American Politics

[QUOTE=KeviKev68;3065202]If JetBlue had merged with Spirit it would have went out business. Look at tickets prices: they are skyrocketing.[/QUOTE]I think it's unlikely it would have. Spirit's business model was flawed. Spirit customers in 2025 paid an average of 9.5 cents per seat mile, compared to 13.94 cents for JetBlue. Spirit's operating margin, being earnings after depreciation but before interest expense and taxes, was -25% in 2024 and -20.25% in 2025. JetBlue's was -7.37% in 2024 and -4.06% in 2025. JetBlue's EBITDA margin, before depreciation, interest and taxes, has been positive for all full years except for 2020, during COVID. Spirit's was -7. 64% in 2024 and negative in a few other years.

JetBlue and Spirit competed on about 30% to 40% of Spirit's routes. Ending the cutthroat competition on those routes would have helped. As would switching Spirits assets over to JetBlue's business model. Admittedly that would have taken years.

The most important point is that if JetBlue had (or does) file for bankruptcy, it would be a Chapter 11, and the company would probably muddle on through and continue as a business. Most employees would retain their jobs, there wouldn't be a wholesale liquidation of assets, and creditors would still end up with something. That's not at all uncommon in the airline business. All the big carriers in the USA except Southwest have gone through Chapter 11 and survived. Not so with Spirit.

In general terms, we probably agree about Iran and the effect on fuel prices. While I have no idea whether Trump's gamble on Iran will play out,

[QUOTE=Tiny12;3064621] On Iran, I'm closer to Tucker Carlson / Bernie Sanders / Rand Paul than President Trump. I'm not a fan of enabling wars waged by Israel or in Ukraine or in any other place if they're not a real threat to the USA. If I'd been Dictator of the USA for the last 35 years, the USA would be on friendly terms with Iran, and Ukraine and Russia would be part of NATO.[/QUOTE]The current situation by the way is something that those on the left who are paranoid about carbon emissions should be happy with. If the price of jet fuel, gasoline, and diesel go through the roof, consumption will decrease. So anyone who lauds Obama's and Biden's executive orders to lower carbon emissions while criticizing fuel prices right now is a tad bit of a hypocrite.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;3065274]I guess we are only left to imagine how many contradicting conclusions would be found from the very first paragraph or two on of any conceivable Real News source link for these random, disjointed and no doubt highly biased stand-alone comments / opinions posted by Magical MAGAs like Tiny and Canada.

Lolol.

Thank's for the usual non-existant links! Love 'them! Really, they tell us everything we need to know about the likely credibility of those "Trump saved us from Trump's Pandemic and Biden caused the Global Inflation that followed" Magical MAGA Horseshit Fantasies that continue to spread on places like Fux News.[/QUOTE]You're intelligent. It's contingent on you to disprove my arguments, not for me to find links in the right wing or center media that echo my arguments. Hint: You might be able to debunk my claims about the trucking industry. You'll have a harder time with the COVID related claims.

As to following through with some of Brix's and Fauci's suggestions, the states and cities were free to do so, and yes they would have and did decrease deaths. If you had tried to send in federal enforcers, like Trump did in Minneapolis, to enforce universal vaccination, school closures and the like, it wouldn't have been pretty. In my community the reaction to that would be similar if jackbooted feds tried to take our guns away. I myself have gotten all recommended vaccines and boosters and didn't hesitate to wear KN-95 masks. But leaving certain COVID measures largely up to the states and localities like the Trump administration did was the way to go. I do think Trump et al should have pumped more funds and effort into masks and tracing the spread of infections. But Trump's handling of COVID wasn't the fiasco you think it was, and I'm not sure at all that a President Hillary Clinton would have done any better. Red State USA is a far different from Australia, New Zealand, etc. It wasn't going to stand for measures imposed in those countries. And from memory I believe we came through COVID as well or better than the UK from a health perspective, and, thanks to Red States, with less damage to our economy.

