ComradeKayAdams

I bet you we could end up agreeing a lot on gun regulation specifics. I do personally know people who want to repeal the second amendment or are at least indifferent to doing so. You are correct that it’s not a very popular political opinion or one that has been represented anywhere in this thread. But more importantly, here are my top 5 vegetables: 1. Spinach 2. Broccoli 3. Garlic 4. Sweet potatoes 5. Onions I am willing to trade up to get into that top 5. Brandon Beane style.

Looking at these past 10 thread pages…I think we all would have been better off debating broccoli. At least the firearms debate managed to take a couple interesting twists and turns. The “100 home invasion homicides per year” stat pops up a lot and is unfortunately used disingenuously among my fellow lefty friends. It’s a surprisingly small number, but of course it doesn’t account for all the burglaries, assaults, and rapes that were either thwarted or could have been deterred with firearms before police arrive. My same lefty friends then point to the approximately 400 annual homicides from mass shootings as a reason for heavy gun restriction, if not an all-out repeal of the second amendment. So worrying about 100 national homicides is right-wing paranoia, but worrying about 400 is highly sensible? My conclusion is that determining rationality seems to be a mostly subjective endeavor when you’re dealing with risk analysis. Is it rational to purchase fire insurance? Earthquake insurance? Volcano insurance? Meteorite insurance? When it comes to protecting your loved ones, sometimes uber rationality doesn’t even need to be a part of the equation. This reminds me of the infamous 2007 home invasion in the safe neighborhood of Cheshire, Connecticut. If the doctor had purchased guns the weekend before for home defense, maybe everyone around him would have looked at him like he was going crazy. But maybe his wife and two daughters would still be alive? Apologies for the rambling thoughts. By the way, I would rank broccoli as the second healthiest human food on the planet, slightly behind spinach and slightly ahead of garlic. Disagree? Come fight me.

I like how Zack Moss is 6 inches shorter than Derrick Henry but only 15 pounds lighter. Like Singletary, his very low center of gravity makes him a bit tougher to bring down. He is EXACTLY what Buffalo's offense needs. Definitely worth a third rounder, even if it means trading up a bit in the round. Not sure whether he's worth that second round pick, though we've seen way worse reaches from the Bills before and it would at least fill the team's biggest need. Carlos Hyde is still an option as well.

It’s okay I understand, just make sure you hold Biden’s feet to the fire if he gets elected. You should also demand to know Biden’s short list of SC judges before the election. Same goes for his VP choice. My best guess is that it will be filled with lackluster anti-union neoliberal types. I’ve already decided to vote Green in a blue non-swing state. I’m recommending the same for all other progressives who live in obvious non-swing states or who are otherwise planning to stay home on November 3. Good to see you back on PPP, by the way! I think we are the only Bernie supporters here??

Kyle Dunnigan!

BPA!! All the way!! But if I wasn't all about the BPA, here is my roster priority list for the Bills: 1. north-south power RB upgrade to Gore who can sustain drives by getting those tough between-the-tackle yards and ideally have some homerun speed too. 2. young LDE to replace Lawson, with run-stopping and edge-setting just as important as pass rush ability. 3. zone CB who can fill in due to injuries. 4. ILB to back up Edmunds and play ST. 5. WR with large target radius and ideally some speed and ST potential. 6. OL because you can never have enough quality ones and because Allen must be protected at all times. I can't imagine more than 6 draft picks making Buffalo's roster. It's easily among the very deepest in the league.

Fair enough, but I don’t think the debate on M4A should be dismissed so readily by an argument that a government-run service = intrinsically incompetent. I’ll probably start a separate health care thread this summer once we have a more complete understanding of how each country in the world was able to navigate the dual crises of a pandemic + potential global economic depression. My concerns with how the U.S. will fare under our employer-based health care system are not alleviated by all the other countries in red here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_universal_health_care Not exactly a who’s who of international success stories.

Yeah I have a big problem with whomever is the “handler” of Handler’s twitter account. I once sent her a tweet soon after she appeared on the Bill Maher show and told her to listen carefully to Killer Mike’s take on the second amendment (another frequent guest on Maher’s show) as it relates to minorities and their relationships with law enforcement. I then ever so kindly recommended she check out Hamilton’s Federalist Paper #29, Madison’s #46, 1689 English B.O.R., and I believe a couple other things. No response. Just blocked. So I’m not a fan.

