Cal wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Your point about pollution and climate change and lifestyle is correct. But the answer can’t be to turn America into a Fortress and shut out the oppressed. Anyone who has a moral compass has to say no to that, especially when it’s the US that did most of the original damage to the environment, and spread the gospel of market fundamentalism around the world, which radically accelerates that damage. Capitalism itself is the major cause of pollution, waste and climate change. No other economic system in history was ever so destructive of the planet. It strikes me as obscenely immoral for us to be the Evangel of Capitalism, to get rich and fat off its rapaciousness, and then to tell the rest of the world, you’re on your own.

As a father of 3 young children, I disagree. Why should my children have to raise their kids in a shitty world because the Greatest Generation lacked the critically thinking skills to understand what they were doing to the earth?

Changes need to be made NOW. And that starts with everybody being more conscious of their carbon footprints. Allowing immigrants to continue to flood into this country so that they can live like the rest of America hinders our ability to move toward zero carbon emissions.

Continuing to spew CO2 and other junk into the air just kicks the can down the road for the next generation. It’s not like there’s a question about the science here. Future generations WILL struggle and die because of this problem.

Cal,

I’m not really getting your point above. Because Trump and the Republicans have actually rolled back dozens of key environmental protection laws and regs, which were already too lax. They’ve radically expanded access to public lands for fossil fuel giants. They’ve given away millions of formerly protected lands for more extraction. He and they are making is vastly easier to pollute now, today, here and now. Unless I misunderstand you, it seems like you’re saying that we can’t fix our problems if we allow more migrants in, but we’re actually not fixing them regardless. They’re getting worse. So, not only are the Republicans acting monstrously toward migrants; they’re actively, aggressively threatening the earth and nature even more than we were prior to Trump.

As in, the two things are on separate tracks. In my view, you might have a shot at an argument if we were doing all we can to protect the earth, wildlife, the atmosphere, the oceans, etc. etc. . . and migrants, and only migrants, would set us back. But that’s clearly not the case. Trump and the Republicans are actually doubling, tripling down on the crazed market fundamentalism that is the root cause of the earth’s burning up. When we need to stop using fossil fuels entirely, they’re aggressively ramping up their use and support, while killing off support for alternatives.

In short, the problem isn’t migrants. It was never migrants. The problem is capitalism, and our support for its endless expansion.

Cal wrote:

Add to that, we have a near total failure to run our lifestyle on energy that won’t continue to pollute the earth and fuel climate change.

Yet, we’re going to take millions more poor and oppressed people and give them access to the modern American consumer lifestyle that demands massive amounts of energy??

The problem is that the left has ambitious goals but they’re hard, if not impossible, to accomplish.

The conservative or centrist argument is appealing sometimes because it’s just more realistic.

The World Wildlife Fund estimated — and this was years ago — that by 2030, we’d need two entire earths to meet our resource needs. Since that estimate, things have only gotten worse. In that same white paper, they predicted that if everyone in the world lived like a middle class American, we’d need four entire earths.

Your point about pollution and climate change and lifestyle is correct. But the answer can’t be to turn America into a Fortress and shut out the oppressed. Anyone who has a moral compass has to say no to that, especially when it’s the US that did most of the original damage to the environment, and spread the gospel of market fundamentalism around the world, which radically accelerates that damage. Capitalism itself is the major cause of pollution, waste and climate change today, and has been since the Industrial Revolution. No other economic system in history was ever so destructive of the planet. It strikes me as obscenely immoral for us to be the Evangel of Capitalism, to get rich and fat off its rapaciousness, and then to tell the rest of the world, you’re on your own.

I’m about a third of the way through Naomi Klein’s latest book, On Fire. She deals with the above in a cogent, accessible way. I highly recommend it. Just out, I think, last month.

(After a strong, present-day intro, the book is a collection of her essays, starting with 2010, and I’m assuming takes us well into 2019. It’s excellent so far.)

TSRF wrote:

Billy, I think you stole my thunder: Archie Manning. Awesome talent, nothing around him…

I’d also hitch my wagon to Dan Fouts.

Warren Beatty would be third, then Mick Jagger and Judge Judy.

Yep. Papa Manning was an amazing talent, on a terrible, new-franchise team. Imagine him with the current Saints. Or last year’s version . . .

I’ve never actually watched the Judge Judy show. Can she throw an out route?

That said, I do think the Dem field is uninspiring overall, outside of Sanders. She has a lot of flaws, but Warren comes in second for me. Both of them are too old, in my view, and that will hurt them in the general.

(Trump, of course, is in his 70s too.)

I probably won’t live to see it, but I hope the Dems groom the younger DSA reps for the title. They have what the party needs the most: charisma, guts, sincerity, authenticity, and they’re genuinely left-populist. Someone like AOC, in 2028, could be extremely formidable, and great for the country.

The Dems need to inspire the nation, not put it to sleep. And nothing would be better as a wake up call than a strong and young progressive or outright leftist, preferably (for me) a woman of color. Run on climate change, economic equality, an end to war, mass incarceration and the surveillance state (public and private). Run on peace, justice and ice cream for breakfast, and they’ve got it!

