Kaitlyn S

I will respond to the questions asked of me when I have time, but in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to give thanks to the Lord for being healthy enough to be here, and wealthy enough to have not only the necessities like food but luxuries like access to the Internet. Not everybody has both of those but most of the posters here do and should be likewise thankful.

I'd be shocked if that was the best post of the year. I'll have to look for a better post, I'm sure several exist

I am, as you are, exchanging ideas. My response to Hrothgar is only silly if the objective is to make a profit. If the highest objective is to greatly diminish man-made climate change, then rewarding innovators and then giving the technology away is not silly at all. It was pointed out that the USA can afford it more than anyone else, and are largely responsible for the problem, so it wouldn't even be that unfair to the US to develop the awesome technology and then just give it away. And if we are really concerned with climate control more than anything else, we should want everybody to get on board with the cleaner energy ASAP which means not only giving it away but training them to use it (including household systems which use the new energy source.) Of course, the company can sell the products overseas at slightly more than cost and make some money; but if we really want a clean earth and the foreign government is married to the idea of producing the new product themselves, just let them do it and tell them how. I know I'm breaking far afield of my capitalist ideology but if there is much agreement on this clean earth initiative, let's get it done as quickly as possible This is different than TV sets where we aren't that anxious to get it used worldwide. There is already partial precedent in the US subsidizing the rest of the world, and while we aren't giving drugs away, we are selling them much more cheaply to foreigners than Americans. http://www.wsj.com/a...rugs-1448939481 I trust that the Wall Street Journal falls within your bounds for a credible source. And while I was pretty sure it was true, I did take your advice and look it up because one never knows.

I can't read the alert on 2H. If it shows 5-5 in the reds, a good case can be made the total tricks will outnumber the total trumps, maybe by 2 or more. However, I'm not sure I want them to compete to 4H which they might make. (give parther KQxxx of spades and out, we get 2 black tricks and a heart.)

May I suggest a copy of "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie 1936? You are calling someone a bigot and a troll for pointing out the obvious fact that third-world people are going to get more developed? I thought it was uncool when I was mentioning something I thought was obvious but race was involved. This is really rough. I think he was only suggesting out that if climate change is a serious problem, it's going to get a lot more serious very quickly.

It sounds like what you are suggesting is cap & trade here in the US, and then when we develop technologies to develop energy cheaper and cleaner, let the rest of the world use the technology gratis. It could work.

I agree, and that was one of my ideas - to reward innovation. Rather than give subsidies to unproven entities like Solyndra, let the magic of Capitalism work by rewarding those innovators that come up with valuable solutions. You will see plenty of private R&D, well-funded startups dedicated to finding solutions which will attract some of the best minds. By the way, I agree with you. This is one case where the theft of our intellectual property might pay off for us.

Allow one of the most tactless people on BBO to show you a more tactful way to say this. I say this because I really think you're trying to be tactful. There are some posters with which I wouldn't bother trying.

I apologize, I meant to repeat the two questions and got distracted by a disturbing phone call. Anyway, let's make the assumption that man-made climate change is not only real but will have disastrous effects on the human race and the planet, so something needs to be done. (Ah yes, you did "answer" them; your answer was that my Kyoto protocol information was bullsh*t.) 1) When there are nations with many in poverty that are trying to industrialize, they will have more pressing needs than worrying about the planet; so if a country with more than three times our population continues to pollute and use oil and/or coal, how will our actions make a difference? Yes, I know they'll make a slight difference, but if we are headed to great devastation, how can we avoid it if other countries don't have the same agenda? (By the way, I have some answers to this question, you may not like them, but I'd like to hear answers from others first.) 2) Let's say your answer to #1 is going to be very expensive (I don't believe any of my solutions aren't.) What are you going to give up to take care of the climate change problem? You have to either take care of it using more tax money (which the American people will revolt against) or by printing more money (which the American people should revolt against, at least those with any savings for retirement), or give up currently funded programs. Are you going to give up Social Security or cut it way below the poverty level and means test it? That will pay for some climate control but probably not enough and there's going to be some political fallout. Are you going to cut military spending? That's cool, you won't have to worry about how the USA will pay for it because we may be one of Russia's conquests or part of the Islamic State, and 99.3% of Americans might be killed so that will reduce our entitlement spending by a fair amount so perhaps that will work. I'm sure you're going to argue that this is ridiculous, but there are a hell of a lot of Americans who want a strong defense, and probably 20-30% of Americans would ban Muslims because they fear exactly the ridiculous event I'm talking about, so politically that's not happening either. (I personally think we'd be okay with less military spending but I really don't want to find out if I'm wrong. But it doesn't matter what you or I think - as long as a boatload of Americans think ti's going to be like the Ottoman Empire attacks all over again, you're not going to get them to let you cut defense.) Right now our national debt is almost $20T. (Try and tell me that's bullsh*t.) That's a few hundred thousand per taxpayer. Fortunately people are still lending our government money. If we start taking initiative on the climate change front, it will do no favors for our credit rating. We will only be able to fund climate change research and development as long as people are willing to support the US government. At some point, we might have to cough up that 20T because nobody will lend us money anymore. As a lawyer, you might be able to pay your share. Most of us can't pay our share. If you count unfunded Medicare and Social Security liabilities, the figure is much worse; a baby born today starts life maybe $400,000 in debt. Clearly if people lose faith in the US government's ability to pay, that baby isn't going to be able to pay up. So it's not the actual cost of the climate change R&D that will financially kill us, it is the perceived effect it has on our creditworthiness. This one I have no answers for. But since you and many others here think it's necessary, maybe you can come up with a way to appease our creditors so we can fund the necessary R&D. EDIT to add: It's possible people may have already discussed these issues in the climate change thread which I haven't looked at. Can somebody involved in that thread tell me if people have addressed these concerns?

