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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
 Posted - 11/06/2008 : 07:51:42 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by moakley
Originally posted by Robb
No. He just never said that once during the election.
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Might well have been intentional. Judging by your reaction now how do you suppose the republican campaign could have used such an admission to their advantage within the last month?
This was a smart and well run campaign.
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Agreed. |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 08:12:21 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Robb
How did the government transfer my money to the wealthy? |
By subsidizing the oil companies, for one. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 08:25:41 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Actually, taxes need not rise. |
Do you mean for everybody or just the rich?
| Spending needs to be cut and controlled. Our military budget is so bloated its pathetic. We should have twice the military we have for what we are paying. We can trim the fat, keep our technological edge, and maintain the best (and largest) military in the world for a good deal less than the current price. |
Amen!
| There are a crapload of other federal agencies and departments that can be made more efficient as well. |
or done away with.
| Then once we get some regulation and sound management restored to our financial and banking sector, implement a major manhattan style project for renewable energy, insist that the auto industry give us 100mpg cars, we can start our economy growing again. |
100 mpg cars are great but who wants them? They would look alot different than what we are used to and cost alot more initially. I suspect the car companies are reluctant to mass produce a car like this becasue I feel Americans really do not want them if it does not drive like a traditional car or SUV. I also would think that safety may be an issue as well. If the government does mandate the car companies to provide 100 mpg cars at some point they must ensure that it is done in a way that the car companies can still make money at it.
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Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 08:29:11 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Robb
How did the government transfer my money to the wealthy?
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All sorts of ways.
One is by making sure that wages are depressed by international treaties like NAFTA. Another is fed policy keeping unemployment high, depressing wages. Another is by laws such as Taft-Hartley which restrict union activity. Keeping the poor from voting by practices such as imprisoning large numbers of them, and then enacting laws that don't allow felons to vote is another way.
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I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 08:34:11 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by Robb
How did the government transfer my money to the wealthy? |
By subsidizing the oil companies, for one.
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Some of the tax breaks are good such as the ones that give incentive to drill with more environmantally friendly techniques. But you are right most of these subsidies are not needed anymore. |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 08:35:58 [Permalink]
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On another front:
Here's a bit of a rundown to the events leading up to and during the prop 8 campaign.
Also:
Three Lawsuits Filed Challenging Proposition 8
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 5, 2008
Legal Groups File Lawsuit Challenging Proposition 8, Should It Pass
Legal Papers Claim Initiative Procedure Cannot Be Used To Undermine the Constitution's Core Commitment To Equality For Everyone
SAN FRANCISCO – The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court today urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes. The petition charges that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution's core commitment to equality for everyone by eliminating a fundamental right from just one group – lesbian and gay Californians. Proposition 8 also improperly attempts to prevent the courts from exercising their essential constitutional role of protecting the equal protection rights of minorities. According to the California Constitution, such radical changes to the organizing principles of state government cannot be made by simple majority vote through the initiative process, but instead must, at a minimum, go through the state legislature first.
The California Constitution itself sets out two ways to alter the document that sets the most basic rules about how state government works. Through the initiative process, voters can make relatively small changes to the constitution. But any measure that would change the underlying principles of the constitution must first be approved by the legislature before being submitted to the voters. That didn't happen with Proposition 8, and that's why it's invalid. |
Snip
In a statement issued earlier today, the groups stated their conviction, which is shared by the California Attorney General, that the state will continue to honor the marriages of the 18,000 lesbian and gay couples who have already married in California. A copy of the statement as well as the writ petition filed today is available a www.aclu.org/lgbt, www.lambdalegal.org, and www.nclrights.org.
In addition to the ACLU, Lambda Legal and NCLR, the legal team bringing the writ also includes the Law Office of David C. Codell; Munger Tolles & Olson, LLP; and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP. |
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 08:40:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Gorgo
and then enacting laws that don't allow felons to vote is another way.
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I am on board with you Gorgo on this one. I feel felons should have the right to vote since they have a stake in the outcome of elections. They are still Americans. |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 09:27:34 [Permalink]
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Robb said:
100 mpg cars are great but who wants them? They would look alot different than what we are used to and cost alot more initially. I suspect the car companies are reluctant to mass produce a car like this becasue I feel Americans really do not want them if it does not drive like a traditional car or SUV. I also would think that safety may be an issue as well. If the government does mandate the car companies to provide 100 mpg cars at some point they must ensure that it is done in a way that the car companies can still make money at it.
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Tesla Motors, for an example, has a car that does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. Fully electric. 244 mile range on a single charge.
If you combine the Tesla Motors technology with the GM Volt you'd have a good start towards high performance vehicles that use a minimum amount of gasoline.
A federal subsidy for car companies who make this type of vehicle, and another one for the companies who will make the batteries.
