[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
Not only does racism have something to do with it, it is all it is. Exposing racism is not the same as racism. Exposing privilege is not an attack on hard working white people. Privilege is not individual racism. It is systemic racism. That anyone in this country believes that it doesn’t exist is the problem. The solution is not for negroes to be quiet about it, as you may wish. The solution is to eliminate it.[/quote]

What is a reasonable solution to eliminate it. Offer one up. There is some level of racism that exists in the country, but I don’t see how the privileged white person is going to walk into the minority community and just fix it for them. We’ve had at least a generation of affirmative action, welfare and anti-discrimination laws, in an effort to give them a hand up and it apparently hasn’t amounted to much since there’s still so much racism in this country. The minority community needs to do some really hard work to modify it’s culture and it’s priorities because “Thug Life” is never going to mesh business culture.

Certainly you need to improve the relationship between cops and minorities. Certainly you probably need to examine various drug laws and imprisonment associated with them. Put a highly educated excellent teacher in a room full of minorities and they don’t respect them because they ain’t from the hood. Who’s responsible for that problem.

Has anybody in the minority communities offered up real concrete minor things that would help them. The college protesters have called for banning offensive speech (who cares about the first amendment), special minority only spaces (gee lets just go back to segregation guys), and more departments/administrative staff dedicated to cultural diversity (college doesn’t cost enough already, although it’s probably a promotion opportunity for minority professors). Most of that sounds like they want to live in their own little bubble.

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
He did not propose Obamacare “with a single payer option that didn’t materialize”. There was no version of the law that included single-payer. And if there had been a proposal like that, it probably would have been similar to medicare. Medicare is not socialized medicine. Despite actual facts, these lies were spread by his opponents, even on this very site. Hundreds of lies about what was in the law. That you, a reasonably well read guy, thinks this shit really happened, is telling. No other president in modern times, has been a victim of this visceral hate that knows no bounds.[/quote]

Well until Trump gets elected. Then it will even be worse.

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
Certainly, if he really wants more of a “socialist federally controlled country” and hates aspects of the constitution, he would have proposed legislation that supports those views. He hasn’t.
[/quote]

Of course he has. He produced a variety of gun measures that run counter to the 2nd amendment. You may find those proposals well intentioned and they may be viewed favorably to the majority of the population, but they they should be considered an attack on the second amendment. Especially to the conservative right, which is the group accusing him of hating America.

He proposed Obamacare with a single payer option that didn’t materialize in the final law but that would have certainly brought the country closer to socialist federal controller republic. You may support that outcome but it doesn’t change what the result means. It means we become more socialistic and less capitalistic.

[quote=SK in CV]
I think the reason that people argue that he hates America is that they’re racist. They don’t like having a black president. So they’ve made up lies to hide that racism. He hasn’t divided the country. The country has divided itself. On one side, you have people that are quite comfortable having a black president. On the other side, you have people who hate the idea. That he hasn’t brought those two sides together doesn’t make him divisive. It just exposes the latent racism that has been here for centuries. That racism has manifested itself as the republican party of today. Sadly, it is the perfect match with the bill of goods sold by Ronald Reagan, that the government is broken, can’t fix anything, and is the source of the problem. 35 years after making the argument, they’ve proved it by both making sure it is broken, and now have a candidate that plays into both the racist fears and absolute certainty that the government can’t help.[/quote]

I’m sure real racism has something to do with it for some people. I do think hard working white people are getting tired of being accused of white privilege and racism every time some minority fails. I think the Social Justice crowd might be wise to tone down those accusations because at some point if you accuse somebody as being a racist all the time they might just decide to be a racist. What’s the point of denying it, might as well embrace it.

[livinincali]

[quote=zk][quote=FlyerInHi]Zk, the reason Obama is deliberately hurting the country is because he’s Muslim and hates America.

The right wing has 2 narratives. 1) Obama is an incompetent idiot. 2) Obama knows exactly what he’s doing.

However, if he’s incompetent, he cannot know exactly.[/quote]

Thanks, Brian, but I want to hear from somebody who believes it. And “Obama hates America” isn’t enough, I want to know what they think is the reason he hates America.

“Because he’s a muslim” doesn’t really fly, either. Most muslims don’t hate America. I’d say only a very small percentage of them do. And I want to ask a believer (among many other questions) questions about their belief that he’s a muslim.

paramount? Anyone?[/quote]

I don’t think Obama hates America. I think he’d like to see America become more socialist federally controlled country. He might hate certain aspects of our constitution, the 2nd amendment comes to mind. He might like to see the 1st and 4th more limited. That’s probably where the Obama hates American rhetoric is coming from.

