ComradeKayAdams

I’m not familiar with Florida Keys topography, but I absolutely do believe in the accuracy of global sea level data from the past 150 years. We have multiple ways of verification, including landmass deformations and tide gauges and, most recently, satellites. The different methods applied at different locations all point to the same conclusion with relatively minor numerical deviation. You at least appear to be more confident in the data since about 2005, all of which indicate global sea levels having risen between 50-65 millimeters (1.9-2.6 inches) over the past 15 or so years. Oceanographers, civil engineers, the U.S. Navy, and people who live and work along coasts don’t disagree with those numbers. Many lives and careers depend on such data being accurate and uncorrupted. Your second-to-last sentence is very telling and is unfortunately where I sensed this discussion was headed. Healthy climate change skepticism in this country has devolved into a logically unfalsifiable conspiracy theory. Instead of constantly demeaning climatologists from afar, please try conversing with some so that you may have your scientific concerns properly addressed.

Kay’s little birds* were fluttering in the five boroughs over the weekend! They’re all telling me the same thing: the progressive consolidation around Maya Wiley is happening at light speed…conventional social democrats (think: AOC supporters), DSA-style socialist types (think: Julia Salazar’s crew), progressive-light Democrats (think: Cynthia Nixon types), Democratic Party-distrusting social democrat purists (think: someone like a Zephyr Teachout or a ComradeKayAdams), and even some confused neoliberals (think: Kirsten Gillibrand fans). Remember that tomorrow is the first time NYC is using ranked-choice voting! We get to choose our top 5 from the 13 possible candidates. No one can win with a plurality. At each round of elimination, the top votes for the least popular candidate disperse to their next-highest choices as that least popular candidate’s name is removed. This process continues until one of the candidates achieves an absolute majority. It’s entirely possible that someone’s vote won’t count in subsequent rounds if all five of their choices get eliminated, so there is a bit of strategy involved with ranked-choice voting! For example, if you REALLY despise anyone who uses the surname of Adams (how could you?!?!), then you might want to reserve your 4th and/or 5th ranked choices for someone you think will be much more likely to last until the end, such as a Garcia or a Yang. Ranked-choice voting probably ends up hurting Wiley’s chances because now a centrist vote won’t dissipate among Adams, Yang, and Garcia. A lot depends on where Wiley may be positioned in the top-5 rankings of Yang Gang bangers and Garcia fans. I don’t know much about Garcia’s #1 supporters, but some of them may have Wiley ranked higher than Yang or Adams because of the opportunity to elect the first female NYC mayor. I have a few Yang Gang birdies* whose insights seem to suggest that the 2nd-5th ranked votes of Yang’s supporters will be all over the place and, therefore, likely won’t play a deciding role in any final round(s). The extremely crucial Latino vote is up in the air, too, but my little birdies* in Brooklyn seem confident that they will follow AOC and Julia Salazar toward Maya Wiley. I am much less confident in their confidence, but we shall see… Q & A with Comrade Kay: 1-Q. PPP Community: “Hi, Kay. So who do you think will win tomorrow?” 1-A. Me: “I’ll answer that in probabilities: 55% chance for Eric Adams, 25% chance for Maya Wiley, 10% for Kathryn Garcia, 9% for Andrew Yang, and 1% for any of the others.” 2-Q. PPP Community: “Who are your personal top 5 for tomorrow, Kay?” 2-A. Me: “I’m going with what I think should be a fairly standard left-wing solidarity approach: Wiley, Stringer, Morales, Yang, and Garcia in that order.” 3-Q. PPP Community: “Didn’t you renounce the Democratic Party last March, Kay?! What are you doing participating in this primary?” 3-A. Me: “I’m technically still registered as a Democrat and will continue participating in Democratic Party activities if I feel it could help advance the overall progressive movement in some way. However, I harbor no delusions that elected Democrats will uphold loyalties to policy promises over party. Also, this policy loyalty issue does tend to be less of a problem at the local level compared to the national one. I normally vote for Green Party candidates whenever possible and am transitioning to Nick Brana’s People’s Party.” 4-Q. PPP Community: “What might Mademoiselle Adamski be wearing tomorrow to commemorate her first ever participation in a ranked-choice U.S. election??” 4-A. Me: “Excellent question! A green blazer dress, NAE Bella d’Orsay heels, and of course my Buffalo Sabres hat. The green symbolizes my political eco-consciousness, the heels my vegan activism, and the hat my pride for my Upstate NY homeland.” 5-Q. PPP Community: “Smug far-left idiots like you are why NYC is falling apart.” 5-A. Me: “That was a declarative statement, not a question. And go ^&^% yourself, you stupid #@^&%ing #$(!~&^hole. Suck my #%&#& you #$^%face right-wing poop%#(@~.” * - a lovely Game of Thrones reference!

WTF?!?! 1. Hurricanes overall HAVE become more numerous and stronger since 2006, according to NOAA, The Earth Institute at Columbia, NASA, and pretty much every credible climate scientist on this planet. I never argued otherwise. You cherry-picked your data and I explicitly told you how you did so to reach an incorrect logical conclusion. 2. Al Gore did NOT predict “much less snow” for the planet, if that is your intimation. He made a single sloppy literary reference for a single mountain peak. You fixate on this one technicality that he got wrong, but then you fail to address the broader intended point of shrinking alpine glaciers around the world. Why is that?? Hmmm… You also very conveniently choose to not address EVERYTHING ELSE that Al Gore covered in his documentary. Why is that?? You claimed that he basically got everything wrong, but then you don’t back that assertion up with ANY data references. BACK UP YOUR CLAIMS WITH PEER-REVIEWED RESEARCH PAPERS. Oh, and then you concluded your post with a classic “weather = climate” fallacy. Impressive.

