Politics

[irishog77]

I'm not sure it can be fixed. Pat Deenen, a professor at ND, recently published a great article on the real division within the American Church; it's not about right v. left (regardless of what Fox News reports), but about whether liberal democracy is fundamentally compatible with Catholicism at all. I definitely lean toward Deenen, McIntyre (another badass ND prof), and Schindler in thinking it's not.

Besides, I've got my hands full trying to shield my kids from the consumerist nihilism most of the country is swimming in, and finding wholesome and challenging alternatives for them. If the GOP decides federalism and religious freedom are worth fighting for, they'll have my support. But as things stand now, I'd just be an impotent voice in the wilderness.



I can't remember the last time Arizona had a competitive Republican primary. Such is republicanism; individual votes are worth far more in some states than in others.



One could argue a second viable party hasn't been on offer in this country for decades (if ever); just different flavors of liberalism. And registering with the GOP means: (1) I'd have to self-identify as a Republican; and (2) I'd start receiving all sorts of obnoxious mail from Reince Priebus and other partisan hacks. That's harmful to my sense of self-respect.



Random aside: Jack McCain went to my high school, and I tutored him in Latin. I wasn't allowed to be directly compensated for my services, but I did receive a $250 gift card to Best Buy as a "Christmas gift". Paid for my PS2. Thanks, John!

Wizards, Whiskey expressed my feelings on this matter much better than I right here.


Also, I'd probably do McCain's daughter.

 

[irishog77]

I do not disagree with anything you said in this post. I didn't say that my observation was how it SHOULD be, but instead how it is. It is unfortunate, indeed, that people aren't a bit more politically aware in this country. While I do not believe Rand Paul is the best candidate, I think we could (and have) done worst in our history. I think that given the reality that we live in, the one you described above, beliieving that Rand Paul is going to win is not unlike the homer feeling that comes across most of us leading into every football season. We might want to believe so badly that they have a chance to grab the brass ring, but a few trips around the merry go round and we all come down to reality. I personally would like to clean political house and start from scratch with a whole new set of Congressmen, Senators, Justices and a President who have not been corrupted by the system. But, that too is a pipe dream. All we really have is the reality that we have, and in that reality, Rand Paul's chances of winning are slim to none.

* I didn't take any offense to your post at all, no worries.

Agreed.

And thinking along those lines, I still can't fathom the animosity the left has for the tea party. I'm no tea partier, but I certainly sympathize(ed) with them. It was a grass roots movement, began and started by the people, to alter the status quo of our government...at every level. Stop the corporate welfare, stop the ridiculous tax codes, make government useful, and quit building inefficient bureaucratic government as a business. That was the basis for the movement, anyway. Even before they picked up steam, they were quickly dismissed by the left/media. Then when the left developed occupy wall street, and similarities were shown between them and the tea party, true anger ensued.

Why on earth would the left be against a populist movement that wanted to alter government as we know it, giving back more of it to the people??

Now, some of the people that have emerged from the tea party and some of its decisions once it became a "thing," an entity of its own, have certainly left something to be desired, but the left's actions and words toward the tea party screams of ignorance...or an underlying desire to not actually give the government back to the people.

That's my take anyway.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Why on earth would the left be against a populist movement that wanted to alter government as we know it, giving back more of it to the people??

Probably because left-leaning media outlets are just as invested in the power structure as those on the right. Conor Friedersdorf just published an article about this today in The Atlantic:

If my friends and I were billionaires, we'd probably throw a party for ourselves at least once a year. Boy, would it be more fun than gathering in tuxedos at a hotel ballroom for a rack-of-lamb dinner, frat-boy jokes, and a lame amateur talent show. That's what happens at the annual group dinner of Kappa Beta Phi, where typical attendees include "many of the most famous investors in the world, including executives from nearly every too-big-to-fail bank, private equity megafirm, and major hedge fund," says journalist Kevin Roose, who snuck into the event in 2012.