I’m expecting Trump to win both if the election were held today. Similar EC result as 2016 but maybe a 3% or so popular vote differential. I’m basing my opinion on all the polling data I’ve seen as well as a general sense of how the Bernie people are feeling about the election. A whole lot can change, of course, depending on how Trump handles COVID-19 into the summer. That’s an interesting theory. I don’t know how strongly the Castro comments tanked his campaign. I feel like there were many underlying flaws in the campaign that would have popped up later anyway. The Anderson Cooper interview is a classic example of people hearing whatever they want to hear based on preconceived notions. I know what Bernie was trying to say and I thought did say well enough without issue, but I also have my own biases and don’t have the intense emotional connection with escaping Castro’s communist Cuba that Cuban-American Floridians may have. Bernie had a very viable path to nomination until the epic centrist consolidation before Super Tuesday. He was doing fine with women (a slight majority of the Bernie supporters in 2020!), although Liz Warren was stealing a lot of the suburban female vote and did Bernie no favors by not dropping out before ST. Bernie was also doing well with all minority groups except older African-Americans. But that Boomer black voting bloc is so crucial to the Democratic Party, so not making inroads with them was a fatal campaign flaw. To the extent that Trump bothers to court Bernie supporters at all, he will attempt to appeal more to a sense of anti-establishment populism than to socialism. His “temporary COVID-19 socialism” actions, as I call them, are clearly about short-term pragmatism and not about any long-term structural changes he has planned for our country. Any Bernie supporters who vote for Trump (5% at best?) will mostly be doing so out of anger and maybe as a strategic ploy to influence the Democratic Party long-term. I wonder if part of Bernie’s cravenly behavior may be due to the “Nader effect.” Bernie has said that the 2000 election result had a profound impact on him and that he never wanted to be considered another Nader in his lifetime. I completely disagree with the strategic aspect to this sentiment. A third party candidate garnering 5% or more of the popular vote can have an enormous influence on the public policies of both major parties. A good example would be the Post-Gilded Age policy reforms stemming from the People’s Party, Socialist Party, and Bull Moose Party. A backbone is my biggest demand for the future political leader of American progressivism. My battered progressive heart cannot take any more political quislings. Interesting how competent establishment Democrat politicians are in suppressing the progressive wing of the party, yet utterly incompetent in dealing with Trump. Why is that? Answer: They get to both avoid Bernie’s progressive tax policies AND keep their DC insider jobs hating on Trump while he’s in office. DR gets it! Neoliberals = neocons. I see multiple progressive policies as political inevitabilities once the Millenial+Gen Z vs. Boomer voting power ratio reaches a critical point. A constitutional amendment for Supreme Court term limits is one of them. Status quo enmity is at unreal levels among us under-40 folk. We may only be a few months away from the penultimate scene of the Joker movie! But somehow none of these things are well received by the Democrats’ centrist establishment wing, either!!! Herein lies the crux of the problem: all this “vote blue no matter who” nonsense destroys any political agency the Bernie movement has. The biggest fear for the establishment Democrats should be us Bernie supporters choosing to stay home on November 3, which could be very substantial among the under-40 crowd. We need to be impervious to all forms of voter shaming, even as they come from Bernie Sanders himself. Biden will make no concessions if he doesn’t respect our power and if he isn’t appropriately challenged in interviews. I’ll take the first public policy issue mentioned as an example, since M4A happens to be the flagship concern for most Bernie folk. Here are some questions I would like to ask Biden if I could (by Zoom only and not in person for fear of getting Tara Readed): 1. You once called health care a basic human right. Do you still feel that way? 2. You once said that you would veto any bill for M4A. Do you still feel that way? 3. You have repeatedly questioned where the M4A money will come from, but have had no problem with the Wall Street bailouts in 2008-09 or with the most recent $4.5 trillion coronavirus corporate bailout or with funding the various military misadventures in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya. How do you square these circles? 4. What do you say to the many thousands of American families that go bankrupt every year due to health care bills? 5. What do you say to the millions of Americans who no longer have health care because they lost their jobs within the past month? 6. What would you say to one patient without health care dying of cancer when the other patient in the next room is getting full coverage due to COVID-19? 7. How come you are meagerly proposing to lower the Medicare age down to 60 when Hillary was proposing to go down to 50 in 2016? 8. What influence do corporate donations to your campaign from the health care and pharmaceutical industries have on your M4A opinions?

