Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

Just cuz hippies are lame doesn't mean that we should trust Monsanto, is all I'm saying.

The internal combustion gasoline engine has delivered us from endless drudgery without any bad consequences apart from maybe a bit of particulate pollution, and a smidgeon of greenhouse gases from the exhaust. Hardly enough to bother about.

i wonder how you'd study the effects of some of this labeling - gluten-free, no GMOs, all natural, organic, etc.. some of which is regulated some not.. troubling if consumers mistakenly believe foods are healthy simply because they're "natural" and no GMO and whatever. i see this with people at work, family members with the "natural" juice/sparkling drinks which are hardly better than just drinking soda.

i pay fairly close attention to food labels myself but i settle for 'good enough' ie i eat a lot of frozen organic vegetables from whole foods and don't really eat processed food most of the time, but if there are doughnuts at the office sure i have one

**anyway** speaking of anti-science, i mean, in a rational world all the GOP candidates would be at sub-30% in the polls since they don't believe climate change is real and caused by humans. it's really depressing to me that climate change has hardly been mentioned in the debates thus far

Just cuz hippies are lame doesn't mean that we should trust Monsanto, is all I'm saying.

― schwantz, Tuesday, April 5, 2016 11:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think one can have distrust for Monsanto the corporation while also acknowledging that thus far, there's been no proven negative health effects from GMOs.

My bad. In any case, the super-condescending "just trust us" attitude around GMOs I get from my scientist friends seems ignorant of the rich history of unintended consequences that have accompanied virtually every scientific advancement.

― schwantz, Tuesday, April 5, 2016 11:45 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But the anti-GMO stance is analogous rougly to Trump's "let's not let in any more muslims until we can figure out what's going on." You never "figure out what's going on" to a satisfactory degree for people who take that stance.

the anti-GMO, pro-labeling movement engages in pretty much the exact same tactics as the anti-vaxxers do

another consequence of requiring labels on GM products, other than what amateurist mentioned, is that it quite understandably increases demand for "organic" or non-GMO products, which despite having comparable nutritional value tend to be more expensive. for the (white, middle class) people who actually care about the issue, this is no big deal. for everyone else, it might be

but we digress. and we've had this exact discussion on a couple of other threads before

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And it took about 25 years to figure out how bad DDT really was.

Sorry for the derail. I'll shut up now.

lotsa Trump investors wailing about the money they lost tonight going all-in on a Trump win based on that shitty ARG poll. I should be going to sleep but reading it is hilarious.

on PredictIt forums

As schwantz pointed out and I have also said on other threads, the only GMO agricultural products to have entered the distribution chain in any appreciable quantities have ALL been varieties of Round-Up resistant plants. Their ONLY benefit is to allow the producer to spray herbicides on them more often and in greater quantities than similar conventional plants.

I personally would avoid GMO products atm simply because dumping ever larger quantities of herbicides on fields seems like a questionable practice for the health of the workers in those fields and the health of the soil, not to mention the greater chance of my ingesting herbicide residues.

I could give a shit about eating the actual genetic material in those plants. I know it won't harm me because chemically speaking it is made out of the same stuff as any other DNA. It's the fucking herbicides I'm against and atm "GMO" is an excellent proxy for their increased use in food production.

there are also plenty of librulls that are all like "burger flippers don't *really* deserve 15/hour, man" too

no problem votin' for H Walmart-Clinton then

YES WE GET IT

"Neanderthal
Posted: April 5, 2016 at 10:44:40 PM
there are also plenty of librulls that are all like "burger flippers don't *really* deserve 15/hour, man" too"

Huh. You know some shitty liberals I guess

really should have said "Democrats" and not liberals there

librulls is funny and i might use it in the future

actually i think that's really one of morbz' better nickname-insults

he does do a good job wif the nicks

morbz fan here.

awwww :)

btw i am really really sorry Sanders is boring some of you with the wholesale theft of everything by the richies who own our government!

I voted for the dude. not my fault the rest of my state didn't follow suit.

no matter who wins the democratic nomination, if the democrats win the presidency, citizens united is sure to be gutted by SCOTUS anyway, no? that's in the case Obama can't ever nominate his last judge.

