PGT: President-Elect Donald J Trump

[Senator Clay Davis]

Also a bit more on the Education Secretary pick: Billionaire, major GOP donor, her brother is involved with Blackwater (and himself donated $100,000 a Trump PAC...pay for play???), she has donated to the Clinton Foundation. Like literally a textbook RINO. Breitbart is pretty pissed on this one. A Romney SOS pick might actually bring out some strong backlash (and won't change anything of course).

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Where are farmers in Alabama and the Okanagan going to move their farms to?

Dunno about Alabama, but at this point the Okanagan farmer will just rip everything up and plant a vineyard.

[2Stonedbirds]

Both parties talked about securing the southern border, GOP more so than the dems.

Let's pretend for a second the border is airtight. No more illegal immigration. Then, provide means towards citizenship for the illegals currently in the country.

What happens? I mean, as stated the US cannot survive without illegal labour. So how do you reconcile strong border security and a path to citizenship without "destroying" the economy?

[GGG]

You just illegally employ citizens.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Anyway, it's true that at this point gatherings like http://reasonrally.org/ aren't as significant as they were in the 1990's or even early 2000's, simply because society has changed and the religious right holds far less cultural power than it used to. But that pendulum can pretty easily swing back, as you've just demonstrated by suggesting that humanism can lead to "heinous ideas", which I think is a pretty clear correlation / causation disconnect. That particular argument has been settled for me for a while, though.

Nothing really turns on it, because ideological labels aren't terribly useful, but I don't think it's unfair to describe your politics in that way, given that not only do you take the left's view on literally every issue as far as I can tell, but also are in favour of identity politics and the like. I certainly wouldn't describe it as centrist. But like I say nothing turns on it and it's totally not worth arguing what if any "category" your beliefs should go in.

Nothing says "this argument has been settled for me" like repeatedly engaging in it. But right, I get it. Religion generally bad, humanism good. Weigh importance of historical moments based on how they help the bias.

That far left comment though... it's funny. Is your quick dependency on categorisation any better than the same things the RL is accused of doing? Isn't this one of the huge problems that is being highlighted in the aftermath of the Trump election? The same people being blamed for pushback from the alt-right? Do we benefit overall by taking the individual views of someone, prescribing them a set category, and then generalising their views as being common with that entire category? Don't you reject this tactic both because it's uselessness and it's like to tribalism? Why utilise it so often?

It's interesting to me at least.

[2Stonedbirds]

So then why make noise about instituting a minimum wage if it will never be applied?

Who's gonna go in for that when you can simply hire off the books?

[ernie]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

US border patrol apprehended over 46,000 illegals trying to cross the southern US border in October alone. Those are just the people they caught. Rapidly declining or not that's insane.

illegals entering the states is down 90% in the last decade. The demographics have shifted significantly. Part of the decline is indeed better vigilance and apprehending those that cross. Which is what I said. But a wall doesn't change that. A very large chunk of those is still unaccompanied children fleeing turmoil which is also what the DHD said about the increased number...unaccompanied children's and partial families increased in line with the overall increas for the month. A good chunk of these people are asylum hopefuls that SEEK OUT border patrol agents to turn themselves in.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Nothing says "this argument has been settled for me" like repeatedly engaging in it.

I'm saying I actually think it should be engaged in again, because it's been a while and it may be approaching dead dogma status so there's a good argument that someone raising it is performing a public service... but I'm just not personally interested in doing it all again right now.

That far left comment though... it's funny. Is your quick dependency on categorisation any better than the same things the RL is accused of doing?

Nope.

Isn't this one of the huge problems that is being highlighted in the aftermath of the Trump election?

Yup.

Do we benefit overall by taking the individual views of someone, prescribing them a set category, and then generalising their views as being common with that entire category? Don't you reject this tactic both because it's uselessness and it's like to tribalism?

Yup.

You're totally right, which is why I put all the caveats in about labels being generally useless, about it just being a descriptor and having no actual content, and the fact that nothing substantive turns on the descriptor. It's a difficult problem because you need to use some sort of descriptive shorthand to describe an ideology without writing a treatise about it every time it's brought up; there's a recognizable political phenomenon, and you have to call it something. Hence the coining of "Regressive Left" - although incidentally I'm seeing on social media now that people are moving to the term "Ctrl-left", which is downright inspired.

But you're completely right that it just creates a new tribe and encourages people to revert to tribal modes. I think I talked about this problem a few pages back. It's almost the same argument that was made by a number of atheists against the term "atheist" a few years ago.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Even if there were no illegal labour to exploit, companies would simply shift to investing even more heavily in robotics and automation. That we heard little to no discussion in the election about technological growth and its role in job losses during the campaign was disappointing. Blaming free trade deals resonated more I guess, but if even China is losing manufacturing jobs to automation, maybe it's time Americans started having the conversation about whether technology is developing too fast and it's effect on Americans jobs.

