Politics

kbd512 · 2021-12-11 14:31:57

SpaceNut,

My dog is loyal to me, but he's also insubordinate as all hell. If I tell him to sit, his butt will kiss the floor and then he's right back to licking my face. He's clearly not trying to overtly defy of me, he's just happy to see me when I come home from work, but that is also the dictionary definition of insubordination. If he thinks someone is attacking me, then they'll be on the menu in short order. Whereas most Republicans can tell the difference between how those two concepts differ, most Democrats can't, as evidenced by your brief but totally inaccurate reply.

You're conflating insubordination with disloyalty. Those two concepts are not remotely the same thing. If the President says we're not going to do something to one of his subordinates, and then you go and try to do it anyway, then you typically get fired for that, absent a reason better than "it's just what I wanted to do". The President is the person who was actually elected to implement policy, not the career bureaucrats and political appointees under him who failed to accept their role in government.

Representative government means the dictionary definition of those words to most Republicans. You elect a person to carry out your wishes, and then that person either does that (President Trump- according to most Republicans) or doesn't do that (President Biden- according to most Democrats). Political hacks voicing their opinions on TV don't count as "most Republicans" or "most Democrats", either. President Trump plainly stated what he wanted to do and then proceeded to focus on doing that and nothing else. President Biden has already done a number of things contrary to what he said he would do during his election campaign, which is why his approval numbers are even lower than President Trump, despite the majority of Democrat-run propaganda never uttering an unkind word about him.

SpaceNut · 2021-12-11 15:05:38

If there are procedural policies and laws that one would break then following the instruction was then considered disloyal in the past administration not just insubordinate. The last Administration tried to do things whether they were legal or not just to do what he had promised.

The 38-page file turned over by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was titled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 JAN

https://web.archive.org/web/20210716135 … -fraud.pdf

kbd512 · 2021-12-11 16:00:00

SpaceNut,

Devising your own policies that are against the policy guidelines laid out by the President is insubordinate, plain and simple. Whether or not the President also considers such actions to be disloyal is immaterial to what they actually are, which is insubordination. The country is supposed to be governed by the policies of elected officials, not the policies of career bureaucrats who were never elected to any office.

Democrats only care about legality when it prevents them from getting their way. Other than that, they totally ignore every law whenever it suits their purpose.

Your posted links are about election integrity, not loyalty. The words "loyal" / "loyalty" / "disloyalty" were not even written in the news article or the document turned over by Mark Meadows, that you linked to.

Do you actually read the material you post links to?

If not, then it might be time to start.

Edit:

Why is it that I can so easily name off chapter and verse from United States Code (USC) whenever a specific law was broken, but whenever I ask for the same from people who support Democrats, they can never cite the pertinent rule or regulation they think was violated, and just provide links to unrelated topics or their own personal opinions?

USC is posted online for anyone with a computer to read. Access is not restricted. It is the "law of the land", in conjunction with the Constitution. I'm not a legal scholar, but the law is written in plain English so that anyone who graduated from High School can read and understand it. If that's insufficient to determine legality, then there is case law or legal precedent provided by all the major US universities that teach jurisprudence to their students.

Last edited by kbd512 (2021-12-11 16:08:19)

SpaceNut · 2021-12-11 18:27:25

Civilians follow policy quite well as they are part of that sustainability part of law to which the military command does not follow as they are told what to do and when so it comes with no surprise that this would happen Navy destroyer second-in-command relieved of duty over refusal to get vaccinated or tested for COVID-19

Those civilians in the capitol are just that with the freedom to follow the freedom of speech even with the same mandate expected to cover there actions as well. That said we can terminate most of the senate and house for not following orders,...

Navarro defies House subpoena in coronavirus probe

President Donald Trump’s trade adviser and closely consulted on the White House’s virus strategy, cited a “direct order” from the former president to claim executive privilege,

That privilege disappears once you leave office...

House subcommittee investigating political interference into the pandemic response have rejected former Trump administration aide Peter Navarro's claims of executive privilege, is particularly indefensible given that you disclosed many details about your work in the White House, including details of conversations with the former President about the pandemic response, in your recent book

Why Fifth Amendment pleas won't keep these Trump allies safe

Roger Stone, a long-time adviser to former President Donald Trump, just became the latest Trump ally to refuse to cooperate with House’s Jan. 6 investigation by invoking his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. The growing list includes John Eastman — a former law professor and legal adviser to Trump, and Jeffrey Clark, who served as an assistant attorney general from 2018 until 2021.

kbd512 · 2021-12-11 20:03:21

SpaceNut,

Executive privilege does not "disappear" when you leave office. That's like saying classified material becomes unclassified when you leave office, or that you're entitled to take classified information with you after you leave office. All such claims are facially false. Only a Democrat would ever make such assertions, and only to harass their political opponents with frivolous evidence-free claims of wrongdoing, much like the "Russian collusion" fraud perpetrated by the 2016 Clinton Presidential Election campaign. Criminal court proceedings may require the President to produce documents or witnesses. The President is not required to produce documents or witnesses for political games played by partisans within Congress. I will make that same assertion for President Biden as for President Trump, else there is no independent and co-equal Executive Branch of government.

As a matter of courtesy, the Executive Branch will generally produce documents and witnesses for Congressional examination when such proceedings are related to matters of policy or law. The matter you're fixated on is about politics, not the law. The way I can tell is that all the utter BS that the Democrat Party has previously attempted to smear President Trump with, has no basis in law or in fact.

SpaceNut · 2021-12-11 20:16:36

The documents exist but the rights to claim protection after the fact does not as there is only one president and commander at a time...documents are not marked after the fact, as its done when they are created. Document can and are down graded all the time from those original marking.
Confidential documents written from the president are covered under policy.
Executive Order 13489, which sets out procedures permitting both current and former presidents to invoke executive privilege with respect to presidential records kept in the National Archives, and defining the role of the Archivist of the United States in making these records public.

kbd512 · 2021-12-11 21:11:47

SpaceNut,

Executive Orders are not laws unless such declarations are covered under existing laws. Executive privilege has its basis in codified law, meaning USC, which is within the purview of Congress to change if they so choose. If Congress votes to nullify or alter the defintion of executive privilege and President Biden signs such legislation into law, then we'll talk. Until then, all I've seen thus far is a continuous serious of conflations of different legal concepts and personal beliefs, for political purposes.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-12-15 05:49:08

The Corona thing

‘A terrible tragedy’: US passes 800,000 Covid deaths – highest in the world
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 … -the-world

Biden Deaths from Covid

https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/bide … h-tracker/

391,893 Americans have died from COVID-19 since President Joe Biden took office.

Worldwide numbers

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

USA Cases 51,136,442
India 34,710,630
Brazil 22,195,775

Death per Million
https://www.statista.com/statistics/110 … habitants/
deaths worldwide per one million

The FY 2021 Budget Request proposes $26.9 billion for national security programs at the Department of Energy, including the Office of Environmental Management (EM), and Office of Legacy Management, and NNSA.
That totals $732.9 billion. So my proposal would cut $295.4 billion. No, I don't expect the Department of Energy to cut anything, but do expect those cuts from Defense.

There are reports some American citizens are still stuck behind enemy lines and held hostage by Taliban

Seems like ISIS and Al Qaeda are back in Afghanistan?

