be the complicated heat and gas transfer dynamics at the interface between the ocean and the atmosphere. My summary of what is going wrong with our search for MMGW solutions: 1. The climate/environment portions of the Green New Deal (GND), in its present form under the banner of either the Democratic Party or even the Green Party, is woefully lacking in details for renewable energy choices, carbon market legislation, transition processes from fossil fuels, and practically everything else. 2. Corrupt Democratic Party leaders, the corrupt/incompetent mainstream media, and hypocritical/oblivious environmental lefties deserve as much of the blame for the state of the nation’s MMGW discourse as do fossil fuel corporate lobbyists, Trump, the Republican Party, and the right-wing voting base. 3. The American economic market is very much structurally biased in favor of fossil fuels and against renewable energy, with regards to subsidies and foreign policy and civil infrastructure currently in place. My own general outline of what a MMGW solution set would look like: 1. Make solar and nuclear the foundational basis of the future US energy infrastructure, with wind/hydro/geothermal added where appropriate, and with certain limited types of biofuels incorporated as necessary. 2. Implement some federal subsidies for private renewable energy industries and substantially increase spending on fundamental scientific research at American universities/government labs that is focused on renewable energy tech, civil engineering, agricultural engineering, replacements for internal combustion engines, replacements for jet engines, planetary terraforming, and carbon sequestration tech. 3. Enact a transition process for displaced workers in an old energy economy that would be centered around similar ideas which have been proposed for workers replaced by automation, such as job retraining programs and sunset UBI’s. 4. Public works projects to facilitate widespread upgrading of the US civil infrastructure, with an emphasis on public transportation and on the reduction of urban/suburban sprawl (I know I know…controversial after the pandemic and the riots, but whatevs…). 5. Reforestation up to at least 90% of the total forest land coverage that existed in the US prior to 1620, as well as essentially 100% preservation of current remaining old growth forests. 6. Carbon market legislation…so the economics are way too nuanced to summarize in a sentence, but I will describe my opinion later this summer, based on what’s working and not working in Europe and elsewhere. 7. Related environmental conservation of air, water, ecosystem flora, and ecosystem fauna by generally more strict regulations, greater EPA oversight, and public works waste cleanup programs. 8. Promote vegan diets that reduce the environmental stress from cattle and their pastoral land requirements, as well as promote the minimization of food waste practices in restaurants, grocery stores, and homes. 9. Educate people to reconsider their capitalist consumption habits, to buy less of stuff they don’t need, to challenge the mantra of “keeping up with the Joneses,” and to increase various sustainability efforts like recycling. 10. Encourage people to not have children if they’re not fully committed to being parents, discourage the “barren spinster” stigma for women, encourage adoption options, promote birth control education, and increase birth control access. And for my beloved TLDR audience: 1. Man-made global warming doesn’t look to be a hoax. 2. All of our politicians suck balls. 3. I have an eco-socialist wish list that is the stuff of hippy dreams (or of authoritarian nightmares, depending on the point of view). 4. Moving forward, we can discuss the MMGW science, GND politics, GND pecuniary matters, wherever y’all wanna go…

Lots of info here. I’ll unpack my responses in the order that the info was presented: 1. Yes, the Sun obviously has the largest influence on Earth’s climate, but it’s also extremely easy for climatologists to model. By “easy,” I am referring strictly to a focus on the energy that leaves the Sun and reaches the Earth, while ignoring the plasma physics details of all the solar atmospheric commotion. 2. There’s actually plenty of evidence in the scientific literature indicating that the Earth’s magnetic field and its fluctuations have a negligible impact on climate. The Earth’s magnetosphere will steer solar winds, but it has no practical impact on solar energy transfer, which consists of light photons that inherently have no electric charge to respond to these magnetic fields. 3. Carbon dioxide is most definitely a greenhouse gas in the same physical way that water, ozone, methane, and nitrous oxide behave after absorbing sunlight energy. Sources or explanation contradicting this?? 4. Agree 100% with the problem of hypocritical environmentalists unwilling to alter their own behavior for a greater good and/or unaware of the full effects their behavior has on the environment. 5. A transition to renewable energies doesn’t necessarily lead to increased taxes. The big devil is in the vast budgetary and legislative details as well as in the allotted timeframes for fixing problems. Plus you have to factor in all of the long-term financial damages from global warming that would burden taxpayers: increased destruction from wildfires and hurricanes, urban coastline civil infrastructure damage, massive agricultural industry alterations, etc. 6. I’d definitely like to see more public discussion on industrial chemical poisoning. It’s best done by case studies. These discussions rarely happen for the reasons you probably already figure: potential subtraction of jobs, inconveniences to people’s way of life, and intentional information suppression from chemical industries. 