Both, unfortunately, since we can’t decouple our environment from the rest of the world. Implement public policy changes for ourselves, while using diplomacy and different forms of economic pressure policies for everyone else. China is still in the Paris Agreement and will want to be a cooperative international economic player moving forward beyond COVID-19 (hopefully…because it is in their own economic interests to be that way). CCP is also positioned very favorably for all these nascent renewable energy industries because of their country’s own rich transition metal oxide natural resources, as well as the ones they’ve been eyeing in Africa. Thanks for this reply. A few comments: 1. Regarding a clearly defined problem and solution: You’ve listed 7 questions. Do you want me to answer them in detail here? Or were they more rhetorical? Questions 3, 5, and 7 are very well-defined by the science (quick source: NASA GISS site). Questions 1, 2, and 4 are defined well enough (quick source: Paris Climate Agreement PDF documents) with a converging consensus, but there is still a range of opinions that vary somewhat by country. Question 6 is still open-ended with the “Green New Deal” umbrella term for the potpourri of solutions, but the United States is one of the few remaining countries in the world with a major political party still stuck debating the worthiness of the other 6 questions first. I’d be happy to answer them in detail later if open-minded people want to read them, but it’s not worth my time if they will be laughed at because they’re coming from a “pseudo scientist” perceived as capable of reading and regurgitating but incapable of understanding and questioning. I’ve already defined the criteria I’m looking for in order to break off from the mainstream scientific consensus: dissenting research papers or research summary articles from properly credentialed climatologists that I could examine. What would be your evidence criteria in order to join my side (a question directed at any anthropogenic climate change skeptic reading this)? 2. On the models and data: I’ve never argued that all the data is known. Likewise with the modeling assumptions and unknown variables. What I did argue was that enough of the data and modeling assumptions are known to make satisfactorily accurate climate predictions. We can have a discussion on what constitutes “satisfactorily accurate.” Future predictions that track all data metrics within 2.5% deviation at 100% consistency? Have you defined your own computational model accuracy expectations at which scientific legitimacy can then be bestowed? It seems absurd and unproductive to me to demand climate model perfectionism before political action is to be taken. It would probably be more productive to take up an accuracy debate with credible climatologists (Zeke Hausfather would be a pretty good start). 3. On government solutions: I’m currently looking into what’s specifically working and what’s specifically not with all the various Green New Deal implementations in the EU, especially in Germany right now. All ideas should be on the table, anyway, given the pressing need to overhaul our dilapidated national civil infrastructure. I just want to reiterate that I would be unhappy pushing Green New Deal legislation without careful deliberation beforehand and without appropriate safeguards. I like to think that we share similarly deep concerns for government overreaches of power, government choosing economic winners and losers, and government waste and inefficiencies that increase with government program size. Where I may possibly differ from others here is my essentially equal concern for corporate power left unchecked in capitalist systems (the fossil fuel industries in this case). I’m mostly referring to the many forms of crony capitalism: shirking environmental stewardship responsibilities via deregulatory pollution law measures, price manipulation policies, foreign policy in places like the Middle East and Venezuela, and exploiting such an overly expansive U.S. transportation grid already built to heavily favor fossil fuel consumption. But even in a completely uncorrupted and unfettered capitalist system, I fully and very cynically expect private tech industries to move on their own volition without proper regard to long-term crises involving mutually shared risk (i.e. man-made climate change).

