VASAviation - Radio Audio of Air Canada Plane Crash with Fire Truck at LaGuardia

@Toadofsky said ^

Yeah... the internet can be the wild west. One possible way to think about this is: I deal with people in real life who are equally unreasonable, so it's interesting to learn what kind of arguments are more effective than others. I guess I can imagine this as debate preparation for having to deal with unreasonable people.

Luckily for me the way developers have coded Lichess means debating with this user in longer an option. Thank God !

My goodness.

People DIED. We can have bipartisan grief at that and mourn them. We do not need to start scoring political points over each other; that's just disgusting. (You know who you are.)

Can we have some decency towards the dead?

As far as "scoring political points" -- this thread has gone into matters that involve creating unnecessary risks at airports (and other places) by not paying hard working airport employees (and others) directly responsible FOR OUR SECURITY.

We don't WANT people getting hurt or dying unnecessarily. It would be "disgusting" to feel otherwise or to just steadfastly look the other way.

Insults or attempts to shame or to deflect are not really discussion. Let's not work hard to try to distract from or avoid noticing what's really been going on. And when I say "Let's" I mean to include several politicians and other prominent "personalities." Some of THEM are the ones apparently trying to "score political points" by using "funding" of crucial airport employees and others as a bargaining chip.

Airport employees (and others) don't NEED the unnecessary stress. The latest tragic incident illustrates how much stress they already have to deal with.

And in reply to other things said above, note the bill that funded ICE last year did not yet NEED to fund TSA and the others at the time. THEIR funding only ran out about a month and a half ago,

Every attempt to blame the crisis on anybody OTHER than the Congresspeople who are refusing to fund ALL employees who are currently unfunded is just silly.

Some employees are already funded. They don't need a bill to be passed. The others do. But SOME Congresspeople refuse to do that and instead apparently try to use the unpaid employees as bargaining chips.

And any bill that funds only SOME of the employees who are going unpaid is INADEQUATE, to say the least. It is STILL playing politics with unfunded employees, and merely tries to turn down the heat on those politicians who have for WEEKS refused to fund others.

I hope it doesn't work to fool Americans -- but many don't really stay that informed, and so Americans (and others) must rely on some in the news -- who don't always seem to be see things all that clearly themselves.

But it's pretty simple, no matter how many convoluted excuses are invented. Sorry.

And by the way, ICE obviously is NOT being paid to "murder and terrorize America" as stated by another, but rather to protect Americans, which they routinely risk their lives to do, despite whatever silly talking points one may have heard.

I hope everybody will notice who HAS actually been murdered lately, and by whom. But some news sources don't seem as eager to report on such tragedies as others do -- so perhaps many don't even know.

The two pilots sacrificed themselves to prevent a more serious accident. May they rest in peace in the heaven of all great aviators. Thanks to them and their sense of duty, all passengers and firefighters survived.

Unfortunately, it appears to have been a particularly bad combination of factors that contributed to the accident : The absence of a transponder on the firefighters truck, a lack of communication between ground crews and controllers, and finally, the already heavy traffic, which could have led to an oversight or an inadvertent mistake.

@Noflaps said ^

Insults or attempts to shame or to deflect are not really discussion. Let's not work hard to try to distract from or avoid noticing what's really been going on. And when I say "Let's" I mean to include several politicians and other prominent "personalities." Some of THEM are the ones apparently trying to "score political points" by using "funding" of crucial airport employees and others as a bargaining chip.

I keep providing more and more context as USA's government for hundreds of years has operated a particular way (and is designed to have three coequal branches of government), and no amount of doublespeak or faux surprise or pretending to "recontextualize" conversation changes reality.

If somehow we are still confused, "After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory" by MacIntyre further informs our moral framework, explaining what demagoguing is and why it is featured so frequently in contemporary discourse.

Nobody in this thread appears to be questioning the existence of three branches in the American government, @Toadofsky.