7. Unfortunately we can’t photosynthesis our way out of the global warming crisis. There’s not enough land on Earth that can support forest growth for all the trees we’d need, and this viable land percentage is constantly shrinking with desertification and climate change effects in progress and competition with our constantly increasing international agricultural needs (biggest culprit by far: cattle pastures for the meat and dairy industries). Additionally, old forests have soil that is better for carbon sequestration than newly planted ones. Yes, absolutely. The carbon neutrality math that I’ve seen works out well if you include second/third generation nuclear reactors. This is the foundational model of France’s national energy policy which I have spoken highly of here. For America’s unique energy needs, at this very moment I’m supportive of solar and nuclear as the bulk of our twenty-first century energy infrastructure, with a mix of other renewables sprinkled in when sensible (wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, certain types of biofuels). It’s a shame that most fellow environmental lefties are against anything related to nuclear energy. They bring up major safety disasters (Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island) or storage concerns (Hanford, Kyshtym, Yucca Mountain) to me without the proper perspective that all known nuclear-related disasters came from entirely obsolete technology and ridiculous safety standards. Sort of akin to refusing to fly on a standard commercial jet plane in 2020 because a few WWI airplanes experienced mechanical failure and crashed. On an international scale, no other modern energy technology scores better on safety and reliability metrics over its entire life cycle than nuclear (this is actually thanks to the heavy government regulations it now faces as a historical legacy of the few aforementioned disasters). For many of the next-generation reactor designs in development, the issues of nuclear waste storage and safety look even better than the current designs being used. To clarify the narrative: it is that we’re not doing enough in magnitude and speed to address climate change that is commensurate with its severity, when considering even the most conservative estimates of the progression of man-made global warming. If you were to do a survey of all the private sector workers in the sustainability industry (renewable energy engineers, scientists, civil engineers, agricultural engineers), you’d probably find that a large majority of them are politically left-leaning. Solutions will mostly come from the private sector, but I believe (as do all now but the most ardent economic libertarians??) that the private market will need significant assistance from the government. Looking throughout the entire history of capitalism going back to the late Middle Ages, the free market has repeatedly demonstrated itself to be insufficient on its own for solving problems similar to MMGW, where negative impacts are dispersed throughout the entire collection of market participants over ranges of time close to a human lifespan or longer. Sorry Azalin, I wasn’t intending to be so flippant or dismissive with my response. But the way I see it, anything related to science that calls for direct public funding or government intervention of the economy will, to some extent, ALWAYS become politicized. Example: even the most esoteric science of fundamental particle physics was politicized during the 1993 Texas particle accelerator project proposal, which was ultimately cancelled. So in my head, I always assume some degree of this inevitable politicization and then work to come up with practical solutions within this constraint. Current example: maybe appeal to Trump’s ego of wanting to beat China economically and be the best at everything when trying to promote the merits of US renewable energy technology?? If we were to remove all politics and notions of the economy with the MMGW topic and go purely by the science, then I think calls for drastic immediate change would be pretty strong (and just as a starting point for the remaining doubtful, MMGW deniers would first need to explain the rise of carbon dioxide in parts-per-million from 280 in 1750 to 415 last year by non-anthropogenic mechanisms, given that the number remained basically steady at 280 for the thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution). For the purposes of this thread’s discussion when thinking about the Green New Deal, I’ll focus on the stuff related to climate change and the environment and ignore all the rest (better for another thread…maybe The Trump Economy one). On one hand, I can fully understand not supporting the GND in its current form when it is somehow still devoid of any agreed-upon details on the changes to be implemented or on the transition process for the fossil fuel industries being replaced. It’s pathetic how little the GND was even discussed during the Democratic Party primary debates, though maybe the Dems would have had more of an incentive to do so if Trump hadn’t removed the topic from the American political table of discussion altogether and if the Republicans didn’t choose to be the only major political party in the world to call MMGW a hoax…but I digress. What I really aim to do here is to challenge how “free” our free market economy actually is when you consider three areas: 1. annual collective fossil fuel subsidies. 2. a post-WW2 foreign policy centered on maintaining cheap oil supplies in the Middle East and now also in Venezuela. 3. an energy-inefficient US transportation system, built with steady supplies of cheap oil in mind, which has been firmly in place since WW2 (especially since the 1956 Highway Act). So we should at least acknowledge that the economic game is already rigged to some extent in favor of fossil fuels and against renewables. But even if we are okay with that and prefer maintaining the economic status quo for whatever reasons, we also have to acknowledge that change may be imminent and may be urgently forced upon us. The pandemic has created a shaky economy that threatens the US petrodollar system we’ve been running since the 1970’s. And if the economic recovery continues as sluggishly as I fear, I can’t think of a more perfect time to upgrade our long-rotted civil infrastructure system and call for FDR-style GND public works projects for the throngs of unemployed. Ouch my fingers hurt from all this typing. Good topics I think I’ll leave for another day: 1. carbon taxes, carbon credits, carbon offset, cap-and-trade emissions program. 2. advances this century in solar technology, including what Michael Moore may have gotten wrong in his “Planet of the Humans” film. Y’all have a good weekend!