I think it's unlikely it would have. Spirit's business model was flawed. Spirit customers in 2025 paid an average of 9.5 cents per seat mile, compared to 13.94 cents for JetBlue. Spirit's operating margin, being earnings after depreciation but before interest expense and taxes, was -25% in 2024 and -20.25% in 2025. JetBlue's was -7. 37% in 2024 and -4.06% in 2025. JetBlue's EBITDA margin, before depreciation, interest and taxes, has been positive for all full years except for 2020, during COVID. Spirit's was -7.64% in 2024 and negative in a few other years.

JetBlue and Spirit competed on about 30% to 40% of Spirit's routes. Ending the cutthroat competition on those routes would have helped. As would switching Spirits assets over to JetBlue's business model. Admittedly that would have taken years.

The most important point is that if JetBlue had (or does) file for bankruptcy, it would be a Chapter 11, and the company would probably muddle on through and continue as a business. Most employees would retain their jobs, there wouldn't be a wholesale liquidation of assets, and creditors would still end up with something. That's not at all uncommon in the airline business. All the big carriers in the USA except Southwest have gone through Chapter 11 and survived. Not so with Spirit.

In general terms, we probably agree about Iran and the effect on fuel prices. While I have no idea whether Trump's gamble on Iran will play out.

The current situation by the way is something that those on the left who are paranoid about carbon emissions should be happy with. If the price of jet fuel, gasoline, and diesel go through the roof, consumption will decrease. So anyone who lauds Obama's and Biden's executive orders to lower carbon emissions while criticizing fuel prices right now is a tad bit of a hypocrite.

Here's where I disagree: the attacks on Iran were not planned and thought out. It's reckless to create or exacerbate a conflict in the Middle East. Did we not learn anything about Iraq and Afghanistan? I can't seriously believe the war is front of mind with Trump.

He appears to be more interested in hosting UFC fights at the Whitehouse and a billion dollar ballroom that is unnecessary. He said that taxpayers would not have to pay (he also said Mexica would pay for the border wall). We've never had a president as unserious as Trump.

We would not be stuck in this mess with Iran if Trump had not destroyed the agreement that was reached in the Obama Administration. There's no way Iran will agree to something like that again since Trump has shown that an incoming administration is not obligated to honor a deal that has been made.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;3065245]Oh, and lookie! Some things went mysteriously missing on Tiny's Magic Time Machine too!

Such as:

[B]'This is a very bad one': Trump issues new guidelines to stem coronavirus spread
The president recommended avoiding gatherings of more than 10 people and also urged Americans to avoid eating and drinking at bars and restaurants.
March 16, 2020[/B]

[URL]https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/16/trump-recommends-avoiding-gatherings-of-more-than-10-people-132323[/URL]

[B]President Trump has extended his stay-at-home guidelines.
Mar 30, 2020[/B].[/QUOTE]Just clueless!

[QUOTE=KeviKev68;3065203]Jet fuel isn't cheap. Now, that we have Trump wrecking the world economy you expect exorbitant flight fares for what's left of the year. You can't admit when Trump is wrong.[/QUOTE]Gas prices are still cheaper nationwide than California prices before the Iran war. Where were all your posts on Democrats gas prices? Or Canada gas prices? Canada and California with their liberal / socialist governments have the highest gas prices in North America. Seems you only worry about gas prices when they are high under Trump. No posts here when gas prices skyrocketed under Biden. I guess you just proved Biden ruined the world economy with his high gas prices. But don't worry. Prices will come down as Trump will see the world again.

One other thing Tooms. Eight hundred thousand people in the USA died from the COVID virus during the Biden administration compared to 400,000 during the Trump administration. Yeah, if the USA had aggressively imposed quarantines on cities and states when cases cropped up like Australia and China did, deaths would have been lower during both their terms. But neither Trump nor Biden nor most governors and mayors had the stomach for that. The majority of Americans wouldn't have stood for it.