I’d rephrase slightly as: “nice job mainstream media. You really know how to pick them.” Since day one, the media has been deliberately and relentlessly molding the narrative on every Democrat candidate in order to achieve a desired result for their corporate donors. Biden was never vetted in a primary process where the main point was supposed to be doing just that for each candidate. Makes ya wonder if even just one of those nondescript, uncharismatic, white male candidates from back in the day (your choice among Bennett, Delaney, Bullock, Moulton, Inslee, Sestak, Hickenlooper) could have been a better option – if given a fair chance from the media – than a senile rapist who has been wrong on every major political issue from the past five decades? As I’ve said all along, forcing a Biden matchup versus Trump cements the 2016 political realignment of the Democrats as the party of reckless economic globalism and regime-change foreign interventionism. The Democrats were supposed to be the party of the working class and the party of peace. And then here we see Trump slide ever so slightly to the left of Joe with $1200 checks and COVID-19 medical relief and student debt relief, while Joe BYE-DONE continues fumbling around in his house with Zoom during a pandemic. Donald Trump is now the presidential candidate for the progressive left…oh my. Can’t help but wonder how much longer the mainstream media can continue gaslighting us with the Joe charade. That coronavirus leadership poll highlights America’s emerging awareness that Joe is probably in the early stages of dementia. The media still likes to point out his competitiveness by referencing national polls from the past week which have him holding anywhere between a tie with Trump and an 11% lead. My big counterpoint is the devastating presidential candidate enthusiasm poll from two weeks back. Even if more Americans prefer Biden, all that matters are the votes from people motivated enough to – you know – go out and vote. I believe we are looking at a complete meltdown of the white working class and the under-40 voting blocs that have formerly buttressed the Democratic Party throughout this era of neoliberalism. The mainstream media, of course, isn’t capable of self-reflection and will eventually blame everyone else for Biden’s inevitable November loss. Any guesses as to whom their favorite target will be? Answer: Bernie Brothers and Sanders Sisters. The voter shaming has already begun with the usual media personalities. They frame the situation as intransigent Millenials and unsophisticated idealists choosing revolution over sensible incrementalism. Why won’t they just accept Biden’s false promises of watered-down public policy scraps? Don’t they know progressive platforms can’t win elections (except when they sort of did twice in 1992 and 2008 while centrists lost 1984 and 1988 and 2000 and 2004 and 2016 and, yes, 2020…but whatever)? That COVID-19 bandana pic from an online Bernie Bro bully must mean he is getting ready for a violent ANTIFA strike. “Closet Trump supporter” is the accusation du jour. This one’s my favorite: in typical Dem establishment style, they are accusing select Bernie supporters of being Russian assets, which to be perfectly frank sounds super exciting! As soon as Putin gives me the orders, Kaytlana Adamsnova be rolling into Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum like:

You’ve given me a grand total of 8 sentences to read. All 8 are variations of calling me stupid, but without any specific details explaining why or how I’m stupid, as well as no recommended educational path I could take to eventually become less stupid. Instead of unchaining me from Plato’s cave, you’ve blocked the cave entrance with a pile of big rocks. Given the way you came at me, I assumed it was because you disagreed with practically everything I said. Unless you agree with most of what I said but don’t like how I express it? I don’t know. Maybe clarify your point of view here a bit more. How do you feel about the clarity of the defined problem as outlined in the Paris Agreement? You deserve a “like” for the Ghostbusters reference. I hope the following exchange puts you more at ease: Me: orange man bad! Rest of PPP: green commie B word! I think it might be comparing apples and oranges, really. CV models are much less complex than climate models and are modeling vastly different types of things. CV models for this particular CV have been around only within the past 5 months at best, while climate models have been around for 60 years. CV models have a much smaller scientific community working on them, while climate models have an enormous body of research literature and related research conferences. If you’re comparing the two strictly by accuracy at this present time, I think climate models easily win the debate. The biggest problems with the CV models are the official data. Many people get the virus but don’t report it. Then you have variations among countries with how cause of death is determined. And then you have serious questions with the quality of data from countries like China and Iran and India. While these CV models use many of the same modeling factors as with other pandemics, scientists are still struggling to work out many of the little details on the mechanisms by which COVID-19 spreads. With climate models, there are no similar concerns with the accuracy (or precision) of the data collected. The issue is getting the right mathematical models for all the possible factors on the planet that influence the climate. NASA GISS (see: Gavin Schmidt’s work) has been compiling the results of many different climate models for the past 20 years, and most of them are extremely impressive in their accuracy. They historically became much more accurate once the ocean’s effects were better understood. Climate models aren’t black boxes, by the way. All the underlying assumptions made are published and then shared among scientists. The various biases, points of view, or funding sources of the climate model creators are irrelevant. The only bias is toward correctly matching climate data from the past and present while making accurate predictions of the future. Rest assured that if Joe Biden somehow becomes president, there will not be a Green New Deal. That’s not what centrist/moderate/establishment Democrats want. They only throw around the “green” label to corral gullible progressive lefties on election day and obfuscate true interests (example: Liz Warren’s “green new military” proposal). They have no desire to fundamentally reshape our civic infrastructure and thus large parts of our economy; they’re only willing to trim around the margins a bit. I always judge politicians by their actions and their donors, not by their speeches and their promises. If Joe Biden or any of the establishment Dems actually cared about any of the Green New Deal components, they would have achieved something substantive within the past 25 years since Al Gore began sounding alarms. I don’t know what you mean by “nature snapping back in 60-90 days.” Are you referring specifically to global warming? The effects of the estimated global COVID-19 shutdown times are projected to be about a 5% reduction in annual carbon dioxide emissions, which will be measurable in atmospheric ppm but utterly negligible in the scheme of things with respect to atmospheric temperatures and ocean temperatures and Arctic ice size and sea elevations and the like. But let’s say the effect is somehow much larger than expected. This would mean these measurable outputs are much more robust to the carbon dioxide system inputs than we thought, which would be encouraging news in term of our potential to turn things around. But that still doesn’t alter the fact that we don’t ever want to push nature beyond certain “point-of-no-return” limits for atmospheric ppm inputs and global temperature outputs. As you may already know, the Earth’s climate is one giant feedback control system with a complex number of positive feedback loops and negative feedback loops. You don’t want to drive this system’s gain beyond certain regions of stability. The atmosphere of Venus is a very extreme example of doing that (although to be clear, an anthropogenic greenhouse effect couldn’t possibly create THAT type of system instability here on Earth). If you’re referring to nature in general, 60-90 days of inactivity will likely show obvious reductions in pollution and increases in animal populations. But nature’s ability to snap back, following corrections in human behavior, completely depends on the situation. Sometimes it can restore itself quickly (hole in ozone layer), sometimes very slowly (rainforest soil restoration), sometimes a mix of speeds (Chernobyl impact region), and sometimes not at all (ecological distortions from megafaunal species extinction). I don’t see the point of ever having a careless regard for nature, even if it’s just a temporary carelessness. Environmentalism is about much more than maintaining a subjective “green aesthetic” for whacko lefties like me. It’s about securing at all times our civilization’s health, food supply, civic infrastructure, and ultimately the economy.

Hillary is way too toxic. She's so despised among the Midwest working class that it's too big of a risk. It can't be Warren or Gabbard since the VP would basically be the likely President within another year, and the DNC doesn't want either of them to ever have that position of power. I don't know enough about Gretchen Whitmer yet, honestly. A lot of Bernie supporters like Stacey Abrams and would stick with the Dems to vote for her, but she doesn't have the proper experience in my opinion. I still think it's going to be Kamala Harris. Young woman of color, enough experience in California politics and on the national political stage, strong centrist who can still kind of pivot on a few key progressive issues, and easily corruptible so she will do whatever the DNC and donors want.

The progressive left wing of the Democratic Party is unfortunately a potential breeding ground for anti-semitism because it’s a natural home for those who most vociferously criticize the state of Israel’s actions, Islamophobia, billionaire crony capitalists (Jews are greedy trope), and mainstream media corruption (Jews own entertainment industry tope). I saw glimpses of it myself from time to time within the Bernie movement, though happily not very often and less often than in 2016. So it’s definitely not just corners of the alt-right that foster anti-semitism. It’s something we all need to carefully monitor as our country enters a major social and economic upheaval, since history shows us that Jews are often the most vulnerable and on the front lines of the blame game in times like these.

For me, it's just an off-season projection based partly on Ford's draft report and partly on his rookie year performances at RG and RT. I think Ford has the highest ceiling of the 3 (Ford, Feliciano, Williams) at RG and Williams has the highest ceiling (a return to 2017 form) of the 3 at RT. So that's why I have Feliciano as the odd man out. It's a projection dependent on best-case scenarios. I'm not a Feliciano hater by any means. I will say this, however: this Bills only had the 24th best offense last year and were mediocre in both allowed QB sack percentage and rushing yards per carry. Diggs, a younger Gore replacement, and more collective experience in Daboll's offense may not be enough to propel the offense into top 10 range. Maybe fielding the same starting OL lineup as last year is sufficient (Dawkins-Spain-Morse-Feliciano-Ford), but maybe the Bills will need an internal upgrade among Long, Nsekhe, Williams, and Bates.