I’ve been reading many pages of this thread with a deep sense of sadness over what’s happening to our country. A lot of good points are being made, but I wanted to add another perspective here that hasn’t been mentioned: the leadership void within the progressive left wing of the Democratic Party. Specifically Bernie Sanders, who is still the de facto leader of the movement. The youth and various left-leaning movements like antifa and possibly BLM are predominantly instigating the rioting, the looting, and the violence. In this way, Bernie may have a larger influence on controlling the direction of the unrest than any other politician right now, including Trump and Biden. What I would like Sanders to do is to publicly praise all of the PEACEFUL protesting in honor of George Floyd while simultaneously condemning parts of the left for their destructive behavior. Additionally, I’d like Bernie to call for new national legislation in the following 5 areas: police conduct reform, mandatory oversight of law enforcement institutions from neutral third parties, increased mental health services for police officers, an end to the war on drugs (or at least marijuana) that disproportionately hampers blacks, and broad changes to the pipeline that connects our interventionist foreign policy and the increasing militarization of our domestic police force. An aside on antifa: I ran into a few of these folks during my 2016+2020 Bernie campaign volunteering efforts (and also during some of my animal rights activism activities). Or at least I think I did, judging by their clothes, tattoos, and conversations. They were not very helpful, to put it mildly, when it came to canvassing. They didn’t come across as interested in the political process very much. Violence and delegitimizing American institutions are known to be their primary focus. There is no uniform political philosophy that they subscribe to, beyond anything that is “anti-fascist.” Most are either communists, hard socialists, anarchists, or short-term social democrats with long-term goals of pushing the country beyond capitalism. I suppose that would be a unifying political philosophy of theirs if they actually have one: anti-capitalism. They are politically to the extreme left and much further left than Bernie’s platform of mainstream European-style social democracy. I don’t personally know much at all about their organizational structure, though I do hear rumors from sources close to the scene that they are well-connected at the local level and have contact with other local cells around the country. It is not a top-down organization, but I would not be surprised at all to later learn they were being funded by higher-up Soros types and that they had been nationally coordinating for these riots all along. So here is my message for my left-leaning friends on this message board: it’s well past time for some deep self-reflection and impositions of quality control on our political side. Are we advancing public policy? Are we helping to defeat Donald Trump by persuading independents and energizing the base? Are we changing the hearts and minds of those that fuel American institutional racism? “No,” “no,” and “no” would be my answers at this very moment. How can we change course? Well for starters, let’s start acting rationally again. Emphatically call out the looting and the rioting. Castigate antifa. Stop suspecting Russia for everything. Stop fixating on the random annoying minutiae of Trump’s speeches or behavior and start focusing on the deeper issues that plague the country. I’d also stop apologizing for Biden’s shortcomings and demand he step up to the plate as a leader during these recent crises (or step aside at the convention). That’s all I have to say on this subject for now. I think I need a small break from news and politics. I originally figured this type of violence and senseless destruction could erupt around the Democratic convention if Bernie lost or following the November election if Trump won. But with the pandemic quarantine restlessness, deep economic anxieties from the pandemic fallout and from failed neoliberal policies, the rising pre-summer heat, and of course George Floyd’s murder…here we are. It may likely get much worse, too, before things eventually get much better. Please stay safe, everyone.