He hasn’t been all that effective at bringing the country together. It’s much more divided now than it was when he was elected. I think America is just sick and tired of the bought and paid for politician. He epitomizes that person and if there were a republican in the presidents role it would probably be similar rhetoric from the Democrats. I.e. Romney hates America because he sells it out to business special interests.

The political rhetoric always gets bad before an election. We got people here comparing Trump to Hilter and he’s a populist racist that’s going to set the country back 50 years in civil rights. I don’t know that Trump’s ever done anything in business that supports that view and talking negatively about illegal immigration doesn’t seem to justify that fear. He doesn’t have a track record in political office so it’s a bit of an unknown. Certainly some of his supporters would like to see that happen, but I don’t think most of them do.

I think the 2 most important issues for this country are fixing the costs associated with health care/education and re-establishing the rule of law (No more we’re above the law for businesses and special interests). Both of those involve standing up to the special interests and their large campaign contributions. I think Sanders and Trump would be the most effective at doing that. I don’t have a lot of faith in Clinton or the establishment republicans doing that.

[livinincali]

[quote=EconProf]
As Svelte points out, our oil production has increased because of fracking by more than the total increase by all OPEC nations.
Another result of our fracking revolution has been the attempt by the Saudi’s to kill our fracking by going all out on their production in order to keep world oil prices down. Their thinking is that, since fracking wells start to become uneconomic when prices fall too much, they would drive American fracking operations out of business. In fact, many of our wells that need a $50 or more price of oil to break even have already shut down. Some that have a breakeven point at $40 or $30 are still open. There is a one-time expense to either shut down or reopen such a well, so some are still producing at a small loss in hopes prices have bottomed out and will keep recovering, as they have lately.
BTW, it is nice that we have lots of wells shut down that could reopen if prices climb above $50. That will put somewhat of a damper on price hikes in the future.
Obviously, other factors are also keeping oil prices down, such as weak demand from the worldwide growth slowdown.[/quote]

Many of the companies in this space borrowed tons on money to buy equipment and they will likely be bankrupt at some point. What the creditors do with the well assets remains to be seen. Probably Exxon or Chevron will buy them for pennies on the dollar and will be able to produce those fracking wells at $20 or $30/barrel profitably because they bought the assets so cheap.

[livinincali]

[quote=flu]Well, I have to congratulate Trump. He’s managed to undo any sort of progress America has made towards equality.

Welcome back to the 50ies-60ies….

Fairfax students taunt classmates ‘When Trump is president, you’ll be deported

http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/fairfax/fairfax-students-taunt-classmates-when-trump-is-president-youll-be-deported/74102571

http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article63230367.html

You know the shit is really bad when even Faux News is not spinning this in a positive light.

If what the say is true about “Lead by Example”, we’re really screwed if Donald is President.

I’m sorry to say this, but the GOP deserve to lose the white house in 2016. Any but that would be terribly disappointing.[/quote]

I’m not sure why we equate illegal immigration with legal immigration. Whom among the working class segment of a America benefits from illegal immigration. Do we really want to open our borders to un-vetted Middle East refugees, more H1-B visas and low skilled Latino workers. What purpose does it serve other than some sort of feel good moral superiority complex. It creates more competition for jobs and lower wages. It doesn’t seem to make much economic sense for the common middle class American.

It’s bad if we assume and treat every Latino person as an illegal, but I don’t see Trump advocating that position.

[livinincali]

[quote=svelte]
I’m thinking that autonomous vehicles will stoke a new type of no-fault insurance. If the vehicle is truly driverless, then the owner can’t totally be at fault. Vehicle producers surely won’t want to be held responsible. What does that leave?[/quote]

I suppose it’s possible but I think the courts will probably try to keep this as simple as possible. Think about something like the Firestone tire controversy with Ford’s back in the day. When those vehicles crashed because of a tire failure the auto insurance paid out those claims. It was the owner’s liability. After the fact people and insurance companies sued Firestone to recover losses from the tire failures. I think the same thing would happen here. If the software is found to be critically flawed in a particular way the maker of the software will be sued. If it’s a one off glitch then it will be the vehicle owners insurance that will just pay off the claim. Same as it would if you get in an accident because your tire randomly blew out.

[livinincali]

[quote=AN]Vast majority is not good enough. Not when they suppose to replace human driving but won’t take on the liability. If a person have an accident, then at least one of those drivers involved are at fault and their insurance goes up. Who’s at fault when the computer make mistake? This is not assisted driving, this is autonomous driving. Which means it has to take into account all situation and be able to react as well or better than a human who’s paying attention.[/quote]

I think the owner of the autonomous vehicle would be the one to bear the cost. I don’t see any new laws where autonomous cars will be able to forgo getting insurance. Auto insurance is required by law in most states. The insurance companies might have a hard time pricing insurance initially but once they have the stats it wouldn’t surprise me if autonomous car insurance is less than human driver insurance. That will ensure the takeover happens even faster.