Okay which one of you edited my wikipedia page??? Apparently I'm dating this guy now: https://muckrack.com/larry-lease

Hi Bill, I’m sure it did to some extent. But I don’t think the correct solution would have been to outright reject Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and continue to divide the progressive wing into smaller pieces. As the de facto leader of the nation’s progressive left, Bernie should have stepped up to address the situation immediately when it came up, denounce as necessary, reframe the Israel/BDS debate, and clarify an “official” progressive stance on this issue. Bernie didn’t do this because he tends to be way too conflict averse with people he sees as allies. He let the issue linger in the minds of many moderate voters to the point that they came to associate the centrist wing as the pro-Israel group and the progressive wing as the anti-semitic Palestinian apologists group, with little room for nuance.

They are still occurring, of course, but their effects have already been accounted for and still can’t explain the specific temperature trends seen since the late 19th century. The greenhouse gas effect caused by modern human activity (mainly from fossil fuel burning, concrete production, deforestation, and methane gas emissions from livestock) is the earth science community’s overwhelming consensus explanation. I’m not really in the mood for personal attacks right now. I summarize the ideas of climate change experts because it also happens to be what I “believe,” which is to say it makes the most sense to me so far based on all the evidence I’ve seen. Arriving at conclusions different from you isn’t proof that I am blindly faithful or lack an aptitude for critical thinking. In science, strong heterodox claims require strong evidence. So what are the peer-reviewed research papers countering the man-made global warming consensus that you find particularly persuasive? What logical fallacies or flaws in the data or computational modeling errors do these papers describe that pique your interest? And what is your own educational background that makes you qualified to assess these challenges to a scientific consensus? I’m asking for published papers in a research journal, not an opinion piece from a William Happer type or a YouTube video from a neckbeard quack. Articles summarizing the dissenting arguments from climate change scientists are perfectly fine, too. Full disclosure on my own climate change background: not a professional climatologist or earth scientist, avid conservationist since adolescence, scientifically literate, basic earth science knowledge at an intro undergrad course level, semi-frequent reader of popular science articles, second-hand connections with actual climatologists via postdoc oceanographer friend who has published articles herself on climate change. I never argued that reforestation was the only solution needed. It’s not a trivial one, but the big limiting factor is the amount of land on the earth capable of growing forests. Research was done a while back about the reforestation potential of the entire Sahara Desert. The big conclusion (to no one’s surprise) was that it would be way too expensive. The somewhat unexpected realization was that it would also probably wipe out the Amazon rainforest in a sort of whack-a-mole problem solving dilemma. So yeah, I don’t want to overstate the idea that we can just grow a bunch of trees anywhere to get us out of this mess. I believe this was JP Losman’s plan for downtown Buffalo. It ended up being his greatest contribution to the city. You have bizarre expectations for political discourse on an online football message board. I didn’t realize DR and I were being graded on our prose. This is my 5th post here. The first two were fairly simple questions. The third was a much longer post casually summarizing all of my opinions on the subject so that DR knew where I stood. The fourth was a quick follow-up. I didn’t know I was supposed to be composing a well-focused expository essay all this time. You want a clearly defined problem: anthropogenic global warming is negatively impacting our coastal cities and overall civilization in a number of ways, and it requires a rapid large-scale movement toward a solution. Do you want specific metrics? Carbon dioxide ppm, temperature limits, sea level rise limits, time scales? Do you want a bibliography appended with properly cited research papers? Why do I need a clearly defined solution right now? I came here to participate in a discussion partly because I don’t have one. I have my general biases toward what a solution might look like, but I’m open to discussing all types of ideas. I originally came here today to share something I recalled about planet terraforming that was based on NASA Mars research done many years ago. Nevermind.

