Now I remember How I Used to Talk to A Conservative

A couple of events happened yesterday that made me think of the day’s that I could have a meaningful conversation with my conservative buddies. One had to do with the stoppage of New York’s “Stop and Frisk” policy, and the other had to do with climate change. Hang on a minute, and you’ll see how I tie these two topics together.

This morning Joe Scarborough talked about a liberal he met on the train in New York who was going to vote for Rudy Giuliani for mayor. People like Joe Scarborough wake up and go to sleep every day wearing their conservative label, and they assume that liberals do too. I assume the liberal Joe talked to, liked Rudy Giuliani’s way of crime fighting and the fact that he didn’t come with the extreme social beliefs. Conservatives like to think that they are tough on crime and so a few believe that we cannot give the police too much power. As human beings, we all want the police to keep us safe within the bounds of the United States Constitution.

A Federal judge temporarily stopped New York’s “Stop and Frisk “policy because it was really racial profiling in disguise.

Let’s look at the police’s own statistics that showed that in the period January 2004 until 2012, the city conducted 4.4 million stops but only 6% of those resulted in arrests or summons. Even more staggering, 83% of those stopped were minorities and 90% of those and didn’t get as much as a summons. The policy was meant to get guns off streets but of those stopped, 1.1% of blacks were caught with guns, 1.2% of Hispanics were armed and 1.4% whites were also armed. With stats like these, the judge ruled correctly when it was ruled that the policy needed reform and had to be closely monitored.

Racial profiling is acceptable as long as it’s the other guy getting profiled. I’ve heard stories of young black males having to dress conservatively in order not to arouse suspicion by the police. Middle Eastern people will automatically attract the attention of TSA if they wear traditional clothing. That’s not the America we want. The founders remembered being stopped and frisked by the British soldiers because they were suspected of not being loyal to the crown, so they inserted language into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution to ensure that that will not happen to future Americans.

And now back to the topic of trying to have a meaningful conversation with a conservative.

Last night, Chris Haynes had a very meaningful conversation with Samuel Thernstrom, a conservative expert on climate change. Chris Hayes led off the segment by showing a clip of Dana Rohrabacher, senior member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology calling climate change a fraud, to the delight of a tea party rally. Mr. Thernstrom said that crowd is mostly against government solutions. So if climate change is real, the government would be compelled to do something about it. The environmental expert also said that conservatives don’t like liberal solutions, like a carbon tax or Cap and Trade. Mr. Thernstrom said the base could be sold on private sector innovations that produced zero greenhouse gases. He said that government grants always lead to crony capitalism. That’s a start, at least there’s a consensus that climate-change is indeed happening and that we must take steps to curb greenhouse emissions. I’m not so sure that a carbon tax is a liberal idea and I know that President George Bush senior signed a sulfur dioxide (SO₂) cap and trade bill, to curb acid rain. Who wants to quibble about the past if you’re making progress talking about solutions?

Now do you see how the two topics blend together? In both cases, it’s a matter, of “we didn’t say you couldn’t do it but here’s how it could be done with less controversy.”

I’ll Try a Different Approach

I’m tired of arguing with the climate-change deniers like Howard Weise and J.W. Harrison. Howard thinks the whole climate-change issue is some sort of socialist plot to control us. Mr. Harrison thinks that 98% of the climate-change scientists are on the government take to commit fraud.

Howard thinks the earth is cooling because of what he saw on Fox News. He didn’t provide any links to substantiate his facts. The last I heard, the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990, and man had something to do with it.

I’m not an expert in the science of climate-change by any stretch of imagination, but I do know that the glaciers are melting, the snow doesn’t stay on Pike’s Peak as long as it used to, sea levels are rising, droughts, forest fires and storms are more intense and it’s due to the increase in the earth’s temperature. It doesn’t matter if it’s due to solar activity or man made greenhouse emissions. I don’t think it will hurt to try and find ways to alleviate our existing problem.

We do know that carbon is a heat trapping gas and a pollutant. We wouldn’t turn up the heat on a boiling pot unless we wanted it to spill on the stove. I also know that since we practically replaced coal with natural gas, our greenhouse emissions are coming down significantly.

