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| [USA] Election Topic; For the 2012 USA presidential election | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 12 2012, 03:27 PM (2,070 Views) | |
| Polychrome | Nov 16 2012, 06:05 PM Post #51 |
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Which is the real reason Romney went in the game with a huge handicap. Even with the argument of state-level vs. fed-level, this would cause conservatives who would normally be showing up in droves to vote out the incumbent to simply not bother with voting...which is exactly what happened. Conservatives need to quit acting out of fear. Fear of the "unelectable" inevitably ends up with loss. Romney was nominated out of fear that anyone else was "too conservative", making them "Unelectable". Well, I have to agree with the radio hosts on this one: People keep talking about x or y social group vote, but they need their base: The conservative vote. If you've lost your own electoral base, then it doesn't matter whether you convince x or y social group. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. With that said, it seems Conservatives are less likely to vote strategically. I know we gotta have our principles and whatnot (Romney was far from my first choice), but the reason libs are taking over is because they've taken over socially in baby-steps, not in an outright revolution. There's a lot of young idealists out there, all of which who have had little to watch or read but a plethora of outright propoganda in the last 20 or so years. They'll vote for any candidate with a "D" next to their name, because in their eyes, conservatives are a bunch of old white guys sitting in a mansion and need to be taken down. I apologize, nothing against 3rd party candidates, but they don't stand a chance against that. Meanwhile, I wanted to slam my head against my desk at work overhearing a chatty group of libertarians who were going all out for Gary Johnston. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all, but if Romney's chances were low, his were non-existent. This is where the baby steps come in. A candidate may not represent everything you personally like, but try to vote for one that has half a chance of winning. So, in conclusion: Conservative politicians need to cater to their base. Conservative voters need to learn to vote stratetically. IMO, that's the only Compromise conservatives need to make at this time. And third, Conservatives need to voice their opinions a bit more in public. I realize it's been a virtue as old as time not to get political, but not being upfront with your beliefs makes only the media-slandered stereotypes stick out. It's NOT impossible. The whole global warming scam (yes, it is a scam) has been dealt a serious blow in the last 6 or so years, to the point that politicians dare not bring it up (too much) in elections. Granted, they may try to impose their beliefs after the point, but it has lost a lot of credibility in the public eye, and THAT is what is important! All I know is this: I really want to give the whole "be careful what you wish for" speech to my country. Because if last week's announcements of business policies and closings are any indicator, we're about to get it. Big time. ![]() Anywho, there's my soapbox for the day. I aplogize, as I imagine I ruffled a few feathers here... I'm just so darned sick of the socialist crap, and until conservatives stop fighting each other and look at the real issues, we'll never defeat it. |
| Any crash you can walk away from is a good one! -Launchpad McQuack | |
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| Backroads | Nov 16 2012, 06:35 PM Post #52 |
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Proclaimer of Book Wisdom
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Eh, Poly, you're fine. I think I find myself in an idealistic setting because I KNOW just who my state will select and figure I don't have much power in voting strategically on that high a level. And yeah, conservatives should be a heck of a lot more vocal. |
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| Night Fury | Nov 16 2012, 09:51 PM Post #53 |
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Romney was always doomed as a conservative candidate, but I think he might have actually had a chance if he'd kept his moderate image from his days as governor. His attempts to woo conservatives only ended up losing him the undecided vote. Those swing voters disenfranchised by Obama's failure to deliver on all of his promises could have been easy pickings for a more moderate Romney. I think he realized that in the final days of the campaign, but by then it was too late to reverse course. I question whether the conservative base is large enough to sustain the Republican party on its own. I don't think that the current trend toward social libertarianism is going to end any time soon. Republicans are fighting a losing battle on social issues, which makes their flip-flops seem like desperation. They need to keep their focus on fiscal reforms instead of social issues. Gary Johnson is smart -- he attracts disenfranchised Republicans, fiscally conservative/socially liberal Democrats, and die hard Libertarians. I don't believe that global warming is a scam, but I think that some very influential people have used and abused the theory for their own gain. The media was keen on hyping the theory for ratings from the very start, often peddling unscientific claims and fringe worst-case scenarios. The general public, by and large, bought into the hype. But when those media-fueled doomsday scenarios didn't materialize, they believed that the scientific community (rather than the media) had let them down. It was really the mass media that had hijacked the science from the very start, but sadly most people are not educated enough to see that. The general public relies on the media to decipher the scientific jargon and put it in layman's terms, but the media sold us out for a quick buck. *edited for clarity Edited by Night Fury, Nov 17 2012, 03:23 AM.
