American Politics

[SubCmdr]

Check Charts BTC / Nividia / Tesla last 6 Month. Maybe this is better than go to courts against this gangster! It will kill him and Musk if this MAGA Stocks ruin many of his followers.

Smart traders and investors (like me) took their original investments out of the stock / crypto markets, booked some profit and I now sitting on cash as others are losing their SHIT cause they bought at the top of the market.

We are witnessing history. We are going through a major financial disruption. You are going to witness the largest transfer of wealth from one demographic to another in the history of this Earth. It might be so bad as to create international financial slaves for the rest of my days here on Earth. I don't know. But I do know you need to protect yourself.

Time to buy is now gentlemen! Time to pack your go back is now gentleman! Time to build out your bug out location is now gentlemen. It's about to get ugly!

[Beno69]

See chart below for the typical stock market decline today as Trump was stationed in front of a microphone talking, talking, talking, blathering and slobbering out one embarrassing lie after another, a colossal lie about how terrible the Biden and Obama economies were vs his "greatest economy in the history of the world", a shockingly stupid lie about who pays tariffs, an array of bewildering, incoherent lies about what is happening under Trump's current spectacular mishandling of the Envy of the World Economy he inherited from Biden-Harris and on and on..

Check Charts BTC / Nividia / Tesla last 6 Month.

Maybe this is better than go to courts against this gangster! It will kill him and Musk if this MAGA Stocks ruin many of his followers.

[Spidy]

That is not true. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc...n-infographic/

Haha! Yeah, take a look at this list of the top 500 most polluted cities by particulate matter concentration. Three hundred and ninety-seven (397) of them are in China. None are in the USA. I was in China not long ago, and came back home through a large Texas city. There is no comparison in air quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._concentration

Funny, how your article on air pollution/quality index (AQI), is like 10 years old. BTW, I was only comparing the largest cities.

Annoyingly, any current and/or up-to-date AQI informational comparisons (in 2023/2024) of current AQI, in China's larger cities, is unavailable and or very spotty at best. However, most older data points, do indicate that Beijing vs. New York, for example, had NY's AQI, as being 3x better. But oddly had Beijing on par with NY for noise pollution...go figure!

So, while I was incorrect in my opinions on China's air quality, it is interesting to note, that many journalists and video bloggers with boots-on-the-ground, on recent 2024/2025 scouting trips to China's largest cities (Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, Shenzhen), swear up and down, they feel the air/noise quality and pollution is cleaner and better than back home...go figure!

If China has reached peek coal (in 2024), the AQI might be is something worth watching, if my assumption of this inverse correlation, makes any sense?

Yeah, you are missing the point on natural gas. It is a waste product from oil production and is flared off instead of being used. The worst of it is going on in Siberia. This is where I get angry at climate change weirdos. They do not get that. They have this dumb natural gas bad and carbon fuel bad approach.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...837-story.html

When cosmonauts look down from their space station at Earth, they say the brightest spot they see is not a metropolis in America or Europe. It is the oil fields of Western Siberia, where thousands of wells flare off the natural gas they produce in giant wasteful torches. A single flare at the Portovaya LNG facility in Russia is estimated to produce more black carbon than the entire country of Finland.
...

In Texas, we have enough sun and wind to to compete with natural gas but there is no way that is the case in the Northeastern part of the country. What kills me is we are still flaring gas off in the USA. IMO all that should be used for electricity or as fuel. What pisses me off about natural gas is that you can by a $1000 conversion pact in Mexico and use natural gas to drive a vehicle but that same conversion is like $10,000 in the USA.

The stupidest fucking thing I have seen is gasoline vehicles in West Texas next to gas wells being flared. Why aren't they using that natural gas as fuel? Talk about unnecessary pollution. How fucking dumb is that?

On the contrary, you fail to even understand the point I was making and your 32 year old article, only serves to prove my point.

Again, allow me to reiterate, that the production, transmission, storage and consumption of fossil fuels, has the majority of it, being burnt off as waste heat, and is the very definition of INEFFICIENT and can't compete with ELECTRICITY. Take for example, something like 60-65% of an ICE vehicle's fuel, is burnt off, as waste heat and/or CO2 emissions, in the operation of the vehicle.

If you didn't understand, I was actually talking about the myriad of ways fossil fuel waste heat energy is lost, when getting fossil fuels from "the ground" at point A, to "the consumption" use case end point B. But I think, a thank you is in order, as your 32 year news piece, ONLY make mys point, w/r to just how inefficient the industry is...so "Thank You!" for that!

