Politics

So reading in the news, Seattle has introduced legislation that would create a new math curriculum highlighting how math was used by western civilization in order to subjugate cultures of color. An example would be how numeracy tests were used to screen black voters in southern states. While this is, and will continue to be, taught in history class, it will now also be taught in math class. Additionally, questions will purposefully be framed to cast light on social issues such as the disparity in criminal sentencing, drug sentencing, etc. Furthermore, the math class would also teach students to use different bases, such as base 20, to help make up for …

In a different thread posters mentioned the excellent article "The case for Reparations" by Coates. Here, I urge everyone to read it. While there are points were folks are going to disagree, the overall article is excellent and provide important perspective. It is far more than only an argument, but rather an exquisite mix of historic and sociological characterization of a group interspersed with individual accounts. A summary would not do it proper justice, so again, I suggest folks to read it in whole. While not specifically this article, many of the contents and studies described within the article have over the years changed my mind on many things (including affirmat…

Yes and no, I honestly wanted to avoid that association in this thread but eventually i plan to open another thread that is more specific. This why i wanted to avoid discussing this problem in the context of UFOs. You have already decided the quality of the sighting by suggesting they are all "Insufficient Evidence", "Lights in the Sky", "Optical Illusion", not to mention suggested that no matter how "professional" the witnesses are being mistaken is most likely.

@iNow, Your comment "My intuition is that Rubio has formally begun positioning himself as a Republican primary challenger to Trump (or replacement if he’s removed from office beforehand)." interests me so I opened a new thread to discuss it. It does seem there are a a few different ways Trump's presidency might end and all seem possible in my opinion. - Trump is removed from office via impeachment. This could happen before 2020 or during a second term should he make to 2020 and win a second term. - Trump resigns as part of a deal to avoid impeachment. - Trump resigns as part of a deal he works out to spare some combination of Ivanka, Kushner, Don Jr, Eric…

Got it all into the title. When will politicians learn the difference between spending and investment ?

The attack on Saudi Arabian oil refineries appears to be a result of (relatively) low cost weapons. I recall reading SF stories by Donald Kingbury - "Courtship Rites", "The Moon Goddess and the Son" - that expressed a view of history of war of swings back and forth from elite professional soldiery, that are expensive to equip and train to peasant armies with cheap but effective weapons. (Hammers and knives and longbows in the hands of footsoldiers taking out armoured knights). The second of those stories (written before Gorbachev but set later with intact USSR) had a homemade drone-missile, made from parts on-line fired at the Kremlin and very nearly setting off all out n…

Today Trump walked out of a meeting about infrastructure and said he won't work with Dems until they stop all investigations. There are a dozen or more investigations of Trump continuing besides Mueller's. The Mueller investigation was of very narrow scope. The other investigations however, cover a broader area, going into all manner of financial dealings, and of many Trump entities and allies. My question is how much in substance do the remaining investigations compare to the Mueller project that took nearly 2 years? Do they all add up to be comparable to the Mueller report, or could the other investigations be much more for Trump and company to worry about? W…

For those who do not know. A very thorough review. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States) A shorter version with a quote. https://votesmart.org/education/electoral-college#.WguT9nNMG7N . So there are some who say our method of voting for POTUS is outdated and broken and needs to be replaced. I am agreeable to the concept if implemented in the right way. If the electoral college is abolished and everything else left pretty much the same my almost worthless vote would become completely worthless. So here is my proposal. 1. Abolish the electoral college. 2. Voting to take place the 1st of November…

Every state of the US gets 2 senators, no matter the state's population. I guess this is to protect against a tyranny of the majority. California has 68 times the population of Wyoming (CA 39,557,000 to WY 578,000 in 2018), but they have EQUAL representation in the senate. What I propose is a slight proportionality modification. The 5 most populous states (CA, TX, FL, NY, PN) each gets 3 senators, and the 5 least populous states (WY, VT, AK, ND, SD) each gets only ONE senator. The total number of senators remains 50, just a little more proportionately (and fairly) distributed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_the_United_States_by_p…

I would say that you don't need to be a genius to see that most scientists are leftists and somewhat socialist. This poll conducted in 2009 says Lab Politics: Most scientists in this country are Democrats. Those numbers probably haven't changed much in these past 10 years since. The reason for this political lopsidedness among scientists comes from the diversity of the scientific professions. For science to advance quickly we need international cooperation and an open forum for the knowledge gained in lab studies and field research. There's been a real hard push lately to make all scientific papers available in a sort of Google-type system internationally (s…

Sorry for my English. I can imagine much more progress. I think medicine is being neglected. Taking into account what radical changes were made during Donald Trump's function, more pressure is needed.