Hi, Capco! Good to see you here again! Small clarification: critical race theory shouldn’t be lumped in with theories like evolution and general relativity. The latter are essentially natural science “facts” that always pass tests of scientific inquiry within very broad domains. CRT is more of a narration that doesn’t go through the same rigorous analyses as do other ideas from the social sciences. Personally, I’m not a fan of formally teaching CRT for the reason above and also because it ends up being way too divisive, and thus counterproductive, in practice. It should be enough to simply remind children in civics class that the American law and order system is often not applied equally among different races (especially regarding the drug war!), and that we should all aspire to make it so when we become adults…beginning with NOT electing a guy who helped write the 1994 Crime Law… From a political strategy point of view, topics like CRT distract us from the necessary war we need to wage against neoliberalism and American imperialism. The corporate oligarchic establishment loves culture war issues like these because they help prevent the working class on both political sides (whites on the right, minorities on the left) from unifying. A politically united working class, after all, threatens their power structures. Jeff Bezos loves seeing my fellow comrades argue over our proper use of gender pronouns as he continues evading tax payments, purchasing the Fourth Estate, and forcing his Amazon warehouse peons to subsist on food stamps.

Ok, I haven’t seen the documentary since middle school and I don’t feel like watching it again lol... So instead, I ran a word search of “snow” and “hurricane” on a full PDF transcript of “An Inconvenient Truth.” The only snow-related prediction Al Gore made was that “within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro.” I assume this was intended to be a cutesy reference to the Ernest Hemingway story? It’s actually the glaciers we care most about, and they are most definitely shrinking near Kilimanjaro’s summit. How much these specific changes are connected to global warming is very debatable, but the general shrinking of glaciers around the world is indisputable and fully in accordance with global warming predictions. Al Gore never made any official predictions of hurricanes in his documentary, aside from general allusions to them getting stronger and more frequent over time. But this is also indisputable, according to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). You referenced the specific drought of no Category 3+ hurricanes striking the U.S. between 2005 (Wilma) and 2017 (Harvey), but that is a bit misleading because it ignores data like major hurricanes that struck other locations during that time, the severity of hurricane seasons since Harvey, and total number of hurricanes…not to mention financial damage and death tolls. This is somewhat analogous to the “weather versus climate” debate when it comes to data selectivity. But in all honesty, hurricane monitoring is a much less certain metric for global warming compared to the other ones, due to the nature of ocean currents. I have no idea where you’re going with the data fabrication accusations. If this is a reference to the November 2009 Climategate controversy, it was debunked years ago. Climate science is no different with their data transparency than any of the other natural science subfields. It is practically impossible for science to maintain a grand operation of willful systemic data fabrication. The profession has way too many built-in mechanisms of checks and balances, especially on the international arena. I still believe the U.S. can do its part in meeting the 2050 Paris Agreement goals without adversely affecting our economy. Doing so, however, will require more vigorous investments in nuclear energy and reforestation than we’re currently seeing from Biden. Advancements with carbon capture technology are simply moving way too slowly, as are positive changes within major greenhouse gas-polluting industries like agriculture and aviation. In my opinion, our ideal composite energy solution should be centered around nuclear and solar, as well as electric vehicles. Bear in mind that I did not whimsically reach this conclusion! All energy resources have benefits and drawbacks, of course, but prioritizing these three would be the most optimal from the perspective of energy production versus risks of environmental degradation. A note on electric vehicles: lithium-ion batteries are already more “green” than conventional fossil fuels, in overall terms of usage plus resource extraction. We can render them more friendly to the environment by working with several South American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile) and making sure suitable government regulations are imposed on brine deposit mining. I also like the progress that scientists and engineers are making on viable battery material alternatives to lithium, which is why I’m so sanguine about electrical cars.

There are multiple irreversible tipping points in the evolution of global warming. The article is highlighting one of the earliest that could be expected to go. Passing through one tipping point does not mean we shouldn’t try to avoid the others. As damaging as the loss of summer Arctic ice coverage would be, something like permafrost thawing in the Northern Hemisphere would be much more devastating to future generations. Because we’re dealing with feedback control systems that proceed nonlinearly and that could trigger cascading positive feedback loops, I don’t have a problem with the alarmist tones in the article. What specific climate change metrics (surface temps, ice sheet sizes, glacier sizes, snow cover, sea level rise, ocean temps, ocean acidification levels, various extreme weather events, etc.) did Al Gore get wrong? Can you state his erroneous claims verbatim from the documentary and then provide the numbers from peer-reviewed research papers that contradict his claims? I’ll spot you the Mount Kilimanjaro glacier example, though Gore could have used plenty of other glaciers to make his point. It has honestly been a very long time since I saw the film, so I should probably watch it again over July 4 weekend to judge how well it has aged. But when critiquing the documentary’s veracity, we need to be mindful of distinctions between worst-case scenarios and expected ones. We also need to be cognizant of the fact that only 15 years have passed. Hey, at least Al Gore covered the thermohaline circulation science better than “The Day After Tomorrow” lol… Which data sets are you determining to be incomplete? How are they incomplete? What should climate scientists do to assemble more complete data? A few quick responses: 1. All known major non-anthropogenic climate change factors have been isolated and ruled out with rigorous data processing techniques. Atmospheric carbon rose ~31ppm from 1988 (the year of James Hansen’s Senate testimony) to 2006 (the release of Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”) and then an additional ~37ppm up to now. Simultaneously, mean Earth surface temperature rose ~0.33 degrees Celsius from 1988 to 2006 and then an additional ~0.39 degrees Celsius up to now. If anyone has a better explanation for this correlation, please cite the research paper you are referencing or tell us your novel hypothesis! 2. Water, methane, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and nitrous oxide are the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere besides carbon dioxide. The methane also oxidizes into carbon dioxide over time, a lesser-known scientific fact that proponents of the fracking industry like to omit! The other ~99% of stuff in the atmosphere (mostly nitrogen and oxygen) does not contribute at all to global warming. 3. Most climate scientists and many green energy engineers are active members of and financial contributors to all sorts of environmental conservation organizations.