Yeah that’s how I look at it too. Targeted, short-term, government emergency stimulus measures shouldn’t be conflated with long-term Keynesian economic policies. We are in an acute economic situation where our government has forced its citizens to not work for a period of time. Therefore, the government should have an obligation to financially support its citizens for the period of time they are not allowed to work. When I say short-term government stimulus measures, I’m referring to stimulus checks/sunset UBI’s, pandemic universal health care, student loan deferments, rent/mortgage deferments, and alterations to unemployment benefits. Stuff like that. It’s a shame that our country creates so much pushback for basic emergency government relief that so many other civilized countries assume as givens. Take Germany for example. Their government successfully froze their economy during the lockdown and kept their citizens on business payrolls, rather than allow everyone to get laid off like what has happened here in the US. Granted, Germany is still facing an almost inevitable recession like the rest of Europe, but to me they look to be much more equipped to handle it than the US. By the way, Germany is handling the health crisis aspect to the COVID-19 pandemic equally well with their universal health care system for all 85 million citizens…thought I’d throw that out there and provoke the board a little this afternoon… You’ve noted in this thread a couple reasons for possible optimism in a v-shaped economic recovery: increased activity in the housing market and recent stock market surges. I don’t see the housing sales data as anything more than a reflection of the lingering pre-pandemic economy, if we are to glean anything from it at all. The people purchasing homes are probably merely carrying out their life plans before this mess began, and these are probably the people whose jobs weren’t negatively impacted from the pandemic. There are way too many variables that have yet to play out in the housing market. A third of Americans didn’t pay rent or mortgage in May. Similarly, stock market Pollyannas need to remember that it is only a quantitative prediction of future economic activity and only reflects the current collective psychology among investors. At some eventual point in time, these companies with publicly traded stocks will inevitably require a sufficient demand pool for their goods and services. With something reported like 75-80% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic, this demand pool is looking terrible at the moment. A non-trivial portion of the American economy depends on the purchase of non-essential goods and services, but the people subsisting on unemployment benefits or reduced income are much less likely to consider buying stuff they want until they can first pay for all the things they need. So we’re 2.5 months into the pandemic response, with hardly anyone fully reopened, most places opening gradually, and with our two most economically important cities (NYC and LA) still closed. The longer this carries on, the worse our prospects will be for a v-shaped recovery WITHOUT significant federal government stimulus. Sorry for being such a wet blanket! Hopefully someone will poke holes in my negativity??? If Zubaz pants become popular again, then all of this will have been totally worth it.

Don’t worry, I’ll try to avoid mentioning anything related to fluid mechanics and thermodynamics in the future. l just want to briefly emphasize one more time the importance of the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean. It can’t be overstated. The ocean is obviously big (covering 70% or so of Earth’s surface area), deep, complex, and can store very large amounts of heat and greenhouse gases with potentially very delayed large-scale transfer rates. So if scientists end up learning that the observed global warming wasn’t man-made all this time, then far and away the most probable explanation (in my opinion) will be because there was something major and potentially fundamental that they got wrong with their understanding of this specific component of Earth’s climate system. Similarly, if global warming somehow ends up stabilizing or reversing course in spite of the continued pace we’re on with our fossil fuel use, then by far the most probable cause (in my opinion) will be because scientists missed something very critical with the atmosphere-ocean feedback control system. This all seems unlikely to me, however, given how much scientists now know about the ocean and all the accumulated oceanic evidence and how accurate their predictions have been matching the data so far. But I wanted to float this idea out there for the skeptics interested in looking for places where climatologists messed up. Ok, this concludes my ocean talk! I agree that it would be unfair and inaccurate to label you a MMGW denier. There is absolutely a difference between a skeptic and a denier. I’m equally frustrated over the politicization of this subject, but it is what it is, yeah? I guess the best we can do is maintain an awareness of all the bad faith actors and cognitive biases on both sides of the debate and be willing to call everyone out on both sides when necessary, especially our own. I’ll start calling them out here because I’m filled with sass and that’s how I roll. First and foremost, the fossil fuel industries manage to play the game effectively by purchasing politicians on both sides and promoting media disinformation campaigns. I’d also say some right-wing voters have turned what was once a healthy classical American skepticism of experts, authority figures, government power, and government program inefficiencies into a counterproductive Alex Jones-style pathology. On the left, we have our hordes of