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| AvannaK | Nov 17 2012, 05:35 AM Post #54 |
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Agent of the Alterverse
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Yeah, Romney lost his footing quite a bit in the end. Night Fury has a lot of good points that I completely agree with. The Republican party is certainly lacking unity these days, as well as moderation. The conservatives who are most outspoken are so unappealingly extreme, which is quite a turn off to those who are on the fence about it. I think it's a bit contributing factor for why they're having trouble getting serious votes. It's a bit sad because I feel we could really use a strong Republican party rather than what has become, in my opinion, a bit of a backwards joke. While I'm relatively liberal on a lot of social issues I also wish the Republican Party would focus more on their fiscal agenda. I feel like I had less of a choice to make for this election and the problem is I want more of one. I want to look at what the Republican side was offering seriously instead of having to roll my eyes and vote for the party that would screw our society over less. I did vote for Obama because he was one of the two options that stood a chance at making presidency and I wanted my vote to at least count for something. Of course, being from Mass, my personal vote probably didn't matter much. Don't get me wrong. I am not a fan of this PC movement. I think my generation is over sensitive and needs a kick in the ass. But I'm also anti-fanatic and think a lot of "traditions" my country has are due to run their course. I'm just on the side of logic. Erm... I won't really comment on the 'global warming is a hoax' thing since I want to keep this place friendly and I tend to treat those comments with the same regard as I treat the 'evolution isn't real' thing. :| Again, I'm resonating with Night Fury here on how it's played up by the media but definitely isn't something we should ignore. Then again, I plan on being dead by the time we really screw things up. |
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| Polychrome | Nov 17 2012, 06:41 AM Post #55 |
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Well, I don't blame you (or even the loud libertarians at work) too much. At least they're speaking their mind. It did feel a bit wasted here in New Mexico, though. On the plus side, I have a hunch Suzanna Martinez will run one of these days, and the prospect of that is quite exciting. (I don't think we've ever had a New Mexico president.) Nice try, Avanna. There's nothing wrong with Evolution and it has nothing to do with whether or not people are making it hot outside. It's just a means of explaining how we got from point A to point B. Once people start understanding that science and religion have nothing to do with each other and explain entirely different things (one explains how and one explains why), that straw man will die the horribly painful death it deserves and all our lives will be better for it.Anywho... Global warming as a man-made phenomenon is indeed a scam. This isn't Bigfoot here. Most of the "science" behind global warming is just experiments on what'll happen if the temperature does rise, usually by otherwise-irrelevent professors trying to get their next grant. No proof or connection whatsoever has ever been found between CO2 and hot weather, other than both make plants extremely happy. In fact, we're in a period of cooling right now and the Medeval warming period was hot enough to grow oranges in Northern Europe. (And people in hotter climates thrived in that time period!) The world will warm and cool depending on outside conditions, all evidence points to it being cyclical, and humans have little to nothing to do with it. That's the practical answer. Well, that and weather vanes used to detect "global warming" are typically kept near air conditioner compressors. It's a great way to find a nice, convenient spot of heat. Also, for a good read: http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/hockey-stick-posts/ There's a good explanation of the debunking of the infamous "hockey stick", which is hugely responsible for most of the belief in a global warming "consensus", including the source code used in said graph. I remember blogs full of people running things like football scores through the code and getting the same result. It's designed to get that "hockey stick" no matter what the "evidence" is. For what it's worth, the so-called record temperatures have resulted in unheard-of hard-freezes here in New Mexico, to the point that natural gas lines froze solid in early 2011, leaving much of the state without heat in artic conditions. Same thing happened to Texas. Anecdotal, admittedly, but I've noticed similar situations all over the place in the last few years. (Wow, actually talking about these things feels good. I should do it more often!) |
| Any crash you can walk away from is a good one! -Launchpad McQuack | |
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| AvannaK | Nov 17 2012, 08:37 AM Post #56 |
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Agent of the Alterverse
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Erm, this is an ignorable post. Just scroll past the language or delete it if need be. Spoiler: click to toggle |
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| Night Fury | Nov 17 2012, 05:23 PM Post #57 |