Hi DR, I was confused about the “top secret patents related to propulsion” and “recovered craft” comments. No need to type up a lengthy explanation to me if you don’t want. Is there a link or book you recommend I check out on this? You raised an excellent point here which I forgot to cover: the issue of countries like China and India raising the global carbon footprint despite whatever efforts we make to reduce our own. Diplomacy and open dialogue and pressure from Paris Agreement countries may not be enough. Hopefully the international economic pressures from wanting to participate in an exploding renewable energy economy would be enough, as well as a shrinking international demand for fossil fuels that China and India self-generate. If not, maybe high tariffs or economic sanctions as a last resort?! You might be interested to know that scientists can measure the dip in atmospheric carbon during the thirteenth century solely due to Genghis Khan’s raids. Destroying civilizations and allowing for the reforestation of the lands is good for the planet. So is the complete implosion of the world economy because of a pandemic. But there are less drastic solutions we can explore as well! No, that was due to things like the earth’s orbital fluctuations, variations in sun energy output, changing ocean currents, shifting continental positions, volcanic activity, and what not. Climate change since the advent of the Industrial Revolution can only really be explained by artificially throwing lots of carbon into the atmosphere and not having as many trees around anymore to absorb it. Earth scientists have accounted for all other possible contributing factors.

My post-mortem analysis of the Bernie campaign: 1. The entire campaign strategy was too heavily dependent on other major candidates not dropping out before Super Tuesday. You can’t coast on 30-35% pluralities in a largely one-on-one race; you also need a coherent plan to break into 50%+ majorities. 2. At a certain point, it became obvious that the primary was about beating Trump and not about public policy. Bernie didn’t adapt quick enough to this emerging truth. He doubled down by repeatedly calling Joe Biden a nice, likeable, uncorrupt guy who could beat Trump. Great strategy, Bernie… 3. Too many Democrat establishment hires in Bernie’s campaign from prior Obama and Clinton campaign teams. Some would call them incompetent and out of touch. I call them campaign saboteurs. 4. He never properly defined socialism and where he stands in relation to that term and to capitalism. 5. Didn’t support what should have been obvious political allies and completely failed to build a single unified progressive left coalition. The first warning sign for me was the Zephyr Teachout incident. I ignored it at the time, but what an omen! Bernie also didn’t aggressively mend relations with Warren before Super Tuesday. Oops. Tulsi Gabbard would have been an amazing attack dog for VP on a very competitive Dem ticket, but she was more or less spurned. 6. Didn’t try hard enough to extend base of support with Boomers, African Americans, and suburban moms. 7. Didn’t help enough college students and working-class Americans navigate voting hurdles during the primary. Sending Liz Warren a few mean snake emojis online is neat, but you know what’s better? Actually going out into the real world and voting! 8. PC nonsense and ideological purity tests. The death knell of the progressive left. The rest of the country won’t ever begin to take us seriously as a political force until this stops. In retrospect, Bernie Sanders was never that committed to winning. Too much political theater and not nearly enough political results. Too bad the Bernie Bro cult is largely incapable of questioning their dear leader. As a Sanders Sis, it hurts me to see most of them continue to believe that Biden can be pushed left and that the Democrats are a viable home for progressives. Kamala Harris for VP is my prediction, which says it all: 4 more years of neoliberalism. Gross. R.I.P. Bernie 2020.

I would vote for Walt Patulski. But honorable mention goes to Leif Larsen, the 194th selection in 2000. John Butler chose to take a chance on a semi-professional Norwegian polar bear wrestler instead of Tom Brady. Wonderful.