You forgot Gabriel. If you asked me that question when I was a kid, back in the 1960s, it’s definitely Roman Gabriel. Today, I’d have to choose between Elway, Manning (Peyton), Rogers, Montana and Brady. I want another year to see what Mahomes can do. But he’s almost there.

If I knew I had a really strong team surrounding the QB, I might go off-road a bit and choose Archie Manning. I think he could have been an all-time great, but was saddled with horrible teams, year after year. Great scrambler, great arm, smart.

Greg Cook is kinda in that category too. Though it was the injuries, mostly, that did him in. He had major potential. HOF level. Terrible injuries and team, if memory serves.

And speaking of smart. I think Starr was the smartest field general QB of them all. Montana, Brady and Peyton are close. But Starr wins that prize, IMO.

Most physically gifted? Mahomes and Elway. Wilson’s up there too.

I like your choice of Young as well. But I think Montana, if you’re going with a Niner, was better.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

105 million people stayed home
66 million voted for HRC
63 million voted for Trump
4.5 million voted for Gary Johnson
1.4 million voted for Jill Stein

In no known universe can the smallest number on that list be the “decisive” factor.

======================

I blame The Party For Socialism And Liberation — 74,402 votes.
wiki:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election

w
v

You need to tell Hillary. ;>)

She’ll call them a “Russian asset” too. Which, of course, is yet another irony. Russia under Putin is far-right. He’s helped far-right parties and candidates all over the world. He became perhaps the richest man in the world because Russia privatized everything public after 1991, and he and his oligarchical buddies made a killing.

Of course, in America, we never had much of a “Commons” to begin with, so our oligarchs have always had private control. But they didn’t have the same Gold Rush opportunities as the Russians after 1991.

Sidenote on my Stein vote. I would have chosen someone well to her left if he or she were on the ballot. The Greens were the only option beyond the duopoly. I do think their platform is a hell of a lot better than the Dems/GOP’s. It’s not close. But they’re not anticapitalists per se. If I had my druthers, that’s who I’d vote for every time.

To me, the root of all our problems stems from an economic system that makes it legal for humans to own the economic output of other humans. I’d limit that to one’s own. You get to own your own output, not anyone else’s. Once the economic entity in question grows beyond that one human, it’s co-ownership or it’s not legal.

A person or party that seeks the complete and wholesale removal and replacement of capitalism with true democratic, radical egalitarian, localized, self-rule will get my full commitment.

Closest thing we have right now to a viable alternative, to me, is the DSA.

To add a tad to the Stein thingy. Voting for Stein had absolutely zero impact on the election results, in any state with a majority vote for HRC. It happened in my state. My own vote for Stein was cancelled out because HRC won.

That’s the way the EC system works. I think it’s deeply anti-democratic, and we need to go to a national, popular vote, but it is what it is. We’re stuck with it for now.

There are already a thousand and one ways in which the Dems and the Republicans make life next to impossible for third parties. Rather than whining about a few million votes, maybe the major parties should find ways to earn them via their deeds instead. Give people actual reasons to vote for the two major parties, rather than moan about how unfair everything is.

Ironically, the people with legit rationales for complaint are those third party candidates, not the Dems or the Republicans.

wv wrote:

i watched the first quarter so far. Does it seem like Legatron never puts em through the middle anymore? Even the kicks he makes now always seem to be barely inside the uprights.

w
v

Do you have Game Pass, WV? Or did you tape it via the Sunday Ticket?

This is my first season in aeons without the Ticket. Bummed that I couldn’t watch the game as it happened.

In limbo now . . . debating whether or not to get Game Pass. The Rams will likely be on local TV five more times this season. Maybe another game or two at a sports bar. But it’s much more enjoyable for me to relax in my own home.

I wish the NFL would diversify and offer other options beyond Game Pass and Directv. I’d be happy if I could just hook up with LA channels. Limit my out of market watching to just the Rams. I don’t need to see all the other games . . . but that’s not an option.

I thought capitalism was supposed to be all about competition!!

;>)

Nittany,

Good extension/improvement of what I suggested above. By naming the specific kinds of jobs, it brings the matter home.

Thanks.

WV,

Well said. I understand why you feel that way about the CIA. But, frankly, isn’t that the case with the majority of “the state”? Should people become police officers, for example, given the history of abuses? Should they become border patrol agents, given its long, long history of (what I would call) state terrorism against migrants? Or the military, given its history, which includes wiping out Native peoples? The list goes on and on, and it’s not limited to the United States, obviously. Every empire on earth has that dilemma. Every empire that has ever existed has engaged in mayhem and the slaughter of the innocent, and each hegemon among those empires has engaged to a greater degree than anyone else.

If a citizen’s duty is not to participate, then none of us should ever work for anything remotely attached to state power, or private, corporate power. Hell, the medical community has an awful history of testing drugs and procedures on the innocent, resulting in death and other horrors. Should every citizen say no to the healing professions too?

(Again, splitting this up into two posts. More below)