American Politics

[MarquisdeSade1]

This will be remembered in the annals of history as a watershed moment: when America began its downfall from its unimpeached dominance. Humbled and humiliated by a basketcase of a nation like Iran. What hope does America have against China? None. The Chinese cannot believe their luck. The Americans have wasted vast amounts of money, ammunition (which will take years to build up) and most of all political and global goodwill. The writing is on the wall for Taiwan.

Not only has America lost a great deal from this farce, but so has most of the world. The only ones who've gained are Israel and Russia and possibly China.

The MAGA fuckwits who still endorse Trump are beneath contempt and beyond comprehension.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...-compromise-us

[Canada]

So while, my esteem colleague EihTooms, was very generous giving you credit for posting a link with you post, "...rather than laying back in your barcalounger with a Tim Horton donut utter nonsense pro Trump fantasies", I think your post was being a bit disingenuous and failed to mention those budget numbers were only projected numbers. Take a look the most recent projected numbers, posted well before your post.

Governor Proposes Balanced Budget, No New Taxes January 16th, 2026. "The budget plan released on January 9 estimates more than $42 billion in added General Fund revenue compared to what was expected last June. As a result, the projected budget deficit has dropped to $2.9 billion instead of the $18 billion anticipated last year." https://calchamberalert.com/2026/01/...-no-new-taxes/.

Yes Newsome proposed a balanced budget just like he proposed the following.

Proposed High speed rail. Billions spent and no high speed rail.

Proposed fixing the homeless problem. Billions spent and more homeless year after year.

Proposed new gas tax to fix the roads and highways. Billions collected in gas tax and CA roads worst in the nation.

Proposed a balanced budget in 2025 and huge deficit.

Newsome proposal tax the millionaire to collect more taxes. Millionaires leaving state for Texas and Florida so collecting less taxes.

Newsome proposal to have sanctuary cities. More criminals moving to CA to avoid arrest in law abiding states.

Newsome will be long gone after the 2026 deficit.

You must be so proud to cheer for these Newsome proposals.

[Canada]

You just don't get how things work around here Canada. What you need to do is find a link to the Guardian or the New York Times or ProPublica that says the price of gasoline was $2.20 in Arizona and $1.99 in Oklahoma. Until you do that nobody around here is going to take you seriously.

Here it is:

https://www.gasbuddy.com/go/nations-...-in-four-years

[Canada]

Alberta ran surpluses in four of its last five fiscal years. If you don't believe that, look it up instead of asking me to jump through hoops like a trained seal.

Yeah, when oil prices are low, the province will run deficits. The 9.4 billion CAD deficit estimate for the 2026/2027 fiscal year was made before the Iran war. If current strip prices for oil are indicative of what comes to pass, Alberta will have a surplus in 2026/2027, not a deficit. So you actually came up with an example of "right-wing conservative" competence?

Alberta is voting October to 9 to separate from Canada. It will never pass but it shows the frustration by a conservative province getting screwed by a socialist government.

[Elvis 2008]

Well, once again, the latest Trump is out of his fucking mind tactic once again worked beautifully. He got everyone talking about his unhinged message about blowing up Iran and putting them back into the stone age, drew a red line in the sand, and worked out a cease fire. Markets are soaring. Hormuz is open and everyone is singing kumbaya. So is everything all good?

Hardly.

I have been trying to get a handle on why Trump went in. At first, I thought it was simplistic. A military invasion worked in Venezuela. Why not in Iran? Trump has been engaging in Democrat level lawfare with regards to foreign leaders, and some of actions have been beyond annoying, so I was cynical. I thought Trump was just like, "So Iran's leadership is a pain in the ass? Let's just blow them up!

It was easy to take pot shots at Trump on this matter. Iran is not Venezuela. They have councils and a clear succession plan. Chavez and especially Maduro were meglomanicas who put themselves above their country and had no succession plan in place so taking out an egotistical dolt like Maduro and putting in his #2 as a puppet was easy.

Then of course, you had the drones and missiles of Iran that have been cauing havoc in the Middle East. Some of these missiles have been shot at targets close to a 1000 miles away, and they have caused hundreds of billions in damages. Hell, Iran has even been able to shoot down American planes. The American militray was caught flat footed and woefully underestimated their enemy and have not learned the lessons of Ukraine and been busy preparing to fight the past wars and not the current ones.