Your contention that Trump's failures caused millions of COVID deaths is ridiculous. The virus didn't spread from the USA to China and Europe. It was the other way around. Using excess death statistics, the percentage of worldwide COVID deaths that occurred in the USA was 5.5%. Under 2% would have occurred during Trump's administration versus a bit under 4% during Biden's time in office.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;3065351]One other thing Tooms. Eight hundred thousand people in the USA died from the COVID virus during the Biden administration compared to 400,000 during the Trump administration. [/QUOTE]'Based on cumulative data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and analyses by The Washington Post and Science Feedback, more COVID-19 deaths occurred in the United States during the Biden administration than the Trump administration. However, this comparison is largely attributed to the pandemic lasting the entire duration of the Biden administration's first three+ years, whereas it was managed by the Trump administration for roughly its final 10–12 months (starting from the first deaths in early 2020)'.

[QUOTE=Canada;3065342]Gas prices are still cheaper nationwide than California prices before the Iran war. Where were all your posts on Democrats gas prices? Or Canada gas prices? Canada and California with their liberal / socialist governments have the highest gas prices in North America. Seems you only worry about gas prices when they are high under Trump. No posts here when gas prices skyrocketed under Biden. I guess you just proved Biden ruined the world economy with his high gas prices. But don't worry. Prices will come down as Trump will see the world again.[/QUOTE]You are really playing "Twister" with the other 49 states are paying less than California. If it's market forces or just geo politics than I can live with it. We have outrageous gas prices now and the blame is squarely on Trump. Everyone knows that and he's mentally challenged.

What's more we someone with some focus not scheduling UFC fights at the White House or wrecking the East Room for a billion dollar "ball room. " What ever happened with DOGE and all of the BS about government efficiency. Does Trump even remember what he did in the first year of his second term? Or, perhaps he allowed Elon Musk a South African to run the White House while Trump was sleeping in the Oval Office.

I guess Trump needs hospice care in the White House a billion dollars is the right price.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;3065351]One other thing Tooms. Eight hundred thousand people in the USA died from the COVID virus during the Biden administration compared to 400,000 during the Trump administration. Yeah, if the USA had aggressively imposed quarantines on cities and states when cases cropped up like Australia and China did, deaths would have been lower during both their terms. But neither Trump nor Biden nor most governors and mayors had the stomach for that. The majority of Americans wouldn't have stood for it.

Your contention that Trump's failures caused millions of COVID deaths is ridiculous. The virus didn't spread from the USA to China and Europe. It was the other way around. Using excess death statistics, the percentage of worldwide COVID deaths that occurred in the USA was 5.5%. Under 2% would have occurred during Trump's administration versus a bit under 4% during Biden's time in office.[/QUOTE]Now that the Magic MAGA posters have admitted they've got nothing to substantiate their BS claims and that it is up to us intelligent posters to disprove their BS claims, as we intelligent posters have been doing all along anyway, I must now remind you that my previous posts' substantiation already addressed the fact that the earliest surge in the most cases occurred in the USA after Trump's defunding and removing from those Chinese labs the means by which the virus would have been prevented from spreading from China to us and everywhere else in the World, "easy" as Trump admitted it would have been prevented if only he hadn't defunded and removed those means contrary to all expert warnings for him not to do that, and that the cases were increasing dramatically in the USA, not decreasing, at the end of 2020 thanks in large part to Trump having just spent the majority of critical Trump's Pandemic year 2020 lying to Americans over and over and over again that "It is disappearing. It will go away without a vaccine" while he and Melania got vaccinated in near total secrecy.

Really. It's right there in my quotes of the substantiation of the points I made, unlike the ones that are not there in the points you and Canada made.

See, that's why Trump's 1st term Mass Murder trajectory would naturally increase into the months after he got his ass kicked out of office and launched into his War Against America on American Soil. It was but one of a slew of historic Trump / Repub disasters handed to Biden-Harris and the Dems to fix, which they did to highest worldwide levels in record time, of course.

