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Right, Left and coddling

If both the Democrats and Republicans were both right-wing parties, then the Democrats would almost never lose an election, since even though they are right of center, they are still closer to the center than the Republicans.
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Not if a big chunk of the voting population was exceedingly rightwing or grotesquely misinformed.

If you mean, compared to certain other countries, then I can understand the sentiment. But you might stop to ask yourself why this is true. My guess is that for the last 70+ years, the US has provided the defense for Europe and Japan.
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Or maybe we should have listened to Eisenhower.
 
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Fudbucker said:
There are two popular political shows at night: Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow. The difference between those shows is night and day.
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In what narratives they present, maybe, but certainly not in their honesty about reality when it doesn't fit their preferred narrative. I haven't watched a lot of Maddow, but my defining memory of her is a segment she did about the latest stealth fighter, full of the same standard lies about what a worthless piece of crap the machine was that could be found at any other left-wing source. She even not only quoted Pierre Sprey but claimed he had the same credentials to be taken seriously on fighters that so many others had claimed he had, which he didn't have. It was lies based on lies backed by lies. And the fun part is that this wasn't the anti-military crowd's current favorite boogeyman, the F-35. It was the F-22, which the anti-F-35 crowd ended up touting as the standard of perfection which the F-35 is a failure for not being enough like... along with the F-18E/F/G... which they also trashed when it was the newest one. Why? All in service to the ultimate cause of the "military bad" narrative. And these days, she's apparently turned her show into The Russia Show, which, given how little there really is there to talk about, is itself another case of trying to force the news into another chosen narrative.

There might indeed be a general trend toward more honesty on the left and more twisting-to-fit-the-narrative on the right, but if so, Maddow is not an example of it.

Brainster said:
I am perpetually amused by this claim. From the standpoint of political science theory, it is transparently false. If both the Democrats and Republicans were both right-wing parties, then the Democrats would almost never lose an election, since even though they are right of center, they are still closer to the center than the Republicans.
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That logic would only work if the premise were true that the most central party wins. That premise is false.

Brainster said:
If you mean, compared to certain other countries...
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Unfortunately, it's also true compared to the general population of their own country. The politicians just don't listen to the populace.
 
Ziggurat said:
It was truncated for brevity. Even with the full quote, my interpretation would have been the same. And you're only objecting to this now, well into the discussion of the topic, which suggests to me this isn't really the issue.
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I read it the same way as you and looking back it's the only way that post and the ensuing discussion actually makes sense.
 
aleCcowaN said:
Thanks for that. Apparently the rules only prevent filibustering, but they don't imply changing any majority need to confirm a justice (If I'm wrong you'll certainly will correct my mistake)
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Majority, yes. The filibuster had to happen to force a simple majority vote when every Justice before Gorsuch had 60 or more Senators vote yes. He's the standout who had only 55 votes of confidence.
 
Ziggurat said:
Depleted uranium isn't radioactive.

Case in point for an irrational fear.
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This is just incorrect, 238U is radioactive, it's just not a lot of use as fissionable material. Its half life is about 6 times that of 235U but it still decays and produces radiation. In particular it is an alpha emitter, and decays into 234Th, which is more dangerous because it is a Beta emitter with a 24.1 day half life.

While 238U is slow to decay, many of its immediate daughter products have half lives in the days and minutes and are beta emitters, making them far more dangerous.

One mole of 238U would be producing 3,000,000 Alpha Particles, 2 Beta Particles, and 1 gamma ray every second.

While this isn't a lot if it's just lying around a few meters away, it can be significant if ingested through contaminated food and water sources.

Uranium is also chemically toxic.
 
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PhantomWolf said:
This is just incorrect
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Yes, I'm being a little loose with terminology. Its radioactivity level is too low to be of any concern.

One mole of 238U would be producing 3,000,000 Alpha Particles, 2 Beta Particles, and 1 gamma ray every second.

While this isn't a lot if it's lying around a few meters away, it can be significant is ingested through contaminated food and water sources.

Uranium is also chemically toxic.
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One mole of U238 is about half a pound. Nobody ingests half a pound of uranium. And yes, uranium is very chemically toxic. But that's sort of the point: the heavy metal toxicity, NOT the radioactivity, is the only real health concern of incidental exposure with depleted uranium.

Intentional exposure to depleted uranium usually kills due to kinetic properties.
 
Brainster said:
I am perpetually amused by this claim. From the standpoint of political science theory, it is transparently false. If both the Democrats and Republicans were both right-wing parties, then the Democrats would almost never lose an election, since even though they are right of center, they are still closer to the center than the Republicans.

If you mean, compared to certain other countries, then I can understand the sentiment. But you might stop to ask yourself why this is true. My guess is that for the last 70+ years, the US has provided the defense for Europe and Japan. If you take defense off the table, then pretty much the only thing left to argue about is how much social spending is enough.
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For the life of me I can't follow your reasoning. The USA has two right wing parties based on the policies that they espouse.
 
Fudbucker said:
Right. GMO "fears" pale in comparison to the fears of deportation, roll back of abortion rights, LGBT rights, chipping away at Obamacare, etc. This pining by many on the Right for a 1950's America has many people on the left rightfully concerned.

"A new national survey from PRRI finds 72 percent of likely Trump likely voters say American culture and way of life has changed for the worse since the 1950s, while roughly 70 percent of likely Hillary Clinton voters say life and culture in the U.S. has changed for the better since that time."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article110293997.html

That one survey right there is terrifying. The 1950's were great, for a certain large segment of Trump supporters.
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If you assume that everybody was pining for the good old days of segregation, then yes, going back to the 1950s sounds intolerable. If you think about it more as nostalgia for the entertainment elements of American culture --the movies, the TV, the music, etc.--then it's not so scary. Also the economy was pretty damn good back then; it is not at all unusual to hear somebody like Michael Moore (no Trump supporter) saying (with dismay) that this isn't the same country he grew up in. Back then you could graduate high school, get a good job and start a family. Pretty soon you were buying a new car every two years. Wouldn't you like to see income inequality at 1950s levels?
 
Darat said:
For the life of me I can't follow your reasoning. The USA has two right wing parties based on the policies that they espouse.
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Compared to what? Compared to the UK? Compared to France? Compared to what you would like to see?

You seem to feel that there is nothing subjective or relative about this claim, that it's like observing that the sky is blue on a clear, sunny day.
 
Brainster said:
Compared to what? Compared to the UK? Compared to France? Compared to what you would like to see?

You seem to feel that there is nothing subjective or relative about this claim, that it's like observing that the sky is blue on a clear, sunny day.
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Compared to the whole rest of the developed world and compared to the US before the 90's.
 
Brainster said:
If you assume that everybody was pining for the good old days of segregation, then yes, going back to the 1950s sounds intolerable. If you think about it more as nostalgia for the entertainment elements of American culture --the movies, the TV, the music, etc.--then it's not so scary. Also the economy was pretty damn good back then; it is not at all unusual to hear somebody like Michael Moore (no Trump supporter) saying (with dismay) that this isn't the same country he grew up in. Back then you could graduate high school, get a good job and start a family. Pretty soon you were buying a new car every two years. Wouldn't you like to see income inequality at 1950s levels?
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You can't really say the economy was good when millions were systemically deprived by the same segregation trying to be ignored.

Segregation is economic sanction.
 
kellyb said:
Compared to the whole rest of the developed world and compared to the US before the 90's.
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Why is that the right relative scale to use? And if we are going back in time, there are a lot of things that put more weight on the right side of the scale.
 
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