Taliban have beheaded or hanged dozens of prisoners and publicly displayed their bodies in extrajudicial killings while recruiting child soldiers
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … veals.html

Calliban wrote:

For some reason, the idea that the economy is a machine that consumes energy and materials to produce goods and services has escaped the thinking of politicians and even many scientists.

they have run out of ideas? White House pushes for suggestions on truckers and ships and more supply chain fixes, lots of news about gasoline prices and inflation

Clogged ports, empty truck cabs: Good problems to have
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny- … story.html

Thanksgiving gasoline prices rose $1.20 in US over 2020
https://www.gopusa.com/thanksgiving-gas … over-2020/

President Biden’s Job Rating Is Slipping Due to Inflation, Crime, and Covid
https://theeastcountygazette.com/presid … and-covid/

RobertDyck wrote:

Looting over BLM doesn't make sense either. BLM incidents are horrible, but looting does not solve anything. Business owners are not government and certainly not police.

The multilple smashing raids and thousand Dollar thefts and crimes are constantly making the news

Smash-and-grabbers steal $2 million in watches from Chicago car dealership, owner blames Mayor Lightfoot
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news … et-let-out

LA Nordstrom robbed by looting gang
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … -gang.html

NY Democrat rips AOC's denial of rise in smash-and-grab robberies: 'She's a danger'
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ocasio-co … dov-hikind

Blame the Victim! Chicago Mayor Blames Merchants for Rampant Crime Under Her Watch
https://humanevents.com/2021/12/09/blam … her-watch/

How looting turned the most upscale part of San Francisco into a ghost town
https://nypost.com/2021/12/04/how-looti … host-town/

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-12-16 19:33:51)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-01-01 15:35:27

SpaceNut asked me to move a post

the original topic was called difficult ones, it talked about a future "rule" of Law on Mars, Drugs/Alcohol, Sexuality, FreeSpeech, Pregnancy etc

When did satire and fiction start to no longer seperate from reality?
However they say don't pay any attention to all the smash and grab lootings, the theft and killings and burglary and vandalism and larceny and armed robbery happening across major US cities.
I think it is false calling the thing a 'coup attempt' at the very most you might be able to indirectly link some hot-headed Trump remarks to a riot.
What the heck has happened to US Centrist politics, why is there no strong third party anymore and in news media you get the constant divide stage show of left vs right or conservative vs liberal. What happened the people who were Central but Libertarian, the folk who liked Freedom but also Respected the US Heritage like the Founding Fathers and the Constitution?
If the modern US Culture as it stands today, got exported to Mars with not just 'The Right Stuff' but Tourism and Immigration in thousands of people in a colonization movement, then it is very possible the New city on Mars could have some very similar things you have happening in the USA. What political stuff is happening Antifa people, Q-Anon people, Rightwing politics, Leftwing politics, debates of Religion, debates of Drugs and Anarchy and Degeneracy and Prostitution, BLM riots and Looters and Murdering, Leftwing areas breaking away in Seattle also known as the Chaz aka Chop ...Rightwing Conservative areas breaking away from California and break away independent or secessionist movements. In the crime ridden cities of Chicago and Portland and L.A and Cleveland and Detroit and Baltimore and other cities you see a mass of shootings and massacres, however the news media or Dinosaur media or Legacy Media seems to only report shootings as value when its a White Cop shooting a Black African American playing the clip of the knee on the head again and again and again on repeat for a loop for an entire two weeks, like some kind of human sacrifice ritual broadcast into the midns of people watch the tv, maybe to hypnotize people into a frenzy or perhaps to spark more 1992 style L.A Riots and Lootings? The Riots continue in Portland even today and even the Cold Winter and Christmas has not stopped the shootings, with gangsters and drug dealers and criminals running around murdering people, however it makes little news when some Black African American hoodrat gang kills some innocent African Americans. It's almost like that scene from the Joker in the Dark Knight
'If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. – because it’s all part of the plan...
...
But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody lose their minds.
'
So what kind of a place is the United States and Western world entering when guys like Elon Musk have started to give interviews to Not-the-Bee websites or Onion style parody news sites such as 'The Babylon Bee'
Once they asked guys like infowars AlexJones to testify it starts to become a circus but with the chasing down of a straight pariot guy like Bernie Kerik the January 6th starts to become a Pelosi driven witchhunt?
They moved to defend the Police in Portland and then a new record came, attacks, shootings, lootings and assualts go off the scale. Portland a small city of 650,500 now has shootings and theft and murders on the levels not seen in the combined numbers of other major US cities that number in the millions, Portland per person has become one of the worst, with killings and theft and attacks comapred to the levels seen in Detroit, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Newark, L.A, Chicago
...and whats the solution in these gun-control areas ridden with crime
Defund the police they say!

but don't worry as ilhan Omar gets ready to go full jihad with her politics you got Chicago that plans schools for homosexual lesbian transexual gay identity politic students
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne … dents.html
Elon Musk asks
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1461372314424164367
It is hard to find good sources of relatively objective news these days. Any suggestions?

At one time it was guys like Russel Means almost as famous as 'Sitting Bull' and 'Crazy Horse' that became famous as a marginalized person, a Native American Indian who felt left out of the new American society and said he his people and culture were being destoryed by bad deals and failed treaties. Before he died he left with a warning saying that all Americans would have their freedoms taken and be put inside their own reservations, now the fringe movement has become part of the left mainstream a nd right mainstream.
This is a nation the US with a military more powerful than any other on Earth, with Sealth bombers, a powerful Navy, US Marines, an Airforce, the most modern Tanks, attack Subs, a SpaceForce, ASAT weapons, and its going to have now what? 14 Aircraft Carriers? more Aicraft Carriers than all the other Carriers of other nations combined and we get another new one coming named after Doris Miller and another new one named after the Shuttle or StarTrek show Enterprise?
So in the end it was only internal corruption and an America that could only defeat herself?
Trump-Appointed Judge Denies 'Sixth' Rioter's Charge That DOJ Should Prosecute BLM Protesters
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-appointe … rs-1661942
Prosecutors: Couple had 14-year-old 'in tow' at Capitol riot
https://helenair.com/news/national/govt … 3d435.html
Uncovering the Truth About the Attack on the Capitol
https://www.examiner-enterprise.com/sto … 971566002/
Marjorie Taylor Greene rips Jan. 6 jailer as ‘hateful’ anti-Trumper
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin … ti-trumper

Meanwhile thousands of people are out in the cold, needing Federal help, their homes burnt by fires, or smashed by Freak 'Once in a Hundred Yerar' Storms, Tornadoes leaving hundreds dead, mass of Wild Fires burning across lands hundreds of homes in flames and then ashes. It forces people out of their homes destroyed by wind and fire, thousands of evacuations Boulder Colorado.
An Admin that has no problem with the other 45th President getting banned from the internet while the Taliban and Iranianj terrorists operate their social media accounts, an Admin that is unsure how to deal with a virus other than to suggest more lockdowns to local States, it can afford to give Billions in high tech equipment to Taliban terrorists, give millions upon Trillions in Banker Bailouts and Debt Ceiling Relief, give millions to their corrupt friends....that can feed a failing Trasnport economy with gasoline prices skyrocketing and ships and trucks not functioning so let's throw more money at it ...but can not help the American family that literally had their homes blown up...
and which ones did you say were the 'difficult ones' again?

kbd512 · 2022-01-01 16:16:33

Mars_B4_Moon,

One group of people wants to throw a temper tantrum over the fact that America has never been a socialist utopia, so they're busy wrecking the place. The other group wants to keep the country we grew up in, which did not devote all of its attention to special interest groups or anti-humanists who hate the very idea of America. Since there's nowhere left to run off to that still permits their citizens to enjoy basic human liberties, we're going to battle it out with these people-hating nihilists that have hijacked the Democrat Party. The third party, which has never existed in a way that greatly influences national politics, is all of those people who "just want to be left alone". The communists and nihilists of this world are never going to leave you alone, so you can either cede to their evil demands or fight back against them. All of it is a smokescreen to distract attention away from politicians who rob America blind while the rest of us fight each other, instead of them and whomever they actually serve.