Just curious - am I supposed to be playing these hands at IMPs or matchpoints? Your discussion said I was trying to beat -140, so I am assuming matchpoints. I went and tried a random deal from a practice set. Am I assuming matchpoints for all the problems?

I found the post (that got 4 positive reps mind you) and indeed you did imply that big coal and big oil were doing their part to save their businesses. Why wouldn't big pharma do the same? Is it not possible that the climate change scientists have been better or more fortunate in being able to counteract big coal and big oil than other scientists have been against big pharma? You see to ignore my arguments citing that I know nothing and yet, knowing nothing, I seem to have caught you in a contradiction. But if you are elitist and condescending enough, maybe nobody will notice.

There seems to be a major consensus among this group that man-made climate change is real and needs to be addressed. I presented two very real questions a while ago and rather than anybody even suggesting an answer, the only direct responses I received is that I'm presenting nonsense. Now, I don't know that the drug companies are making it more difficult for alternative medicine solutions to come to light. I could do all the research I wanted and I still wouldn't know. Why not? Because I personally don't know enough about medicine to do the correct research and draw the correct conclusions, and there is much money in big pharma and they have incentive to stifle competition. Mike, you can't have it both ways. Didn't you say (I'll look back and make sure, and retract this if I have you confused with someone else) that there is much money in the coal and oil industry that is trying to stifle the climate change argument, and now you're saying that big pharma isn't doing the same thing? If this is true, while it is possible you are right on both counts, you have to agree that it looks disingenuous.

I agree. I believe there is massive suppression of discoveries (or research of) alternative medicines and supplements to keep the drug companies bringing in the big bucks.

TBH you could know the better players in the US and not know me because I'm not one of them :D If you play in the Main Bridge Club, you know that being a good player is not a prerequisite for being here :lol:

On Bibi: I feel pretty strongly that we should try to stay allied with the only Democratic state in the Middle East, for if they fall, it will only embolden their destroyers with their disastrous ideology. On Hillary: I assumed he wouldn't do anything. However, he might have some intelligence that we don't have that nothing is likely to come from the investigation. On the estate tax: I agree. This sounds self-serving to me. On torture: I agree. Sad to say it seemed that several of the leading Republican candidates were in favor of torture. While I was at one time, I realized that I couldn't really call myself a Christian and support torture. On involving his children: If he honestly thinks they are the most qualified people to do the job, that's fine. I'd bet 60% of Americans would rather see one of his children replace Banner. I'm one of them - one of his children would be benign and Banner is divisive. On compromise: I'm OK with it. If he doesn't compromise, half the country is not represented since the GOP has both houses of Congress and will have the Supreme Court (which should not be partisan IMO but I don't know what to do about that.) Plus, I don't think Obama showed good faith; it seemed to be his way or the highway, and his appointment of Holder was anything but compromising.

Mike, while I realize that you're being as nice as you can, it's really hard for you to hide your contempt or disdain. You want someone to discuss issues with that knows as much as you do. My interest in politics and issues is fairly recent, so I'm probably not that person. I realize that now. As we both are constantly learning, I will probably never be that person. Unfortunately, someone that might be that person already agrees with you on most points so the discussion isn't going to go very far. Al_U_Card and Jon certainly do not agree with you but I think you have even less desire to discuss things with them than you do with me.