When natural gas is produced as a byproduct of oil drilling, it is called associated gas. In the U.S., the percentage of natural gas that is associated gas, varies by region and over time, and is only estimated to be around 30-40% of total natural gas production.

Yes, flaring is a waste of energy resources and a major climate issue. So while not perfect and a VERY INEFFICIENT use of resources, it persists due to economic, technical, and regulatory challenges. The reducing of flaring, does however, require the oil companies to have better infrastructure and spend the capital (if they truly wanted to), in order to capture any or more associated gas for use, instead of flaring it.

Just don't rant and appeal to your illogical MAGA gullible sensibilities, and tell me flaring releases CO2, which is better than methane...(...kkkk!)

So of all the immediate steps that can be taken to reduce pollution, natural gas pipelines to China and India would be #1 on my list. It is just the climate change weirdos are not going to go along with that when in reality the switch from coal to natural gas is pretty much the reason carbon emissions in the USA are down.

Don't worry about China, like Norway, their decarbonization efforts are are doing just fine, and I'll be sure to revisit that AQI challenge, in several years from now. Although, I think India has a long way to go, its the U.S. decarbonization efforts you should be concerned and worried about...under your American Fuhrer, it's a fucking DISASTER!

[Sirioja]

If the President of Ukraine is truly a dictator, when why does't Trump like him?

There are plenty of examples in the world of dictators that Trump likes!

Who told Zelensky is a dictator? When Putin is. Trump friends are criminal Netanyahou and Putin, both international law prosecuted.

[EihTooms]

See chart below for the typical stock market decline today as Trump was stationed in front of a microphone talking, talking, talking, blathering and slobbering out one embarrassing lie after another, a colossal lie about how terrible the Biden and Obama economies were vs his "greatest economy in the history of the world", a shockingly stupid lie about who pays tariffs, an array of bewildering, incoherent lies about what is happening under Trump's current spectacular mishandling of the Envy of the World Economy he inherited from Biden-Harris and on and on.

Stock Market due diligence simply does not include falling for the same blithering, blathering, incoherent lies that MAGAs slurp up with a big spoon in a determination to do as much serious harm to themselves and everyone else as possible.

To re-cap on the state of the USA Stock Market as measured by the S&P 500 Index for market watchers like Trump used to be back when he was far more shrewdly simply coasting on the terrific economic trajectories he inherited from Obama-Biden and not DOING anything to effect the economy:

It is up a mere 1. 35% since the November 5th election almost 4 months ago.

It is DOWN 2. 25% since Trump's Inauguration day about 6 weeks ago.

Seriously, has Trump said or done anything in the past 3-4 months that would inspire a serious investor, home purchaser, entrepreneur or "job creator" to invest in anything, buy anything, expand a business or hire rather than fire anyone? Much less to fly anywhere.

And speaking of flying anywhere; That is also unless the prospect of a Trump's Pandemic Part 2 combination of drug-resistant HIV / AIDS, Ebola and Child-Killing Measles works to inspire such a thing.

Again, otherwise known by MAGAs and their Russian bot script-writers as, "The Greatest First Month in the History of Presidential Terms".

Uh-huh.

[EihTooms]

If the President of Ukraine is truly a dictator, when why does't Trump like him?

There are plenty of examples in the world of dictators that Trump likes!

You are right.

This just in:

Trump the Cowardly Liar back-pedals like a big, fat, lying clown pussy on him calling Zellenskyy a dictator when confronted about it by his own hand-picked, utterly compliant and subservient Nazi Dictator-style press corp:

Donald Trump Denies Calling Volodymyr Zelenskyy A 'Dictator' Days After Calling Him A 'Dictator'.
Feb. 27, 2025

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/donald-tru...BaEvSqCX5GQcgc

Donald Trump has denied calling Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator - barely a week after calling him a dictator.

The US president stunned reporters with the bare-faced lie as he sat alongside Keir Starmer in the White House.

Trump attacked Zelenskyy in a tirade on his Truth Social account last week.

He said: He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden like a fiddle. A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.

But asked by a reporter in the Oval Office if he still thinks Zelenskyy is a dictator, Trump replied: "Did I say that? I cant believe I said that. Next question."

See video in the link.

But the far more important question is; now that his America-hating lord and savior cult leader has so publicly back-pedaled on his huge lie, will Elvis follow suit as slavishly lemming-like as he follows his America-hating cult leader Trump on every other point?