SpaceNut · 2022-01-01 16:36:17

Mars_B4_Moon
I would agree that we are faced with a reality issue in the US in that we have many now that do not want to follow any laws...

What is difficult is doing what the laws tell us that we must do as we do not want this to be the next world

The issue for banning social media is to stop the false claims from gaining momentum and as you noted so being taking down a lot more...

like this QAnon nut job Twitter permanently suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account for violating policies on misinformation about Covid-19. Twitter is using artificial intelligence to identify posts about the coronavirus misleading enough to cause harm.

Two or three strikes earn a 12-hour account lock, four strikes prompt a weeklong suspension and five or more can get an account permanently removed.
Twitter had previously suspended Greene’s personal account for periods ranging from 12 hours to a week.
Greene was issued a “fourth strike” this summer, for saying vaccines were failing.
“We’ve been clear that … we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” a Twitter spokeswoman said on Sunday.
The congresswoman’s official account remains active.

Trump Legal Team Adviser Turns Over ‘Privilege Log’ On Big Lie Efforts To Jan. 6 Committee which include a “privilege log” describing material he declined to produce to the panel.

In the log of documents Kerik didn’t turn over that was obtained by Politico, one is labeled “DRAFT LETTER FROM POTUS TO SEIZE EVIDENCE IN THE INTEREST OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE 2020 ELECTIONS.” Politico noted that it’s unclear if Trump knew about the draft letter’s existence. In his “privilege log,” Kerik argues that he withheld the document due to being an “attorney work product.”
In addition to the “privilege log,” Kerik provided emails between him and associates about paying for rooms at the Willard Hotel — the so-called war room where Trump allies gathered to strategize about stopping Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Kerik was previously subpoenaed by the panel in November as part of its probe into the hotel.
Kerik, an ally of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, also provided another 22-page document , titled “STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS PLAN – GIULIANI PRESIDENTIAL LEGAL DEFENSE TEAM.” It detailed a blueprint for a 10-day blitz leading up to Jan. 6 to pressure swing-state Republicans to oppose certifying the election. According to the document, that effort was focused on six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The 22-page document said its primary channels to disseminate messaging included”presidential tweets” as well as talk radio, conservative bloggers, social media influencers, Trump campaign volunteers and other media allies. “Key team members” who supposedly supported the effort included House Freedom Caucus members, some of whom pushed the Big Lie of a “stolen” presidential election, in addition to Giuliani, “Peter Navarro Team” and “identified legislative leaders” in each of the six swing states.

How some GOP feel As Trump weighs 2024 bid, top Republican calls him 'clearly unfit for future office' [and] clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again."

As the one-year anniversary of the Capitol siege nears, the House select committee's sprawling probe is in full swing. In the past six months, the panel has interviewed more than 300 people, issued more than 50 subpoenas and obtained tens of thousands of records.

kbd512 · 2022-01-03 12:52:38

SpaceNut,

The entire reason your favorite leftist propagandists are still talking about President Trump is that they have absolutely nothing else to talk about that's actually positive in nature, as it relates to President Biden's administration. They're working over time to try and paint President Biden in a positive light, but he's a walking talking disaster area, much like Vice President Harris. President Biden is the embodiment of all the failures and issues that the left falsely attributed to President Trump.

If leftists want to censor every idea they disagree with, then much sooner rather than later, other leftists will be the only people they're talking to. Republicans, conservatives, and other free thinkers like Joe Rogan, who value free exchange of ideas, have already vacated what are so plainly leftist propaganda platforms like Twitter, FaceBook, and YouTube. They may still post things to those leftist platforms to spread their ideas, but if those platforms nuke all of their content tomorrow, they simply keep doing what they're doing on other platforms. Republicans and conservatives are either creating their own content platforms of moving to platforms run by people who still value freedom of speech. You can call them every name in the book, but they're simply not listening to you.

Your fellow leftists retreat into their echo chambers every time one of their ill-conceived ideas is challenged in public, they start calling people names, and when all that fails to change opinions they violently lash out at the other people in their own community who may have previously supported them. That is not a winning strategy, and it shows how weak leftist arguments are. Basically, your leftists don't have any real arguments that stand up to cursory scrutiny and all of their "big ideas" turn out to be abject failures. The way the rest of us can tell is that you regurgitate what you're told and never express your own ideas, in your own words.

Since I don't think any of you leftists know how to tell the difference, Liz Cheney is not a "top Republican". She's a "Republican In Name Only", in much the same way that Joe Manchin is a "Democrat In Name Only". Liz and Joe don't speak for or to the majority of Republicans or conservatives, nor do they draw crowds of hundreds of thousands to millions of people the way President Trump does. I never heard of Liz Cheney before she bad-mouthed President Trump. Leftist media will give absolutely anyone a platform to bash President Trump, like Governor Cuomo, who was "Presidential material" according to leftist media, until he stated that he had no desire to run, and then it came out that he was harassing his female staff members. Your favorite political party lives in its own little world if it thinks anybody cares about what Liz Cheney thinks of President Trump.

President Trump uses the same tactics that the left does to fight back against their outrageous behavior, because he was a Democrat for his entire adult life until 2016 rolled around. He watched what the left were systematically doing to their own people, was totally disgusted with their outrageous or openly criminal behavior, and decided to turn the tables on them. Now that President Biden has doubled-down on radical leftist policies, he's swung the door wide open for another populist exodus from the Democrat Party. That plays right into President Trump's hands.

Stop telling me what other people in the media or politicians, all people I know you've never once met and don't have the first clue about their motivations for saying what they do, have said about the man, and make an actual attempt to articulate what you don't like about him, using your own words. Post your own thoughts about President Trump for a change. Why are you so fixated on someone who is not actually President?

Everything I've posted about President Biden is from personal observation of his own speeches and behavior. These days the man can't make a speech without mixing up his own words. He can't take any unscripted questions, and he can't respond coherently to any criticisms, however slight or benign in nature (like simply asking for clarifications). I don't care if he's expressing his own personal thoughts, nor do I care if he may have taken the ideas from someone else, so long as that's what he actually thinks and believes. If anyone else besides President Biden had stood up on national TV and said some of the things he's said, then everyone who watched the speech would be talking about the fact that the person giving the speech has severe mental issues.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-01-03 13:48:06

The 'Transitory' Inflation thing doesn't seem to be going away, is that Looting inflation, or more prices on Oil and Gasoline or an inflation of Shootings Murder figures or an increase in Corona numbers and Covid hospitalizations?
Perhaps duer to political pressure from Border States the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Admin seem to be slowly returning to Trump administration's immigration policies

Shootings?

