Don’t waste too much time on climate-denying imbeciles. They’re embarrassed over and over yet continually come back anyway. Just trolling— or a learning disability. Either way, best to ignore.

If you want to learn something, check out Unenlightened’s posts— something can actually be learned in that case, rather than attempting to refute any child’s armchair ideas about science.

Shouldn't we take climate change more seriously from now on after the floods in Valencia (Spain)? — javi2541997

Yes we should. But climate deniers never will. They’ll keep their heads in the sand till the bitter end.

Like I said: just stupid, stupid people.

there's only idiots raising their voices so high that it disturbs the public space — Christoffer

Absolutely.

Stupid, stupid people. That’s all it is.

“Don’t Look Up” captures it well.

m

:clap:

I think Cheney’s endorsement is revenge for being attacked and thrown out of office, which in turn was done because she’s as establishment as they come and thus one of the few who voted impeachment. Why? Because prior to this Trump attacked Bush and Cheney— why? Because Jeb Bush ran against him and never made nice afterwards. Etc. It’s like asking why Megan McCain is against Trump. There’s personal reasons. This praise for Cheney is ridiculous. Fuck the Cheneys.

Abortion and democracy may be what motivates people to get out and vote— but you don’t really know that, nor do I.

But as always, I hope you’re right about this.

It’s close because of the electoral college, which is a stupid and anti-democratic system, as the US constitution itself is mostly anti-democratic.

But the other reason it’s so close, in my view, is that a good portion of the electorate’s lives are crappy, which makes them angry — and they look for reasons and someone to blame. They want explanations and to make sense of the world, as we all do. The media fill that role now, where family friends and religion once did, and cater messages to these people, depending on where they live and what their interests are and how they get their information (radio? TV? Newspaper?).

So there’s huge gaps between women and men, rural and urban people, college educated vs not, etc. The left demonizes Trump (although they have a much better case for doing so), and the right demonizes “liberals” (and do it much more effectively). Both are devils to the other side.

Since the advent of social media, distrust in literally everything and anything that doesn’t conform with what your preferred information pipeline is telling you has become rampant. Thus Trump can say almost anything — even trying to overturn an election and saying he won even when he lost — and many millions will go along with it, or shrug it off.

If CNN says he’s a threat to democracy or whatever, or if there’s reports about some crazy thing he said, it’ll be ignored— because those sources have been undermined and discredited in their minds (“fake news,” “witch hunt,” etc), mostly by Trump himself.

If the Democratic Party offered something real and started talking to working people, they’d break through a lot of this stuff — as Bernie did. But since they’re also a party of corporate America, there’s little chance of that.

Nate Silver: 50-50 but gut says Trump.
John Mearsheimer: “My guess is Harris wins popular vote but Trump eeks out a victory in the seven swing states.”

Guess I’m not so crazy after all :rofl:

Former president Donald Trump’s years-long effort to restrict mail balloting and early voting has skidded into reverse in North Carolina, with the Republican presidential nominee demanding the kind of easier voting access that he labeled fraudulent when Democrats pushed similar measures during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/21/trump-voting-north-carolina-helene/

Election fraud! :lol:

:up:



I voted three days ago against fascism.

That’s two more says earlier than you, so…

No, it's not. His odds have been going up rapidly across betting markets generally since the start of October. Averages about 59% overall now. — Baden

Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 60% chance of winning on Friday, while Harris’s chances were 40%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October.

Trump’s gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trump’s favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trump’s growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. “More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line,” Musk posted.

But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win.

Seems others have followed suit.

Harris’s lead has gone from roughly 2.8 to 2.4, with nearly every serious forecaster calling it a coin flip. Nate Silver has Trump’s odds at 50.6% or something like that. Little reason for the 60% number if not for manipulation. If they were truly following the polls, unless they have some secret knowledge, there’s little reason to put the chances at 60%. True, they could be imbeciles— but I think the WSJ’s argument is convincing. Even though I think he’ll win, I wouldn’t bet on it— and certainly not give it those odds.

Yeah but it isn’t for that reason. It’s actually due to about four people. Hence the article I posted. 60/40 is a lot by this election’s standards.

Whether Harris needs 3% to win is disputable now, given inroads Trump has made in Florida, New York, and California. Nate Cohn has written about this well. His electoral edge is probably slipping.

Yeah I still think he’s going to win, but it’s because Harris is a dud. Not because of the polls.

I don't see how Polymarket is anything but a betting market for bettors looking to earn a buck. — BitconnectCarlos

That’s really all it is. I don’t see how they have any special insight otherwise.

This should help explain why the polymarket odds are so skewed now.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/betting-election-pro-trump-ad74aa71?mod=mhp

Is Kamala 2024 Clinton 2016?