Or, more realistically, when will Elvis follow his previous lie about this with an even bigger lie that "he can't believe he said that" just as his America-hating, dictator-loving cult leader Donald Trump did?

[Elvis 2008]

At times like these, it is always best to have a blithering, incoherent known goofball conspiracy theory liar appointed by a blithering incoherent 30,000 plus documented liar of a so-called potus in charge:

Texas child who was not vaccinated has died of measles, a first for the US in a decade.

https://apnews.com/article/measles-o...b2677480031ab9

So, while he was he wrong about there being two reported deaths instead of one, he was therefore trying to shrug off TWO deaths in a decade as "not unusual".

Be prepared for the worst, most incoherent communications imaginable about whatever Trump's Pandemic Part 2 he is again pulling all the stops to lay the groundwork for in order to usher in and, consequently, is quite likely to occur sometime over the next four years.

Man, it must be hard being a Democratic douche these days. Here you are pouncing on RFK Jr. A Democrat and being supportive of big Pharma over, wait for it!, one death. Fuck the millions who were harmed by the Covid vaccine and the potential tie in with vaccines and autism and the millions of Americans suffering from that and the explosion of auto immune diseases among the American people. And of course in the binary Toomsian world of Republican bad, Democrat good, we now have the repeat of the idiotic vaccines good, antivaxx bad.

Are you ready to repeat the bird brained mantra with regards to vaccines and withholding treatment that you did with Covid? Yeah, let's withhold medical treatment from the unvaccinated! Let sick people die! That will teach them!

In actuality, measles is probably the one vaccine along with polio that probably should be mandatory. And some of the more astute doctors are thinking about making that stand alone instead of mixing it in with mumps and rubella. The MMR vaccine has been the only studied and found NOT to be linked with autism.

It is fucking insane as to how many vaccines are being given to kids, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/healt...ation-schedule, and the vaccines still have aluminum in them. Yes, we took out the mercury but we added a new poison.

"It's not safe to delay vaccines or to follow another schedule you might find online or through friends. The vaccine schedule that pediatricians across the USA Use (which we describe here) has the backing of careful medical science. ".

Of course, we heard the same bullshit with Covid.

And RFK Jr. Is the Democrat who ran for the 2024 nomination and had to quit once he saw how rigged the primaries were and how your party chose the guy without the working brain. That was a great job there and after you realized Biden was demented, you all chose the woman who was not demented but just really dumb. It would seem impossible to have a candidate with less mental capacity than Biden, but somehow you all managed to pull it off.

The problem with being a modern Democratic douche is you have no principles. Trump is on the verge of peace in Ukraine, and there is all this griping. He gets back the hostages held in Gaza and all we hear about is how terrible his plan is for Gaza. Then you have the climate change weirdos freaking out about cars in the USA while India and China are polluting like hell, and Russia has been forced to burn off more gas than ever after Biden blew up Nordstream. Hell, when Trump and Musk tackle the deficit and try to see that the USA does not go into default, Democrats are like, We want waste! We want default! We want vaccines! We love big pharma! We love censorship! We love the deep state! We love war! And fuck those children with autism and autoimmune diseases!

How long can the Democratic douches hold on? The defections have been ongoing: RFK Jr. , Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Anderson, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn, Glenn Greenwald to name a few. And what is the derogatory term for these people who looked at the pro vaccine, pro censorship, pro deep state, pro big pharma, and anti Democracy methods of the current Democratic party? Ah yes, they are bothsiders. Elections? We do not need no stinkin' elections.

Man, it is getting harder than ever to be a Democrat. I almost, almost feel sorry for you guys.

[Xpartan]

The 45% approval rate from two independent polls.

57% say he's exceeded his authority.

A whopping 34% approval for Musk with only 26% approving his massacre of the government programs.

63% don't like his "marauders" having access to government databases.

I'm starting seeing jail sentences in some people futures. Perhaps, not Trump's and Musk's, as our justice system seems to be decisively impotent in front of the rich and powerful, but some of their lesser minions are going to get quite a hungover after the feast. Just wait.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opini...on/ar-AA1zOER0

[Sirioja]

Haha! Yeah, take a look at this list of the top 500 most polluted cities by particulate matter concentration. Three hundred and ninety-seven (397) of them are in China. None are in the USA. I was in China not long ago, and came back home through a large Texas city. There is no comparison in air quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._concentration

Yes, natural gas replacing coal for power generation is the biggest reason USA Carbon emissions have come down so much. Greenies don't understand that perfect is the enemy of good. Like our fellow contributor's recent posts on South Australia. If South Australia turns around tomorrow and bans natural gas, which from memory from his post accounts for about 25% of the state's electricity generation, then SA will end up buying more electricity generated from coal from other states. And carbon emissions will go up. As you know, this is what happened in Europe when Russian gas supplies were lost -- it had to burn a lot more coal, and carbon emissions went up.