The group included "many of the executives whose firms had collectively wrecked the global economy ... and they were laughing off the entire disaster in private, as if it were a long-forgotten lark," he wrote, noting that one skit was "a self-congratulatory parody of ABBA's 'Dancing Queen' called 'Bailout King.'" The night "amounted to a gigantic middle finger to Main Street," he added, concluding that Wall Street plutocrats are divorced from reality. "No self-aware and socially conscious Wall Street executive would have agreed to be part of a group whose tacit mission is to make light of the financial sector’s foibles," he declared. "Not when those foibles had resulted in real harm to millions of people in the form of foreclosures, wrecked 401(k)s, and a devastating unemployment crisis."

He sounds more shocked than I would've been. The night was obviously in terrible taste. But was it any worse than President Obama joking about killing the Jonas Brothers with a drone? Or a Dick Cheney roast featuring jokes about his war crimes? Depraved humor can be harmless at times, too. Hang around a bunch of firefighters or doctors or teachers long enough and you'll hear tasteless utterances.

What isn't harmless are the subset of villains on Wall Street, the havoc that they wrought, or the socialized losses they imposed on us. Reminded of their misdeeds, Rod Dreher wonders why America seems to be back to business as usual:

Those elites get away with it because we either don’t know what to do about them, or can’t muster the political focus and will to do anything at all about them. After the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, we couldn’t even get a proper Pecora Commission. Then again, Pecora got to be Pecora because the American public of the 1930s demanded it. Us? Not so much. Why not? ... What has changed about American culture to make us so unserious about these things?

By way of an answer, I want to challenge the premise of the question. The financial crisis triggered substantial grassroots movements on the right and the left.

The Tea Party reshaped the United States Congress. Occupy Wall Street inspired tens or hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets, and many thousands to camp out in the centers of numerous U.S. cities. The people behind these populist protest movements were earnest in their civic concerns and serious enough to spend time and money on organizing the like-minded.

Why have their protests been ineffective so far?

There are so many reasons, and some of them involve flaws in the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street themselves. I've written myself about their various shortcomings.

But their shortcomings should never have distracted us from their most valid critiques, any more than scattered "Bush = Hitler" signs at 2002 anti-Iraq War rallies should've distracted us from the fact that invading the country was bad geopolitics.

There are a lot of reasons that elites keep their place at the top even after being party to catastrophic failures. One reason is their success in delegitimizing their critics. There's often a lot of material to work with. If you spent any time at an Occupy Wall Street camp, you met a lot of great people, a number of ignorant protest groupies, and committees that chose the least workable form of group governance imaginable. Tea Party rallies were filled with both competents and crazies too. As were anti-war rallies.

The public was right to be wary of flaws and excesses, but anyone who dismissed these groups entirely because of them was part of the problem. And that was pretty common. For some reason, the press is complicit in a system by which groups challenging elites are deemed unserious due to the presence of any incompetent or radical fringe ... whereas, say, presiding over 9/11, and then responding with a radical program of torture and a catastrophic war gets a president reelected and celebrated; and a Wall Street meltdown is followed by a bailout and record bonuses. To be taken seriously, those who critique elites must be without flaws, whereas the elites themselves are forgiven their most egregious errors in judgment.

A similar dynamic is playing out with Edward Snowden.

Higher-ups in the NSA have retained their jobs despite perjury, an unprecedented theft of U.S. data due to inadequate security procedures, international embarrassment, furious legislators, and numerous constitutional violations. Yet many side with the NSA rather than Snowden because, as they explain it, he fled to Russia, took more documents than he absolutely needed, and sounds arrogant. They wanted a whistleblower like Mary Poppins: practically perfect.

Well, the people who critique elites are seldom perfect. Let's stop making that a deal-breaker.

 

[chicago51]

Agreed.

And thinking along those lines, I still can't fathom the animosity the left has for the tea party. I'm no tea partier, but I certainly sympathize(ed) with them. It was a grass roots movement, began and started by the people, to alter the status quo of our government...at every level. Stop the corporate welfare, stop the ridiculous tax codes, make government useful, and quit building inefficient bureaucratic government as a business. That was the basis for the movement, anyway. Even before they picked up steam, they were quickly dismissed by the left/media. Then when the left developed occupy wall street, and similarities were shown between them and the tea party, true anger ensued.

Why on earth would the left be against a populist movement that wanted to alter government as we know it, giving back more of it to the people??