Portland Rings In The New Year With More Crime And Violence
https://www.ktsa.com/portland-rings-in- … -violence/

2021 ends as Chicago’s deadliest year in a quarter century
https://www.gopusa.com/2021-ends-as-chi … r-century/

Port of Oakland opens 25-acre container yard to help clear export backlog
https://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/533 … rt-backlog

Taliban a ‘Major U.S. Arms Dealer’ After Weaponry Left Behind in Afghanistan, Watchdog Warns
https://justthenews.com/accountability/ … eft-behind

Afghan Diplomat Claims Taliban Granted Passports To Al-Qaeda & IS; Calls It 'red Signal'
https://www.republicworld.com/world-new … eshow.html

As overdose deaths spike, Minnesota families grapple with grief
https://www.postbulletin.com/newsmd/as- … with-grief

Congressman Kim: Take Notice of Drug-Related Deaths
https://www.thesandpaper.net/articles/c … ed-deaths/

Opioid Deaths Hit New Record Levels
https://www.independent.com/2021/12/21/ … rd-levels/

It now seems much of the world isn't having kids or getting married during the lockdown, a large scale elderly demographic decline comes across much of the world?

South Korea also in population decline

Deaths outnumber births for 24 consecutive months
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20211229000679

Italian births decline dramatically during pandemic
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/italian … 35808.html

This seems to be from the blog called the Desk of Donald Trump

The United States just set a record high for coronavirus infections. Remember when Biden said that he would quickly and easily solve this problem? How’s he doing? He now says that it is up to the states, not the Federal Government, exactly the opposite of what he said during the campaign!

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk/

the 45th President of the United States of America

Some virus news

Last count was almost 55,736,042 cases and 811,522 Deaths, 409,921 under Biden

Cases
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
USA
56,174,612
India
34,922,882
Brazil
22,293,228

Italy reports 68,052 coronavirus cases 140 deaths
https://news.yahoo.com/italy-reports-68 … 32368.html

Three major Melbourne hospitals buckle under COVID-19 pressure
https://www.9news.com.au/videos/nationa … o0qk4d73gi

Analysis-South America, battered by COVID-19, now winning global vaccination race
https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/29/us- … n-analysis

Thousands protest coronavirus restrictions in Czech capital
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory … l-81432813

COVID-19: Centre Calls Reports Of Expired Vaccines Being Administered In India Misleading
https://www.republicworld.com/fact-chec … eshow.html

Brazil health agency confirms COVID-19 cases in cruise ship
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavir … -1.5726005

417,366 Americans have died from COVID-19 since President Joe Biden took office. He promised the American people he would "shut down the virus." (Fact check: He has not.)
https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/bide … h-tracker/

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-01-03 16:59:34)

Calliban · 2022-01-03 14:41:00

What are the chances that the 45th president of the US, will also be the 47th president of the US? At this point, I would say there is a better than even chance that the Donald will be back in the White House after 2024.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-01-03 14:41:17)

SpaceNut · 2022-01-03 21:04:05

Trumps angelic shine must be blinding as he is not fit as he is corrupt to the core.
Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking case where Trump and Epstein partied in the same social circles in the 1980s and 1990s. Epstein, who was a big donor to the prestigious program, also had a cabin near the camp. Jane said Maxwell acted like a big sister while, at the same time, luring her into sex trafficking. Those in the know have a tell-all book that sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein had more ‘Topless Young Girl’ photos of Donald Trump with underage girls in his possession. Donald Trump Tried So Hard To Burry but its not going away when the same snare caught friends Bill Clinton, plus others all followed around with NDA's and settlement agreements. It is the third time Trump have been mentioned in the case of Epstein- and the second time for Andrew. Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficked even to Prince Andrew where a $500,000 settlement from Epstein in 2009 and agreed not to sue him or any other “potential defendant,” according to a court document unsealed Monday. Andrew's former friend Epstein sex-trafficked her at age 17 to the prince at Epstein's Manhattan home in 2001 and that the prince knew she was trafficked at the time. There is very little possibility that those who socialized with him were unaware, and even less possibility in the case of Donald Trump, who himself faces a number of rape allegations and has specifically attested to discussing women with Epstein.

Now for the inept Biden whom can not seem to get the Defense Production Act to make enough of anything to combat covid let alone support our hospitals but barely with guard units and such in many states. Now he wants to distribute half a billion COVID-19 home tests
kits what a joke. Now rather than fixing the vaccines we are letting the big pharmaceuticals tell us that we just get more boosters instead. He seems to have forgotten that the supply chain seems to run through China and not America as it should have swapped over to since the act has been live form several years now.

Edit the scandal has crossed the pond to the UK's prince and now this has happened Epstein’s Alleged Pimp Jean-Luc Brunel Found Hanged in Cell

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-01-11 14:12:20

SpaceNut this one is the real conspiracy that stands above almost of all conspiracy theories, I have not looked at all 'Epstein' news evidence but personally would say that Bill Clinton and Donald Trump in a ways are womanizers, you could call them perverts, sexist, misogynist that is not a good character but that does not make them criminals or pedophiles. The media would like to divide and make one side blame all Republicans and another media make the other side blame all Democrats, another way to divide the United States of America with political confusion and bury the truth.

Epstein when you look at news reports you hear about smuggling of people, the women keep getting younger and younger, they have their braces, look even boyish they don't even look like women they look like kids no hips no real breasts, there are reports of human trafficking. There are sex abusing perverts on both the Leftwing and Rightwing, it does not make it a political one side did this issue, all criminasl should be jailed and exposed.

Dennis Hastert is a Republican who is a convicted pedophile, Anthony Weiner is a Democrat who is a convicted pedophile, Jimmy Savile is a foreign pedophile linked to the British Royals was part of a sexual abuse scandal.
All of this conspiracy theory has been in the public domain on news articles and internet blogs and forums for 10 years maybe even at least 20 years. I remember seeing strange stuff appear at www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/ for many years
http://web.archive.org/web/201106071615 … verywhere/
They knew it 10 years ago
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/fo … 658&page=2
'In June, 2008, after pleading to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution, Epstein began serving an 18 month sentence. Following his release he was required to register as a sex offender'

I have a feeling no proof but just a feeling from my experience in life that this criminal pedo stuff is happening in every major Church, every Continent, S.America, Africa, Europe, Asia and N.America, it links to the Mosques and the Hindu temples and Jewish Synagogue it links to the Pagan hippe circules, there are old fellow freemason lodges that trafficked kids from Brazil to NY Shriners International and the Order of Jesters, there are Buddhist monks abusing boys and girls and it without doubt links to the Vatican and smuggling and abuse of people inside the Roman Catholic Church. What did I hear of this conspiracy talk? - Well at one time I did hear it, I guess during the 'Satanic Panics' when the Occult sysmbols were a more underground thing and not all over the internet and all over movies and MTV and rock and rap videos like today. These conspiracy were supposed to be dumb and I thought these conspiracy about pedo islands far too insane and creepy and ridiculous were too crazy to be true, what the heck...pedo islands there is no way that is real. I used to watch some UFO, bigfoot stuff, read their alt ufo sites maybe just as entertainment. I am aware of some conspiracy from listening to silly UFO radio shows or the culture of Dan Brown books and movies. I never really took conspiracy serious I would listen to crazy bigfoot thing a streamed radio or watch a clip maybe out of amusment, just to see what wacko stuff the Richard C. Hoagland or Anon types of their time used to blab about. However the conspiracy about blackmail and Pedophile islands was a big thing, it was a major conspiracy 'news' topic on these 911 type 'truther' shows for a long time, Ted Gunderson used to talk about it, you also had David Icke but he also thinks the Queen is a Reptile Lizard? The Rightwing Michael Savage Radio guy Author and infowars Alex Jones types were making their own books maybe based of the findings of what other conspiracy people wrote.