Since this thread concerns my city and many of my comrades, I shall provide some commentary: Yes, Andrew Yang looks to be finished. He positioned himself in somewhat of an ideological no-man’s land, which is a dangerous place to be if one lacks the rare personal charisma that can draw a plurality of voters from two disparate political sides. Yang’s comments on Israel and on the minimum wage certainly did not help him curry favor with the left. Maya Wiley is now the top progressive choice and is making a late surge, thanks to the recent endorsements from AOC and Jamaal Bowman. There are still plenty of undecided voters in NYC that she can win over, including a large pool of undecided lefties who were previously flirting with Scott Stringer and Diane Morales. But I don’t think the NYC progressive political infrastructure was organized all season, and so I don’t think they’ll be ready to meet this moment which is arriving fast. Eric Adams (no relation) is also the safest perceived choice to a community that I feel is looking for stability right now and a return to normalcy above all else. In the likely event of Eric Adams winning, the corporate mainstream media narrative will be that June 22 was a bellwether election for the failing political experiment that is modern American progressivism. Since NYC is commonly looked upon as the vanguard of the country’s far left (and rightfully so!), replacing Bill de Blasio with some form of a neoliberal centrist is indeed a bad look. But as long as the proper lessons are learned here (stop the childish infighting, stop the rigid ideological purity tests, drop the failing culture war issues like “Defund the Police,” prioritize economic issues that have 50+% of the popular vote, strengthen connections with working-class communities), progressives everywhere should fare well in next year’s Democratic primaries and beyond.

The Soviet Union collapsed because its implemented economic system doesn’t work and its bureaucracy became unmanageable. The efficacy of the various Cold War proxy wars is completely overblown by war hawk propagandists. The most involved one, of course, was the Vietnam War which didn’t turn out so well for us. I will reiterate: there are other ways to promote democracy that don’t involve regime change wars and coups. Carefully crafted multilateral trade deals are one such way. I’m not even going to attempt to properly break down U.S.-Latin America and U.S.-Africa foreign policy history this morning. Suffice to say, words like “blowback” and phrases like “human rights violations” would be used frequently. I noticed that you didn’t address Obama’s 7 military interventions. How come? Do you still defend them in terms of ethics, budgetary cost, military strategy, and international diplomacy?

Hello, my newfound free market fundamentalist friend! I’m curious to see the full results. We have ~30-40 semi-frequent visitors these days, I think. The poll, unfortunately, is a bit biased in favor of libertarians because they are more likely to click on this thread in the first place. Also, the wording of the first option is too vague since most people will agree to that stuff in principle. The details of public policy are what distinguish genuine libertarians from the rest. I would have slightly adjusted your 5 voting options like this: 1. I like the Libertarian Party’s platform the most. 2. I prefer someone like Bernie Sanders, the Green Party, the DSA, or the People’s Party. 3. I would prefer a more socially conservative Reagan-esque GOP, like under Mitt Romney. 4. I prefer the GOP under Donald Trump’s populist nationalist platform. 5. I prefer the Democrats with Joe Biden. Great question! The late Milton Friedman, a hero among libertarians, proposed this general idea in a somewhat different form called the “negative income tax.” It was a way to provide a social safety net while simultaneously removing the government bureaucratic middlemen. I don’t have a strong opinion on UBI at the moment, so I won’t answer your question. Lots of interesting test runs are being done on UBI throughout the world. Germany, for example, is doing one. You can look at the pandemic stimulus checks as a type of UBI experiment, too. As far as the universal health care component goes, yes! Absolutely. Eliminate the health care insurance company middlemen. Nationalize the whole service already like we do with defense, police, fire department, etc… We should have done this back in 1946, but better late than never. Obamacare, public option, and whatever hoodwinking nonsense Trump was promoting are all no good. I prefer the UK model and would use the Australian model as a transition stage. I don’t know, Tibsy, because I never receive a straight answer on environmental issues whenever I discuss them with libertarian purist types. Something about how I’m not defining precisely enough what I mean by the word “pollution.” Or how private individuals are the best stewards of property and that we should let wealthy CEO’s buy up national parks and other public lands. Or how government ruins everything it touches anyway (a classic “throw the baby out with the bath water” argument) because it lacks the all-powerful “profit motive” that can solve every single one of life’s problems. Laissez-faire capitalism fails in the modern industrialized world for a multitude of reasons, many of which include its inability to address market failures such as externalities. Pollution is the main class of negative environmental externalities. A strong tendency among libertarians is to side with job creators, so they will frequently give industry polluters a free pass if environmental regulations would cut into company profits and lead to less jobs. They do this by downplaying or outright denying the environmental damage specified by scientists and health professionals. Two examples: Donald Trump’s well-documented war with the EPA, the anthropogenic global warming “debate.” If your economic toy model can’t effectively solve a problem, I guess try downplaying or denying the problem?