Now, some of the people that have emerged from the tea party and some of its decisions once it became a "thing," an entity of its own, have certainly left something to be desired, but the left's actions and words toward the tea party screams of ignorance...or an underlying desire to not actually give the government back to the people.

That's my take anyway.

The Tea Party was propped up by billionaires. It is an an astroturf corporate funded organzitation that relies heavily on corporate cash rather than genuine activism.

Quick history on the Tea Party. First off its orgins started long before wall street talking head Rick Santelli went off in Feb 09 about Obama potentially bailing out the homeowners like FDR did saying "we need a tea party!".

Back in the 90s tobacco companies formed alliances with other organizations in hopes of fighting back against emerging antismoking agenda in Congress. They funeled millios of dollars in CSE "citizens for a sound economy" which also took up other anti tax and anti public health regulation causes to form what they called a "new boston tea party". One its most prominent founders was economic royalist David Koch.

Ultimately the tobacco companies went down and got hit with a huge $200 billion settlement. However in 2002 David Koch CSE organizations in 2002 purchased a website domain name: USTeaParty.com. The plans for this were put on hold because George W Bush was doing all the things the royalist wanted with lower taxes and deregulation of the environment as unlike grass roots conservatives the bilionaires really don't care about the deficit.

However once the elites crashed the economy and Obama came to town the so called Tea Party was revivied. CSE by this time had split off into "Americans for Prosperity" and "Freedom Works".

So yes there may be genuine grass roots activism but this is not a grass roots movement. It is a billionaire funded movement.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

The Tea Party was propped up by billionaires. It is an an astroturf corporate funded organzitation that relies heavily on corporate cash rather than genuine activism.

Similar accusations were made about Soros and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

For every corporate boogeyman you see on the Right, there's an equally pernicious set of deep pockets on the Left. Claiming that the original Tea Partiers were shills while the Occupy protesters were true activists is just blinkered partisanship.

 

[chicago51]

Similar accusations were made about Soros and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

For every corporate boogeyman you see on the Right, there's an equally pernicious set of deep pockets on the Left. Claiming that the original Tea Partiers were shills while the Occupy protesters were true activists is just blinkered partisanship.

For sure I agree 100%.

Quick aside: I think Occupy personally was/is very incoherent on what exactly they want and believe. Sort of just saying "I'm mad and I'm blaming you".

Believe it or not I don't hate or even envy multi millionaires and billionaires. I just think there are times when what is best for 90% or more of the country may not be best for them. Secondly and most importantly I worry about how American democracy survives when there is little to no restraint on money being used to influence our democracy.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Quick aside: I think Occupy personally was/is very incoherent on what exactly they want and believe. Sort of just saying "I'm mad and I'm blaming you".

The early Tea Party gatherings were similarly unfocused. But you're right that it has since been hijacked and branded.

Believe it or not I don't hate or even envy multi millionaires and billionaires. I just think there are times when what is best for 90% or more of the country may not be best for them.

None of your previous posts here (at least that I've seen) have come across as irrationally classist.

Secondly and most importantly I worry about how American democracy survives when there is little to no restraint on money being used to influence our democracy.

That's the trillion dollar question. As long as power keeps getting concentrated in Washington, the money will inevitably follow. I don't believe any amount of transparency or campaign finance reform can stop it*. A strong structural prophylactic (federalism, separation of powers, etc.) is the only solution that even has a chance at working.

*Fun fact: after the McCain-Feingold Act was passed, the reelection rate for incumbent politicians increased substantially! It turns out burdensome reporting requirements and low limits for individual donors hurt challengers a lot more than sitting politicians, since those guys already have fund-raising systems in place.

 

[connor_in]

 

[Black Irish]

For sure I agree 100%.

Quick aside: I think Occupy personally was/is very incoherent on what exactly they want and believe. Sort of just saying "I'm mad and I'm blaming you".

Believe it or not I don't hate or even envy multi millionaires and billionaires. I just think there are times when what is best for 90% or more of the country may not be best for them. Secondly and most importantly I worry about how American democracy survives when there is little to no restraint on money being used to influence our democracy.

