9th August 2016, 10:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 9th August 2016, 10:26 PM by A Black Falcon.)
Weltall Wrote:Thread title seems extra relevant these days.Yeah, aren't they all having so much fun dealing with his scattershot insanity?
Seriously though, at first I was scared for America because of his authoritarianism, but now his pro-Russian foreign policy agenda is just as, or more, worrying than that. It's so insane that the "we hate Reds" party now has a Presidential candidate with explicitly pro-Putin advisers and foreign policy positions!
Weltall Wrote:Of course not. But a label stating that GMOs are in a product teaches the consumer nothing about the effects of genetic modification. It explains nothing. It just scares people into thinking that they'll grow extra arms if they eat Lance crackers. And of course, consumers don't want to read an explanation on the side of their food containers, or wouldn't even if it was there. So what's the actual good being done here? What's the point of awareness without any actual effort made to introduce understanding?I think that we allow chemicals into products without requiring full testing -- that there is far too much of a presumption of safety where there should be the opposite -- is a problem. Similarly, GMOs should be proven safe before being used... and yes, there have been some studies showing that for at least some GMOs, but generally the FDA is in the pocket of big food and chemical companies and does not do the job it should at protecting peoples' health.
This isn't just a peeve, either. If people become terrified of GMOs like this, it could seriously disrupt the field and many potential benefits may be lost.
GMO labeling is just a real life version of the dihydrogen monoxide meme. People fall for it all the time because dihydrogen monoxide sounds like some flesh-eating industrial chemical and they don't bother trying to learn anything about it, so they write Congress and ask for a ban on water.
Quote:Mature GMOs would be designed such that pesticides would not be necessary, the plants (in this case) would be made to repel pests on their own.Yeah, I'm sure none of those ways possibly could create any possible issues... but anyway, so far GMO use has only increased pesticide usage in this country, not decreased it.
Quote:This is the most frustrating thing about the conversation for me. People conflate a specific corporation with the entire concept of genetically modifying food organisms. It's like calling for a ban on all restaurants just because some of them are filthy and poorly run.Don't kid yourself, Monsanto is the massively dominant player here. You cannot separate them from GMOs, it's impossible. They dominate the field.
Quote:Bring on cancer then, I fucking love coffee. Besides, I smoke enough kush to never have cancer. Or so some people say.I try to stay away from addictive substances... other than videogames and ice cream, that is. :p (I've never cared for coffee, and have never drank it much at all.)
Quote:In a couple of decades people probably won't even remember what cancer is without looking it up.That is quite highly optimistic.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Dang it Hillary, Henry?! You're chumming up with Henry "here's how you commit war crimes without complaints" Kissinger?What are you talking about with Kissinger? I haven't heard of anything new. But from months back, Hillary has said moderately positive things about Kissinger before. Remember how this became an issue in one of the debates with Bernie, when she said something like that and then got hit for it since Kissinger is, of course, an unindicted war criminal (because of the Vietnam War) we should not be listening to? She partially walked that back, but it was an issue for a bit. Now, her excuse pretty much was that she listens to a lot of people, and her positive statements about Kissenger focus maybe entirely on how he helped open China up to the West (and that was indeed a very important and positive thing!), but I agree that she's nowhere near as hard on him as she should be. It's harder to be hard on someone you know personally, as she does Kissinger, than it is for people who do not know him to say how awful he was, though, I will admit that.
Ack! Just when I was starting to actually get enthusiastic about the platform policy, you go and do something like this. If it's as bad as people are suggesting (and that remains to be seen just yet), it's enough to put me in the "anybody but Hillary" camp....
...
In four years...
This is why having only one choice is bad. When Trump is "yelling at a baby" terrible, and the other candidates are so vanishingly insignificant that my own state won't even recognize them as options, it means the democratic candidate can do whatever she wants with barely any consequences. The republican party is imploding, and I for one am okay with that (and I'd also be okay with a rational, humanistic republican party rising from the ashes), but we've got to have real choices here. This is why I can't ever really get on board with claiming a party alliance too. My previous decision stands. Hillary is, of the two, far more likely to get policies in place that align with my values than Trump. It's just that this is a reminder that it'll very likely only be a few things, and I'm starting to think that the health care "public option" won't be one of those things after all (it'll get toned down into yet another expansion that, while it'll help some, doesn't quite cover the people closest to me). In four years, when Trump is flatly denied a rerun in the republican party, I'll be taking a good long look at what else is out there. With any luck, some serious shake-ups will occur by then.
I've voted for a lot of reasons, but this will be the first election where my vote amounts to a stay of execution. In some ways literally, if Trump's questions about why we don't use nukes more often to solve our problems is any indication. From the heights of hope to the pits of despair. And ABF wonders why Bernie supporters were so adamant....
Here's an article about the controversy from the debate in February - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book...-loved-it/
... As for this new thing, is it just the rumor that she may be looking for his endorsement, along with other Republicans who have refused to endorse Trump? http://www.jta.org/2016/08/09/news-opini...g-the-left I doubt many of those Republicans will endorse her, so don't look for it to happen. On a related note, one of my senators, Susan Collins, just released an op-ed saying that she will not vote for Trump, but she also says she won't be voting for Hillary either... that's the more likely path, rather than major Republican Party figures, like Kissinger sadly is, actually saying "we will vote for Hillary". (But if Kissinger did vote for Hillary... well, with how much Trump likes Russia, who'd blame him? It wouldn't be a sign that she is a warmonger, just that she is sane and believes in America's alliances and democracy, things Trump clearly does not care much about. In a normal situation I would be upset about the idea of her looking to Kissinger in any way, he's horrible overall regardless of the good he did in our relationship with China, but this is not a normal situation.)