A “shoddy pseudo-scientific” understanding of fundamental economics…really?! You mean the emerging consensus among faculty and grad students at Columbia’s and NYU’s econ departments regarding the current inflation situation, mixed in with some canonical intro macroeconomics material?? Now you’re just being haughty with me. So I guess we’re just two equally haughty people haughtying around on Two Bills Drive, no? Please reread my point #3 above. My argument has been that inflation is multifaceted, that I believe its transient components are the dominant ones for the current situation, and that I will consider monetary policy means to address any long-term components if the inflation data persists intolerably throughout the summer. In other words: I will be perfectly happy to admit that my initial hypothesis was wrong, depending on new data that better informs us on how the real world is functioning. You, on the other hand, stated in page 2 of this thread that the Biden administration will “try to manipulate and hide inflation data as long as they can.” This is quite a convenient position to take if the economics data doesn’t end up fitting your preferred narrative by August/September! Apparently that dastardly Bureau of Labor Statistics is also in on the latest conspiracy. Do you see what I mean when I say “cult?” I’m not a communist, by the way, even though red does happen to be my favorite color. On political economics issues, I’m ideologically much closer to Donald Trump than I am to a communist.

Next time you call a post of mine illogical, please outline why in a single response. I don’t really know who you are, so I’m having to piece together your opinions from other posts: 1. It appears that you acknowledge Israel’s non-trivial injustices toward Palestinians. Good. All international human rights authorities and experts concur. 2. You seem to be arguing that Israel doesn’t need U.S. financial aid in order to survive, and so this would not be any diplomatic leverage. If that is the case, then great! All the more reason to immediately cut off aid to a country running an apartheid state (or quasi-apartheid…however one chooses to label the human rights violations). 3. Am I overestimating the extent to which other Arab countries would cooperate in mitigating the Israel/Palestine crisis? Sure, I probably am, but I still stand 100% by the actions I said the U.S. should take. These actions should be done on ethical grounds alone, not to mention for the broader Middle East strategy on other issues (namely the war on Islamic terrorism). 4. I get the sense that you are advocating for a much harder stance on Iran than JCPOA, i.e. Bibi’s general position. If so, do you mean like Trump’s? Or different? And how would that change the dynamics of all involved actors in the Israel/Palestine conflict for the better, particularly in the long run? Even if Hamas were to lose all support from Iran, would that end terrorism against Israel in the name of Palestine (and/or radical Islam)? And again: what about the ethical quandaries, this time ranging from draconian sanctions on the Iranian people to an all-out war? It’s easy for us to play Machiavellian board games of Risk when the consequences don’t personally affect us.

“Isolationist” is a pejorative term, Tibsy. That was hurtful. I prefer “non-interventionist.” I generally believe in the Golden Rule when it comes to foreign policy. There are other ways of promoting democracy that don’t involve coups, hard sanctions, and regime change wars against countries that did not invade others. To be crystal clear, the United States does not intervene in the name of democracy and/or human rights. It selectively does so on the basis of profit maximization and natural resource extraction. There are about 200 countries in the world. About half of them can be considered authoritarian, and many of those 100 or so others that are called democracies can be considered highly flawed ones at that. Why not intervene in all of them? We seem to pick on ones in the Middle East and avoid others in, say, Africa. It’s not always about crusading against authoritarianism, either. We also seem to pick on Latin American countries whenever they willingly veer toward democratic socialism. Let’s think about the efficacy of military interventionism for a moment. How well has it gone since World War 2? Let’s focus specifically on Obama’s military interventionism: Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. How well did all of those go? Would we do them over again if we had that choice? What do human rights watch groups think of those 7 situations? How much of the total U.S. national debt has gone toward these activities? Did they help deter Putin from annexing Crimea in 2014? Maybe they instead motivated him to do that? Furthermore, the Russia hysteria is way overblown. This is twentieth century fearmongering propaganda from the corporate oligarchs who own the United States government. From the Democratic side, they use Russia. From the Republican side, they use China. And given the fearmongering choice between the two, the Russian one is laughable. Their GDP is less than 10% of ours despite having over 30% of our population size. Because their economy is so over-the-top in its dependence on the fossil fuel industry, they are extremely easy to subdue using only peaceful tactics and strategies. Sure, Russia still has a lot of nukes and that makes them a player to be taken seriously on the international stage. But we already have that effectively countered with our nuclear triad. A U.S. policy of regime change is an entirely disproportionate response to the specific ways that Russia is pushing authoritarianism. And Putin’s foreign policy maneuvers are for economic leverage, first and foremost. The promotion of authoritarianism is subsidiary. I’m also not buying the unified Slavic ethnostate idea one bit because Putin is smart and must know it’s not remotely practical.