Just because they are propped up by millionaires and billionaires doesn't automatically make them wrong, just like a grassroots, organic movement isn't automatically right.

 

[chicago51]

I'm double posting this post from the Freeze thread I just posted because of the political implications related to climate change.

While we are freezing the UK and Europe are getting pummeled by these record breaking wins and severe storms.

This from Dr. Malcolm Light a respected climatologist:

Arctic News: Extreme weather strikes around the globe - update

The volume of water transported by Gulf Stream off the east coast of the United States has increased by three times since the 1940s due to a massive increase in wind drag. This increase in the south westerly wind drag is a result of the continuously increasing pressure difference set up between the continental air mass over North America, heated by fossil - fuel generated carbon dioxide, and the marine air of the Atlantic.

The increased energy entering the Gulf Stream as heat and its associated winds and storm systems are what are now pummeling Great Britain and Europe. This heat is also transported further north by branches of the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean, where it is destabilizing the subsea methane hydrates, releasing increasing volumes of methane into the Arctic atmosphere and causing temperature anomalies this last winter of more than 20 degrees Celsius.

As a consequence of the extremely high Arctic temperatures and pressures, the normal freezing Arctic air has been displaced into Canada and the United States, causing catastrophic blizzards that have never been seen before. When the floating Arctic ice cap melts towards the end of next year, the Arctic Ocean will then become more aggressively heated by the sun and the northern offshoots of the Gulf Stream.

Under these circumstances, the cold Arctic air will be confined over the Greenland ice cap and the Arctic atmosphere will rotate anticlockwise around Greenland, transferring the fast-increasing amounts of its atmospheric methane to Canada and the United States and causing a further increase in the energy of the Gulf Stream.

Therefore the United Kingdom and Europe must brace themselves for even more catastrophic weather systems, widespread flooding and massive wind damage from the start of the last quarter of next year.

So the bold explains that even though releasing CO2 caused this phenomenon we now have a positive feedback loop that pretty much will pretty much continue on its own. So I think we can expect more winters like this.

Here is the difference in methane concentration in the arctic from just last year to this year.

 

[wizards8507]

I'm double posting this post from the Freeze thread I just posted because of the political implications related to climate change.

Good for "methane concentration." We have pictures, too.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Reason published a decent article addressing the pros and cons of Guaranteed Income.

And Matt Steinglass, the Economist's liberal blogger for American politics, just posted a good article on the crisis in Ukraine:

AMERICA and Europe, exhausted by futile wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and by their own financial crises, have over the past five years come to a tacit consensus that they lack the power and the political will to bring democracy to far-flung, failing authoritarian states. That seemed a sad but wise conclusion so long as those failing authoritarian states really were far-flung. Then, yesterday, the zone of failing authoritarian states arrived at our doorstep. The massacres of demonstrators in Kiev's Independence Square are as awful as anything that took place during the coup in Cairo last year or the initial crackdowns on demonstrations in Damascus two years ago. In Egypt and Syria, America and Europe have largely thrown up their hands, recognising that such states are simply too alien and too far away, in terms of political culture, development levels, and strategic importance, for intensive Western intervention to be promising or worthwhile. Ukraine is different, and the stakes are higher. For the first time since Yugoslavia in 1991, a European country bordering EU member states is on the brink of civil war.

What can America do about this? Probably not very much. Back in the 1990s things were different; America and the EU ultimately, if belatedly, imposed a new order along Europe's fractious edges in the aftermath of the cold war. In Yugoslavia, after years of civil war and genocide, NATO established that ethnic cleansing and cross-border aggression would be met with overwhelming military superiority. Failed states were placed under protectorates, chartered by the UN and funded by the EU. Sanctions and pressure on behalf of local protest movements ensured that election-stealing, as in Serbia in 1999, would likely fail. War criminals would be hounded down and tried in international courts. In the 1990s, this liberal interventionist model seemed to work. When the West tried to spread the template outside of Europe, to East Timor and then Afghanistan and Iraq, the results ranged from disappointing to disastrous. But at least in the European zone of influence, there seemed to be a new, mature, liberal democratic international order, underwritten by EU money and organisational expertise, and by American military might.