What do you think about USA and Canada unification? Do you think US govt. would support a Canadian politician who would promote such idea?

Netflix has a film about how our data is being used, often against us and mostly to profit from us, and also how the right has used companies like Cambridge Analytica (then nation states like Russia and now China and Iran) to win elections nobody thought they could win (in Trinidad Tobago, Ukraine, Brexit, and Trump, for example). I’ve been loosely following these topics for years and it’s a good film if you haven’t yet seen. My question is: Should the left use this technology in the same way? I’m thinking that not doing so is like coming with a knife to a gun fight and that a principled stance against it is a losing stance, that unilateral disarmament is a mis…

Hello all. Politics is not something I comment; but found interesting that U.S. already bought from Denmark the Virgin islands not too far ago, in 1917 and paid 25 million in gold. With such antecedent, all the noise generated is showing some historical ignorance... If it is a government thing or a presidential personal pursuit, I do not know.

I was listening to a BBC interview with an American this morning, who said that he was going to put is choice in the "Little box at the bottom marked none of these" Is it true that the Americans have this advanced option on their ballot papers? I would love to see them introduced here.

Doesn't it seem to you that ultimately the time came for EU to make the most decisive step in its history and accept Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Russia making economic unification of Europe complete in this way?

Poland is pushing the EU into crisis: ps. koti and Silvestru should be the most interested in this subject, after all they're Polish citizens..

Is there a way or process to stop incumbent governments hijacking the election process and legal system in their favour for future elections?

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has reportedly filed the first criminal charges as part of the sprawling inquiry into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, CNN reported.. Citing “sources briefed on the matter,” the network said a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., approved the charges, which have been sealed by a federal judge. CNN did not indicate who had been charged, how many people had been charged, or what charges had been filed by Mueller’s team. An arrest could come by Monday. Reuters subsequently confirmed CNN's report. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/robert-mueller-sealed-indictment/544292/ …

There is stiff competition from the UK with the "Brexit" vote followed up rapidly by the "what the flip have we done" realisation, and the "we still want all the good bits" pout - and frankly on the United States side the failure to agree to stop selling weapons of war to those on a terror watchlist seemed to be a shoo in; but this latest farce from Washington just adds layers of ineptitude, corruption, and sheer downright nastiness to an already strong contender http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-zika-funding_us_5772937fe4b0dbb1bbbc00c2 A spending bill with 1.1 billion to be set aside for funding the US response to the Zika virus has failed in the house …

It seems to me that the Trump administration is pre-meditatively creating and escalating a problem with Iran to the extent of maneuvering the armed forces and removing non-essential staff from Iraq. Do you think the ulterior motive might be to bury bad news at home by distraction?

The answer is both reassuring and disturbing This is actually the title of a report by Haworth et al (Bulletin of the atomic scientists 2019). In this report they conducted an experiment in which a representative group of Americans were shown different scenarios (e.g. North Korea conducting missile tests and threatening allies or the US) and asked them what responses they would favour a preventative strike under different scenarios (e.g. limited air strike, large scale strike, nuclear strike). In these scenarios they were also presented with different numbers of civilian North Korean casualties (15,000 up to 1.1 million) and different rates of success of these p…

Documentaries: Untold History of the United States, Born in Gaza, The War Show and Last Men In Aleppo. "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence...". Samuel Huntington. Gaza 2014. 507 children killed and 3,598 wounded. 80% of Gaza's population depends on humanitarian aid. More than 400,000 children need psychological support in Gaza. Once again WH supports a dictator who kills his own people: Bashar al-Assad (Syria) against the Islamic State. WH still kills innocent civilians (Vietnam, Gaza and Syria). Israel did not learn anything from World War II. The WH…

Teaching and protesting is not effective. There are still people who dont respect different races and cultures. Why don't we imprison them? It is one of the biggest issues today and everybody talks about less important things. Sorry for my English.

The Kyoto Protocol is a UN strategy for minimizing greenhouse gas emmissions in nations across the world. The taxes levied on a country's emmissions, are called emmision caps. Now China has an emmision cap twice that of USA. So that means China pays double the emmision taxes as USA. This extraeneous cost could be used to balance out the US china trade deficit if USA manouvered it's trade equation to take into account and control chinas emission taxes. After all, global commerce is a set of equations and one trade route can be enlargened to control another with all parties' agreement!