You lost me a bit in your last two paragraphs, DR, but I always appreciate outside-the-box brainstorming for difficult problems! Here is broadly where I stand on this subject, since I have some time to waste this morning: 1. Man-induced climate change is not a hoax like this thread title suggests. The science behind it, in terms of the fundamental mechanisms by which planets warm, has been well-established since the middle twentieth century. The accumulated evidence is overwhelming. I won’t bore my dear PPP readers with talk of weather pattern data, average temperatures, summer sea ice, greenhouse gases, ice core gas deposits, atmospheric carbon isotopes, ocean sediments, tree rings, corals, sun activity, orbital mechanics, cyanobacteria, yadda yadda yadda…unless people really want to… 2. The computational models that scientists use to predict global warming time frames and levels of severity are certainly open to criticism, but not at all to the degree that the biggest and loudest climate change skeptics state. When it comes to the problem-solving stages of climate change, I have no problem operating from the worst-case starting point of these models due to the grave potential impact on civilization. 3. Private industry has an important role to play in terms of technological innovation and churning out applicable products into the global markets, but it needs government incentives to move toward these solutions in a focused and expedited manner. In terms of the fundamental science behind these products, this is best done in academia and with (primarily public) research grants. It’s been this way for a while now. The glory days of Bell Labs and IBM research labs are long gone. The same goes for the government labs, too. The glory days of NASA and the Manhattan Project are even more long gone. 4. I enthusiastically support the Green New Deal, but only when viewed as a declaration of a moral imperative and a loosely outlined philosophy for getting to that point of solving man-made climate change. I’m not comfortable with calls for nationalizing our energy industries, for example. I’m also very unhappy with exclusions of nuclear energy and what I see as an overreliance on wind farms. We need many more details on the (unavoidably disruptive) economic transition process for fossil fuel companies and all other industries affected by substantial infrastructure changes. I’d also like to see a greater emphasis on things like addressing reforestation initiatives, the environmental impact of meat/dairy industries, and public/private land right claims. Basically, I’m open-minded to a wide range of discussion on the details, but I’m also fairly convinced at this point that a large primarily government-based movement is needed to tackle climate change. We are, after all, at this point because we have not been a proper watchdog of capitalism since the Industrial Revolution began. I don’t think capitalism is inherently evil or anything like that, but it has proven over and over again that it is not much of an environmental steward and doesn’t respond very well to long-term problems and community-shared risks like man-made global warming. We need to be pragmatic and not turn a once very healthy American skepticism of centralized government authority into a dogmatic pathology. Sure, be wary of increased government reaches of power and government arbiters of economic victors in a Green New Deal, but also hold that same standard for fossil fuel companies that have been manipulating government regulations and spreading disinformation campaigns for quite some time now.

Corporate welfare is okay in limited cases, but the dairy industry definitely shouldn’t be included in these cases. The original purpose of farm subsidies was to stabilize the country’s food supply during famines or deep economic recessions, like what was seen during the Gilded Age. The dairy industry has always invested heavily in lobbyists in order to convince America and its politicians that they provide a “critical” nutrition source (I think they may have even played a prominent role in getting Iowa to be the first primary state?). The problem here is that dairy milk is in no way an essential source of nutrition. You can get calcium and vitamin D from a large variety of natural food sources, as well as fortified ones, supplements, and sunlight in the case of vitamin D. Many Americans are not even lactose tolerant, including most non-Caucasians. Dairy farmers are whining to the government because alternative plant-based milks are hurting their business model, but at the same time they’re completely unwilling to adapt their farm business model to accommodate the natural changes in demand occurring within the food market. I didn’t even touch the animal rights issues with the dairy industry, but that’s another topic for another thread.

I’ve been a proponent of FDR-style capitalism independent of the pandemic crisis. This latest crisis only exacerbates some of the fundamental weaknesses in our economic system. So does this mean you won’t be giving my post a “like?” Take your time. Or even table discussion of long-term structural changes like M4A and only focus on your original topic of how to transition our economy back to something resembling normal. When doing so, try to address some of the concerns I raised in my post: unemployment spikes in a service-oriented economy, people losing health care due to unemployment, health care costs, student loan payments, rent payments, and mortgage payments. I posted this in another thread somewhere: wage growth hasn’t been keeping up with costs of living for four decades now (especially rent, education, child care, health care).This has mostly affected the working class and is a significant reason why so many Americans find themselves barely treading economic waters. But even if we assume it’s 100% due to Americans irresponsibly living beyond their means, that doesn’t take away the economic crisis that it presents during this pandemic! These people are not going to have money to put back into the economy once we try to jump-start it. Not what I meant at all. I am NOT declaring South Korea a clear winner. I’m saying that if you WERE to (foolishly) go about declaring winner countries and loser countries right now at this very moment, you would probably choose South Korea, a country that happens to incidentally have universal health care. And again to be clear, I am NOT suggesting that a nation’s specific pandemic response is directly related to their general health care system, either. There are numerous reasons why they initially appear to have had better success than others (geography, culture, past experiences with zoonotic diseases to name a few).

Gotcha, but don't you think the government has a major role to play too, in terms of research grants from NSF, DOE, DOD, etc....? Or from government-run DOE research labs? Once upon a time, a lot of amazing and diverse science/technology resulted from throwing a lot of taxpayer money into NASA. There's also the temporal constraint component to man-made climate change. The free market operates on its own time frame.