And I see no "doublespeak" coming from those, like me, who simply say: PAY GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES WHO ARE WORKING.

Not just some of them. ALL of them.

I fail to see any "double speak" or "faux surprise" in that preference for the paying of working employees.

Any "demagoguing" going on seems to be coming from the camp that is trying to explain away why not all government employees are being paid. And notice that it is NOT coming from the current administration running the executive branch. No, that branch seems to WANT all working government employees to get paid.

Indeed, consider President Trump's recent, pertinent executive order trying to make that happen, despite the apparent resistance of SOME in Congress.

This is all pretty simple. No need for convoluted explanation or references to prior centuries.

It is interesting, though, to watch various people try to over-complicate the matter. I wish people would just face the obvious: for WEEKS some in Congress refused to fund many working government employees.

Now there are attempts to muddy the waters. But what's been going on is actually pretty clear to those who have actually been paying enough attention.

@Noflaps said ^

It is interesting, though, to watch various people try to over-complicate the matter.

Ah, so you do support H.R. 7147 then (assuming Congress can pass it). Glad that's settled.

@Toadofsky said ^

I pray that my nation will soon prioritize safety over politics:

that will never happen as long the dumbest people of the land are in the arena!

Meanwhile, enjoy the war of choice in Iran and the dementia of pedophile Orang utan.

sorry, but your country is GONE! Trashed by maga.

That happens, when Idiots elect Idiots.

(Right...? @Noflaps)

As for the LATEST version of the house bill 7147 -- it appears that more than EIGHTY amendments have been offered up for the bill, and I am slowly attempting to make heads or tails of some of what the Democrats have tried to put into the bill and how it currently reads.

Consider, for example, this quote -- in pertinent part -- from an apparent very recent offering by a representative from Minnesota:

"....there is hereby transferred, from amounts made available under this division for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, $500,000,000...."

So -- if I am reading that correctly, it attempts to remove 500 MILLION dollars from OTHER funding that has ALREADY been passed into law previously. That seems to me STILL trying to use paying employees as a unacceptable BARGINING CHIP to get what Democrats want and take away from what has ALREADY been achieved by Congress.

Let's hear what the Speaker of the House has to say about the current state of the Bill before I endorse it. The last time I heard him speak of the matter (and I don't know if that was the very LATEST time) he didn't seem to me to be too happy with it. And, indeed, it hardly seems to be a "clean" bill that simply provides for all employees to be paid without trying to essentially "re-litigate" and take back other legislation ALREADY rather recently passed with great difficultly before.

The bill has apparently gone back and forth -- from the house to the senate and back -- each time being changed. I hope the employees who have been working without paychecks for WEEKS can just get paid without any cute attempts to UNDO other legislation as a condition for getting them paid.

Thanks for giving me a chance to go into more detail about even a tiny FRACTION of what's been going on.

This really is pretty simple. Just pay the ALL the employees and don't use their pay as a bargaining chip.

By the way, @da_loser , government funding is a serious and important matter, and telling ourselves that those who disagree with us are all "idiots" isn't really taking the matter seriously, is it? How does mere insult really add to understanding? I don't think it does. But, of course, we're all welcome to our own opinions.

I selected my words carefully on purpose. If Congress can pass the bill, then there is no bargaining except maybe with Trump who could veto or pocket veto it.

You likely know that all appropriations bills originate from the House (lower chamber). That's why this is an HR bill rather than SB; often an unrelated bill taken from the House is completely rewritten and sent back to the House for approval. At time of my earlier comment the House hadn't yet taken up the Senate's submission for consideration.

@Noflaps said ^

Let's hear what the Speaker of the House has to say about the current state of the Bill before I endorse it. Because it hardly seems to be a "clean" bill that simply provides for all employees to be paid.

This is the cleanest possible bill, all circumstances considered (see my many previous comments explaining circumstances). The House should vote on this bill and should pass it, assuming any of them have math or literacy skills:
$75B minus $0.5B = $74.5B