Senate The US Politics discussion

So instead of working to make better pesticides, we'll just go into a whole new farming technique that has no hope of feeding the planet?

 

I also like how the democrat side had no mining or processing. Because that light rail was made with magic?

And wind farms are going to magically supply all the energy.

 

Given the homology between insect and human nervous systems, I guess I'd like to see what sort of poison could devastate them without having adverse consequences to us in the massive doses needed to cover industrial farms. But hey, maybe we can harvest it from an alien planet with one of VLM's warp drives.

 

I think Vivec is in essence repeating this message.

 

There is always GMOs. That gets rid of the need for a spray insecticide.


Oh yeah, progressives hate genetics....

 

Wait . . .

So public assistance housing (the projects), high risk loans to increase home ownership among the poor (the foreclosures), and sexual permissiveness (the strip club) are conservative ideals?

 

Apparently so is construction and land development. I guess democrats foregoed the tractor for...magic wands?

 

Forget the details. That graphic... cartoon... whatever it is falls flat on its face just because there are few fundamental differences between nationwide Republicans and Democrats. We have a Democratic President who assassinates U.S. citizens, advocates "clean coal," implemented a Heritage Foundation plan for healthcare reform, spins the revolving door, is open to cutting beneficial social programs to the point he's practically begging for it, escalated a war, is probably going to greenlight a pipeline that will ship oil to Asia, etc.

And regarding public housing, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth addresses a lot of the problems with it (see: it's not a fundamentally unsound idea).

EDIT: Also, I don't know enough about GMO's to take a position and defend it (though I know there are concerns beyond the supposed health risks), but the fact is that our mode of agriculture is unsustainable and highly destructive. I don't begrudge advocates of "organic" (really a nebulous, broad label) foods their desire to lessen their impact, even if they may go about it in a misguided way.

 

The projects are a sign of the poor, which is where the GOP wants you. High risk loans were a big corporate ideal to eventually make money off the backs of those who had those loans thanks to deregulation from the previous administration. True even Clinton did some dereg, but not to the extent as the GOP in the last decade. And are you really going to try and say the right wing is some kind of sex free entity? Whenever they have their conventions both sides induldge in local clubs and prostitutes. When the GOP comes to town they have to ship in extra workers from across the country to supply the demand.

 

As Even touched on, one can make a fair point that organic techniques don't ultimately support global food security very well. But do you know what else doesn't pass this test? Meat in almost any amount, let alone the absurd and ever-rising demand that's currently en vogue. The huge economic incentives towards the production of cash crops with little nutritional value or, illicit drugs that have none at all. The diversion of actual foodstuffs into relatively inefficient non-consumables (eg corn-based ethanol). Subsidy programs in developed countries that undercut the competitive advantage of farmers working in more fertile, albeit poorer, countries.

Of all these, one of the very few to give arguably more benefit to the actual low income farm laborers is organic farming techniques. If you want to have a serious debate about how to go forward in agriculture, that's one thing. But it's silly if the only thing that pushes you to apoplexy is people declining to buy Monsanto products.

 

but jabba, bacon is yummy...

 

I'm not irate at people not wanting to buy a particular company's products. I'm annoyed at
1) People causing general panic over GMOs (calling them frankenfoods, etc)
2) People (most recently Wocky) conflating GMOs with Monsanto
3) People making up false data and/or purposefully misrepresenting scientific findings about GMOs to spread fear about them.

It's a thing you progressives are good at: Spreading undue fear about chemicals and genetics.

 

Okay, but none of that stuff happened in this thread. There was just a drawing that mentioned "organic farming" on it, leading you to make a whole series of post on how terrible it was.

 

A few thoughts on the embasy closings.

So, Benghazi is/was this horrid moment of lack of security and U.S. reps died and Obama is an evil villain.

Chatter comes through so a major precaution is taken of closing a couple of dozen embassies(sp) and Obama is now a chicken who is letting Al Queda run us around.