I agree about the flaring. Yeah, it should be permitted while a well is being completed, or if necessary for safety or maintenance. But not for month after month. If you drive down Interstate 20 at night through West Texas, you won't see as much of it now as in years past. The problem is that there's a lack of pipeline capacity. As a result, the price of gas in West Texas is frequently negative. Oil producers have to pay to produce associated gas, if they want to produce the oil. No wonder they want to flare gas. This is rapidly being remedied, in West Texas at least. A couple of major gas pipelines are scheduled to go on stream soon, or may already have. .

China despite their EVs and USA are 2 biggest polluting, fucking our planet, and crazy Trump wants to increase pollution, just criminal, killing people from bad air, hurricanes, fires, rivers, sea.

[EihTooms]

At times like these, it is always best to have a blithering, incoherent known goofball conspiracy theory liar appointed by a blithering incoherent 30,000 plus documented liar of a so-called potus in charge:

Texas child who was not vaccinated has died of measles, a first for the US in a decade.

https://apnews.com/article/measles-o...b2677480031ab9

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) A child who wasnt vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious but preventable respiratory disease since 2015.

The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.
..........
In federal response, RFK Jr. appears to misstate several facts

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nations top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of the Health and Human Services is watching cases and dismissed the Texas outbreak as not unusual.

He appeared to misstate a number of facts, including a claim that most who had been hospitalized were there only for quarantine. Dr. Lara Johnson at Covenant contested that characterization.

We dont hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes, said Johnson, the chief medical officer.

Kennedy also seemed to misspeak in saying two people had died of measles. A spokesman Andrew Nixon, for the Department of Health and Human Services later clarified that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified only one death.

So, while he was he wrong about there being two reported deaths instead of one, he was therefore trying to shrug off TWO deaths in a decade as "not unusual".

Be prepared for the worst, most incoherent communications imaginable about whatever Trump's Pandemic Part 2 he is again pulling all the stops to lay the groundwork for in order to usher in and, consequently, is quite likely to occur sometime over the next four years.

[SubCmdr]

If the President of Ukraine is truly a dictator, when why does't Trump like him?

There are plenty of examples in the world of dictators that Trump likes!

[Tiny 12]

That is not true. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmc...n-infographic/.

Yeah, you are missing the point on natural gas. It is a waste product from oil production and is flared off instead of being used. The worst of it is going on in Siberia. This is where I get angry at climate change weirdos. They do not get that. They have this dumb natural gas bad and carbon fuel bad approach.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-...837-story.html

When cosmonauts look down from their space station at Earth, they say the brightest spot they see is not a metropolis in America or Europe. It is the oil fields of Western Siberia, where thousands of wells flare off the natural gas they produce in giant wasteful torches. A single flare at the Portovaya LNG facility in Russia is estimated to produce more black carbon than the entire country of Finland.

So of all the immediate steps that can be taken to reduce pollution, natural gas pipelines to China and India would be #1 on my list. It is just the climate change weirdos are not going to go along with that when in reality the switch from coal to natural gas is pretty much the reason carbon emissions in the USA are down.

In Texas, we have enough sun and wind to to compete with natural gas but there is no way that is the case in the Northeastern part of the country. What kills me is we are still flaring gas off in the USA. IMO all that should be used for electricity or as fuel. What pisses me off about natural gas is that you can by a $1000 conversion pact in Mexico and use natural gas to drive a vehicle but that same conversion is like $10,000 in the USA.

The stupidest fucking thing I have seen is gasoline vehicles in West Texas next to gas wells being flared. Why aren't they using that natural gas as fuel? Talk about unnecessary pollution. How fucking dumb is that?

I do not get the fucking bullshit that we are going to allow Russian oil to continue to be shipped but the world will come to an end if Europe or Asia is dependent on Russian gas. Both Biden and Trump have been stupid on this.

You cannot be serious about climate change and ignore what is going in on Siberia and demonize the fuck out of Putin. You just can't. Russia is not Libya or Iraq. It is too important to the world economy and the environment. China is making deals with Russia right and left, and you know what? The Li L9 is for sale in Russia too.

