Welcome to Gaia! ::

global warming is definitely real
have you seen the movie "an inconvenient truth"?

I think you're confusing communism with Leninism. Leninism is a type of communism which insists that the only way in which communism can come about is violent revolution. Most communists are actually Marxists, who believe that it'll just inevitably come about as society progresses.

The new House bill is bullshit. It's been torn to shreds by conservatives (Both Democrat and Republican) who are owned by the insurance industry. Yes, it mandates that everyone have coverage; who do you think that'll benefit? Oh, yes, the insurance industry. I find it quite ironic that while people accuse liberals of "taking over" and trying to "control people", the conservatives are the ones that actually make the mandates.

To be fair, it does regulate the insurance industry a bit better, though it doesn't regulate premiums so any regulation it does will probably just end up raising premiums. It does have a public option, albeit a weak option that doesn't even cover everybody.

And once we add the Senate's bill, which is probably going to be even worse...If I were king for a day...


The House bill actually expands Medicaid.


Yes, that's the public option. It doesn't sound to controversial when you think about it, and yet our country always seems to have trouble doing it even when the majority support it. Goddamned Russians...

My dad is a fisheries biologist who tracks fish in Alaska. Every year, he goes to Alaska to catch and survey fish. He's been doing it for almost 20 years.

Over just that short time, he has had to go farther and farther north in order to catch the fish he was originally sampling in the early 90's. A couple years ago, he started catching fish that you could only find off the coast of California when he started.

He says that in his field, the idea that there's a debate over global climate change is laughable. He doesn't know of anyone in his field who disagrees that global climate change is taking place.

Why would somebody violently revolt if they knew change was going to come about anyway?

Karl Marx said things would inevitably change to become more communist, either through peaceable or violent means by an organized proletariat. He never actually told people to violently revolt.

Leninism takes Marxism a step farther in saying that it is up to a revolutionary party to incite that change.

And Stalinism takes Leninism yet another step farther in saying,"F*ck you, Lenin and Marx! Morality is for the weak!"

Thanks for the info on the Communist / Socialist scene guys. 3nodding

As for global warming, my understanding is that about 99.9% of the scientific population around the world agree that a) climate change is real and that b) it is at least exacerbated by human actions.

To alleviate that, I think that there should be very strict regulations on pollution, but there should also be just as heavy incentives to come up with cleaner solutions. There is a problem, and it's only going to get worse. However, without a global consumer effort, it's pretty much up to the business sectors to make sure things change.

There's also the issue of wildlife, and the dying off of species.

I do not like hunting and killing of animals. However, people are very unlikely to protect things that are not a financial boon, especially in impoverished rural areas where a lot of the last refuges of wildlife are. I think that in order to save our endangered species, we need to give them a use, make them financially advantageous to raise in a sustainable manner, and THEN people will care and want to take care of them. For example, a lot of wildlife in Afirca is making a comeback as the wildlife refuges are used for tourism and, yes, for hunting. I may not like the hunting, but it makes the people selling the chance to hunt them make sure that the population isn't going to crash, and makes sure that poachers stay out.

You described communism as a more violent form of socialism, when in fact communism is not inherently violent. Also, it is true that Marx believed that in order fr socialism to come about there had to be a rising up of the proletariat, but it didn't have to be violent. The transition is going from the means of production belonging to the bourgeoisie to belonging to the proletariat, and obviously there's going to be some class struggle whenever you do that. I probably misunderstood you, and for that I'm sorry. My point was only that Marx was not a violent person, and communists are not violent people. It's just all those damned Soviets that give them a bad name.


Marx considered socialism to be a step on the way to communism-To refer back to the "flow chart" you mentioned, socialism is the thing between capitalism and communism. I think they've always been different.