So like anyone who peruses the MSM, I did not get this war. Worse, you have this notion being sold that we are losing. This is such a stupid concept, the concept of winning the war. Iran has been decimated. They have lost and so have we and so have the neighboring Arab states. There are no fucking winners here. It is war not a fucking football game. So why did we even bother doing it? Is there any reason outside of Trump being crazy? Well, yeah, there is, and it is not to be found in the MSM.

Quite frankly, Israel has been crying wolf about Iran having the bomb for so long that it has been easy to tune them out and given out recent raid on Iran and supposedly destroying their nuclear capacity, it was hard to have to admit the bombing raid did not work. New intelligence showed Iran has much more nuclear capacity than was thought possible. From the substack link:

Here is what is known about the location of Iran's uranium ore that has been enriched to 60 degrees of purity, just short of the 90-plus degrees of purity needed to trigger a nuclear bomb.

Iran's main enrichment center, deep inside a mountain at Fordow, one of three main nuclear weapons sites in Iran, was struck last June by a US air attack authorized by Trump in cooperation with Israel. I now understand that every three kilograms of uranium, once enriched at Fordow, would be stored in a heavy container and quickly shipped to one of the vast underground tunnels—depicted to me as "octopus" tunnels—beneath a second major Iranian nuclear weapons facility at Isfahan. Iran's fleet of ballistic missiles and launchers were similarly stored, among other hidden sites, in the tunnels at Isfahan and at a third underground nuclear weapons facility at Natanz.

At this point, I learned, 390 kilograms of enriched uranium are known by Israeli intelligence to be stored at the underground nuclear facility in Isfahan, 25 to 30 kilograms at Natanz, and 15 kilograms at bombed-out Fordow. US and Israeli military teams have tracked locations and have been studying the question of how to fight their way into the tunnels and retrieve the enriched materials. The next step, so the thinking goes, would be to transport the canisters by helicopter to a covert US base in Azerbaijan.

All in all, I was told by someone with firsthand knowledge, there are at least 26 curving underground "octopus" tunnels throughout Iran used for the storage of ballistic missiles and launchers.

I was further told that Israeli intelligence estimated within the last two weeks that bomb and rocket attacks have destroyed 80 percent of Iran's missile launchers and 90 percent of Iran's ballistic missile arsenal. But the rockets keep coming, as does Iran's huge fleet of drones.

Israeli intelligence now believes, I was told, that the incessant US and Israeli bombing of known tunnel entrances may have shielded entrances to underground Iranian missile and rocket depots that may have other, unknown exits. That would explain the continuing flow of accurately targeted Iranian rockets and missiles launched at sites in Israel and at other states along the Persian Gulf allied to the US.

I've been told that tens of thousands of US troops are in place and poised to invade the Kharg Island export terminal in the northern Persian Gulf that is tightly controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as well as other islands in the Strait of Hormuz controlled by Iran. The order has not yet been issued from the White House. End of link.

This puts the war in an entirely different light. Iran has the uranium to build a bomb, and their missile technology has gotten better. Obviously, Iran can hit Isreal with a nuke, and in a short time, they could hit the USA. Thing is unlike other nations like North Korea or Pakistan, the Isrealis believe the Iranian muslims are crazy enough to detonate a nuke, and they have Trump buying it as well.

If you recall, the Isrealis also hit a nuclear reactor in Iraq when that country was being controlled by Saddam Hussein, and he definitely was crazy enough to have blown up a nuke.

I do not buy that Kharg Island crap. If the USA is going to put troops on the ground, there is a mission and I think a doable mission which is to seize all that uranium. If Iran does not hand it over, I think we are back to square one and the war is on.

So at least there is a why to this war outside of Trump's impulsiveness. It was refreshing to know what he is still rational when everyone is calling him crazy but Iran having nuclear capacity and the missiles they do is downright scary.

[MarquisdeSade1]

This will be remembered in the annals of history as a watershed moment: when America began its downfall from its unimpeached dominance. Humbled and humiliated by a basketcase of a nation like Iran. What hope does America have against China? None. The Chinese cannot believe their luck. The Americans have wasted vast amounts of money, ammunition (which will take years to build up) and most of all political and global goodwill. The writing is on the wall for Taiwan.