My "intellectual laziness" is somewhat practicality. If I assume that everything I believe is wrong, and has to be checked, it would take me hours to write a fairly simple but long post, since I would have to check everything that wasn't 2+2=4. I have to make some assumptions about things that I already "know" being true. If they aren't true, I'll find out soon enough, but to me it's better to write something including 50 facts in an hour and have someone tell me that one of my facts is false then to spend 12 hours checking every one of the fifty facts. Even adding in the time discussing intellectual laziness, the time spent is still far less. How would you feel if you had to write your long posts and had to check every thing that you were going to say before you wrote it? You wouldn't get to say anything. You're writing what you know, and if you say something wrong, you're probably going to get away with it because I'm not that likely to call you out on it because I'll probably not know it is wrong (however I'll look it up if it sounds fishy.) But you know the points I was trying to make, and it's not really that relevant to my points whether we met the Kyoto protocol or not. Instead of discussing the points, you decided it was better to call me intellectually lazy. The points being that (1) how does it do any good to try to solve climate change if others won't do their part, and (2) what are you going to give up to pay for it? These are both very important points IMO and if you disagree that either of these points is important, just say so. You can add that you believe I'm wrong about the US meeting Kyoto protocol in your discussion, but to say you really want to discuss issues, and then make the "mistake" the focal point of your discussion is kind of disingenuous. If you want to discuss issues, fine, let's discuss issues. But if your sole reason to discuss issues is to make your "adversary" look stupid, then I have no desire to engage, for we're not discussing issues, we're involved in a sh*t-flinging contest. Not having much practice, I don't think I stand a prayer in a sh*t-flinging contest against you since it's an essential part of your career and you're probably pretty good at it. While the particulars of climate change science don't interest me, I'm willing to discuss the practical side of the politics and economics of it. That is if we can do so with some mutual respect. It doesn't sound like that's going to happen though. It's almost like you're saying "You said something wrong so you're not worth talking to anymore." I know that isn't exactly what you're saying but you can understand how it sounds like that. Imagine how someone would feel if they were discussing the play of a hand on the Expert forum and someone came up with a really detailed line of play and someone else dismissed them from the discussion because at one point he said "The odds of a 3-2 split are 70%" and the reason given for the dismissal of his ideas were that the odds were more like 67.8% even though the rest of his analysis was good. And everybody else is talking about the hand but ignoring this one poster just because he was wrong about one of the facts. Do you think that's right?

I recently got that lesson when I stated that the left was following Alinsky tactics and someone mentioned that the Tea Party was handling out Rules to Radicals to some of their leaders (to follow, not just to see what the other side was doing.) I looked it up and damn! He was right!

Let me just add that it is a dangerous game for the party in power to ignore the other side. Right now the Republicans control everything and IMO it would be just awful to pass a lot of legislation and executive orders to take the country far right, only to have a Democratic sweep in a few years and have the country move far left. Nobody could plan anything that depends on the future because the country could be drastically different in a few years. I feel that any party that is in power needs to carefully consider the other side's position since it represents about half the country. I'm not sure how to make that happen politically but since there are very strong opinions on both sides of each issue and very many people on each side, so ideally some degree of compromise needs to happen. Trump choosing Bannon is scary since it's an implication that this isn't happening. However there is hope. Obama had both the House and the Senate for two years and yet couldn't get that much accomplished. Perhaps the same will happen this time; after all there is much disagreement between the conservative congressmen and the Trump populist congressmen and the good ol' boys of the GOP establishment. So it's unlikely that they're going to agree on much and maybe any of the factions will need some Democratic support to get anything done. Let's hope so. For while I'm in favor of conservative change, I'm also opposed to ignoring the opinions of left-leaning Americans just because we won this time.