Obama never said Al Queda was dead and gone but that is what Fox News reports he did say.

Chris Kyle is the sniper who had a book ghost written which contained a story about he punched out Jesse Ventura for saying bad things about America. That writer now has a bookcoming out about a sniper who disobeys direct orders from a fictional President to save a U.S. representative from terrorists.

 

Jessie Ventura BTW, is still going through with his defamation lawsuit against Kyle (saying Kyle never punched him), but now it's aimed at Kyle's widow.

 

Except in reality I made only, what, 2 posts on the topic of organic farms themselves?

I made a post on chemicals that you never addressed.

 

"I ain't got time to be punched."

 

Yes, you made two posts that bristled with hostility at the idea of organic farming because of things that someone has supposedly said, but which no one here ever brought up, and in spite of the actual benefits which were pointed out subsequently.

I'm not sure about which post you mean when you refer to the one "on chemicals." If you mean the last post of yours before this one, I'll again point out that no one actually did numbers one or three. At all. By any stretch of the imagination. There was just a drawing that mentioned an "organic cafe" on one side. Does this really justify carrying on a big campaign against an entire movement?

 

1) "bristled with hostility?" You're purposely making it look like that. It was more an attitude of derision.
2) The one on chemicals was the same initial post on organic farming. Reread.

 

I'll gladly substitute derision. You went out of your way to deride organic farming in two posts because of something no one here ever said, and in spite of its actual benefits? I don't see how it justifies any more of a campaign against it, personally.

Nor do I see what you're worked up with in your edited post. Yes, non-scientists speaking to other non-scientists in the general public do not use terms the way scientists do. Somehow the sky has kept from falling.

 

1) I derided organic farming for being used as an example of "Democrats are more scientific than republicans." I mean look at the poster again. It's clearly trying to posit republicans as religious anti-science and dems as pro-science. And yet they're using organic farming when there's no evidence that it's scientifically better for you/ That's where the derision comes from.

2) Liberals use the term chemicals as if it's a bad thing and it perpetuates a misunderstanding of the word chemical. That's offensive in and of itself. You can't argue that the average person doesn't have a misunderstanding of the terms "chemical," "organic," or even "natural." Just because the final result isn't Armageddon doesn't mean I'm out of line for being annoyed by it.

 

The clear intent of the drawing is not reducible to "pro-science vs anti-science." That issue alone doesn't tend to move many people. That's only one element of a much broader depiction of the liberal side as a more appealing place to live. Thus, there are job centers and union halls, neither of which have anything to do with science. Low-income housing is situated by other residential areas instead of besides areas with high pollution. Strip clubs are portrayed negatively, even though that arguably hints at a puritanical streak that has nothing to do with "liberals." But it is consistent with the image that they are often in bad neighborhoods, and are unpleasant places to work in, visit, or to have at all. It's pretty myopic if all you can read into anything is how for or against science it is.

 

The GOP doesn't want to pay for the projects. The GOP is totally fine with zoning and restricting out strip clubs even if some of their politicans have affairs. Aggressive expansion of homeownership to people who couldn't afford it started under Clinton.

Those three items in the picture make no sense.

 

What about the church on the republican side?

 

It's inherent in the asymmetric presentation of the picture. The liberal side displays a best case scenario for liberal ideas, whereas the conservative side displays the uglier, real world "failure" of conservative policies. Thus, strip clubs appear not because Republicans "support" them, but because they're a feature of seedy, rundown neighborhoods that have seen chronic underinvestment. You know, like what might happen if you took a cutthroat approach to lowering taxes and no private parties stepped in to fill the void in civil services or communal life. Similarly, housing projects are situated next to factories not because the GOP has ever supported public housing for anyone, but because they doubly scoff at suggestions like seeing institutional racism in the way minorities and low income citizens are often forced to live in the areas with the highest pollutant exposure, and then coincidentally also develop the highest rates of asthma. It's perfectly workable if you understand it as a hit job instead of an actual comparison, which is how it was always intended.