It’s the cult of free market fundamentalism. We could use many words and many paragraphs to explain what’s happening with inflation, but my experiences with a similar cult here last year (see: “Global warming err Climate change HOAX” thread; pages 324-334; author: ComradeKayAdams) revealed to me that very few people on political sub-forums of sports message boards read or comprehend what is not posted in meme form, one-line joke form, or corporate media hot take form. And there unfortunately isn’t a crayon font available at Two Bills Drive. So all you can do, really, is make a list like this one and pray that your readers are taking their Concerta: 1. Much of the observed inflation is best explained by supply perturbations (mostly in energy and in raw materials that we see trickling down to food) as the economy is attempting to open back up to pre-pandemic levels. 2. If you look at the phenomenon of built-in inflation from pre-pandemic projections to now, we are approximately on track with what was expected (~2% regular growth in consumer prices). We’ve had a recent spike in inflation percentages, but that can be interpreted as a self-correction from last year’s unexpected drop. 3. We can revisit prices toward the end of summer and early fall as our economy returns to “normal.” If inflation is still problematic by that time, then yes, it would be reasonable to begin exploring monetary policy measures like raising interest rates and restraining the money supply. 4. Comparisons with 1970’s stagflation…I don’t even know where to begin. Maybe just sit back and bask in the heat from the politically charged hot takes? My favorite is that Biden’s $1400 stimulus checks are causing this. What are yours? Do tell… 5. No, I can’t even imagine what the debates are like on our AFC East division rivals’ political forums! I’m sure the Dolphins ones are bad, but I bet the Jets ones are the worst! Have you ever heard two Strong Islanders communicate with each other on politics?! They make this place look like Chomsky versus Buckley, even with our handicap of brain damage from Drought Era-induced alcoholism and folding table mishaps. I appreciate a Phillips curve reference as much as the next gal, but it does nothing to discredit ALF’s first sentence. You can have a supply contraction from supply shocks, reduced demand from higher unemployment, and still have inflation. For one, the degrees to which each effect are occurring matters. Yes, of course. The Fed was referring to demand-pull inflationary effects. They said they weren’t going to worry about it because the positives of the government stimulus on the economy outweigh the negatives. Most governments around the world have done WAY more economic stimulus during the pandemic than we have and are not panicking. Again, this all comes back to free market fundamentalism and its grip on the American psyche. That, and the need to score quick political points on the other team because of blind partisanship. I hate how right-wingers are making me temporarily come to the defense of Joe Biden, by the way…

I no longer believe they are “pretending” to like warmongering Liz Cheney. Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are two sides to the same coin. They defended Obama’s military interventionism, they defended Hillary Clinton’s, and they will be defending Biden’s. The Democrats are firmly a party of American imperialism now. The party that “opposed” Bush’s Iraq War died in 2009. That fissure you mention within the Democratic Party has more to do with the voting constituents than with the elected national politicians. And the Palestine/Israel escalation issue is simply a furthering of an already large fissure that had been growing since December. The public policy straw that may have broken the progressive camel’s (donkey’s?) back was the $15 minimum wage rejection in the Senate. Corporate media can run all the interference they want for Joe Biden in 2021, but reality has a delightfully forceful way of making herself known! Can the centrist Democrats corral enough progressives back into the party and avoid losing both the House and the Senate next November? In my opinion, based on the current sentiment among the far-left that I’m seeing and the already razor-thin margins, that would be an emphatic “no.” The Democrats will need to conjure up another specter similar to The Great Orange Menace, unless they feel that particular well has not yet run dry.

A lot, actually! We could theoretically withhold all funding to Israel until they end their apartheid state practices. This would help draw the Palestinians back to the negotiating table for a one-state solution, with a two-state solution remaining somewhat viable as well. We could also close our military bases in Muslim lands, end drone strikes, and get back into the JCPOA. All of these actions could provide negotiating leverage with other Muslim countries who, in turn, could help us pressure the Palestinians to fully reject Hamas and to work peacefully with the Israelis. The United States, of course, isn’t really that motivated to see the Israel-Palestine feud resolved. Endless Middle East conflicts are profitable for the corporate oligarchs that control both major parties. The only politicians consistently (well…sort of) speaking out against Israel’s human rights violations are the progressive Democrats, but they only tweet and give moving speeches so to energize their voting base. They won’t ever actually use their combined powers to challenge Biden and the neoliberals in meaningful ways that threaten current oligarchic power structures. As ordinary concerned Americans, I would look into aspects of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) Palestinian movement. I would also use the primaries and populist third parties to apply electoral pressure on the establishment at both of its ends: left and right, Democrat and Republican. Educating others on the Israeli apartheid controversy is always helpful, too. American public opinion has been shifting rapidly toward Palestinian sympathy in recent years, so this strategy seems to be working. We’re seeing less and less of the fallacious “criticism of Israel = anti-Semitism” arguments in public spheres of any good repute (i.e., not places like this hellhole).

Consider changing your user name from “Logic” to “Emotion” because there appears to be an overabundance of negative estrogen chemicals in your brain clouding your otherwise sound masculine judgment. You are missing the big picture. Kim Jones’ theatrics are but a small part of the grand female conspiracy to invade all male safe spaces. Look around you! We’re everywhere now. Voting lines. The workplace. Turn on a TV to watch a football game and you’ll see the stadium nearly 50% women. Most don’t even have the sense to wait in the concourse or car after picking up the food anymore. They’ll just walk right up to the seats now and sit down! Outrageous. The feminization of American culture is permeating our beloved Bills, too. Back in the good ol’ days when the Darryl Stingleys of the league took their spinal cord-crunching hits like MEN, our Bills players would stoically hand the ball over to the ref after their ever-so-rare touchdown. And now? After each TD, they routinely dance and prance around, emoting like Johnny McDimples just asked them out to the high school prom. Don’t even get me started with Sean “Playtex” McDermott who constantly talks about “loving” the guys in the locker room. Or Josh “Nancy Boy” Allen hugging his teammates in the final minutes of the AFC Conference Championship game. And now Daryl “I’m a Big Giant Pathetic Pu**y” Williams is publicly acknowledging human emotions?! Is it any wonder why we lost to KC? How much you wanna bet these “guys” were baking cookies and complaining about their menstrual cramps at halftime instead of properly dissecting the plays that went awry after their 9-0 lead?? Even our Buffalo Bills marketing team developed a case of the vapors over the years. The original AFL logo had a quite prominent pen!s to let our opponents know who’s boss. The current semi-castrated one?! His could easily be confused with a small tuft of hair. What’s next? A tit ol’ pair of sagging biggies drawn below the formerly red stripe, now colored pink to promote breast cancer awareness? My Lord. Just you wait: the new uniforms of the Buffalo Bills this fall will be French bouffant dresses and red/white/blue designer pumps appropriately tailored for artificial turf. And maybe a cute petticoat to help stay warm during the games beyond October. UGH. I’m just so weirdly emotional over this topic right now!!! But in a good angry male kind of way, not in a weak girly WRONG way.