You always got the sense that the Democratic Party resented having to learn anything from losing in 2016.

There’s no doubt that all the excuse-making that followed — blaming Russia, James Comey, the media, anyone but Hillary Clinton and her campaign — was the party’s desperate attempt to avoid taking responsibility for letting Donald Trump win and to assuage anger from their rank and file, lest they hold the party leadership accountable.

But tell a lie incessantly enough, and you start to believe it. And you can’t help but feel that Democrats really do believe that they ran a great campaign that would and should have won, if only it hadn’t been for the dastardly villains who pulled the rug out. This year, they seem determined to prove that thesis.

At first, there were hopes that Kamala Harris’s ascension to the Democratic candidacy was going to bring some kind of new, exciting vision to the election fight, possibly combining Joe Biden’s early, halting economic populism with the personal charisma, optimism, and history-making aspects of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Gone was the “basement strategy” of hiding the candidate from unscripted media. So were the by now stale warnings about Republicans threatening democracy and dictatorship, in favor of the new, deflating label of “weird.” Harris’s slogan of “we’re not going back” suggested she’d lead the country not just out of the morass of Trumpism but in a different direction from Biden’s disastrous last two years.

So much for that. For weeks now, it’s been clear the Harris campaign has decided that it’s going to rerun the Clinton 2016 strategy on the off chance that that year really was a fluke, and that Trump really is so hated that Americans will have no choice but to vote for his opponent. It didn’t work in 2016, but this time . . .

What does that look like in practice? It looks like dropping the “negative” label of weird and performing civil disagreement instead. It looks like giving up on exciting the party’s progressive flank — actively thumbing your nose at them, in fact — and explicitly pivoting to trying to win over Republicans instead. It looks like rolling out white papers and policy positions that few will read, while rarely talking publicly about what you would actually do when given the chance at a public forum. Like running to Trump’s right on immigration and foreign policy, even calling Iran, absurdly, the country’s most dangerous adversary and suggesting you might launch a preemptive strike on it.

Okay, Democrats would say, but what about some of Harris’s policy announcements? Like her housing platform, for instance, which pledges to build three million homes and to give first-time homebuyers a grant of up to $25,000? Or what about her recent announcement that she would expand Medicare to cover home care services, vision, and hearing? Doesn’t that point to a different, more progressive policy–based direction than Clinton’s 2016 run, even if she barely talks about it?

The answer to which is, not really, because this platform is actually a major step backward from the Biden years. It’s true the sitting president often seemed reluctant to run forcefully on the populist agenda he had taken up as a way to make nice with Bernie Sanders voters, but that agenda was fairly ambitious: among other things, it featured universal pre-K, free community college (for two years), childcare subsidies, paid leave, Medicare expansion, and a more generous child tax credit. Everything but the last two are now out in Harris’s day one agenda.

What I was saying earlier.

When Trump wins they have no one to blame but themselves.

:up:

Roevember 21 — 180 Proof

What does this mean?

It’s remarkable how much time and effort silly things like this take up within “philosophy.” Still kind of fun as a game I guess.

“Everyone’s mad here. I’m mad; you’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?”
“You must be — or you wouldn’t have come here.”

That being said this strategy isn't that really much different from Trump's to be honest — Mr Bee

You’re right. It isn’t fair, really, but because he’s been a lying degenerate clown for so long, any bullshit he spews is shrugged off.

You stick with those MAGA-GOP talking points — 180 Proof

Well there’s no need to get nasty. :gasp:

Also, when you say it won’t be Joe Biden as the nominee — care to bet on that too?
— Mikie
Like taking candy from a baby. :yum:
— 180 Proof
I (technically) have won this bet but lost the other one that Diaper Don wouldn't be the GOP nominee. — 180 Proof

Yeah, you did. I was as shocked as anyone. What did we end up betting? $10 to charity of choice? Let me know and I’ll pay up. I’d forgotten about that.

Needless to say, I hope you’re right here too.

Anyway — he’s within the margin of error in swing states and is down with black men by a lot compared to 2020. Women could save the day if they come out strong — but will they? Will it be enough? I have doubts.

I’ve seen enough. Ready to make my official prediction:

Trump wins.

Which is unbelievable and sad, but so it goes. Looks like men aren’t ready for a woman president, yet again. But it’s more than that — it’s that she has no message.

She could have run with a strong and consistent message of taxing the rich to pay for popular programs. Instead she’s raced to the “middle,” on the advice of the most pathetic intellectual weaklings known to man, and desperately tried to appeal to conservative voters. She’s done so with climate change and fracking, on guns, and on war. She doesn’t answer questions directly. She regurgitates the same lines like “hopes, ambitions, and desires.” There’s barely been any policy proposals, and the ones that have been proposed are “eh.” They’ve once again left Bernie and progressives in the cold— and they’ll pay for it, especially among the Gaza crowds.