Unfortunately, two decades later, Bosnia and Kosovo are still basket cases. And even if the model had worked flawlessly, it couldn't be applied to today's Ukraine. Where Serbia was a somewhat peripheral Slavic cousin and Russian client state, Ukraine is a Russian-speaking country firmly inside Moscow's zone of influence. And where Yeltsin's Russia of the 1990s was resentful but confused and impotent in the face of American and European intervention, Putin's Russia is assertive, powerful and adamantly resistant to further Western encroachment. As we report, the worst-case scenario in Ukraine could involve attempted secession by either its pro-European western half or its pro-Russian eastern half; the parliament of overwhelmingly ethnic-Russian Crimea has already made noises about leaving, while protestors in the western city of Lviv have over-run government offices and police garrisons. But no matter how widespread the fighting becomes, the only country that could conceivably intervene militarily is Russia. (Mr Putin's top Ukraine adviser, Sergei Glazyev, has openly hinted Russia may do so.) That leaves America and the EU with one option: economic sanctions. But economic sanctions will never deter a regime from killing protestors when it correctly understands that it is fighting for its life.

What can Americans do with this conflict that it cannot win? The most useful thing, I think, is to use it to understand the nature of the threat to freedom we're seeing these days, in Ukraine and around the world. Viktor Yanukovich is a democratically elected president who has used his powers to eliminate liberal-rights safeguards and jail political opponents on dubious charges. He has reinforced his political position by building cronyistic relationships with powerful business figures. In this system the state creates economic rents and awards them to favoured business interests, who in turn buttress the state's political power, all while maintaining the trappings of democracy. In other words, Ukraine looks a lot like Russia or Egypt; more significantly, it looks like other states that are in the early stages of similar threats to liberal democracy, such as Turkey and Hungary. The enemy of liberal democracy today is more often kleptocracy, or "illiberal democracy" (as tiger-mom Amy Chua put it in her book "World on Fire"), than ideological totalitarianism. The threat is less obvious than in the days of single-party states and military dictators. But it ends up in the same place: economic stagnation, a corrupt elite of businessmen and politicians, censored media, and riot police shooting demonstrators.

It is not clear that America has the political appetite to do much more than watch and deplore what's happening in Kiev. It is not clear that the country could accomplish much anyway. (As an aside, Der Spiegel is right to observe that the speeches given by John McCain and Geoffrey Pyatt, the American ambassador, to protestors in Kiev may have irresponsibly created the impression that the West could intervene on their behalf. Anyone who makes such a speech should emphasise that, while Americans sympathise with the protestors, they must win or lose their battles on their own; outsiders will not come to their rescue.)

So we are left watching the latest in a years-long string of depressing, violent reversals of democracy around the world, from the defeat of the green protests in Iran to the failure of Egypt's peaceful democratic revolution and the endless succession of red-yellow street battles in Bangkok. The crackdown in Kiev is perhaps the most depressing of all: the memory of the 2004 Orange Revolution drives home the point that peaceful democratic transitions often don't stick, and that the spread of the zone of liberal democracy is not inevitable. The most we can do is recognise what the threat to freedom looks like today, impose sanctions, offer asylum to political refugees and make it perfectly clear where we stand, however ineffectually.

So much for the Myth of Progress.

 

[Cackalacky]

Reason published a decent article addressing the pros and cons of Guaranteed Income.

And Matt Steinglass, the Economist's liberal blogger for American politics, just posted a good article on the crisis in Ukraine:



So much for the Myth of Progress.

Thanks for guaranteed income article WhiskeyJack.

 

[Emcee77]

That's fascinating stuff on the Ukrainian crisis.

Ukraine's former overlords, the Russians, seem to have infected Ukraine with their addiction to authoritarianism. In the last one hundred years, Russia has had two revolutions intended to free the people from authoritarianism by installing an entirely different political system, only to have each new regime lapse back into authoritarianism. It really is a sad history that Ukraine apparently shares.

 

[Cackalacky]

Good for "methane concentration." We have pictures, too.