That is just ONE way.
Ethanol could, if cellulosic technologies are more fully developed, provide a huge supply of feul. Enough to completely eliminate the use of fossil feuls (which is why, obviously, that technology is not yet in place).
Then we have to consider feul cells. This tech has the potential to give us inexpensive, high performance vehicles as well. A method of hydrogen production and distribution remains a significant block though. Odd how these technologies that threaten to displace oil are so slow to develope.... almost as if some special interest has slowed or blocked federal legislation/policy that favors them.
All that and more, combined with a major push for renewable energy production (solar, wind, nucular nuclear, etc..) is what we need.
Hopefully Obama, if he does nothing else at all, will get us moving down that path.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 10:00:46 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Tesla Motors, for an example, has a car that does 0-60 in 3.9 seconds. Fully electric. 244 mile range on a single charge.
If you combine the Tesla Motors technology with the GM Volt you'd have a good start towards high performance vehicles that use a minimum amount of gasoline.
A federal subsidy for car companies who make this type of vehicle, and another one for the companies who will make the batteries. |
Do these cars really have a good effect on the environment? These cars need to be charged up and doesn't that shift the polutants to the power plants? Also, can our electric generating capacity handle millions of these cars added to the demand without building more power plants?
| Ethanol could, if cellulosic technologies are more fully developed, provide a huge supply of feul. Enough to completely eliminate the use of fossil feuls (which is why, obviously, that technology is not yet in place). |
I don't know. Ethanol has less energy content than gasoline and would impact the worlds food supply and take up much more land to grow crops for it.
| Then we have to consider feul cells. This tech has the potential to give us inexpensive, high performance vehicles as well. A method of hydrogen production and distribution remains a significant block though. Odd how these technologies that threaten to displace oil are so slow to develope.... almost as if some special interest has slowed or blocked federal legislation/policy that favors them. |
I think this is the way to go. I saw a guy on TV about 5 years ago that had developed a solid fuel for a fuel cell that could be bought at Wal-Mart at a reasonable price if it is mass produced. He got over 300 miles on it. He may have been a quack though, but it seems reasonable to me that this type of fuel can be developed. The question is how to get hydrogen to the car.
All that and more, combined with a major push for renewable energy production (solar, wind, nucular nuclear, etc..) is what we need. |
I think that nuclear power is the answer for at least the next 30 years or so until we can get renewable energy in large quantities.
| Hopefully Obama, if he does nothing else at all, will get us moving down that path. |
I agree.
[/quote] |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5310 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 10:23:13 [Permalink]
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| All these things are probably fine, but what we need is more time, attention and money put into public transportation. |
I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's alright-
Jerry Garcia
Robert Hunter
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 10:46:28 [Permalink]
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| Do these cars really have a good effect on the environment? These cars need to be charged up and doesn't that shift the polutants to the power plants? Also, can our electric generating capacity handle millions of these cars added to the demand without building more power plants? |
The American's power-plant system also should be changed anyway to remove its dependency on fossil fuels.
Europe and Japan has moved to nuclear power plants 30 years ago, for example and, even if many environmentalists hate it, it still is better than what the US now have.
And renewable energies are coming too.
| Ethanol could, if cellulosic technologies are more fully developed, provide a huge supply of feul. Enough to completely eliminate the use of fossil feuls (which is why, obviously, that technology is not yet in place). |
I don't know. Ethanol has less energy content than gasoline and would impact the worlds food supply and take up much more land to grow crops for it.[/quote]
The world is already producing more food than it needs. Sure, some region are going through shortage, but, in reality, the problem is to bring food to them not to produce the food.
But, yeah, I am not particularly a fan of ethanol fuel, as producing the ethanol generally release more carbon than just using fossil fuel.
Once again, research is being done in this direction, however, and farms of micro-organisms could do the trick.
Also; the average American car has a mpg which is about 2 as bad as European/Asian produced ones.
In the recent months the sales of SUV and other guzzlers have been going down. Hopefully this trend will continue and even American companies will adopt better engine (buying the existing technology or acquiring it through a partnership, many firm already are linked to foreign car makers). |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 12:01:39 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
I don't know. Ethanol has less energy content than gasoline and would impact the worlds food supply and take up much more land to grow crops for it. |
Cellulosic ethanol can come from weeds (switchgrass is popular) or crop by-products, unlike corn ethanol. Make it from fast-growing plants and it could possibly make a net carbon sink. Put such farms on the sides of mountains and other non-farming land.
And Robb, switching the pollution to the power plants allows for centralized pollution controls, instead of having millions of mobile sources of pollution which all need to be controlled. And if I lived a few miles south of where I do, my power would be nuclear. People in L.A. and Vegas get hydropower, so near-zero pollution there with all-electric cars.