I wasn’t actually being facetious, though my wording did admittedly make it look like I was. If you send me links on meat consumption history, I’ll put them in my lengthy reading queue and will get to them by this summer. If you’re looking specifically to change my mind about veganism, however, that’s highly unlikely to happen at this point in my life. Is that cult-like thinking? No, it’s just a set of core ethical principles I have that are even stronger than all of my political ones (social democracy, environmentalism, non-interventionism). The unhealthy-looking vegans you see are most likely the ones who didn’t plan their diet responsibly. Nothing but Pepsi and Oreos is a vegan diet, after all! Lots of women also use veganism to mask eating disorders so that they can justify their various food restrictions. Part of what makes the dairy and egg industries cruel is what happens to the males. Chick culling is the mass murder of all the non-profitable ones that don’t lay eggs. Male calves are quickly sold to meat processing companies, so supporting the dairy industry is still de facto supporting the beef industry. In factory farms, the living conditions are atrocious. With dairy, the additional cruelty comes from the milking machines, the forcible impregnations, and the immediate removal of the calves from their mothers. Also, consider that all of these animals we exploit for food have been carefully bred over generations to maximize profit at the expense of their own physical mechanical comfort and physiological well-being. Fair enough. I suppose I’ll conclude by recommending everyone watch Earthlings, a 90-minute documentary available for free on YouTube (it’s NSFW). If you can sit through all of it and still have no motivation to change your animal product consumption, then so be it. Vegan activism is still in the stages of promoting fully voluntary personal choices (well, excluding some of the peripheral animal cruelty laws plus any tax implementations to address negative environmental externalities). Once affordable lab-grown meat is ready, we can begin pushing for full legal abolition and concurrent transition programs for economically displaced workers in the meat/dairy industries.

Thank you, Tibsy. It means a lot to me for you to acknowledge this point. I thought about posting a graphic image from an abattoir (how very Upton Sinclair of me!) to really drive home my message, but a simple Mahatma Gandhi quote is probably more appropriate for TBD: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” People should do their own internet searches on images from American meat processing plants and then juxtapose them with images from, say, the Yulin Lychee and Dog Meat Festival. This is a faulty comparison. Choosing not to grow one’s own vegetables because of the labor difficulty and labor specialization is not equivalent to choosing not to kill one’s own food. The added ethical quandary with the latter is the obvious distinction. I think you may be confused with what I meant by the “caloric survival” phrase. I’m referring to Robinson Crusoe-esque “eat meat or starve” situations. These would include living in American food desert communities or not being able to go fully vegan due to personal financial hardship. The ethos of veganism is minimizing the suffering of all sentient beings on this planet. Note that I said “minimizing” and not “eliminating,” which is a manifest impossibility. You are unlikely to find any self-identifying vegans who find it reasonable to expect someone else to starve to death rather than to eat meat. From a health and safety perspective, I fully understand the reasons why we cook and season meat. I’m not personally interested in learning about the other culinary details. I have a pretty good understanding of the history of meat consumption, but nothing special. I dunno…send me some links or tell me which articles/books you recommend I read on this subject? Keep in mind that I was referring to the period in human history WAY before the Agricultural Revolution when I mentioned the scientific evidence for our predominantly herbivorous past. Also keep in mind that conclusive scientific results on this sub-topic wouldn’t affect the core vegan message. Evolution is eternally dynamic. We can always choose to “evolve” into pure vegans since we know that modern humans already thrive with a properly planned vegan diet. By the way, you might find Dan Buettner’s work on Blue Zones interesting. See: “The Secrets of a Long Life,” National Geographic, November 2005. Your reply to Tibsy was a non sequitur. Please see my response to RochesterRob above.

Hickory Dockery block, We need an offense that can run out the clock. Why not a lineman in round one? To ensure KC’s dynasty is done! Hickory Dockery block. Hickory Dockery block, I want more linemen of good draft stock. Why not a guard in round two? Because against KC, Feliciano blew. Hickory Dockery block. Hickory Dockery block, Ford’s injury left our line in shock. A reserve tackle in round three? This offseason we lost Nsekhe. Hickory Dockery block. Hickory Dockery block, Let’s see all the names in Kiper’s mock. A backup center in round four? Morse’s head is one foot out the door. Hickory Dockery block. Hickory Dockery block, Kay wants another oversized jock. Another lineman in round five?! Nah, any good athlete with drive. Hickory Dockery block. Tick tock…tick tock…tick tock…tick tock…tick tock…I looooove NFL Draft weekend!!!!! Can’t wait, so excited!! Can you tell?!?!

