Right To Left

I don't agree with #3 though, cause I don't believe he is trying to understand politics. More like trying to impose a theocratic dogma as politics.

Reality seems to be allergic to providing links to source material though!

Nobody wants to deal with the dilemma that extreme lockdowns are likely the only way these new diseases like Sars-Cov-2, and there will almost certainly be more of these new diseases coming at us as the last of the world's tropical forests are chopped down for farming and palm oil plantations, in an already overcrowded (with humans) world.

1. Hasn't this been the main source of the Republican Party's and conservative movements' schizophrenia on the topic of immigration! GOP business leaders want lots of immigrants and encourage refugee flows also, to prevent wages from rising and union organizing, because it helps drive down the cost of labour. BUT of course, the knuckle-dragging common louts who make up rightwing activism don't benefit unless they at least own a small business, but they mostly just see dark people moving in to town and becoming more of a presence. So, they represent Fortress America, and want that wall on the border completed. Since it appears they have won...or maybe the business class republicans have fled to the Democrat Party now that no longer represent anything that average workers care about, so now the militia crowd is all that's left of the GOP. 2. I see cosmopolitanism as an openness to other perspectives and other cultures. I see that as a net benefit that has little to do with capitalism and expanding business. This has been a general principle since the time when the first large communities or cities were coming together thousands of years ago. And of course, all that tolerant thinking can go flying out the window fast whenever times get tough...as they inevitably do. But, it's interesting to note that the very first large settlements of Asia Minor (Catalhoyuk) beginning around 7000 b.c., exhibit anthropological evidence of being multiracial for centuries until they experienced hard times and invasions from marauding bands of warriors much later. Catalhoyuk never showed much evidence of violence that became much more common later when populations grew larger and settled agriculture became the standard model for most people. It was a 'city' of at least 8000 people at its height, that grew together in an unplanned, haphazard manner, with no walls surrounding the settlement, or fortifications. Over a period of many millennia, people moved in from all directions until the city was abandoned thousands of years later...likely because of prolonged droughts. So, when times are good, people feel more relaxed and open to outsiders who are different than them, and turn insular and violent during hard times......same old, same old! That seems to be the direction we are heading today, so I would say that rightwingers have little to worry about!

And those people would not be rightwing conservatives, who taught us that white Europeans were superior to other 'darker' races of mankind, and so had the right to move in and push natives off their lands, as they set up their settler colonies around the world. NOOO, anyone left of rightwing who plays the race card is just patronizing poc's for votes and like rightwingers, isn't interested in dark people beyond the elites among black and brown people. In the US, they were referred to as "The Talented Tenth" -- as white northern philanthropists referred to the local business and ruling classes among America's black population centers. And, more than 100 years later, the Democratic? Party applies the same old coercion and fear tactics to win the vast majority of African American votes, BUT if you pay attention, does NOTHING for them beyond symbolism. For instance, the same "talented tenth" black mayors of Washington and Atlanta who put giant Black Lives Matter street murals in downtown centers, increased police funding and condemned BLM demonstrators and those who demanded large cuts to police budgets to maintain other city services. Once again, learn to look past the headlines at what's in the details!

So, Conservatives are feeling buyer's remorse for the "Free Trade" policies they pushed on us under Reagan and Mulroo back in the 80's! And let's not forget that after the quagmire China experienced following the Tien An Mien Massacre, it was Herbert Walker Bush who told America and the Limbaugh crowd in particular, that ending China's "Favored Nation" trade status would be a big mistake. Some blather about a world of trading nations wouldn't be at war with each other because of mutual economic interest. And that open trade encourages democracy and peaceful relations with other nations just by virtue of becoming trading partners. Not sure how they explained away that First World War problem that featured the trading nations of Europe sending out troops to kill young soldiers of their trading "allies." Maybe Neoconservative propaganda was easier to digest back in the 80's -- when at least half the population was gaining in wealth. While today, the winners are a tiny and shrinking segment of the population.....unless you live in China.

With capitalist economics leading us all to a disaster lately, I've been dusting off my books on Marx and reading more from a growing number of younger socialists who are trying to figure ways out of a range of dilemmas we're all facing today. I don't have an attribution for this, but just recently I heard a claim by a reputable source that it was actually Adam Smith "Wealth of Nations" fame who first created a 'labor theory of value.' The difference of course was that capitalist merchant like Smith would never agree to a system that declares all surplus value belongs to the workers who created it, but apparently Karl Marx himself, read Adam Smith's book in the 1840's and used his theory to develop a socialist form.