Haha! Yeah, take a look at this list of the top 500 most polluted cities by particulate matter concentration. Three hundred and ninety-seven (397) of them are in China. None are in the USA. I was in China not long ago, and came back home through a large Texas city. There is no comparison in air quality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._concentration

Yes, natural gas replacing coal for power generation is the biggest reason USA Carbon emissions have come down so much. Greenies don't understand that perfect is the enemy of good. Like our fellow contributor's recent posts on South Australia. If South Australia turns around tomorrow and bans natural gas, which from memory from his post accounts for about 25% of the state's electricity generation, then SA will end up buying more electricity generated from coal from other states. And carbon emissions will go up. As you know, this is what happened in Europe when Russian gas supplies were lost -- it had to burn a lot more coal, and carbon emissions went up.

I agree about the flaring. Yeah, it should be permitted while a well is being completed, or if necessary for safety or maintenance. But not for month after month. If you drive down Interstate 20 at night through West Texas, you won't see as much of it now as in years past. The problem is that there's a lack of pipeline capacity. As a result, the price of gas in West Texas is frequently negative. Oil producers have to pay to produce associated gas, if they want to produce the oil. No wonder they want to flare gas. This is rapidly being remedied, in West Texas at least. A couple of major gas pipelines are scheduled to go on stream soon, or may already have.

And correct, flaring is a much bigger problem in places like Russia and the Middle East. We're increasingly getting on top of methane leaks in the USA too. That's something else the greenies don't understand. It's the developing world that will determine how much carbon is emitted going forward, countries like China and India. We won't have much say in it, as their emissions will dwarf ours.

[EihTooms]

And then there are little things like the fact that the war-time Britain DID NOT hold elections for the head of state, which is exactly what Putin, Trump and Elvis are insisting on.

I don't know which "journalists" and what kind of reportage of potential military intel and troop movements Zellenskyy has justifiably been trying to restrict or contain on the ground during the full-fledged war raging on Ukraine from the country right next door.

But what is so different about a Russia State or Nazi Dictatorship control of the media than this, even during a time of total Peace and Prosperity with no USA Military maneuvers anywhere on the Earth but especially not in the USA as Trump inherited from Biden?

Outcry as White House starts dictating which journalists can access Trump.
Fox News correspondent among those to decry move that journalists say will tear at independence of a free press

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rnalists-trump

The Trump administration announced it will take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.

[Tiny 12]

The oil and gas subsidies at first glance look like the deductions any business takes. I rechecked that, and not only did I confirm that, but I am reminded of the windfall profits tax. Google and Microsoft can make money without a windfall profit but oil and gas cannot?

Yes, the oil and gas industry receives very little in direct subsidies. This is greenie / leftist propaganda.

Accelerated depreciation would be the industry's biggest tax break, and is available to other businesses. Oil companies can write off intangible drilling costs in the year incurred instead depreciating them. This affects the timing of when the companies pay tax, but not the amount paid over the long term. Companies with R&D expenses receive similar treatment in other industries. The only tax break unique to the oil and gas industry is percentage depletion, and only small oil and gas companies receive it. It should be done away with IMO.

While there's no longer a Windfall Profits Tax, most oil producing states levy a severance tax. The amount collected from the severance tax, which is not levied on most other businesses, exceeds the tax benefit the industry receives from percentage depletion. Finally, on leases issued by the feds and the states (mostly western states), the government receives a royalty.

Then there are gasoline taxes, which amount to a pretty penny in some states. And oil companies involved in international operations are frequently not allowed to use all of their foreign income taxes paid as tax credits on their USA Tax returns.

Add it all up, and the industry as a whole receives minimal direct subsidies, and pays higher taxes than average.

Then you have the gasoline tax for the roads but if you create your own electricity via say solar, you do not pay taxes. And you get this subsidy while buying an EV that you do not get when buying a ICE car. If we all buy EVs, we are going to have pay taxes elsewhere to maintain the roads.

Very true.

And some great thoughts in the rest of your post, about tariffs, manufacturing autos in the USA versus China, and competition in pharmaceuticals.

[SubCmdr]

In Great Britain, the prime minister is chosen by the leader of the political party that holds the largest number of seats in the House of Commons

Some people up in here need to learn the forms of government that exist outside the United States of America. Has anyone looked into the fairness of elections in China and Russia?