The conspiracy about evil doings at Pedo islands did have some truth to it. NXIVM was another type of blackmail mind control cult, founder, Keith Raniere, linked to actors and political people from the USA, Mexico and Canada, there was an actress Allison Mack, were arrested and indicted on federal charges which including sex trafficking. https://www.eonline.com/news/932909/all … ing-arrest and more recent news https://people.com/crime/allison-mack-r … -in-nxivm/ However Trump was smart in media, as he ran for election did gets the truther mob on his side, he starts covering issues the media won't touch, he also managed to get the fringe mob on his side, he did I think phone into some of these fringe talkshows before the election, he mentioned the island during debate and Hillary's link to 'Kathy Shelton' which put shock into the Clinton faces and got 'truthers' on his side. There was also a real Cult called 'The Finders' the human smuggler issue gained wider attention it was said DC Police Department investigation into The Finders had been dropped as a "a CIA internal matter", the spooky clownshow CIA investigations get to investigate itself again. Some conspiracy news radio chat and blogs would also say there are also weird meet ups like Bilderberg and Bohemian Grove and other events that conspiracy people trying to link to the Occult, it seemed like crazy talk to me. Vice Magazine said in 2019 that "The Finders become a sort of "Patient Zero" for the larger network of beliefs in government-linked child abuse such as Pizzagate Q-Anon or Jeffrey Epstein’s so-called suicide."
The FBI admitted something might have been going on?
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/ … 487934001/
FBI releases 'Finders' file

Whatever way it has worked out this Epstein guy is dead and Ghislaine Maxwell, has been convicted of trafficking to nobody because they are also dead...or the living names blacked out, they used a white out pen so its all un-named just like those Saudi 28 pages went missing after 911? Ghislaine's father Robert Maxwell ran a Media Empire took bags of pension money or stolen from the Queen's bank, then he goes missing or slipped or had a heart attack or drowns, nobody really knows but he's finally buried in Israel. The new court cases is over a trail concludes. Nothing printed from Epstein flight logs or no phones or names that exist in little black books. It does not seem outside the realm of possiblity that CIA and Corrupt Police, MI6 or MI5, KGB and networks in Latin America and Eastern Europe and Mossad and French Intelligence are all the same Blackmail Human Trafficker group, links everwhere and to France and England with that Epstein propety in Paris. In 2021 the French law was amended so that any sexual activity with a person below 15 is automatically classified as rape or sexual assault and in France he is being investigated for rape and sexual assault of minors under and over the age of 15 and there is also a link to the daughter of a Leader of Australia and Hollwyood and Newspaper and Business types and Casting couch models all were all in on this sickness together and when they couldn't blackmail their own people they would outsource the weird sickness and blackmail to another outside group or other nations with corrupt police who would then make threats to put pictures in some newspaper if some political thing or business thing was not done ... an entire family of blackmail trafficker clubs. I know he liked to also target scientists with parties and money and it is possible some people went innocent in a ways to some party or getaway or vaction or event kinda stupidly or innocently, maybe they did not really intend to do what was going on maybe it was a blackmail scam, maybe they were drunk or they lights were dim or they smoked weed or wine or it was a 'set-up' ...so it is possible some person had blackmail pictures of them taken but they were not fully aware of what was going on
However anyone who kept a relationship with Epstein after the 2005-2006 conviction that seems very suspicious.

All the conspiracy theories about the death of Jeffrey Epstein say its a combo thats like a combo of The Whistleblower Not for Sale documentary, some small percentage of the insane weird claims by Q-Anon types that might actually be true, Stanley Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut, Barney Frank Democrat and Republican weirdness and the Franklin prostitution ring allegations, perhaps the truth will never be known as long as powerful people insist on covering it up so it is a never ending conspiracy, including payouts from Royalty and Non-prosecution agreements.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-01-11 15:28:17)

kbd512 · 2022-01-11 14:37:35

SpaceNut,

Democrats don't care about sex crimes, except when they can be used as political weapons against their political opponents. They proved that by voting for President Clinton and now President Biden. If all this evidence against President Trump exists, then start providing real evidence. Accusations alone do not constitute evidence of anything. Someone can accuse you of being a rapist, but that doesn't make the claim true, now does it? Stop making claims without evidence and start providing actual evidence. If there's a photo of President Trump with a topless underage girl, then present the photo to a judge in a court of law and I can guarantee that he will be prosecuted. All the women who have asserted that President Trump raped them had years to file charges in a court, but curiously never did.

Thus far, all the stupid political games that the Democrats have tried haven't amounted to a hill of beans. Democrat politicians play stupid games and then the American people win stupid prizes. The moment people figure out what their policies will actually be after they elect them, they end up voting them out of office. All that fake as a 3 dollar bill "Russian Collusion" crapola? President Biden's administration is now prosecuting the criminals behind that, none of whom are in any way connected to President Trump.

President Trump was and is the least bad option compared to competing alternatives. President Trump was a Democrat for 50 years, so you'd think the Democrats would welcome him. I may not particularly like President Trump's personal behavior, but his policy actions are 100% correct for protecting the interests of the common American citizen.

I never see anyone on here defending the actions of the Biden Administration, because they're not defensible. They frequently try to redirect blame to President Trump for the actions of President Biden, but when last I checked Biden is sitting in the White House, not Trump. Give credit where credit is due.

1. President Biden had 8 months to prepare to evacuate from Afghanistan, lists of our citizens and those who helped us were hand-delivered to the White House by former military and CIA members who served in Afghanistan. He left billions of dollars of American military hardware for the Taliban and Chinese and Russians, which they are now using against the people who live there, he left hundreds of American citizens behind and actively prevented former special forces members from extracting our citizens, and he abandoned the one semi-defensible air base in favor of the indefensible US Embassy in Kabul. I know the "Give Tyrants A Try" Democrats don't know the very first thing about actual fighting or war, but showing weakness to our enemies is like waving a big red cape in front of a bull.

2. President Biden said we'd have a handle on the China virus within a year, but that was obviously a line of pure unadulterated BS, the exact same thing President Trump was accused of, and of course that failed spectacularly, just like containment did, just like quarantine did, just like the lockdowns did, just like the vaccine mandates did. For some reason, President Biden still has our borders wide open while people infected with COVID stream across, both ways. If you believe in lockdowns, then why isn't the border locked down? If walls don't work, then why is there a wall around the Capitol building and the White House? If Democrats care so much about sexual assault victims, then they can prove that to the entire world by stemming the flow of illegal aliens who are invariably exploited by the biggest group of sex traffickers in America- the Mexican drug cartels.

3. President Biden said he'd get the economy back on track, but then proceeded to implement more economically devastating lockdowns and mandates. As always, the Democrats think spending more money than we have is the solution to all problems. As always, the middle class and working poor ultimately foots the bill. As always, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why are y'all so stuck on stupid when it comes to this point? You can't spend your way out of government spending problem. Cut the military, cut the entitlement programs, cut everywhere. It's not hard to understand, merely unpopular. 100% of organic and sustainable economic growth comes from the private sector, not the government. Government research programs can lead to private sector economic improvements, but that's it. Everything else they touch costs way more than it should and ultimately turns to dirt. All Democrats need to read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt worse than any other group of people on this planet. The book is F-R-E-E. Read it and learn something.

4. President Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline while giving America's official blessing to the Russian Nordstream 2 pipeline. I thought the Russians were supposed to be the enemy? If the Russians are the enemy that the Democrats claim them to be, then why the hell are the Democrats telling them America won't do anything if the Russians try to control the flow of oil and gas into Europe?