Pictures like this only prop up one's own bias. When looking at ice cover there is always a contraction and expansion phase. What you really need to be looking at and is nearly impossible to visualize is the concept of Mass Balance and what this does to oceanic water salinity and therefor numerous other important characteristics of seawater. Mass balance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This of course includes the ocean's ability to act as a carbon sink (solubility is determined by temperature, salinity, currents etc). There is also the actual speed and direction of currents which also effect the speed and direction of air currents including the jet streams. Further, normal large scale weather patterns such as El Nino are changed. If you need a reference to how important El Nino is to the southern Pacific countries, you should do your research on that. The entire west coast of South America is virtually dependent on favorable El Nino conditions. Albedo is another important concept relating to ice cover.Albedo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since this is much more complex than i will ever be able to explain, please do us a favor and put a little more thought into the issue of climate change instead of posting a relatively worthless picture and claiming victory.....

Signed,
Someone who sciences for a living


Image 1-Mass Balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Image 2 - Mass Balance of Polar Ice Loss

Image 3 - Albedo of Greenland Ice Sheet (Function of Ice Present)
More Ice = More reflectivity or albedo. Less albedo >increase in heat trapped below atmosphere> Increase temperatures.

All of these contributors are accelerating a positive feedback loop

/digression.
Sorry guys.

Edit: I will add one more thing: Regardless of the cause, we are not helping and it will start to show real negative dividends soon. Image 2 references reaching the Barrier Island Threshold by 2012. We are already seeing issues here as you can see. I am protected by barrier islands and they play a major role in energy dissipation from storms and also help function as the earth's "lungs." Losing them is bad.

 

[wizards8507]

You know man...I know you are smart (I really do and I respect your opinion) but when you post something like this it really drives me up a wall.

I wasn't clear enough with the intent of my post. I wasn't trying to use that picture as an educated argument against man-made global warming. I was trying to make the very point that I think you expressed to me:

Pictures like this only prop up one's own bias.

That's what I was trying to say to @chicago51. For every little graphic someone uses to make a point, someone else can find a different graphic that makes the exact opposite point, so let's just dispense with the cute-graphic-based-argument all together.

 

[Cackalacky]

I wasn't clear enough with the intent of my post. I wasn't trying to use that picture as an educated argument against man-made global warming. I was trying to make the very point that I think you expressed to me:


That's what I was trying to say to @chicago51. For every little graphic someone uses to make a point, someone else can find a different graphic that makes the exact opposite point, so let's just dispense with the cute-graphic-based-argument all together.

Cheers then bro. I will edit my post to reflect that.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Ukraine's former overlords, the Russians, seem to have infected Ukraine with their addiction to authoritarianism. In the last one hundred years, Russia has had two revolutions intended to free the people from authoritarianism by installing an entirely different political system, only to have each new regime lapse back into authoritarianism. It really is a sad history that Ukraine apparently shares.

Well, authoritarianism has been the most persistent form of governance in human history. So aside from the fact that Russia and Ukraine are European, they're not really outliers. I think it's more likely that the Western world's recent experiment with liberal democracy is the aberration, and which may end up being relatively short-lived. Makes you appreciate how fragile our civilization is, and how easily we could back-slide from egalitarian achievements that many Americans (especially on the Left) take for granted.

 

[Irish Houstonian]

That's fascinating stuff on the Ukrainian crisis.

Ukraine's former overlords, the Russians, seem to have infected Ukraine with their addiction to authoritarianism. In the last one hundred years, Russia has had two revolutions intended to free the people from authoritarianism by installing an entirely different political system, only to have each new regime lapse back into authoritarianism. It really is a sad history that Ukraine apparently shares.

I don't know, they both seem like addicts to me -- like Russia's Curt Cobain and Ukraine is Courtney Love. I think Trotsky was Ukrainian.

 

[Cackalacky]

Klitschko (former heavyweight boxer) is a Ukrainian government official now. I just thought that was interesting.
Ukraine Elections Only Fair If Boxing Champ Klitschko Can Run - Forbes

 

[PLACforever]

Kony 2012.

Is he still alive?

How'd that push go?

Great example of how ADD we are as a society. That was popular for a long weekend nationwide, then some other headline stole our attention.