I'd say we 'live in interesting times' today for sure. When it comes to which oligarchs actually run government, it's not as simple as the Wall Street commercial banks anymore. The Silicon Valley billionaires and their trillion dollar dotcom bubble machines have swooped in and taken over the Democratic Party over the past 20 years. That's why except for a few mostly inconsequential social agendas, the Dems have thrown their old union members and working class voters over the side, in a rush to curry favor with the new middle class of high tech professionals. While the Republicans still have the oil lobby, but that's about it! They're not even the preferred party of the arms manufacturers anymore. And that is also why every Democrat since Clinton has sounded more and more like a warhawk. Nowadays, if someone is going to run for Congress as an antiwar candidate, they better be libertarian in the Republican Party. Because there's no room for any Democrats who think they're on the left to step out of line on foreign wars and regime change operations...even Bernie has to sign off on it.....to keep his Senate seniority as a non-Democrat Democrat!

At least RT channels do some news coverage. CNN is nothing but one "expert" panel after another of talking heads and spin doctors. They wouldn't recognize a news story if it leaped up and bit them in the face!

There certainly is an undisguised vote-buying aspect of lax immigration policy. I got a close up look at this back in the late 70's, when Canada...under Pierre Trudeau agreed to take in 20,000 of a much larger population of Ugandan refugees, who were forced to leave Uganda by the Idi Amin Gov. at the time. These ethnic Indian and Pakistani Ugandans had made up most of the bureaucratic and business classes in Uganda under the British Empire. So, Amin's play at national and racial identity was to drive out all those were a legacy of the old colonial days. A small factory I was working at in 1977 hired an Indian and a Pakistani, who were about the same age as me at the time, and were part of that emergency exodus from Uganda five years earlier. The subject of federal politics happened to come up one day, and I recall both of them saying they voted for the Libs, even though they weren't happy with Pierre's economic performance at the time. In fact nobody was! It wasn't all the Fed's fault, dealing with an economy in recession from high oil prices (this was at a time when Canada - from Ontario east - depended on imported oil from the Middle East, while the west was swimming in much cheaper Alberta crude). So, late 70's Canada was not a happy place, but there was more hope things would turn around in the future than there is today. My Indian and Pakistani friends had voted for the first time in the prior year and declared that they were "obligated" to vote for Trudeau, because he got them and their families to Canada...case closed! It wouldn't matter what happened with the economy, or what kind of Liberal Prime Minister took over after Trudeau was gone, they and the rest of their families who were voting age, would have to vote Liberal .... just out of loyalty apparently. And I'm sure that example has been repeated many times over the years, and made the difference for the Liberal Party - seen as the most open and accommodating of the three to new Canadians. Can't follow you on this one! How does low wages improve productivity? And how do some nations like Germany have high wages and yet also rank high on these productivity stats? But, I'm further left than the NDP anyway!

I'm more than a little reserved on all of the 'economic growth' claptrap I see on a regular basis, but we still benefit from immigration in other ways: re-balancing aging demographics would be #1. I've heard economic commentators mention that Japan's shrinking population and resistance to immigration is the main reason why they are in decline and not really one of those 'Asian Tigers' we hear so much about from the investment brokers. It's up to the Japanese to decide how to run their island nation, but so far they are very lucky they have one of the healthiest and most active aging populations in the world today. #2. cosmopolitan culture. I know, I know, I'm going to get rocks and stones thrown at me from all sides on this board, but even though I'm mostly white (with a Metis grandmother), the only thing I don't like about living in one of Canada's immigration meccas - southern Ontario, is that all of the people moving in to the GTA are the prime motivation for our idiot conservative government to demand zoning changes for new home construction everywhere..........literally - everywhere! No such thing as conservation areas and protected wildlife habitats under the Ford Administration.......bring in the bulldozers! When it comes to dealing with more recent immigrants....either they're friendly or standoffish. Their children do well in school, and don't commit crimes at the same rate as white kids from lower income families. There is an added advantage, when you get to know some of your international neighbors, that they might have first hand or at least 2nd hand knowledge of what it's like living in some of the violent hotspots the US is always looking for excuses to regime change. A lot of people who come from places like Guatemala, Afghanistan or Haiti may be a little reluctant to open up to some gringo about how they feel about the regime installed in their homeland, but I started learning over 20 years ago, that many people from poor nations of the global south who have been targeted for our benevolent gifts of democracy and loans, have done more reading and have a lot more insight on what's going on and what has happened in their countries of origin than 99% of Canadians, let alone Americans are aware of!

So your objection isn't immigrants per se, just the ones that are darker than a sheet of photocopier paper.

You mean we've stopped the spread of Covid-19 and re-opened everything again, and have managed modest economic growth while the rest of the world falls further behind from their inabilities to deal with a pandemic in a serious responsible manner? I didn't know we were doing so good!