We should also outlaw fireplaces. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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astropin
SFN Regular
USA
970 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 12:17:50 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by chaloobi
Well, they impeached Clinton for lying about diddling behind his wife's back. But Bush starts a war on false pretenses, openly sets aside laws he doesn't like, spies on American citizens, kidnaps and tortures people, politicizes the department of justice, and who knows what else, and he's still there. Go figure. They have good reason to try and impeach Obama - based on what I've seen it should work.
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Well to be fair (from the same link filthy posted)
"Obama still has some way to go, however, to equal the number of "Impeach George Bush" groups on Facebook, which lists at least 95 such groups with varying membership." |
I would rather face a cold reality than delude myself with comforting fantasies.
You are free to believe what you want to believe and I am free to ridicule you for it.
Atheism:
The result of an unbiased and rational search for the truth.
Infinitus est numerus stultorum |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 13:29:51 [Permalink]
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It's been a trip, hasn't it? Obama went from being some black guy suspected of being some kind of a Muslim, with about the same chance of becoming president as that of the shade of the Shah -- none. Well, looky here now! To my endless amusement, the Bush cabal is going to have a legacy of self-inflicted disgrace (would that it were incarceration), Congress is going to get a long-overdue, self-inflicted shake-up, and the right-wing, media smegheads are writhing in self-inflicted agony on their path to irrelevance; may that continue even beyond the foreseeable future. Y'see, everybody over-looked one important thing: Obama's a no-shit, no quit scrapper.
So, ok, we're over our election night hangovers, we've waved flags and cheered ourselves hoarse, and it is now time to give some consideration to what we want our new president to do and how we're going to get him to do it. Digby, at Hullabaloo has some thoughts on the matter:
"Making Him Do It
by digby
I was reading through the comment section of a few posts this morning (something I rarely can bring myself to do anymore) and I realized that I need to remind people of something that's very important for successful governance:
FDR was, of course, a consummate political leader. In one situation, a group came to him urging specific actions in support of a cause in which they deeply believed. He replied: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."
He understood that a President does not rule by fiat and unilateral commands to a nation. He must build the political support that makes his decisions acceptable to our countrymen. He read the public opinion polls not to define who he was but to determine where the country was – and then to strategize how he could move the country to the objectives he thought had to be carried out.
If Obama wants to govern as liberally as the political circumstances allow, then we need to work to make sure that the political circumstances include a strong liberal base. Mindlessly cheerleading out of a misplaced sense of loyalty will not help him. As Roosevelt understood, politics are interlocking interests and constituencies that have to be brought to bear to achieve certain goals.
In the current political world, I believe that Obama and the Democrats need a strong left wing that is out there agitating in order that we can continue to build popular support and also give them a political excuse to do things that the political establishment finds too liberal. Being cheerleaders all the time, however enjoyable that is, is not going to help them. Leaving them out there with no left wing cripples them.
One of the problems for Democrats has been that there has not been an effective progressive voice pushing the edge of the envelope. Therefore, when they inevitably "go to the middle" as politicians often feel they must do, the middle become further and further right. It is my belief that one of the roles of the progressive movement is to keep pulling the politicians back to the left, which often means that we are not being publicly "supportive," in order that we really do end up in the middle instead of farther to the right than the country actually is."
The whole thing is a good read.
So, what about it, lefties? Are we going to sit around with our thumbs up our ass' and blithely let someone else do it? As we've been doing for the last century eight years of Bush scumbaggery? We done good in this election, but it ain't over yet. We've still got work to do, a lot of it, and it will be most pleasant work indeed because we'll be getting some long overdue paybacks in the bargain.
Now that he's in, lets make him do it!
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Robb
SFN Regular
USA
1223 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2008 : 13:37:30 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by Simon
I don't know. Ethanol has less energy content than gasoline and would impact the worlds food supply and take up much more land to grow crops for it. |
Cellulosic ethanol can come from weeds (switchgrass is popular) or crop by-products, unlike corn ethanol. Make it from fast-growing plants and it could possibly make a net carbon sink. Put such farms on the sides of mountains and other non-farming land. |
Sounds good!
| And Robb, switching the pollution to the power plants allows for centralized pollution controls, instead of having millions of mobile sources of pollution which all need to be controlled. And if I lived a few miles south of where I do, my power would be nuclear. People in L.A. and Vegas get hydropower, so near-zero pollution there with all-electric cars. |
Yes but hydroelectric, nuclear and renewable power is only 20% of all power generation in the US. 80% is from coal, natural gas, oil and other gases. I agree that localizing the polution in one plant may be better but most of the polution is still just transferred. I think nuclear is the only viable option for the near future.
We should also outlaw fireplaces.
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How about camp fires or cigarettes? |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. - George Washington |
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The Official SFN US Elections Thread