5. We had economic sanctions in the form of tariffs in place against China for their bad behavior, but Biden rescinded those? What kind of a message does that send the Chinese? Steal our corporations' IP, refuse to remove tariffs on imported American products, and abuse the hell out of your own people, and we'll reward you monetarily? Seriously, how stupid is that? If you don't like tariffs, then send the message to the communist Chinese government to stop exhibiting the same behavior. If it's bad when America does it, then it's equally bad when China does it. Do that, or simply admit that Democrats are communist enablers.

I blame President Trump for lots of things, but egregiously bad governance policies aren't one of them.

If Democrat politicians want my support, then this is what they need to do:

1. Reject communism and socialism and nihilism, full stop. Let those anti-humanist cretins know in no uncertain terms that they have zero support from the American government and no say in governance policy. Anyone who has a hatred for other people on the basis of being different, reason unimportant, should be seen for what they are- a clear and present danger to human civilization itself. That applies to all societies and all civilized people. The scourge of anti-humanism has killed enough people already. 100 million civilian deaths in a single century is enough for any reasonable adult to accept that their ideas simply don't work. Anyone who is so foolish or ideologically disabled that they cannot accept that some ideas are failures waiting to happen is not worthy of being called an adult. It's been tried more than a dozen times by dozens of different groups of people from around the world. Pretending that the results will be different next time or that we are somehow better than them is as absurd as it is delusional.

2. Reject all anti-Americanism, whether it comes from politicians or media or popular culture or ordinary citizens. You ever see the Russians or Chinese people piss on their flag? No, of course you don't. That's the symbol of their people. Russians are Russians first and everything else second. Citizenship is a privilege and responsibility that must be earned, never given cheaply or easily. They seem to instinctively know that, because they're required to serve. They don't consider you to be a man or a woman in Israel until you've defended your people.
A. Support our Police. If you think our Police have wronged you for any reason- racism / bigotry / they just didn't like you, then the proper response is NEVER to burn down your neighbor's home or business. If you think our justice system is broken, then vote for someone who will fix it and not make excuses or blame others for why they did not do what they promised to do.
B. Support our nurses and doctors, whether they take certain vaccines or not. Do not politicize medicine. That is a fatal mistake with near immediate consequences. Keep all politics and politicians as far away from medicine as possible. Tell them to eff-off and stay in their lane.
C. Support our military. Don't call those of us in the military horrendous names or spit on us for following the orders of the civilians appointed over us. We did not ask for war, we were ordered to go to war by our civilian masters. As someone who has been in the military, that is our relationship with civilians. The civilians are our masters and we are their servants. You appoint people who give the orders and we comply. Slapping your servant for doing as you have ordered him to do is uncivilized behavior.
D. Don't force our military to do stupid or evil things to appease the fragile sensibilities of people who have never spent a day in uniform. I consider abandonment of our allies and citizens to the enemy to be both stupid and evil at the same time.

3. Stop spending us into oblivion on "bridge to nowhere" projects. Pick up and read a book about economics. That book I keep linking to is not about politics, it's about the principles of economics, which will not change merely because someone with an ideology has utopianist ideas or a bone to pick with rich or poor people. I like that book because it's a fast and easy read with no high-brow nonsense. It starts with simple concepts, like "Breaking all the windows in a country is not a reasonable or desirable way to stimulate economic growth, and here's why that is so." The glass makers will obviously "get rich quick", but since everybody else also gets much poorer, breaking all the windows doesn't ultimately improve the economy. That's the classic "broken window fallacy".

4. Accept the simple fact of life that government can't solve all of life's problems. The government is comprised primarily of people who know the law. They know very little of math, science, technology, medicine, energy, or economics. Since the government couldn't make money running a whore house and selling booze, I think we can reasonably conclude that their knowledge of how to run a business is also lacking. Whenever they involve themselves in subjects that they know little to nothing about, everyone should expect poor results and outcomes that may be worse than the problem that was supposed to have been "solved" by the insertion of more government into something that those within government knew so little about to begin with. Government is supposed to be an umpire calling strikes and balls, not another player on the field. Government can certainly never be both at the same time, so they need to decide which role they will play and not switch back and forth between the two.

5. Stop trying to divide people and pitting them against each other. There is no future in tribalism. You can go to nearly any country in Africa to see how well tribalism has worked out for them. All those genocides are proof of what tribalism ultimately leads to. When we have our little Republican / conservative meetings, we don't discuss all the various ways in which we're different from each other, because each person there is seen as an individual. If you divide and sub-divide each group enough times, what you ultimately "discover" is that you're staring at a bunch of individuals. When I speak, I speak for myself. I only represent me, myself, and I. The advantage of not requiring a group identity is that I can disagree with other Republican without ostracization. We don't fixate on differences or similarities, to the exclusion of all other considerations. Our ideas stand or fall on their own merit.

kbd512 · 2022-01-12 02:01:55

I had no slight clue how royally screwed up the Chinese real estate market is, but when that bubble pops, it's going to make the mortgage-backed securities insanity in the United States look like a walk in the park, by way of comparison. China's inflated real estate values have created a situation where their market is "worth more" (entirely on paper, just like here in the US) than the entirety of the US, European, and Japanese real estate markets combined. They're going to take America down with them, when that bubble pops, unless we do that to ourselves first, which could easily happen with Biden in charge.

China has entire sections of their cities populated by gigantic high-rise buildings with no electricity, no running water, no stair cases or elevators, nor any other features required for them to be suitable for human use. These properties are traded amongst real estate buyers on the assumption that the real estate market can only go up, despite the fact that nobody could ever live there and nobody could ever afford to live there on the basis of the average yearly salary of potential renters or buyers. I never figured out why they were doing that for lack of interest, but knew that their population wasn't growing fast enough to justify the sheer number of apartment buildings they were erecting. Many of these structures are so poorly built that they would be condemned anywhere else, immediately after construction was completed (crumbling concrete, steel rebar unsuitable for construction, toxic dry wall, etc). Basically, they were never built for human habitation, merely to comply with government regulations dictating that the property owners put something on the land they purchased from the government. Worse still, the real estate developers would over-pay for the land itself, the construction materials, and the labor used to erect them, all on the assumption that the market would continue to go up, so they could continue to borrow more money from the Chinese banks, and then inflate their way out of debt. Needless to say, that hasn't gone over very well.

If you want to know what can go wrong in a planned economy run by mostly rational (meaning people generally doing things out of cooperation for perceived mutual benefit versus fear of the government) but illogical decision makers, then this is it. In a country where so many people still cannot afford the necessities, the surplus cash from business activities was squandered on ridiculous numbers of high rise apartment buildings that nobody could ever live in or afford to live in if they were intended to be habitable, all on the assumption that the market would continue to go up, rather than improve existing properties to build wealth that way, or erect properties suitable for the existing markets.

Here in America, we had speculators who were speculating on the value of existing properties or debt, for which there was actually a market, until they drove the prices so high that the potential buyers could no longer afford to live there, after which point in time the bubble popped and the values fell to levels that the prospective buyers could then afford to pay. In China, in virtually every major city, the speculators have driven prices so high that 90% of the population or better could never repay the loan or afford the rent price over their lifetime income.

In both cases, this insanity only makes some bit of sense when government manipulation of the free market creates perverse incentives to act in ways that are ultimately self-destructive. Again, "Economics in One Lesson", by Henry Hazlitt, is your friend. It shows exactly why the "broken window fallacy" is flawed thinking and why you can't stimulate real economic growth by smashing all the windows in a city. I was dumbfounded by the idea that a country with as much manpower and industrial machinery as China has, would ever have to import food, but I'm beginning to understand it now. The issue with over-regulation by government, and the perverse market incentives the government creates, even if entirely unintentional, is the root of the problem.