 

[NDFan4Life]

Court: Notre Dame must adhere to ObamaCare birth control mandate

The University of Notre Dame must provide birth control to employees and students after a federal appeals court ruled Friday, a move the school says will force it to violate its religious beliefs.

In a blow to religious colleges and universities across the country, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago denied Notre Dame's request for an injunction to the ObamaCare birth control mandate that requires the school to provide coverage for contraception.

The injunction would have given Notre Dame a temporary reprieve from the birth control mandate, as the Roman Catholic school challenges the rule in court. But the appeals court ruled 2-1 that the school will have to comply with the rule, even before it hears the court's final decision.

The court found Notre Dame "has not yet shown that there is a substantial burden" in complying with the birth control mandate.

"If the government is entitled to require that female contraceptives be provided to women free of charge, we have trouble understanding how signing the form that declares Notre Dame's authorized refusal to pay for contraceptives for its students or staff, and mailing the authorization document to those (insurance) companies, which under federal law are obligated to pick up the tab, could be thought to 'trigger' the provision of female contraceptives," Judge Richard Posner wrote in the majority opinion of the court.

But Judge Joel Flaum sided with Notre Dame in his dissenting opinion.

"Notre Dame tells us that Catholic doctrine prohibits the actions that the government requires it to take," Flaum wrote. "So long as that belief is sincerely held, I believe we should defer to Notre Dame's understanding."

This comes after the Obama administration extended an olive branch to religious institutions. President Obama offered a compromise so that religious groups could let their insurance providers handle the birth control provisions. But Notre Dame and a handful of other religious schools argue this is inadequate because they would still be complicit in providing contraception coverage.

The Catholic church has a long-standing opposition to contraception.

Notre Dame brought the lawsuit against the Department of Health & Human Services, which is administering many of the ObamaCare rules, including the birth control mandate.

The birth control mandate has been challenged by a number of religious universities and businesses. Two religious business owners will argue against the rule before the Supreme Court next month.

Court: Notre Dame must adhere to ObamaCare birth control mandate | TheHill

 

[Black Irish]

Pictures like this only prop up one's own bias. When looking at ice cover there is always a contraction and expansion phase. What you really need to be looking at and is nearly impossible to visualize is the concept of Mass Balance and what this does to oceanic water salinity and therefor numerous other important characteristics of seawater. Mass balance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This of course includes the ocean's ability to act as a carbon sink (solubility is determined by temperature, salinity, currents etc). There is also the actual speed and direction of currents which also effect the speed and direction of air currents including the jet streams. Further, normal large scale weather patterns such as El Nino are changed. If you need a reference to how important El Nino is to the southern Pacific countries, you should do your research on that. The entire west coast of South America is virtually dependent on favorable El Nino conditions. Albedo is another important concept relating to ice cover.Albedo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since this is much more complex than i will ever be able to explain, please do us a favor and put a little more thought into the issue of climate change instead of posting a relatively worthless picture and claiming victory.....

Signed,
Someone who sciences for a living


Image 1-Mass Balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet

Image 2 - Mass Balance of Polar Ice Loss

Image 3 - Albedo of Greenland Ice Sheet (Function of Ice Present)
More Ice = More reflectivity or albedo. Less albedo >increase in heat trapped below atmosphere> Increase temperatures.

All of these contributors are accelerating a positive feedback loop

/digression.
Sorry guys.

Edit: I will add one more thing: Regardless of the cause, we are not helping and it will start to show real negative dividends soon. Image 2 references reaching the Barrier Island Threshold by 2012. We are already seeing issues here as you can see. I am protected by barrier islands and they play a major role in energy dissipation from storms and also help function as the earth's "lungs." Losing them is bad.

Yes, an extremely complex and multi-faceted issue. So you can see the frustration that someone like me feels when so many on the left claim that "the science is settled" and that "the debate is over" with regard to man made climate change. I'm not saying you are one of those people. But the claims of many who are purportedly on the side of science come off as more on the side of fashionable leftist dogma with regard to climate change.

 

[connor_in]

Charles Krauthammer: The myth of ‘settled science’ - The Washington Post

There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge.