In terms of budgetary policy, the estate tax is actually not that important because the tax revenue generated is a small drop in the bucket relative to the other revenue streams. I believe it’s something like half of 1% of total annual tax revenue. So the estate tax is mostly a topic relevant to political philosophy. If you aspire to balance national budgets and choose to focus on fiscal policy at the exclusion of monetary policy, my three big recommended areas of focus would be the federal income tax, capital gains taxes, and the military budget. I know that you can easily pay for something like M4A with modest adjustments to the income tax brackets (go from 37% marginal to about 50% marginal at the highest), modest increases to short-term capital gains taxes (leaving the far more important long-term capital gains activity alone), and of course a sizable dismantling of U.S. imperialism (dropping the annual defense budget by ~25%...which would still leave ours twice as big as China’s, by the way). American Foreign Policy Fun Fact: did you all know that our tax dollars fund Israel’s universal health care program?? Meanwhile, the United States is still the only industrialized nation without universal health care, with about 500k families filing for bankruptcy every year due in significant part to medical bills… Neat. Most Americans do believe in an estate tax, but to a point. The devil is in the details. Any productive discussion needs to be quantified. What’s the wealth floor for the estate tax? What percentage of it should be taxed? If we are setting up progressive estate tax brackets, what would they look like and why exactly are we setting them up like that? What bequeathment loopholes should be closed? What exceptions for family business transfers should be allowed? More importantly, what would you rather be doing on NFL Draft Day: engaging in wonky tax debates or reading up on all sorts of exciting college prospects whom you just know the Bills won’t ever draft?!?! The minority of Americans who don’t believe in any estate tax mostly include the economic libertarian purist types and strict constructionist types. I personally have zero interest in debating with these types of people this weekend***, but of course the rest of you can spend your free time as you so choose. Recommended topics that might steer a debate with them in a more productive direction: the social contract, law of diminishing marginal utility of income, historical effect of wealth inequality on societal stability (especially: Gilded Age), tendencies of sociopaths and those who score low on empathy tests to cluster in high management positions, and the capitalist-laborer relationship as defined by Marx (i.e. the inherent “exploitation” of labor…that is to say, you can’t run a company that generates profit without some degree of economic exploitation of the laborer’s market value). Godspeed, PPP’ers! Over and out, Commie Kay. ***-Come talk to me when you can get your childish ideas published in reputable economics journals, you Austrian School freaks. You know: ECONOMICS JOURNALS. They’re those things with collections of research papers that are periodically released and that attempt to describe how the macroeconomic real world actually works and not how we wish it would work because we’re all a bunch of selfish f*cking a-holes who just don’t want to pay any taxes and we dream of “going Galt” over to our anarcho-capitalist utopia of Somalia where we don’t have to be bothered anymore by all those lazy poor Americans…hmmm…was that a little too strong? Did I generalize too much? Well now you know how us lefties feel whenever we are subjected to your PPP rants…

I don’t want to derail the Biden Economy thread, so I’ll make this my last post on meat processing plants. If others want to continue this conversation, please start an Animal Rights thread and I will definitely show up to contribute. To say that Clancy the Cow is in a different class of animal rights from Fluffy the Cat is to show your American cultural bias. In India, cows are sacred. In certain Far East cultures, cats are food. Both animals are sentient beings. In my opinion, taking the life of a sentient being against their will should only be acceptable under four circumstances: instinct (so the rest of the animal kingdom is off the hook!), self-defense, caloric survival (so not just because they taste good), or the safety of the greater society (example: population control of deer to reduce car accidents…even though that is technically an issue of habitat encroachment and man’s elimination of deer’s natural megafauna predators…). The killing component may be just one part of meat processing, but I’m pretty sure (not 100% but confident enough) that is the part which is giving the employees PTSD at alarming rates. The vast majority of hunting is performed from great distances, so it is much less personal than, say, slitting open an animal’s throat while looking directly into their eyes. I’m not condoning hunting when I say that hunters typically have great respect for Mother Nature and for the animals they kill. They aim for swift kills and find all forms of extended animal suffering abhorrent. They enjoy the difficulty component in spotting and stalking their game. These reasons are why many hunters become outspoken critics against factory farming once they discover what really goes into the meat production process, from the farm animals’ births up to their deaths. As a chef, I think you know the customer responses you’d get if you served meat in its raw form without any cooking or added seasonings. Why is that? If humans are a true omnivorous species, everyone should have no major beef (pardon the pun) with eating meat raw and unseasoned. And everyone should be able to regularly kill their prey without getting PTSD. Cancer and heart disease risks shouldn’t skyrocket, either, from consuming meat and dairy (though to be fair, that could also be from the specific ways we process these foods). From a scientific evidence standpoint, the evolutionary story of ***** sapiens as these natural big game hunters is actually quite controversial. A much more palatable (pardon the pun) thesis is that humans are herbivorous primates who developed limited capabilities as opportunistic hunters during times of evolutionary bottlenecks (famines and such). This isn’t exactly settled science, but hey…it’s thought-provoking and does help further my pro-vegan message!

Hmmm…one of these three is not like the others. High rise jeans work well with certain outfits and can be quite flattering. I have a couple, for the rare occasions that I want to wear jeans. But mom jeans?! Jeans with holes?! GROSS. By the way, fashion bandwagoners are just as loathsome as football bandwagoners. Floral skater dresses paired with black pantyhose are my Buffalo Bills of my wardrobe. I wouldn’t be fazed if such an outfit ever went out of style for 17 straight years. F*!k the haters. I just be continuing on my way with my bad b!tch self. Y’all have a problem?! Nah, y’all don’t want no problems… <<< cue “No Problems” song by Azealia Banks playing in the background >>> GoBillsInDallas makes a valuable point, but the spirit of the marketing campaign is what is being questioned in this thread. I was hoping everyone could agree that Americans with the financial wherewithal to forgo clothing companies for their negative environmental impact and poor labor practices should be encouraged to do so. Environmental sustainability, fair labor standards, and profit maximization are not at all mutually exclusive pursuits (or at least they don’t have to be if your company leaders are competent). Ciara’s dance posse agrees (FYI: 3:28-3:33 was me celebrating Taron Johnson’s pick 6 during the Ravens playoff game): EDIT: Corrected a spelling error. I meant to say “others” in first sentence. Details matter, people!