Somehow, some strange way, a government that has total control over the economic activities of its citizens will also manage to put them to work doing things that are arguably worse than doing nothing at all. Here in America, we still have people who have learned nothing from such mistakes, which adequately explains why Biden is President. It's easier to fool those people than it is to convince them that they've been fooled. Maybe the Democrat Party can take some of them on a ride forever, but when the music stops and the ride is inevitably over, the money they spent on the ride is gone and they still don't have what they need, and probably none of what they actually want, either.

Calliban · 2022-01-12 08:37:04

The situation in China looks ripe for some kind of maintenance crisis collapse, as described by Joseph Tainter.
https://www.peakprosperity.com/joseph-t … societies/

Chinese steel and concrete production is greater than the entire rest of the world combined. The CCP have a sort of faustian pact with their people. The legitimacy of their rule is not questioned, provided that full employment is maintained and wages keep rising. Up until 2009, the Chinese economic model was based upon cornering the world's production of consumer goods. They were able to expand these industries and the infrastructure that they depended upon very rapidly. China benefited from some of the cheapest energy in the world, in the form of coal, which was exploited using low cost labour and benefited from huge scale economies.

After the global financial crisis, demand growth in the rest of the world was no longer sufficient to keep China's monster export based economy growing. So the focus shifted towards a domestic demand solution. Chinese central planners have sought to maintain employment and economic growth through massive infrastructure spending. They are literally pouring more concrete every two years than the US did in the entire 20th century. That is staggering when you think about the sheer scale of infrastructure in the US. The interstate highway system, the thousands of bridges, railways, industrial buildings, airports, domestic residences; the Chinese are building all of that every 24 months! The scale of it just boggles the mind.

The problem is that none of it is really consumer driven. It is being done by government backed contractors on the assumption that consumer demand will keep rising enough to make it profitable. So lack of present demand is being hedged against anticipated future wealth and the demand that will create. The Chinese property and infrastructure bubble is on a scale greater than every other bubble in the world combined. And as Kbd512 noted, much of the infrastructure was of poor quality on day one.

The problem with this kind of economic ponsi scheme is that all economic activity is really just the use of energy to rework matter. Consumer demand and the value of money, are really just claims on future energy resources used to rework matter into goods and services. High rates of growth are therefore dependent on very cheap and easily expandable energy supply. The less efficient the economic activity is, the cheaper energy needs to be for the activity to be sustainable. The Chinese are trapped on an endless tread mill, with continuous high growth rates in consumer spending power being necessary to both cover the economic burden of past infrastructure creation and allow even greater investments in the future.

The stumbling block that will eventually derail this process, are limitations in Chinese energy supply and rising energy needs of physical resources, due to depletion of ores and other concentrated resources. In the past, the great bulk of Chinese energy production was derived from coal. This has given them some of the cheapest electricity and industrial heat in the world. China is still burning as much coal as the rest of the world combined, on a resource base only 50% that of the US. China imports 70% of its oil. One of the reasons behind China's recent antagonism with Australia, was the requirement from Chinese mining industry for higher coal prices. The average depth of Chinese coal mines is now 600m. The only growth potential for coal in China is in outlying regions, like outer Mongolia and Xinjiang. This makes increasing coal production expensive. You can either transport it hundreds of miles by rail, or relocate energy intensive industry closer to the coal, which is what the Chinese have done with their solar power industry. On top of this, the entire world is now running up against production limits for oil and gas. Gold production has probably peaked and silver production is exploiting much poorer ores now than was the case a decade ago. I think the Chinese realise the energy situation that they are in. Their nuclear capacity is already approaching that of France and they are building new capacity faster than the entire rest of the world, with 150 large nuclear reactors planned by 2035. At this rate, Chinese nuclear capacity will overtake the US in less than a decade. But even this would meet only a small fraction of China's monstrous energy demands. One can rest assured that the Chinese are not building nuclear reactors out of altruistic concerns about climate change. Their coal based energy production has reached its limits, cannot expand further and will very soon decline due to depletion of high grade ores. Their big bet on the future is that nuclear power can seamlessly take up the slack from the decline in coal based energy.

If surplus energy production can no longer increase, or if the energy demands for the same activity are increasing (or both at the same time) then consumer buying power can only increase by allowing the growth of a debt bubble. Debt appears to be increasing at a rate far higher than GDP in China. It now stands at around 330% GDP. The situation looks even worse when you consider than much of that GDP is the notional value of asset investments which never be very useful to Chinese industry or consumers. Looking at situation from afar, we can never be quite sure how close to final collapse the Chinese ponsi scheme is. Others have made calls and have generally been proven wrong. For China, more than in any other place, the answer depends on their collective ability to keep energy supply increasing. The facts that Chinese coal production appears to be hitting a peak and the CCP are now deliberately cutting back investment in new concrete production, tells us that a reckoning of some kind cannot be far away.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-01-12 09:43:15)

Calliban · 2022-01-12 10:20:10

This article is almost 5 years old. It's premise is that by reducing interest rates effectively beneath zero back in 2009, central banks were able to delay the global peak in oil production by allowing previously unprofitable investments in unconventional oil. Quantitative easing had a similar effect, as central bank bond purchases tend to push bond yields to very low levels.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/06/12/f … -peak-oil/

If money is really just a claim on the products of energy applied to matter, debt is a claim on future energy. If energy investments require lower interest rates to be profitable, it is a good indication that net energy return (energy yield minus energy cost) is poor. This has bad implications for the outcome of future interest rate rises, which are being discussed now to quell inflation, as it suggests that the real economy may be far more dependant on loose monetary conditions than it has ever been before. Even small increases in interest rates (or a halt to QE) could result in an unravelling of the notional wealth that has built up since the financial crisis. Why would this be the case? Because a large part of the energy base supporting the economy today, is simply too weak (low EROI) to generate the rate of return in the real economy that allow interest payments to be met. Reducing interest rates to zero back in 2009, was a one way ticket. It allowed the economy to adapt temporarily to a weaker energy base (unconventional oil and gas). But as this took effect, it became impossible to reverse without obliterating any new notional wealth that was built on that weaker energy base.

The irony of this situation is that many onlookers who knew nothing about the energy basis of the economy, hailed the shale revolution as effectively disproving the idea of Peak Oil. The reality is that peaking conventional oil production forced central banks to adopt very loose monetary policies. As oil prices rose to unprecedented levels between 2005 and 2008, they drove an increase in prices. Central banks, interpreting this as being the result of too much money in the system, decided to raise interest rates. Western consumers were already over-leveraged in things like real estate. The sudden increase in rates crushed the financial system and much of the real economy along with it. Central banks had misunderstood the nature of price increases, which were in reality driven by natural resource depletion, as being a monetary problem.

Following the economic collapse, central banks started pursuing the opposite: extremely loose monetary policies. The alternative would have been permanent economic contraction due to the shrinkage of the world's fossil fuel energy base. Both tight oil (shale) and Alberta tar sands are very capital intensive and could not have reached the size they have without these loose monetary policies. Even with zero effective interest rates, these investments have been largely unprofitable. But falling bond yields and low interest rates, mean that institutional investors like pension funds have had to tolerate low returns. Cheap money has also led to a surge in stock valuations that are now entirely detached from real world value determinants, like actual sales data. So falling interest rates were a direct consequence of the deteriorating energy resource base of the economy. They have resulted in an economic system that is literally cannibalising its own future. The rot has gone so far that central banks are nervous about increasing rates and deleveraging past QE, for fear of bringing the house down. The longer they wait, the more brutal the final correction will be.