 

[Cackalacky]

Yes, an extremely complex and multi-faceted issue. So you can see the frustration that someone like me feels when so many on the left claim that "the science is settled" and that "the debate is over" with regard to man made climate change. I'm not saying you are one of those people. But the claims of many who are purportedly on the side of science come off as more on the side of fashionable leftist dogma with regard to climate change.

Its not a left of right issue. Its a human issue with wide ranging global effects. The trends are real and are accelerating and deteriorating. So you can see how frustrated I get when people who don't respect how the data is obtained and refined and dismiss it it and politicize it for short term gain. The current models are generally sound and will be improved and whats more, independently derived models converge on the same trends. I showed that in the figures above. That is the power of science and what leads to theories that make accurate predictions.People who are dismissing this as some conspiracy theory are fooling themselves. I am not out to change anyone's mind. Only they can do that that for themselves. I only hope people will look past the politics and seek the knowledge that 95% of climatologists already know.

The truth is our current activities across the globe are without a doubt contributing (I will admit an undetermined degree) to the accelerating and poor outlook. I would rather us start to look at net neutral or positive technologies. Hopefully there are some ideas that would be profitable enough to chase in a global economy.

 

[Cackalacky]

Charles Krauthammer: The myth of ‘settled science’ - The Washington Post

:eyeroll: :yawn:

See above. Articles like this serve no purpose but to misinform and pander to the lowest common denominator. An "opinion piece" lol.

 

[chicago51]

Average Arctic temperature has risen 20 degrees in the last 100 years. Still damn cold in the arctic but pictures aside you can't sweep that under the rug.

I think like any issue it is about finding balance with todays economy and tomorrow.

Global climate by the way is the real cause of the war in Syria and the recent rebellion in Egypt. The price of wheat has skyrocket causes food prices to rises leading to rebellion.

With globilization wall street banking speculators have made it worse driving up food prices around the world including here in the United States by betting on commodies like wheat and corn so you get prices that don't reflect the supply and demand.

 

[MJ12666]

Average Arctic temperature has risen 20 degrees in the last 100 years. Still damn cold in the arctic but pictures aside you can't sweep that under the rug.

I think like any issue it is about finding balance with todays economy and tomorrow.

Global climate by the way is the real cause of the war in Syria and the recent rebellion in Egypt. The price of wheat has skyrocket causes food prices to rises leading to rebellion.

With globilization wall street banking speculators have made it worse driving up food prices around the world including here in the United States by betting on commodies like wheat and corn so you get prices that don't reflect the supply and demand.

Actually I have read many articles in various publications tying rising food prices to US government pushing ethanol production in the US. Climate change was never mentioned.

On a different issue. Earlier did you say that you admired Thomas Jefferson and would support Liz Warren if she ran for president?

 

[chicago51]

Actually I have read many articles in various publications tying rising food prices to US government pushing ethanol production in the US. Climate change was never mentioned.

On a different issue. Earlier did you say that you admired Thomas Jefferson and would support Liz Warren if she ran for president?

Eh Warren isn't my first choice but in terms of having our first female POTUS I prefer her to Hillary.

Yes I do admire Jefferson.

Food prices in the US haven't rose due to global climate. The post was referring climate change affecting agriculture in the middle east where the long periods of hot dry weather have been more extreme.
.
I was adding that transnational banking speculation on commodities makes that problem worse. Since 2000 we've seen a spike in food prices in the US due speculation is causing the price not to reflect the actual supply and demand.

The US maintained normal food product but has been effected by wall street speculation on commodities.

I got to stop making multiple points in a post.

 

[Black Irish]

Actually I have read many articles in various publications tying rising food prices to US government pushing ethanol production in the US. Climate change was never mentioned.

On a different issue. Earlier did you say that you admired Thomas Jefferson and would support Liz Warren if she ran for president?

Warmer than average weather means that there is more farmable land and crops can be planted and harvested further into the year. I've read this as one of the benefits of warming trends. I'll say that human pollution isn't helping anything. But it seems like a combination of hysteria and hubris to assume that human activity could have such a serious impact on something as complex and multi-faceted as the global climate. The earth has gone through massive climate changes in the past, and didn't require our contributions. So we are to believe that "this time it's different?" It wouldn't be happening without us? I'm not outright denying it, but I still remain very skeptical.