I was confused by what was quoted. Sorry! Yes I do want to engage in rational discourse. While I do try to advance my own ideas, I frequently learn new things that changes the way I look at the situation - because while I have opinions on just about every issue that is argued, I'm not 100% married to any of those opinions. I hope the same is true for the people I'm discussing things with but in my experience my views have changed far more frequently than those of the people who I speak with. (Apparently being aware of one's cognitive dissonance is the first step in overcoming it, and most people are not aware of it affecting themselves, while everybody intelligent should be aware of it.) I agree with this assessment. There are some matters where fundamental beliefs will never bring the two sides together no matter how much they argue the points, such as the pro-choice/pro-life argument. I am personally pro-choice and thought that my party's obsession with pro-life would cost us the election. But there is no point in arguing this point with fellow conservatives because they think I advocate for murder. So I think that's one of those issues where people have to agree to disagree. There are other issues where one side is clearly right and the other is wrong, but only a limited number of people can know for sure (like whether Hillary was truly hiding something evil by wiping her servers.) We can't know for sure, the only thing that each side can do is present examples of her good character or her bad character to support their side. As I posted elsewhere, I totally expect that Trump will be a terrible president and that Hillary would have been even worse and one of my points will probably be proven, and I'll be slammed for voting for Trump even when I might have been 100% right. However, we will never know and it's probably pointless discussing this issue because (a) it won't matter and (b) it's going to be very hard for either side to prove the other right. However, one side is clearly right - we will never know which but it is certain that one of the following is true: Hillary would have been worse, or Hillary would not have been worse. Although it could be argued what the definition of "worse" is: many Sanders voters might be quite happy with a country that falls under my definition of worse. I'm not happy with his Cabinet selections either, especially Banner. Whether I personally like Banner there or not, I think he is adding to the divisiveness in the country by choosing Banner, and if he truly wants to work with Democrats, then this is not the way to show it. I agree that Pence is a scary choice of VP for many people. I would hate to see what would happen to the LGBT community if God forbid, Trump died and put Pence in charge. However, Trump in one of the debates said he didn't agree with Pence on an issue and Trump is the big dog so Pence's ideology might not matter. However, having Banner advising Trump isn't going to be good for minorities or LGBT. I just hope he can use good judgment in choosing when to ignore his advisors when they give him awful advice. But I think there is hope, I think choosing Pence was more a move to help get elected than a serious replacement leader for the country in Trump's mind. Climate change? I'm sitting that one out. I don't know enough and most of the material on the matter neither interests me nor is understandable to me. The only thing I have to say about it is that both sides of scientists should be allowed to speak freely on the subject. I at some point heard that Lynch wanted to arrest climate change denying scientists but that is probably right wing propaganda, but in case it isn't, she shouldn't be allowed to do that. Not only for freedom of speech, but let's let science happen freely and without legal consequences. Normally if scientists agree on something, I would rationally go along with it. However, the argument is whether the scientists truly agree or those that disagree are being muffled. Again, I don't know the answer, but conservative (you might say alt-right) sources say that the public is only hearing one side. I believe that there are evil forces in government, on both sides, so while it sounds like a conspiracy theory, I can't discount it as being 100% false. Certainly if the government only gives grants to scientists who have a preconception that man-made climate change is not only real but will have disastrous effects, then there is bias coming from the scientific community. It's not that I don't believe the scientists, it's that I'm not sure I'm not hearing only one side. After all, if I listen to Fox News and Breitbart, wouldn't you say I'm only getting one side of each issue? The same may be true for climate change, except that it's the other side. Am I denying man-made climate change? Not on your life. I don't know enough. What I am sure of is that those scientists that I am allowed to hear from say that it's real. So that says there is at least some chance that it is real and I would be a fool to say that it isn't. I agree that since we don't know, the safer path is to assume that we can do something about it, as long as the expense isn't so great that other necessary programs will bite the dust. For example, given a choice between funding education or trying to fix the climate change problem, I think we have to fund education. If we are rich enough to do both, fine. However, our country is almost 20 trillion in debt (NOT counting unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities) and that works out to be a few hundred thousand for every taxpayer! If you count the unfunded liabilities, each new baby born is a few hundred thousand dollars in debt at birth. At some point, people will stop funding the U.S. government's extravagance. Also, it's a worldwide initiative and much of the world is ignoring the problem. Last I heard, only the USA fulfilled their Kyoto Protocol obligations, so we can pour untold trillions trying to solve the problem but it will do little good if there are countries with 4 times as many people as we have that continue to pollute and are become more industrialized. I don't think you're being unreasonable here. I've got a lot more to respond to here but unfortunately I must get some work done before Orlando. However I think it's possible to have some good discussions. I remember one discussion I had recently on UBI. All the other participants were left-leaning as my fellow conservatives wouldn't touch the subject. However I felt having a conservative in the discussion was valuable to them as I was in a much better position to discuss the political obstacles that they are going to run into (knowing how fellow conservatives might think) and ways to overcome them and have people be happy about it, whereas without me it would have been more of an elitist "We know this is right so we're going to ram it down the Americans' throats."

If either of our solutions is right, IMO this is a tough problem for I/A, especially for the I portion, although it is less difficult than the problems I've seen in the expert forum. I would never get this in a table without collecting late-play warnings and a mean glare from partner for holding up the game. To potential BBO partners: Don't expect I'm going to find these plays at the table. :)

I understand what you are saying, but the timing of your post seems odd. You were responding to a post where I was suggesting to JonOttowa that he may have fallen victim to the cognitive dissonance that he was stating that you had been afflicted with.

Pete, a while back I took a wrong turn and stumbled into the BBO Water Cooler. Trust me, what is happening to you here is tame in comparison.

Really? I'm tempted to set up a simulation to test this hypothesis but my general impression (assuming the hands are balanced) that this isn't true.

duplicate post