And, what the hell, while us intelligent posters are posting, why not pre-emptively cite a couple of fully-substantiated points about the true state of Trump's current National Security, Foreign Policy and Economic disasters so far in his 2nd term before the Magic MAGA posters assure us with no substantiation whatsoever that this is Trump's Golden Age of the Greatest National Security, Foreign Policy, Economy and Presidency Ever!

(See screenshots below).

[QUOTE=KeviKev68;3065312]Here's where I disagree: the attacks on Iran were not planned and thought out. It's reckless to create or exacerbate a conflict in the Middle East. Did we not learn anything about Iraq and Afghanistan? I can't seriously believe the war is front of mind with Trump.

He appears to be more interested in hosting UFC fights at the Whitehouse and a billion dollar ballroom that is unnecessary. He said that taxpayers would not have to pay (he also said Mexica would pay for the border wall). We've never had a president as unserious as Trump.

We would not be stuck in this mess with Iran if Trump had not destroyed the agreement that was reached in the Obama Administration. There's no way Iran will agree to something like that again since Trump has shown that an incoming administration is not obligated to honor a deal that has been made.[/QUOTE]Actually we mostly don't disagree. I wouldn't try to argue with any of that, except that Trump's the least serious president ever. That honor should go to Warren Harding.

Trump's mistake was not realizing that if you're going to shoot something, you damn well better kill it or it's going to come back and bite you. Still, like I've posted here, you can't say with certainty that Trump's "strategy" was wrong. If Iran is forced to give up nuclear weapons and its proxies like the Houthi's and Hezbollah, we could look back and say Trump was a genius, or lucky depending on your point of view. I suspect that won't happen and the world would have been better off leaving Obama's agreement in place. Again, it's above my pay grade though.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;3065391]Actually we mostly don't disagree. I wouldn't try to argue with any of that, except that Trump's the least serious president ever. That honor should go to Warren Harding.

Trump's mistake was not realizing that if you're going to shoot something, you damn well better kill it or it's going to come back and bite you. Still, like I've posted here, you can't say with certainty that Trump's "strategy" was wrong. If Iran is forced to give up nuclear weapons and its proxies like the Houthi's and Hezbollah, we could look back and say Trump was a genius, or lucky depending on your point of view. I suspect that won't happen and the world would have been better off leaving Obama's agreement in place. Again, it's above my pay grade though.[/QUOTE]More than killing more than 150 Iranian young girls who were at school, this not ending war show to the whole world the ignorance of crazy Trump and his stupid team: Vance, Hesgeth, all Nobel awards for low level of brain, when total failure for USA: still mollahs, still same repression, still same unfound uranium, after spending billions, many deaths and for USA and our world paying inflation because of only how Trump is just a stupid guy following his war criminal Netanyahou who makes his business with war, just to avoid justice. If USA want to become MAGA, not shameful like under Trump, then only way is to get rid of Trump and his team. Never MAGA with him, just daily bullshits boring our world and lies compare to his elections program, not more. Thank him for inflation and lost jobs. When I pay gas, I think who deserve a medal to kill him.

[QUOTE=Sirioja;3065400]More than killing more than 150 Iranian young girls who were at school, this not ending war show to the whole world the ignorance of crazy Trump and his stupid team: Vance, Hesgeth, all Nobel awards for low level of brain, when total failure for USA: still mollahs, still same repression, still same unfound uranium, after spending billions, many deaths and for USA and our world paying inflation because of only how Trump is just a stupid guy following his war criminal Netanyahou who makes his business with war, just to avoid justice. If USA want to become MAGA, not shameful like under Trump, then only way is to get rid of Trump and his team. Never MAGA with him, just daily bullshits boring our world and lies compare to his elections program, not more. Thank him for inflation and lost jobs. When I pay gas, I think who deserve a medal to kill him.[/QUOTE]Yes all the things you don't like about Trump but facts are facts. Trump is still better for Americans than Biden or Obama. There is a price to pay for world peace. Obviously you don't want to pay it. Even UK are coming around as they have just sent in a war ship to Iran to help USA.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;3065351]One other thing Tooms. Eight hundred thousand people in the USA died from the COVID virus during the Biden administration compared to 400,000 during the Trump administration. Yeah, if the USA had aggressively imposed quarantines on cities and states when cases cropped up like Australia and China did, deaths would have been lower during both their terms. But neither Trump nor Biden nor most governors and mayors had the stomach for that. The majority of Americans wouldn't have stood for it.