Howard is wrong because the president knows that new legislation to curb greenhouse emissions will never pass through the House of Representatives, so he is issuing executive orders to reduce greenhouse emissions by 17% over the next three years. The Supreme Court said that carbon was a pollutant, but they also said that the EPA should control its use and keep it from being a health hazard. I guess Mr. Harrison thinks that the conservative Supreme Court is also on the take.

Mr. Weise is an old libertarian, so anything that comes from the government in the form of regulations, taxes, fact sheets, or recommendations are causes for alarm. How ironic, he doesn’t mind socialism in the form of Medicare for all, but he complains of the control in a private insurance system like Obamacare. Forget the fact that exercising, eating well, and living a healthy lifestyle would lead to lower costs. He worries about the 2,700 pages in the health care law but I’d be willing to bet that he doesn’t know how many pages are in the Social Security or Medicare program. The first thing a republican lawmaker does nowadays is count the pages of a bill and anything over three pages is a bad bill. Oh that’s right, the original 2008 bailout bill was only three pages long.

If progressives are really socialist, they’re really bad at it because the stock market is at record highs and companies on the Fortune 500 have never had it so good. Wall Street borrows money a 0.75%, yet our students have to pay 6.2% as it stands right now.

Howard says progressives have a lust for power but on any given day, you can see  GOP controlled states exercising their power without hearings or a debate. No, Howard, Michelle Obama saying we should eat our vegetables is nothing our own mothers didn’t do and Bloomberg banning 32 ounces sugary drinks at some public places is for his city only. In neither case, no one is trying to impose their will on you.

I don’t usually drift as much, but I had to if I was going to keep up with Howard’s latest complaints.

Lately, I’ve seen conservatives admit that the earth is getting hotter, but now they’re saying that we cannot do anything about it because the solutions would be too expensive, and it would destroy our economy. I believe the fossil-fuel industry and chemical plants want to find ways to control their greenhouse emissions that will not destroy their bottom line. That’s why we need a bipartisan energy commission but that’s going to be hard to do, if over half of Republican legislators are climate-change deniers. Those folks still think global warming is about a local weather report.

Things are looking up,Wm Paul Tasin just got the facts hot off the press“the solid statistics are in, and the culture of death that we live in is losing badly to the culture of life.”  The study he provided sated that “ religious Americans enjoy superior mental health, are happier and far less likely to commit suicide.” Now,I don’t know if Mr. Tasin is making a sales pitch or trying to prove his superiority. I still believe if you are all that great,you won’t need stats because your example will be enough.

Well Done Mr. President

I’ve been waiting a long time to hear another liberal inaugural address that drew the line on what separates liberals from conservatives. The president did not use the opportunity to extend another olive branch to the Republican Party but instead chose to lay down the foundation for a new tomorrow or as someone said,” to declare the end of Reaganism.”

The talk of a need for collectivism and a need for a free market that is fair for all Americans had to be devastating for Libertarians to hear. 

The president did not draw- a- line in the sand, but he did lay down his marker, which is what we need to have an honest dialogue. He knows nothing will get done on climate change in the next four years, but that doesn’t mean he won’t continue to talk about more violent storms, frequent fires and drought that are caused by climate change. Fifteen years from now, the climate-change deniers will be saying, “ if we only have listened to President Obama, we would have had a fifteen-year head start."

The president talked of honoring the social contract we made with the elderly and the most vulnerable and the need to view all the options before cutting those programs. This was the first time in inaugural history, that the words, gay, Medicare, Medicaid and climate change were ever used.

The Republicans are out in full force telling everyone within earshot" see I told you he was a liberal” as if it was a social disease. I never knew how liberal or moderate the president was because of some of his previous appointments and stances. For instance, he never fully endorsed the public option and during the debates he bragged of all the drilling for oil we’ve done. He set deportation records and kept all the Bush methods of fighting terrorism except for the enhanced interrogation methods. After four years, he has become wiser and has learned that you won’t win many battles if you're always playing defense and on your opponent's home turf.

The voters want the parties to compromise to get something done but that can’t happen unless the lines of distinction are known by both parties. For example, it is highly unlikely that a grand bargain will be made because the president barely mentioned the deficit or the debt. The Democrats could be persuaded to raise the retirement age to age 66 for the elimination of the oil subsidies and the parties can continue working on things that can be passed with bipartisan support. Like anything else, bipartisanship can be habit forming.