Not only has America lost a great deal from this farce, but so has most of the world. The only ones who've gained are Israel and Russia and possibly China.

The MAGA fuckwits who still endorse Trump are beneath contempt and beyond comprehension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c

https://www.visiontimes.com/2026/01/...questions.html

https://www.investing.com/analysis/a...stem-200676971

https://www.newsmax.com/scottpowell/...02/id/1251621/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBo45Jz0jXU

[Elvis 2008]

Melonia Trump ate a live baby on Times Square last night.

No link necessary. It happened. I just know more about Repub cannibalism than anyone here. Look it up for yourself and stop expecting everyone else to do the hard work for you.

Former ABC News Reporter Who "Debunked" Pizzagate Guilty of Possessing Child prn.

https://www.lipstickalley.com/thread...%B4rn.5337154/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Maher/comme...on_an_apology/

Bill Maher Admits he May Owe QAnon an 'Apology' Over Epstein: 'It's a Little More Than Smoke'.

You see? There are links and everything.

[Elvis 2008]

No, I absolutely get it. Your tribe wants to blame the genocide of Indians and the enslavement of blacks on the American white men alive today. Same principle.

You and Tooms demand to be spoon fed everything. And then if the info doesn't come from one your favored LWM (leftist WINGER media) sources you discount it.

Yeah, when Tooms and Spidy are dead wrong about something, they try to change the subject or question the source. With Spidy, this sentence was the death knell of his idiotic electrostate comment.

"A grid composed solely of solar, wind, and batteries is preposterous on its face the volume of batteries required to provide baseload power for days or weeks at a time borders on the absurd. This is why no such system has ever been piloted at a reasonable scale: the moment it is, the flaws would become immediately and fatally obvious. ".

He had no counter and had to babble on about the history of power generation and accused me of not crediting my source and wring it as my own. IOW, he did everything but deal with the facts within the statement as it totally took the air out of his absurd "electrostate".

So he goes back to his link defense not realizbing there is something called a paywall and I cannot link the site to one in which he could read. Thing is the information I am getting from paid sources on Substack is so much better than in the MSM it is cringe worthy. In this case, the article I quoted was written by Doomberg, which has evolved into the #1 rated source on Substack for financial news. The background of the founders of Domberg are clearly in energy and they have ravaged the "carbon neutral" electricity farce better than I have read anywhere else. They even have a rare comments section where the tired red-blue debates that have overwhelmed everyone (even in places where I cannot stand it like the NFL) does not exist. It is a refreshing change where you do not add or subtract 10 points from someone's IQ based on whom they voted for. That is my definition for the dumb Dem.

[Tiny 12]

Melonia Trump ate a live baby on Times Square last night.

No link necessary. It happened. I just know more about Repub cannibalism than anyone here. Look it up for yourself and stop expecting everyone else to do the hard work for you.

Good for "Melonia"! Why should Democrats have all the fun?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopul...ember_what_it/

Adrenochrome kicks ass!

[EihTooms]

Melonia Trump ate a live baby on Times Square last night.

No link necessary. It happened. I just know more about Repub cannibalism than anyone here. Look it up for yourself and stop expecting everyone else to do the hard work for you.

[HotDog666]

This will be remembered in the annals of history as a watershed moment: when America began its downfall from its unimpeached dominance. Humbled and humiliated by a basketcase of a nation like Iran. What hope does America have against China? None. The Chinese cannot believe their luck. The Americans have wasted vast amounts of money, ammunition (which will take years to build up) and most of all political and global goodwill. The writing is on the wall for Taiwan.

Not only has America lost a great deal from this farce, but so has most of the world. The only ones who've gained are Israel and Russia and possibly China.

The MAGA fuckwits who still endorse Trump are beneath contempt and beyond comprehension.

[Sirioja]

Really no MAGA for USA. Attacking Iran to support criminal Netanyahou, was just a mistake and big failure with deaths, injured and so many billions spent for 0 result other than putting economics in messe and now inflation to pay. When really not deserving Nobel peace award, Trump can compete for less clever ever president of USA. Would be incredible if he is confirmed on November.