Your contention that Trump's failures caused millions of COVID deaths is ridiculous. The virus didn't spread from the USA to China and Europe. It was the other way around. Using excess death statistics, the percentage of worldwide COVID deaths that occurred in the USA was 5.5%. Under 2% would have occurred during Trump's administration versus a bit under 4% during Biden's time in office.[/QUOTE]Yes Biden was responsible for a record number of deaths but if Trump wouldn't have fast tracked the vaccines Biden would have had 2,000,000 deaths. No way Biden would have gotten a vaccine out in 4 years term. But the fake news would never have reported it just as they don't report the accurate deaths in China (communist country).

[QUOTE=Canada;3065340]Just clueless![/QUOTE]Yeah, it is amazing what happens when government steps into health care. Before Covid, the DEA cracked down on prescription opioids and demonized doctors and the Sacklers of Oxycontin fame, and the end result was Fenatnyl killing hundreds of thousands per year. Portugal has a policy which treats those in pain and with addictions with compassion has 80 opioid drug overdoses per year while the USA has 100,000 per year. The real reason for this is the money and power our government gets in the drug trade. The government makes too much money in the drug trade to legalize drugs, and the vaccine trade is just as bad if not worse.

With Covid, we have the dumb Dems bringing up how more government officials in China would have helped. What would they have done? Would China have allowed them to help? Yeah, that does not matter; it is a way to blame the pandemic on Trump even though the pandemic started in China.

Then there is the "life saving" vaccine. And here we go again with Hanta virus. We need to vaccinate everyone all over again, and Moderna's stock is up. Thing is in this day and age, you know what the antibodies are and can produce them. In fact, when Trump was sick with Covid, what got him better was an outside infusion of antibodies versus his own. The concept of vaccinating everyone against Covid especially children was a waste of money and detriment to the health of so many, but we got people arguing here how great it was, and no one is talking about antibody treatment that unlike the vaccines actually worked.

That comes with a novel idea. You only treat people who are sick. Shocker huh? Here is a study that government officials dared not do such that they cashed in on the billions in vaccine. [URL]https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/antihistamine-nasal-spray-prevents-covid-19-study-finds[/URL].

Results from a single-center randomized controlled trial published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine show that azelastine, an antihistamine nasal spray used as a preventive measure, was associated with a 69% reduction of COVID-19 infection.

Of course, this study was published in 2025. If it had been done in 2021, those doing said study would have been tarred and feathered and called quacks.

You Canadians should be screaming at the top of your lungs to Americans to get government the hell out of health care, but they won't listen. Even after the Covid debacle, they won't listen.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;3065391]If Iran is forced to give up nuclear weapons and its proxies like the Houthi's and Hezbollah, we could look back and say Trump was a genius, or lucky depending on your point of view. I suspect that won't happen and the world would have been better off leaving Obama's agreement in place. Again, it's above my pay grade though.[/QUOTE]This piece from Doomberg has changed my mind on Iran having a nuke.

The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief. " – Jacques Ellul.

Just hours after the outbreak of war in Iran, we made a deliberate decision to plug into as much foreign propaganda as possible. We repurposed the all-powerful Twitter / X algorithm to identify a new list of high-signal / low-noise accounts with a pro-Iranian bent. Using a technique previously described here, we supplemented our standard approach to information-gathering with this new feed. In doing so, we were able to draw conclusions about the war's arc days before they surfaced in legacy Western media outlets.