Low interest rates are really a way of bringing future consumption into the present. This allows weaker resources to support lifestyles that they could never ordinarily support. But the price paid for this initiative is a very heavy one. It completely destroys the ability of price discovery in the stock market. It destroys the value of long term investments like pension funds, effectively allowing people today to consume more at the expense of their own future earnings. And it buries the surplus energy problems and builds systematic weakness into the economy. The central banks now have no choice other than letting inflation run its course. The alternative is unthinkable to them. By reducing interest rates in response to Peak Oil, they effectively doomed the economy to one last decade of cannibalism, with the final reckoning threatening to be far more brutal and civilisation ending than it had to be. Had we faced reality back in 2008, we could have built a fleet a fast reactors by now. As it is, using zero interest rate money, we are attempting to solve our energy problems using low EROI junk solutions, like tight oil and infrastructure intensive wind and solar projects. The world is run by idiots.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-01-12 11:06:37)

tahanson43206 · 2022-01-12 11:28:22

For Calliban .... this post is not specifically about Post #1970, although I read it carefully.

It seems to me, as I look back over your many posts, you have covered a range from warnings about impending doom if we (humans) do nothing, and hints of great abundance for everyone if we could allow ourselves to harness atomic energy effectively.

However, one aspect of all those posts seems constant (as they come across to me). You ** seem ** to have a deep and abiding confidence that humans are not up to the challenge.

If that is the case, you would certainly be in good company.

There are a few (humans) who warn of the consequences of failure to act (as a population) to head off the unhappy effects of global warming, but there seem to be few persons in any level of society who have the merest clue about how to collaborate to head off what seems to be coming.

In your posts, including this most recent one, I have noted pessimism that (humans) are capable of meeting the challenges we face.

Capitalism is a useful tool for meeting challenges, and it seems possible it might be enlisted in the present circumstance.

However, to this point, it would appear that no one has found a way to achieve an energy surplus with nuclear fission sufficient to cover all the expenses related to the technology.

Recently, Mars_B4_Moon has reported on Chinese experiments with small scale fission plants, and there are experiments in other countries.

No one has solved the nuclear waste problem with a capitalist solution, but (to my way of thinking) that would be a (potentially) profitable place to look to make an investment.

We ** do ** have companies that appear to be making a modest profit handling ordinary waste.

The city where I live hires a contractor to handle what purports to be re-usable waste, and yard waste (which itself should be re-usable).

A for-profit contractor to accept nuclear waste and dispose of it safely (as in the subduction zones of continental plates) might have a decent business world wide.

(th)

kbd512 · 2022-01-12 13:07:56

tahanson43206,

Corporations that build nuclear power plants take out loans from the bank to build the plant, same as companies that build wind turbines or gas turbines. After they receive approval to build from NRC, which can take 5 to 10 years, the regulators jack them around for another 5 to 10 years to ensure that nothing ever gets built because the builders either run out of money and can't secure another loan, or the investors disappear after it becomes crystal clear that the government has no intention of ever allowing the operator to build a new reactor. It's intentional government interference, even after approval has been granted, in order to ensure that energy remains scarce and the profits from the existing providers are maintained. Congress and state legislatures are lobbied to, in order to ensure that no new reactors are built, because we wouldn't need any gas turbines or wind turbines or photovoltaics or dams if operators were permitted to operate more reactors.

Look at the number of withdrawn / suspended / denied licenses:

Combined License Applications for New Reactors

Nearly all of the "Issued" licenses took so long that the companies who would build the reactors either ran out of money or scrapped the project on their own after it became clear that the NRC had no intention of actually allowing them to build. Here in Texas STP #3 and #4 were scrapped by Toshiba after NRC jerked them around for 10 years. Corporations have to make money to stay in business, but the government simply will not allow that to happen when it comes to nuclear power. Vogtle #3 and #4 are thus far, the only new build units that NRC's "death by thumb twiddling" hasn't run into the ground (yet), although I'm sure they'll make every effort to kill the project.

More than 90% of "nuclear waste" is "nuclear fuel" with 95% to 98% of its original energy content. For all intents and purposes, there is no nuclear waste to speak of, just cracked fuel rods that the government will not permit operators to reprocess to stuff them back into a reactor to make more power. This is yet another government-sponsored scheme to keep the Uranium miners in business fueling the existing reactors, because otherwise we wouldn't be mining another kilo of Uranium for the next several hundred years, bare minimum, even if America was 100% nuclear powered. Think about that for a moment. If we never mined Uranium or Thorium in our lifetimes, there would be sufficient fuel collecting dust to supply 100% of the electric power for the next 6 generations of Americans. Anybody who wants to dump perfectly good nuclear fuel with almost all of its original energy content is part of the problem.

Q: How do you ever compete with an industry that both makes its own new fuel while generating power, when they're starting with a fuel that's 24 million TIMES more energy dense than coal?
A: Simple. You hire an army of lawyers to legislate and regulate them out of existence so that you can continue destroying the environment, because otherwise you could never ever compete if total cost of all energy generating assets and minimal environmental impact to supply 100% of the power 100% of the time, was the only consideration of actual merit.

Calliban is rightly pessimistic about humanity, because common sense is dead, people who make decisions can't count and have been "bought off" through legalized bribery, and the general public is so exquisitely ignorant that there's little point to spending money on educating them, because after all their horrendously expensive low-quality schooling, they've merely been indoctrinated into anti-humanist ideology, rather than educated.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-01-12 16:46:09

We had an old discussion on newmars many years ago, Who Governs Mars? - Corporate Warlords vs. The Monarchism Commonwealth

I guess the scandals prove a corrupt Monarchy can be with links to blackmail and pedo islands

'Prince Andrew to face civil sex assault case after US ruling'
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59871514

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-01-12 16:57:03

UN slams Kazakhstan after soldiers seen wearing UN helmets amid unrest

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/un-slams-kaza … 29646.html

Calliban · 2022-01-12 18:12:52

An aristocracy is nothing more than the putrified remains of conquering overlords. Britain's aristocracy is the last hangup of the Norman conquest. A bunch of murderous, Norse French half breeds, that terrorised Europe for generations. The Scottish aristocracy grew out of its own clan system, but were no less peevish and abusive. They generally had a hatred for poor people and were the ones primarily responsible for the oppression of the Irish. Many would argue that the western world if now under the thumb of a Jewish aristocracy. This is people like the Rothchild family, the Maxwells, Mark Zuckerberg, Philip Green, George Soros and many more.

Whatever the circumstances of an aristocracy rising to power, the results are never good. They live on the rest of society like leeches. The existence of an aristocracy is incompatible with democratic principles, because wealth and power are based on heredity rather than personal initiative and merit. Wealth inequality and entrenched political interests has created a sort of pseudo aristocracy in the US, which is generally guided by Zionist Jewish interests.

Mars should be founded as a Constitutional Republic. We need some reincarnated Thomas Jefferson to draft a bill of rights and oversee the drafting of a constitution that can avoid some of the pitfalls that have lately weighed upon the US. There need to be measures they avoid concentration of wealth and power. And it would help to have means of weeding out psychopaths before they can reach positions of authority.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-01-12 18:27:58)

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