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I'm not a global warming fanatic or anything, but I have studied atmospheric science in college and I've done some work in weather data collection, so I'm not completely ignorant about the science.Actually, the basic science behind the theory is very sound: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect Assuming that is true, a short cooling trend of a few years does not invalidate Global Warming. Even in the presence of a warming signal, not every year will show successive warming over the last. In a chaotic system there is always a "signal to noise ratio" -- the signal represents the long term trend, and the noise is the short term variations that must be averaged out to reveal the trend. This article goes into good detail on the issue: http://news.discovery.com/earth/no-global-warming-hasnt-stopped-121017.html There is also some evidence of melting ice in the arctic is disrupting global circulation patterns, leading to colder than usual weather in some areas, and warmer weather in others. But the arctic itself has been experiencing record warmth and record low summer sea ice coverage in recent years. Compounding the problem further is that fact that open water has a lower albedo (reflectivitity) than ice, which means that less solar radiation is reflected back into space, causing a positive feedback loop. Proponents of Global Warming do not deny that the Earth warms and cools cyclically, but conclude that human activity is causing additional warming -- which might normally occur over several hundred or thousand years -- to occur at a more rapid pace. That's not what I'd call typical placement based on in my experience in the field. Yes, it is true that not all temperature sensors are ideally sited, but there have been studies that filtered out the warming influence of buildings and other man-made surfaces, and shown that a warming signal still exists. And many rural stations (away from man-made influences) have shown an noticeable increase over the last century. Didn't Texas (and most of the US) also just experience one of their hottest summers on record? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/10/2012-warmest-year-summer-record-breaking_n_1871216.html These cold and warm events in isolation neither prove nor disprove Global Warming. The effects of warming are not predicted to be uniform. Some areas of the planet may actually experience cooling for several decades before the warming signal becomes strong enough to overcome localized distortions. One byproduct of warming is increased local cloud formation, which blocks the sun's rays and may cause cooler temperatures in some area, particularly during the day. Of course, there is always a caveat -- temperatures may actually increase at night because the same clouds prevent heat from radiating back into space. Subjectively, people are more likely to notice the cooler days and less likely to notice the uptick in nighttime temperatures, leading them to conclude that the temperature is cooling when in fact it is doing the exact opposite. Edited by Night Fury, Nov 17 2012, 05:25 PM.
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| Polychrome | Nov 17 2012, 07:19 PM Post #58 |
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I'll just snip and get right to the point. The point isn't that Albuquerque freezing is proof of anything, and I said as much. (Anecdotal evidence I said, yes?) However, with everybody always commenting on how much "hotter" it supposedly is: 1. There was a sharp cooling period before the 80s, to the point that everyone was utterly panicked that the entire world would have a hard freeze that we wouldn't escape from, for the same reasons they currently blame Global Warming on. With that in mind, of COURSE it's hotter than people remember! 2. A lot of data that we have on the past is due to indirect measurements (such as tree rings and glaciers), before people started to really record this sort of stuff for the sake of recording it. A lot of this data is superimposed on data from other sources, and "inconvenient" data is snipped if it doesn't fit the pre-set conclusion. This is not science. In order to be science, it must be disprovable and evidence against your case must be taken alongside the good so that people can decide for themselves what it means. If your science is solid, you shouldn't have to throw data out or deny peer review to make your case. If it isn't, you try to find the "correct" answer. Skeptics keep that under consideration. Warmists do not. That is why skeptics are skeptics. They understand science as a process to find an answer, not one to prove your hypothesis by any means. 3. The problem with "positive feedback" is it doesn't exist. If it did, there should be a "hot spot" in the atmosphere for the "trapped" heat. It does not exist. Good explanation: http://sciencespeak.com/MissingSignature.pdf A simpler "quick" one: http://joannenova.com.au/2008/10/the-missing-hotspot/ 4. You cannot seriously tell me that colder = hotter, under any circumstances. The fact is, winter is supposed to be cold, because we are turned away from the sun, and for the same reason, summer is supposed to be hot, because we are turned toward it. The atmosphere is not a stationary thing, it is always moving and changing, and hot and cold temps will move around the world, especially when El Nino and La Nina have their say. It has nothing to do with humans putting out CO2. It has been doing that as long as the earth's been around. If you want extremes, look at the moon. That has little or no atmosphere. The temperature where the sun hits is over 100 celcius, whereas where the sun does not hit it is far in the opposite. Look at far-hotter periods in the earth's distant past. CO2 didn't initiate the warming, it followed it. Why? Because plant and animal life thrived. If anything, the atmosphere protects us from things getting too crazy. Back to Avannak: I'm not insinuating that humans need not be responsible. However, there is a lot of outright propoganda and lies that go into the whole Global Warming thing, *especially* in schools. If I look back on my school years, all they really said was "Yup. Global Warming. People are causing it, too much CO2 turns the atmosphere into a big glass bubble. Now let's watch a documentary on how it affects animals..." People caught in the middle are worst off, IMO. The problem is, nobody in the Global Warming deal is out to find science. They are started with a set conclusion, and will do anything they can to prove it. This is why Darwin and Mendell are science, and Global Warming is religion in the worst sense. Darwin and Mendell came up with theories that are testable by anyone and even continue to prove new and interesting facts today. The hypothesis Darwin set out to prove was squished in his face, and he came home with a whole new set of science we all depend on. Mendell