Take the fate of the US military bases sprinkled around the Middle East, presumably built at least in part for an inevitable clash with Iran. During the first week of hostilities, our new feed was replete with shocking footage and satellite imagery that strongly indicated Iran had inflicted massive damage on these bases, far more than the Pentagon was admitting. Much of it seemed "leaked" from Chinese sources, having found its way to Twitter / X via popular Chinese social media outlets, and was mostly confirmed by Western-based satellite providers, at least before the Pentagon demanded they stop publishing it.

Because this material so mismatched what US and Israeli military leaders were reporting, we filed the information as a loose axiom in a developing mental model: Iran was outperforming expectations, a quick and decisive defeat of that country was not in the cards, and no amount of jawboning would alter events on the ground. Although, in many cases, it took several weeks, traditional news organizations slowly began to confirm what by then had become old news to us, culminating in this remarkable investigation by The Washington Post, published Wednesday:

"Iranian airstrikes have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at US military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment, according to a Washington Post analysis of satellite imagery. The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the US government or previously reported.

The threat of air attacks rendered some of the US bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said. ".

This affair drives the importance of not only casting a wide net for inbound information but also having a disciplined process to grade it for veracity. The Washington Post has historically printed many stories we find dubious, but this one revealed sources and methods beyond the standard "people familiar with the matter" trope, adding to its credibility. In other words, it rang true under our own internally developed mosaic.

End of link.

It looks like Trump made the same mistake Putin did. He believed his superior forces would overwhelm the enemy. With Putin, he thought his superior population and munitions would win out. Well, Ukraine has not only pushed Russia into a stalemate but is destroying Russian infrastructure with unmanned warfare.

At this point, the Trump administration better concede it has tried and cannot stop Iran from getting the bomb, and to be honest, given how deadly and destructive unmanned drone warfare has been, does it even matter anymore? Israel had the so called iron shield and that has failed as Israel has been getting pummeled by drones and missiles.

The worst kept secret in the world is that Israel has nukes and Iran does not. The idea was the Israelis were measured and rational, but the Iranians were crazed and out of their minds. Well, we now know that Iran has been holding back the means in which it could hurt Israel and its neighbors whereas Israel has shown no mercy to those living in Gaza.

Think about this for a minute. Iran was selling Russia drones. And now Ukraine is selling the USA and other nations drones. That is how woefully behind the times our military has been. We are still showing Top Gun versus the current reality, a base of nerds in Arizona remote flying drones. War is not being fought with aircraft carriers, submarines, and jet airplanes, and of course, that has been where we have been dumping our money.

Iran has told the USA to stuff it and even if the marines were to land in Iran, they like their Russian counterparts would be droned into the ground. At this point, all the USA can do is show it can hurt Iran and blow up their infrastructure. Great, what does that accomplish? Forget about getting the uranium now. Hell, at this point, that is fool's gold. Do you really need a nuke if you have drones?

Trump was sold this war by Netanyahu. We will blow up their leadership. Mission accomplished there. Then there was what would happen next: The people will rebel, there will be confusion in leadership; we can take their uranium, and we will suffer minimal consequences. Eh, wrong answer!

So now of course, we have the answer. The military and political leadership is lying again. Iran has done catastrophic damage and instead of admitting the mistake and turning and running. Trump and the USA are making things worse insisting that they are winning with Israel cheering them on.

I have read that the reason Netanyahu is fighting so hard is that he is afraid he will be jailed if he ends the war. I wonder if Trump feels the same way. Of all the dumb things the Dems did, the worst was raiding Trump's home and the criminal trial. Wars like this are the reason you do not go that far, but the Dems have no notion of going too far with Trump.

With Republicans, we would call Biden demented and the like, but I was like, why would you want to put this old feeble guy in jail? Who is that going to help? But the dumb Dems want Trump jailed, humiliated, and killed, and IMO that is a big reason why Trump is not backing off like he normally would have. Tucker Carlson said that when he talked to Trump that he felt Trump had no choice but to go to war.

Trump has had three assassination attempts and we still have Spidy calling him the Fuhrer practically egging on his fellow Dems to keep trying to kill Trump, and the libtards think they are the compassionate ones. Oh brother!