The GOP is starting the new legislation session after a three- day retreat to strategize but their opponents did the same in a less informal way. The Democrats know that they are only 17 house seats away from taking over that legislative chamber. They think if they keep laying out mainstream positions, they will be bait the GOP to oppose; thereby keeping their extreme Tea Party at  9% approval. The GOP has a 26% approval, and Speaker Boehner has a 18% approval compared to Obama’s 52 % which gives them the confidence that their strategy is working. Things can change overnight but right now I don’t see the president moving one inch away from the stand he took yesterday. In his upcoming State of the Union speech in two-weeks, he will say what legislative accomplishments he thinks can be accomplished in his second term.

We don’t want no stinking compromise

I can count on one hand, the times I've come away from a spirited debate , where I've said, “by golly you're right" and neither has my opponent. I think that's pretty common with online debates because it's mostly about a point and counterpoint with not much in- between. Sometimes it's all about gotcha.The on line debates mimic the "You didn't build that" or "what's in those tax returns,"nonsense.

In my last blog, I should have saved myself a lot of time by simply stating that, we could deal a severe blow to those who want to commit a tragedy like the one in Aurora, Colorado by reinstating the 1994 assault weapon ban. It's very simple logic, if you can't get your hands on it; it lessens the odds on it happening again. The idea of a ban is at the heart of the issue; after 911 when we all submitted to tighter security measures. I would like to think that we would've complied regardless of who was president. A couple of failed bombers forced us to endure more intrusive searches, a longer wait time at airports, and we accepted that some liquids would be denied. We did all this without much fanfare but if a homegrown terrorist commits mass murder with a semiautomatic assault weapon; the gun advocates will ban together to give us their reason on why it's a foolish idea to ban those weapons. They know that the politicians don't have the backbone to step up to the NRA. Therein lies the difference. It's not about the second amendment, the intent of the founders because it's already been proven that we will sacrifice a little freedom, if we think, it'll make us safer. My argument was in the first sentence of this paragraph, and my opponents will go through circles and semi circles in trying to make others think that there're willing to compromise. Truth is, they are scared that the country might want to take their guns away, if they don't take a stance every single time.

I read Jessica Puente's well researched blog asking the question "Why we asked what should happen to the survivors of the Goliad County wreck." Most of the responses were predictable. I understand the journalistic argument. Jessica was trying to make, but it will not penetrate because people had their mind made up before the accident ever happened. Some were trying to humanize the situation and others would have none of it. I've been watching the forum since I left, and I found that articles and blogs were not getting a lot of comments. The minute the subject turned the illegal immigrants; a lot of people came out of the woodwork, and others came out to defend the victims. The America that I grew up in, no matter what state our economy was in, would treat victims of any tragedy despite the circumstances. I trust that our authorities will do the right thing when the survivors recover. There are no laws that say if a person enters this country illegally and gets badly injured, that they will be allowed to remain until after they recover. It's a little premature and out of most people hands but not their mouths, on what will happen to them when they recover. I sincerely doubt that those people posting the hateful comments have read one line of Jessica's article because they are not interested in reading something that is contrary to what they firmly believe.I may be wrong, but I don't think those posters represent the Victoria I grew up in. They're like the Tea Party, small in numbers, but they make a lot of noise.

We could live if those two issues I mentioned remained on the back burner for now but our planet is getting hotter, yet were are not serious enough to try to do anything about it.

Greenland Ice Melt, Measured By NASA Satellites, Reaches Unprecedented Level

Exxon CEO, Rex Tillerson acknowledged that burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet, but said, "society will be able to adapt." Huh? You tell that to the farmers who see their crops being ruined by the heat.

We are also discovering just how corrupt Wall Street is, but we have one major party that wants to repeal Dodd-Frank. My favorite is the latest CBO report on the Affordable Health Care Act. "They concluded that with the June United States Supreme Court decision, the law by 2022 would insure three million fewer people resulting in a lower cost of the law by $84 billion, and that a planned repeal by Republicans would add a net $109 billion to the federal budget deficit by 2022." That doesn't matter to the partisan Republicans who still want to repeal Obama Care.

I like to think that I’m a reasonable man, let’s start small by insisting that Speaker Boehner kick Representative Michele Bachmann off the House Intelligence Committee or at least change the name of the committee. Here is another one of her latest stupid remarks.