The DNC strategy at this point is to lay low, appeal to the middle, say as little as possible (see any of the uninspiring, friendly interviews she’s done), and bring it back to how bad Trump is and was. It’s a terrible strategy and a terrible candidate. They even defanged Tim Walz, who is now left with endlessly talking up school lunches — which is all the party allows him.

So the democrats put up another loser in the 4th quarter and will blow it try again against the worst candidate and former president in history. 4 more years of Trump’s climate denial and federal judges (given that republicans are going to win the senate), which will do generational damage, and the further destruction of institutions that do any good for regular people.

It feels like 2016 again: no real enthusiasm for the Democrat. There was none in 2020 either, but it was a pandemic and we were sick of Trump. That was motivation enough — plus Biden, a man, also hadn’t fully degenerated into the shell he is today, and still had a little Obama fairy dust on him from his years as VP. The electorate’s memory is also poor and rose-colored, and usually rebel against whoever is in office.

So despite what the polls, or Allan Lichtman, or Bill Maher, or Nate Silver or anyone else says, I think Trump will win at least one of the blue wall states — Michigan? — and that will be all he needs, as he will carry Georgia and North Carolina and Arizona.

Maybe some good comes out of it. Who knows. I hope I’m wrong — but I won’t be.

Ps. Sorry @180 Proof. I’ll put money on it.

Ethel Kennedy. 96. It amazes me she was still around.

Speaking for myself, I respect every pro-Isreal Jew who openly, vigourously denounces and opposes the mass murdering, ethnic cleansing, apartheid policies of the US/Nato-backed Netanyahu regime. — 180 Proof

The truly pro-Israel Jews are those who don’t want to see Israel destroyed. Which is exactly what they’re doing with these policies.

I spent the past three years sailing through storms and visiting research labs around the world to learn about the recent increase in extreme cyclones. I spoke to captains who logged changes in the Gulf Stream, the jet stream, trade winds and storm seasons. I interviewed scientists who studied amplifying typhoons in the Pacific, whose barometric pressure could drop so low that they triggered a spider web of earthquakes. I studied major cyclones that hit parts of the Middle East for the first time and some of the first hurricane landfalls to strike Europe. Experts consistently tied storm intensity, range and destruction to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — and said that if we reduced it, storm intensity would also diminish in lock step.

Here is a glimpse of where we are headed. The heat accumulating in the ocean from global warming will make tropical cyclones last longer than they once did, and occasionally move slower, making damage many times worse. Rapid intensification — in which storm winds increase by 35 miles per hour or more in 24 hours — will continue to rise, especially in coastal waters.

A 2021 study by Yale University researchers shows that warmer waters in the north and south will soon draw extreme storms toward the poles, threatening to inundate densely populated, and especially unprepared, cities like Washington, D.C., New York and Boston. A northwestward migration from the region where most Atlantic tropical cyclones originate could result in an uptick in landfalls along the East Coast later this century.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/opinion/hurricane-milton-florida-storm-surge-climate-change.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Q04.RYJo.4A9XWKePGo6H&smid=url-share

If only we listened.

If only we start listening.

I'm irrelevant too because I don't get to vote. — unenlightened

You’re always relevant in this thread, at least.

So Israel’s goal of reducing most of Gaza and southern Lebanon to rubble will undoubtedly be achieved, guaranteeing a stronger Hamas and Hezbollah in the future and prolonging the conflicts for decades more.

Missing accomplished.

Forgive me, I will not take your advice. If no one shovels out the shit, then the whole thread becomes shit. — unenlightened

That was directed at John— but I’d say the same of you. But I appreciate your efforts, whatever it is they’re claiming. The climate issue attracts a lot of idiots.

Anti-zionism is effectively anti-semitism. — BitconnectCarlos

:lol:

There's no apartheid. — BitconnectCarlos

:rofl:

Magnificent. :ok:

I think you’re in over your head here mate. Why do you go on like this? — John McMannis

Answer:

A troll, a complete troll, and nothing but a troll. — unenlightened

I see you’re engaging with a number of intellectually deficient individuals. My advice is to just let them be. Banging your head against a brick wall is useless— eventually you just have to stop. Ignore feature is helpful there.

Anyway, back in the real world:

https://www.france24.com/en/video/20241007-in-utah-climate-change-denial-persists-as-america-s-dead-sea-disappears

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna174260

A Changing Climate Is Scorching the World’s Biggest River

In one stretch in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, the river was 25 feet below the average for this time of year, according to the agency, which began collecting data in 1967.

Parts of three of the Amazon River’s most important tributaries — major rivers in their own right, each spanning over 1,000 miles — have also fallen to historical lows.