[darockwilder]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Mexico.

And make them pay for it!

[Weitz]

Anyone have any figures for illegals working? Like percentages?

My Cousin does construction management in Texas and he says on a site with 1000 workers you might have 2-4 people working illegally. Its not easy to get construction work as an illegal (according to him).

[Tacopuck]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

You're totally right, which is why I put all the caveats in about labels being generally useless, about it just being a descriptor and having no actual content, and the fact that nothing substantive turns on the descriptor. It's a difficult problem because you need to use some sort of descriptive shorthand to describe an ideology without writing a treatise about it every time it's brought up; there's a recognizable political phenomenon, and you have to call it something. Hence the coining of "Regressive Left" - although incidentally I'm seeing on social media now that people are moving to the term "Ctrl-left", which is downright inspired.

I haven't seen this before but that is so perfect, on so many levels.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

US border patrol apprehended over 46,000 illegals trying to cross the southern US border in October alone. Those are just the people they caught. Rapidly declining or not that's insane.

You are aware of the reasons for those numbers? Those numbers are what they are because people from Central America are crossing and surrendering looking for asylum. They are not trying to sneak in. They are fleeing violence in their own countries and hoping to find asylum by surrendering to Border agents. This is also only up in one area, and it is intentional on the part of the people trying to come to the US.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by photon

Yesterday people get a little bit of hope when Trump says there might be some man made component to climate change.

Today Trump wants to defund NASA's earth science division, because he wants to crack down on "politicized science". Uh, if you want to crack down on science becoming politicized, then crack down on the politicization, not the science.

"Mr Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science."

Bob Walker, Trump's advisor 'claimed that doubt over the role of human activity in climate change “is a view shared by half the climatologists in the world. We need good science to tell us what the reality is and science could do that if politicians didn’t interfere with it.”'

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...hange-research

Trump’s Plan to Eliminate NASA Climate Research Is Ill-Informed and Dangerous

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astro..._research.html

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Weitz

Anyone have any figures for illegals working? Like percentages?

My Cousin does construction management in Texas and he says on a site with 1000 workers you might have 2-4 people working illegally. Its not easy to get construction work as an illegal (according to him).

I think it's like most other regulations (safety and whatnot) where larger projects with bigger budgets and more oversight tend to follow the rules very closely. In things like residential construction where it's just a contractor and a few employees it's a lot easier to hire whomever you want.

I go to California fairly regularly and one of the places I sometimes stay is right down the street from a spot where dozens of day laborers line up for work every morning and from what I've seen there's no shortage of construction and landscaping contractors willing to hire them. That said, day labor is certainly not exclusive to undocumented workers so I have no idea how many of those people are not legal residents.

[Fuzz]

Can't quote Troutman for some reason....

I've always wondered what NASA has to do with climate research anyway. Shouldn't that be with NOAA? Atmosphere is in their name!

[troutman]

What’s NASA got to do with climate change?
http://climate.nasa.gov/faq/

Earth is a planet too, and NASA is one of the biggest players in the Earth science arena, with broad expertise on observing our climate, especially from the vantage point of space. Today it spends over a billion dollars a year doing Earth science and has more than a dozen satellites in orbit around the planet watching the oceans, land, ice, atmosphere and biosphere.

In the 1970s, NASA’s planetary exploration budget fell dramatically. It was then that the agency really got into the business of studying our home planet from orbit. It was also a time when people were beginning to realize that our climate could change relatively fast, on the scale of the human lifespan. Today, we know that our climate is changing at an unprecedented rate and that humans are a key part of that change. NASA continues to launch new satellite missions, and is also relying on aircraft (manned and unmanned), as well as scientists on the ground, to take vital measurements of things like snowpack and hurricanes, augmenting the big-picture view we get from space.

NASA’s role is to make observations of our climate that can be used by the public, policymakers and to support strategic decisions. Its job is to do rigorous science. However, the agency does not promote particular climate policies.


READ MORE

• NASA’s role: Taking a global perspective on Earth’s climate

[Fuzz]

I'd just think NASA should stick to the tech and space exploration part, and leave monitoring the Earth to the agency that was setup for that...It would keep some of the politics out of it too.

[photon]

If they want to shuffle entire programs from one part of government to another ensuring they remain intact, that's fine, but of course that's not what they're planning to do.

How would moving it from one acronym to another keep the politics out?

[Fuzz]

I remember a year or so ago the Republicans were threatening to cut NASA's budget because of their climate research. It would shield NASA from that kind of politics. But I guess then NOAA would be at the pointy end of the stick....