hypocritical voters who throw the word “green” around to virtue signal about saving Mother Earth and who make fun of those Alex Jones-style conservatives online, meanwhile doing absolutely nothing in their own private lives to improve global sustainability. Then there was Michael Moore’s most recent film that launched a wonderful salvo at the possible bad faith actors operating on the left, the ones who are shilling for select renewable energy industries or co-opting the green movement for purely self-promotional reasons. Last but not least, we get to my favorite political enemy: the entire Democratic party establishment, which effectively operates as one giant bad faith actor working for a variety of neoliberalism-inclined corporatists dependent on maintaining the energy status quo. It’s why I think so little has been achieved for the American green movement this century, while our European counterparts have moved light-years ahead of us in green politics. Even when facing a looming economic depression and an important election, these so-called Dem party “leaders” can’t even cobble together something like a Green New Deal-esque basic public works plan to energize the voting base and score easy political points. Oh I should also mention a major political fissure emerging on the left: mainstream leftists inclined to be content enough with the given panoply of renewable energy alternatives versus the eco-socialists (my wonderful people) who prefer exploring all the hard questions first like technical difficulties with achieving carbon neutrality on solar/wind alone, the nature of human consumption, overpopulation, land rights and resource claims, public transportation and urban/suburban sprawl, blah blah blah. That’s certainly one way of looking at it. I’m starting to respect more and more the politicians who can somehow find ways to actually achieve deliverables for their constituencies, especially deliverables with strong moral imperatives. My only counterpoint is to be mindful of all the prospective political blowback and be confident enough in the quality of your ideas. Forceful political action to finally clean up the Zone Rouge, for example, would probably work out okay. But forceful action for something as seemingly innocuous as a slight increase in fuel taxes could lead to a large, sweeping Yellow Vest movement and an abrupt end to many French political careers. I love France’s national energy policy, by the way. It’s my favorite one in the world right now.

All of this plus the upgrade of Gore to Moss. During the last half of last season, this offense would have looked so much better if you had added just an extra 1-2 yards on many of Gore's runs.

1960's: Daryle Lamonica (Raiders) 1970's: Ahmad Rashad (Vikings) 1980's: Art Still (Chiefs) 1990's: Chris Spielman (Lions) 2000's: Jason Peters (Eagles) 2010's: Stephon Gilmore (Patriots) candidates for 2020's: Cole Beasley (Cowboys), Mario Addison (Panthers), Josh Norman (Panthers) honorable mention: James Lofton (Packers) dishonorable mention: Ronnie Harmon (Chargers)

I’d feel more comfortable verifying my response with a friend of mine who happens to be a professional oceanographer. But until I hear back from her, my best attempt at an answer is that the climate data going back to about 1900 is acceptably accurate, partly because old analog measuring equipment for climate metrics (temperature, precipitation, atmospheric pressure, humidity, maybe also wind) can still be used today without losing practically anything in accuracy. Also, the data HAD to meet high accuracy thresholds in order to make early twentieth century technology (particularly airplanes) possible and agricultural businesses able to run effectively. Now whether or not they still use this climate data for making calculations? I want to say yes because I remember reading popular science articles in the past that referenced changes from early twentieth century climates. For a given location on earth, I believe they take temperature and rainfall averages for about a generation’s length (25 years or so) to determine the climate. Then they increment these averages forward in time and plot the trend. The “normal” climate can then either be defined as the original average (i.e. the least anthropogenically perturbed) or arbitrarily chosen at a later date in time, depending on what is considered acceptable for civilization in terms of its civil and agricultural infrastructure. I haven’t said much about ocean data, which is super important to climate because the oceans are a major heat sink and greenhouse gas sink for the atmosphere. I want to say that the temperature and pressure data was equally accurate back then as it was for the atmosphere, but probably WAY less complete because we hadn’t explored nearly as much of it back then as we have since World War 2. Because submarine technology depends on good temperature and pressure data, the range of our ocean data in the early twentieth century possibly varied in direct proportion to the depths and geographic locations which these designs evolved to handle. This was a really good question you raised. Global warming skepticism is healthy and should be encouraged, given the huge economic stakes. My only concern is when people hold strong opinions but aren’t intellectually curious enough to seek the knowledge that better informs these opinions (I’m not including you or most anyone reading this thread). It’s also crucial to establish in one’s own mind a standard of new facts or evidence or scientific insight that would cause one to completely reverse their old opinion. This goes for everybody on both sides of the debate. I myself have a pretty good idea of what I need to see to join the side of global warming deniers. Hopefully I’m there in about 5 years…