I think Biden said it best the other day (for once): if you deny the climate crisis, you’re braindead at this point.

Your choice to not choose between possible administrations ignores the extreme rhetoric from the Trump side that has been going on for years. As citizens, these differences appear in outcomes in our communities. — Paine

Yes.

If I had to go before a tribunal and defend my choice of voting for Harris, it would give me pause. But it isn’t that serious. People want to believe it’s their only political power— to fill in an oval every 4 years — and thus all the hand-wringing.

It’s overthinking it. Vote against Trump and keep at the local work — organizing, striking, protesting, lawsuits, unionizing, boycotting, etc. That’s it. Will a Trump or Harris administration make achieving goals easier or harder? I think the answer is clear.

The one area I understand feeling bad about: support for Israel’s genocide. Seems like Harris is all-in for Israel, just as Biden has been. True enough. It’s also true, however, that Trump is an even bigger supporter. So not only do we make it worse with him in office, we get all the other terrifying, horrible, shitty things along with it.

A vote against the worst candidate when there’s really just two options isn’t an endorsement of the less bad candidate, nor the two-party system. Sitting out or voting third party, particularly in a swing state, is helping to elect the worst candidate. This is true if you believe Harris is the worse candidate too.



Cool— so you’re irrelevant.

Funny, I thought this thread was about the election, not the spewing of tiresome, disingenuous bullshit from Trump cultists— or sifting through it to see if there’s any point or coherence (spoiler: there isn’t).

, loads of Americans are still convinced to vote for people who vilify social welfare programs, public schools, publicly owned entities, organized labor, American manufacturing, self-sufficient practices, and the like. — creativesoul

:up: :up:

At this point, to be a climate denier takes really hard work. Must be like playing whack-a-mole. Unprecedented heat, hurricanes, floods, droughts, etc.— but nah, nothing to see. Or it’s all “natural,” so no need to care about emissions. Or it’s “not so bad,” because it probably won’t wipe out every human.

I was thinking of a good film metaphor for all this— and of course Don’t Look Up was a good one, but there has also been another staring us in the face for 50 years: Jaws.

Try picturing the shark as climate change, and it all makes sense. And Republicans are still the mayor.

I am afraid that in their attempt to sound moderate, Harris and Walz will lose support among some groups, and they will try to stick with an economic plan that does not sound popular to the majority (middle class) they are trying to appeal to in other ways. — Eros1982

I think that’s a disaster too. But not surprising.

I am just glad that Vance did not refuse global warming; he even blamed democrats for not having done enough with renewables — Eros1982

No he didn’t. He rambled a bunch of nonsense and then threw in a lie about nuclear. He also said “if you believe” emissions are causing climate change. An absolute joke.

The fact that you give him a pass while criticizing the Democratic ticket, and yet claim you care about climate change, shows how unserious you are — or how fake. The choice is clear for anyone truly concerned about that issue. Should take about 10 seconds.

A forgettable "VP debate" — 180 Proof

Yeah, nothing great. They were polite. Walz stumbled with the Hong Kong answer— Vance stumbled with January 6th and gave ridiculous answers on guns, Climate change, abortion, child care and healthcare. Should have been a slam dunk for Walz— too bad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/29/world/middleeast/middle-east-war-peace-nasrallah.html

The key paragraph:

“But an ironclad alliance with Israel built around strategic and domestic political considerations, as well as the shared values of two democracies, means Washington will almost certainly never threaten to cut — let alone cut off — the flow of arms.”

Notice the vague, careful phrasing. Translation: there’s nothing the US can do because the Israel lobby is too powerful (“domestic political considerations”) and is an extension of our economic agenda (“strategic considerations”) in the region.

There’s plenty we can do: namely, STOP SENDING WEAPONS. Stop funding the war. Period. Shame on The NY Times for talking nonsense. This isn’t the 1990s — we see right through it now.

Maggie Smith— not on the list, but probably should have been.

I hate Taylor Swift! Haitians are destroying music— they’re eating the Snoop Dogs; they’re eating the Doja Cats.

$14.70 per share — 180 Proof

Oof. That’s less than the IPO. :rofl:

Donald Trump and other insiders can now sell shares of DJT, just as stock hits new low

Don’t waste too much time with climate deniers. Ignore feature works great. That’s my recommendation.

Anyway— yes, for denialists who don’t understand a single thing climate scientists say, but want to sound as if they alone have special knowledge, it’s important to develop the strawman of “they think the world will end in 12 years!”

Idiots are gonna idiot.

Noam Chomsky b. 1928

Oh cool, the dude who worships the guy who said anyone burning the flag should get put in jail is gonna lecture us on free speech absolutism. Pass.