Regarding civil infrastructure and climate change, I would argue strongly that Biden hasn’t done NEARLY enough to “meet the moment” during his first 100 days. But ugh…whatever…I’ll save that lengthy debate for another day. Being the ostentatious vegan that I am (see: my beautiful profile wallpaper!), I very much like the side debate on meat consumption that has emerged. The fat-shaming tactic isn’t the one I would go with, but you did include a quote from Mean Girls, so that makes it more than okay in my book! Let there be no doubt: those fatty omnivores hate us DIME PIECE vegans for our low BMI’s and for our glowing, phytonutrient-enriched skin! You highlighted the most salient point: reducing meat intake is the best singular thing an individual can possibly do for the environment, due to the extraordinarily disproportionate amount of land/water resources consumed and greenhouse gases emitted relative to plant-based protein/calorie alternatives (legumes, grains, etc.). Same goes for dairy versus plant-based dairy alternatives (almond milk, rice milk, soy milk, cashew milk, etc.). As RochesterRob explained, a regressive sin tax would not be the most desirable way to reduce meat consumption. To be clear: meat/dairy consumption is most definitely a negative environmental externality, so in principle I have no moral qualms taxing it (not to mention the animals rights component or the burden on our already sh!tty health care system). But there are so many better proposed solutions out there: cap-and-trade permit markets for the meat/dairy industries is one such method I would prefer over sin taxes, though so far I’m not 100% convinced of any particular solution. If you insist on going the sin/carbon tax route on meat consumption, you would first need to address the American food desert dilemma that plagues poor communities. The poor need viable alternatives to meat! Oh and dairy must be included in the conversation, too, because the poor in America are disproportionately minorities and minorities are disproportionately lactose intolerant. Affordable lab-grown meat will be the ultimate game changer in this conversation!! I can’t wait for that day to come!! Oooh and speaking of game changers, everyone please check out all of these vegan documentaries for free on YouTube: The Game Changers (2019) Dominion (2018) What The Health (2017) Cowspiracy (2014) Earthlings (2005) EDIT: spelling error. It’s CIVIL infrastructure, not CIVIC.

Yeah right…one of these two scenarios will likely play out: 1. The roughly 2,000 U.S. combat troops will withdraw from Afghanistan in September, but the other roughly 18,000 military contractor personnel will remain. Those withdrawn U.S. combat troops will then quickly be dispatched to other emerging hot spots of conflict around the world (somewhere near Russia, China, or Iran?). These conflicts will have been instigated in some way by America’s own foreign policy blunders (sanctions, coups, outright regime change wars?), all in the name of post-WW2 U.S. imperialism. 2. The CIA will use the corporate media (MSNBC, CNN, NY Times, Wash Post, etc.) this summer to help ramp up the propaganda campaign on why the combat troops need to stay. Nebulous tactics to fight terrorism, intractable human rights abuses in Afghanistan, or blatantly made-up stories involving Putin will comprise the propaganda. The political pressure will force Biden to keep our foreign occupation forces there indefinitely. The corporate oligarchs that own both the Democrats and Republicans will then continue exploiting Afghanistan’s natural resources and economically strategic geographic position. The military-industrial complex will maintain their bloated government contracts.

We really shouldn’t be determining Biden’s “wins” and “losses” right now based on fluctuations in the stock market and in commodity prices. The economy is still emerging from the pandemic craziness, and the financial health of the consumer base is not yet fully understood. Give it time to stabilize and reach some semblance of a “normal era” equilibrium. Much of the stock market growth has probably come artificially from the super low interest rates: excess bank borrowing from the Federal Reserve plus company stock buybacks to some extent. We’ll know more about our economy’s standing once most of the population is vaccinated and once businesses and schools can fully open…so no earlier than August/September, I suppose. The looming rent, student loan, and medical bill crises will surely be a drag on market consumption, but to what extent? I don’t think Trump nor Biden did NEARLY enough to buttress the consumer base, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Great Recession #2 begin by early next year. We can quibble over Biden’s modest tax hike proposals on capital gains taxes (I would differentiate between taxes on long-term gains and speculation taxes) and marginal tax rates at the highest income brackets, but keep in mind that the professional and managerial classes made out very well during the pandemic while the working class fared oppositely. This is what economists are calling the “Kay-shaped economic recovery,” presumably named after famed Buffalo Bills message board economist, ComradeKayAdams. So…now’s your time to shine, supply-siders! It’s time to start creating those jobs, Mr. Highest Income Bracketer, despite the huge uncertainty in the American consumer’s ability to purchase your goods and services. Yup. The high foreign confidence in our country’s currency (and our sterling reputation for paying back lenders) is EXACTLY why we should be (and should have been) leaning heavily into Modern Monetary Theory this year as we continue navigating our economy out of the pandemic. Meat processing plants are ethical nightmares. In addition to the substandard pay and the terrible health/safety conditions for the workers, you have that whole concept of murdering farm animals for a living that leads to alarming rates of PTSD diagnoses among meat industry employees. Most human beings just aren’t wired for this kind of behavior, which explains why our society decided to create laws to protect our pets from abuse. Farm animals are no different from dogs and cats. This is a reality that workers at meat processing plants very quickly discover and that employers in the meat industry do everything they can to conceal from the public.