I remember this being good on the anti anti-science stuff

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/the-new-scientism/

If it's actually bad then I apologise

Sanders in Wash Sq Park next Wednesday night

doing sk8board tricks

poppin wheelies, eatin vegan food, gettin arm tats

cool new york jokes dudes

yeah sorry i regretted that instantly

it's okay i would blame the last 2 years of New Yorker covers.

Trump is fucked

Maybe i'll go see sanders. I wonder if the pigeon guy will be there. What does he do when the park gets massively crowded?

Some nerdy beardo explaining convention rules to lawrence o'donnell brian williams and rachel maddow, all of whom are acting intrigued, like they are improbably just learning about this now. maybe thats true of brian williams

Some nerdy beardo

Sage Francis?

Chris matthews has the same odd blonde old man hair trump has. What is this about? Is it dyed?

Ben Ginsberg. They should do an hour on this stuff. The rules are what the delegates decide they are after the delegates vote on the rules base upon the rules committee's official rules, barring a minority statement on alternate rules based upon 25% of the rules committee delegates agreeing to create one, based upon the rules, and the Louisiana delegate meeting where Trump's invitations got lost in the mail. Plus hookers slipping mickeys to delegates in Cleveland hotels to prevent signing off on the nominees (that discussion was implied in my living room).

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https://twitter.com/speechboy71/status/717175557096673280

i like the picture of sanders there, he looks like a total dumbass. go back to the retirement home, you kooky old piece of shit. amiright, daily news?

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https://twitter.com/tcote/status/717382056481800193

if they want people to take the article seriously, they should pick better photos.

this just reminds me that /all/ of our choices for president are essentially terrible, although naturally by no means /equally/ terrible

good night everybody!

Wow what an irritating twat this Michael Cohen is - his tweets reveal that he too has no idea what he's talking about. Who is he?

yeah i don't give a shit about michael cohen but the bernie interview /was/ pretty embarrassing and cohen's takeaways from it were mostly pretty valid

anyway back to the humor section:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/716222480738869248

i mean i don't think you can successfully explain away bernie's answers in that interview by reference to how irritating/lame michael cohen is

I'm a bernie supporter but I think his insistence on the moral culpability of the corporations and banks is misguided. The issue is coporations and private banks are existentially required to maximize profit by any legal means necessary. It's bleak but it's what they do, otherwise we wouldn't call them corporations. Politicians who don't reign them in, or are compromised by their lobbyist money or whatever, are far more culpable, because they are supposed to work in the public interest.

Basically you can't expect capital to work for the interests of labor-- that's why labor needed to get organized to improve their circumstances. That's why so many people in history have wanted to abolish capitalism.

cool shit twitter account speechboy71, one to watch in 2016

do you mean moral culpability of individual actors? or the institutions?

cool shit twitter account speechboy71, one to watch in 2016

― hunangarage, Wednesday, April 6, 2016 1:16 AM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

man, every other post on ILX is such garbage these days

much like... a twitter feed, i suppose

As a rhetorical tactic the talk if jailing bankers is I guess effective, but that kind of thing wouldn't strike at the root of the global forces that are dispossessing and angering the working class. And I am skeptical that there is a lot that could be done on the trade agreement front without causing unexpected consequences.

is "moral culpability" really the center of sanders's attack on "big banks"? if it was, wouldn't he be aiming primarily and punishing the individuals responsible? (which is part of his "plan," such as it is, but not the one he insists upon most vocally)

i feel like sanders does diagnose the problems as structural ones to the extent that someone making a serious run for national political office in the USA can

a problem is that the diagnosis isn't very sophisticated

do you mean moral culpability of individual actors? or the institutions?

― wizzz! (amateurist),

Both. Capitalism is amoral. It's hard to reign in. It wreaks havoc. I don't know if things would be so different if it was only good people leading these profit maximizing organizations, who need to maintain their edge however they can or else become unprofitable and die.

right, of course -- i just can't imagine that line of argument getting a politician anywhere