[Tiny 12]

So while, my esteem colleague EihTooms, was very generous giving you credit for posting a link with you post, "...rather than laying back in your barcalounger with a Tim Horton donut utter nonsense pro Trump fantasies", I think your post was being a bit disingenuous and failed to mention those budget numbers were only projected numbers. Take a look the most recent projected numbers, posted well before your post.

Governor Proposes Balanced Budget, No New Taxes January 16th, 2026. "The budget plan released on January 9 estimates more than $42 billion in added General Fund revenue compared to what was expected last June. As a result, the projected budget deficit has dropped to $2.9 billion instead of the $18 billion anticipated last year." https://calchamberalert.com/2026/01/...-no-new-taxes/.

Alberta in Contrast: I thought this was supposed to be Canada's oil-rich province? Canada's Alberta projects deficit of nearly C$9.4bn, citing low oil prices, February 27th, 2026 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yvppyv442o? WTF, that's roughly US$7.55 bn (C$9.4 bn) and slightly more than 2x as much as California, for a province that has population, 10x smaller.

From what I've gathered, it sounds like one of those dumb and unqualified women (Danielle Smith, right-wing conservative party), you referred to in a previous post, running an inept provincial gov't and has the so called "oil-rich" province in debt to the tune of US $7.55 bn (C $9.4 bn).

What do yo make of this right-wing conservative US $7.55 bn (C $9. 4 bn) incompetence?

Alberta ran surpluses in four of its last five fiscal years. If you don't believe that, look it up instead of asking me to jump through hoops like a trained seal.

Yeah, when oil prices are low, the province will run deficits. The 9.4 billion CAD deficit estimate for the 2026/2027 fiscal year was made before the Iran war. If current strip prices for oil are indicative of what comes to pass, Alberta will have a surplus in 2026/2027, not a deficit. So you actually came up with an example of "right-wing conservative" competence?

[Tiny 12]

BTW, did ChatGOP, puppet you ...I mean "educate" you, into thinking China wasn't an electrostate? Or did you come to that dumbfounded falsehood on your own?

Why China is becoming the worlds first electrostate, Aug 12,2025. https://newsapp.abc.net.au/news/2025...owth/105555850 "The superpower is dominating the global clean technology sector. It's not all about climate change. ".

China Is The Worlds First Electrostate, Mar 26,2025. https://cleantechnica.com/2025/05/26...-electrostate/ "An "electrostate" refers to a country that primarily relies on electricity generated from renewable sources rather than fossil fuels. ..So while ChatGOP is educating you to "cut-and-paste" large swaths of its Chat info (you cannot put into own frame of thought), then perhaps you can ask it, if China isn't an electrostate, then who is?

At this point, I'm not sure what's worse:

• MAGA posts with large swaths of "cut-n-paste" news articles, with blank spaces and the word "ADVERTISTMENT" still left in the post, because the poster is too lazy to take them out or to paraphrase in their own words;

• MAGA posts with a single webpage link, with no explanation, often too lazy put into words their own words on the subject matter;

OR

• MAGA posts with large swaths of "cut-n-paste" ChatGOP information, with no associated links (or links to French webpages) because the poster is again too lazy to put the aggregated information, in their own words and thoughts.

So, what say you, Tiny 12 ...err, I mean ChatGOP? Please do "educate" us,as too what is an electrostate and what makes an electrostate, if China is not?

I haven't cut and pasted anything from ChatGPT Spidy. I just write and know fossil fuels a lot better than you do. And I'm more accurate on this subject than many of the sources you quote.

OK, if it will make you happy, China is an electrostate that emits 33% of the world's CO2 and relies on fossil fuels for over 80% of its primary energy.

[Tiny 12]

You and Tooms demand to be spoon fed everything. And then if the info doesn't come from one your favored LWM (leftist WINGER media) sources you discount it.

6 weeks ago gas was $2.00 to $2.20 a gallon in Wyoming, Oklahoma and Arizona. I filled up in Arizona at $2.20. Oklahoma had some stations at $1.99. It was on the national news as cheapest gas in USA. CA was averaging $4.89 at the same period so double. CA is usually $2. 00 above USA average. Canada was about $4.00 a gallon.

Still no link, but OK.

You just don't get how things work around here Canada. What you need to do is find a link to the Guardian or the New York Times or ProPublica that says the price of gasoline was $2.20 in Arizona and $1.99 in Oklahoma. Until you do that nobody around here is going to take you seriously.