[livinincali]

[quote=spdrun]Having a cumpootah drive might be better on the highway — I don’t see it in the city, yet, until it can interact with humans and their vehicles appropriately.[/quote]

Google’s already driven over 1 million miles on city streets. This crash is the first one where they admitted fault although their vehicles have been involved in other accidents where presumably it wasn’t they fault.

https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/

[livinincali]

[quote=moneymaker]If I get out again I will have made 4% in the last 2 months, not bad.[/quote]

If you get out today. In a week or 2 the market could be 5% higher, 5% lower or relatively the same.

[livinincali]

I think it’s a lot closer to being a reality than not. People are so fearful of this software but it seems like it will be better than the distracted driver. I’d rather have a machine driving next to me rather the fool that is texting, putting on makeup, eating, drunk, falling asleep, or whatever else. At least the machine is paying attention. It will also get even safer and more efficient when a large portion of the fleet is automated. Will there be some glitches and accidents. Sure but look at what we have now.

[livinincali]

[quote=FlyerInHi]
There are ways to mitigate that, if only we had the willingness to do it.

Free, or nearly free public transport? That would spur so a lot of infrastructure investment and change the face of urban planning.[/quote]

Nothing is free. The money for improving public transportation or making if free to use has to come from somewhere. Maybe you can shift the burden onto the wealthy to some degree, but it isn’t free.

[livinincali]

[quote=FlyerInHi]
The email is thing is nothing. So is Benghazi.
That shows that the Republican base those stories are targeted at know nothing about government.

Plenty of other government officials used private email accounts. Certainly, they didn’t have the resources to have their own servers, but they certainly used yahoo, gmail, and AOL and CompuServe before that.
[/quote]

Last time I checked the FBI doesn’t spend resources investigating nothing and I also don’t believe the FBI works for the republican party.

The point isn’t that government workers use google and yahoo email for their private matters. The problem is transmitting classified information in those channels.

[livinincali]

[quote=bearishgurl]I think Trump and Cruz made a backroom deal to force Rubio out after he loses his home state of FL in the primaries next week. They want Rubio’s voter base added to their own SINGLE campaign when they start campaigning together.[/quote]

I really don’t see Trump picking Cruz as a running mate. It could happen to make sure the hard right shows up at the polls, but you don’t have to fear the hard right voting for Clinton or Sanders.

Surprisingly Sanders actually won Michigan which is a little outside of his local sphere of influence. I still think Clinton has the nomination won especially with the Super delegate situation the democrats use in the nomination process. It’s probably up to the FBI and Attorney General to keep her from being the democratic candidate although I don’t know that the FBI is going to be done with the case by the end of July. It could get rather ugly down the stretch if she’s the nominee but also recommended for prosecution.

[livinincali]

[quote=poorgradstudent]

Yeah, I mean, in science you always need to be skeptical of any one individual data point. Science is littered with studies that were never reproducible for one reason or another.

But when ALL the data points in the same direction, it makes a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty strong case, even if there’s always cause to keep looking closer.[/quote]

Have you actually looked at some of the stuff the skeptics have produced. This guy went back into old studies and shows how newer studies actually lower the past temperatures to make if look like there’s a larger warming tend then there really is. The past temperatures didn’t change. There’s no reason to adjust them unless you are trying to make you CO2 model work out when it isn’t working out.

http://realclimatescience.com/history-of-nasanoaa-temperature-corruption/

He provides links to the actual older studies so I don’t think he’s just making this stuff up, but who knows. Climate change/global warming is becoming a religion or belief system. Not believing in climate change is blasphemous. I want real science not people with agendas screwing with the data to fit their models to keep the grant money rolling in.

We should put some significant effort into Thorium nuclear. It’s clearly the best option in the short term. I agree that we shouldn’t just use more oil for the sake of using more oil, but oil based products are really hard to beat for travel purposes. Electric cars can be good for commuting, but considering most people are going to be plugging them in when they get home from work it’s getting it’s electricity from a fossil fuel power plant somewhere. Public transportation is good as well but the west coast just isn’t that well designed for public transport.

The bottom line is there’s a huge economic investment that has to happen to do any of this and in most cases it will hit the lower middle class and poorest the worst. A new car payment, a new gas tax, higher electricity prices all hit them harder than it would hit me or you.

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