just happened upon some interesting stuff and experimented with it, but did it explode in this century or what? Global Warming is just a bunch of alarmists doing anything they can to prove their original conclusion was right all along so they can claim they're higher and mightier than the rest of us. I'll be honest, I was convinced of it until learning about the whole cooling thing in the 70s. Then I did my homework. The fact is, there's a *lot* of disagreement within the scientific community, to the point that if there's anything that needs to be taught in school, it's that there is disagreement. Science isn't always solid. Just look at astrophysics. Scientists still don't agree on how much of Einstein's stuff to keep or throw out. He was mostly correct, but there's still a lot of variables we aren't sure of. The only reason progress is made is *because* the field is so higly contested, and that the scientists are always working to find the better answers. |
| Any crash you can walk away from is a good one! -Launchpad McQuack | |
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| Tasermon's Partner | Nov 17 2012, 08:34 PM Post #59 |
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Not to turn this into a thread 'bout global warming, but yes, it is real, and it is man-made. You can argue 'bout concentrations and effects of CO2 and other gasses all ya want but the simple matter of fact is in last 200 years we've destroyed over 60% of the world's forests, over 80% of the world's grasslands and prairies, 90% of the world's wetlands and bogs, and half the coral reefs. You don't wipe out half the planet's major ecosystems and then expect the climate not to change. No offense to anyone who believes otherwise, but that's just silly. Destroying over half the world's forests does effect the climate. Once again, I don't wanna sound antagonistic or confrontational in any way, but that's just kind of a "duh" thing. Alotta people like to focus on greenhouse gasses, but the truth is, the biggest contributor to climate change is land use. Plus, many of the ecosystems we've wiped out were huge carbon sinks to begin with, so without their "buffering", any effects as a result from greenhouse gasses are going to be much worse and happen much more quickly. Sorry if this post sounds antagonistic or reproachful in any way, I mean no offense to anyone who believes differently, I'm just expressing my own viewpoint on the subject. Sorry.
Edited by Tasermon's Partner, Nov 17 2012, 08:47 PM.
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| Polychrome | Nov 18 2012, 06:51 AM Post #60 |
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No, you expect plant and animal life to change. That's like claiming taking a sledgehammer to my computer is going to give it a virus. Both are different issues entirely. Both might make a computer inoperable. There may even be a correlation (as people with computer viruses may be tempted to sledgehammer their computers), but correlation does not mean causation. Extinction is a genuine problem, but education about that has been improving for decades. We also have the distinct advantage of humans no longer feeling like they are at war with nature. (Often a problem in centuries past.) It is a real problem with real-world solutions that don't involve hollywood fat cats scaring the populace with tales of Armageddon while they themselves live in mansions stocked with 100watt bulbs that are always on while being driven around in limos, and telling the rest of us we have to pay confessions and live like we're in a 3rd world country. Still, caution must be taken. For example, a tree farmer who discovers an endangered animal on his property might quickly cut everything down before the animal is discovered so that his livelihood will not be confiscated. It sounds cruel, but this is a genuine issue born of overzealousness, and happens far too often. If the farmer were worked with logically and encouraged rather than kicked off his land (something that shouldn't even happen in the US IMO), crap like this wouldn't happen. Being overzealous is not being responsible. You make situations worse by overstepping. What happened when Obama was reelected and all hope of an Obamacare repeal died? Many businesses cut all their employees' hours to part time so that they would not be forced into Obamacare. You hit somebody, they defend themselves. And now a heck of a lot of people who were previously lucky enough to have full-time work are going to be looking for a second job. Good luck to 'em! I want to be clear. I think humans should live responsibly. But if you really want to "save the world", the billions of dollars we waste on what is essentially a massive, worldwide boondoggle (much of it pocketed by corrupt politicians) is beyond irresponsible. That money could be better spent on improving life for starving people in other countries and getting them better equipment, clean water, food, and education, so that they don't feel the need to cut down forests or hunt animals to extinction to feed their children for a day. Besides, I think if we had the power to change the weather, it would have been boxed and sold by now. (For whatever price that might have fetched.) So if you genuinely care, donate significant amounts to charities that handle this sort of thing. (I do!) Your money will be far better spent than by some politician who will inevitably pocket your tax money for his reelection funds so that he can wreck some random average schmuck's life in the name of "progress". (Eh, let's face it, I derailed the thread. I'll go troutslap myself after this post.) Edited by Polychrome, Nov 18 2012, 06:52 AM.
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There's nothing wrong with Evolution and it has nothing to do with whether or not people are making it hot outside. It's just a means of explaining how we got from point A to point B. Once people start understanding that science and religion have nothing to do with each other and explain entirely different things (one explains how and one explains why), that straw man will die the horribly painful death it deserves and all our lives will be better for it.

4:45 AM Jul 11