"Safety be damned!!!" Exactly what criteria do you rightwingers and Neolibs use to define "national security?"

The Government should have set up some method of payment that could have prevented small, independent newspapers from either dying out or being bought out years ago! Now, in smaller towns and cities, there is no coverage of local news that's too small for the FAANGS to take an interest in. So, unless someone posts a story on their Facebook or Twitter account, nobody will ever hear about it. And those big newspapers and radio and TV are just shills for advertisers and motivated special interests. For example, when I turn on my local radio station - CHML just to get a quick traffic and weather report and listen too long, a talk show starts where every guest calling in is a prof or dept. head of some public policy or finance think tank who is actually paid by the corporate sponsors giving money to the university. And whatever he or she has to say about what's going on in the world is never going to be original or radical in any sense of the word. If real life blows up a narrative, then the talkingheads put together their excuses or brand new narratives, or just make the whole thing disappear from news coverage to be replaced by more important events....like whether Lady Gaga got her little dogs back! Nevermind what happened to her employee who took four bullets in a vain effort to do his job and protect her dogs.

You'll be happy to know that Turkey is a US and Israeli ally and a member of NATO. And also worth noting that the US proxy forces recruited and cultivated by CIA field agents come from the most extreme and violent Muslim activist groups, which have especially targeted and killed Christians and other non-Muslim (or not the right kind of Muslim) minorities in Syria and Iraq. That's how much politicians and government apparatchiks care about Christians or so called Christian values!

Mini-reactors are apparently safer and easier to manage than the big ones needed to boil enough water to power the turbines that provide electricity to major cities. And nuclear power is perfectly safe.....until something goes wrong at one of them, anywhere, and then all bets are off. And that's why they require government underwriting! No private-for profit insurance companies will take the risk that could completely bankrupt them! That's what governments are for.

If you're happy with a nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over your head, GREAT! But if most people were informed of the risks and longterm costs and all of the costs that private contractors - GE and Westinghouse skip out on, support for nuclear would have never increased over the past 30 years. The public is less informed about nuclear than during the 70's or 80's after Chernobyl, and has been brainwashed with false information that nuclear has no carbon footprint...even though the tons of concrete that have to be produced and poured to make the necessary safety containment walls sure does produce alot of carbon that goes up in the air.

QAnon is Republican for Russiagate! Some Republican had to put together a conspiracy theory in 2017 to explain why Trump wasn't carrying out his promises, and now that he's "former" president, the QAnon account serves no purpose, just as endless rehashing of Russiagate, Mueller, Comey would no longer serve any purpose today!

The only things that come instantly, no questions asked, are illegal invasions and bombing attacks, like Joe's bombing of illegally occupied Eastern Syria because........some Iraqi militants the CIA claims are Iranian equipped killed one contractor at an Iraqi base. And nobody in MSM land ever asks how an attack in one proxy justifies attacks on a different country. *When Trump ordered a bombing in response to a chemical gas attack blamed on the Syrian Government that was actually done by US armed - Saudi/ UAE- trained Islamoextremists, there were a few MSM talking heads outraged that he didn't consult Congress first. But, now that America is a one party state, nobody is going to ask such questions anymore!

I wouldn't be too concerned that Biden's puppetmasters are going to change US border policy from ............ whatever the hell Trump Admin was actually doing down there. They didn't build a wall....but then again, Mexico didn't front the money that was supposed to pay for it. The revolutionary Biden regime still has kids in cages...just nicer cages, that look more like a bunch of outhouses. And when Joe surrogates say to 'wait,' it's the same message they're giving Americans already 'waiting' for a modest increase in minimum wage to $15 per hour, or WAIT for your 2nd Covid relief check that shrunk from $2000 promised to Georgians if they elected Ossoff and Warnock to the Senate...on down to $1400(added to Trump's $600), which hasn't arrived....yet! So, they're just telling prospective refugees from America's colonies in Latin America looking for something better than the gangster-run hellholes US "soft power" has left them with, to also WAIT before you risk your lives after giving your last dollars to coyotes on the promise that they will smuggle you across the border somewhere, somehow. Now, let's see how long that works!

Didn't they say something similar about the GE reactors at Fukushima a few years back? Now, those melting reactor cores are burning their way through the earth, with the recent earthquake there causing more radiation to leak into the atmosphere.

There is something very strange going on down there now! It's almost like the US is turning into a one party state, with a small compliant conservative party allowed to present the image of an opposition. I sure as hell would never support Republicans, let alone Trump. But an online oligarch yankiing Trump's Twitter account is just more evidence of who has power and who doesn't in America today.

I didn't find much interest in examining if there was any danger to the public from these emergency shutdowns. What if a reactor's cooling system failed during such a shutdown!