Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

To AA:

Agreed.

My point is that there is a financial incentive for hm to stay as clean as possible. But, I agree, he has shown no indication that he can control his ego.

I don't think there is an incentive in his mind. I think he believes he's bullet proof. And with some justification.

[Jeff Buchanan]

All hail the President of the U$A.

Hell...its the last step in a long path. Why keep pretending at this point.

Oh, fuck ....... I'm no Trump fan but Richard Nixon's presidency was the pinnacle of the Imperial Type. Keep pretending?

Comong, man. There is a difference here between the two but it's subtle; both were/are very interested in self agrandizement and Nixon was probably the worst. HE alone, along with his legacy, not any business interests he might have had, were his thing.

[AlabamAlum]

I don't think Nixon was that bad. Heh. He just got caught.

[hack]

There is no financial incentive for him to stay clean, and he has already ``pushed the envelope'', at least in terms of what we all commonly would refer to as peddling influence or using the office to further private purposes. But, he's right that it's not illegal. It's a pretty weird loophole that the president is exempt from rules everyone else must follow. It seems to be an example of where the system assumes noblesse oblige on the part of a president, basically. So, a failure of imagination at the start. I hope that the first order of business of the next president is to make the office subject to the same standards as others are.

[hack]

Comong, man. There is a difference here between the two but it's subtle; both were/are very interested in self agrandizement and Nixon was probably the worst. HE alone, along with his legacy, not any business interests he might have had, were his thing.


I'm no Nixon expert, but on the continuum of corruption, as far as I could tell Nixon wasn't nearly this bad. Criminal activity no doubt, but IMO it's important to draw the distinction between corruption to advance political outcomes and corruption to simply line one's own pockets.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump had better hope no hard evidence surfaces of him directing foreign policy in a direction that benefits a real estate project of his. I'm willing to bet plenty of Republicans secretly would prefer Mike Pence and wouldn't resist too strongly if impeachment became a genuine possibility.

He's not putting the businesses into a true blind trust. If his kids are going to run the business empire, they can't also be given complete access to the national security apparatus and sit in on classified briefings and whatnot. That seems insane to me. I can't believe some folks are willing to shrug and say "no big deal" to me. Especially just after numerous folks went nuclear over the Clinton Foundation.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oh my...marriage between Breitbart and Trump already on the ropes? Website slams Trump over decision to not "lock her up"

http://www.businessinsider.com/breitbart-trump-clinton-charges-lock-up-2016-11

[hack]

Distractions are useful, right?

As for the corruption, there's already the stories from Argentina and Philippines about Trump Towers. We are going to see a huge surge in Trump Towers globally, it seems. But what Trump can/has/will do is, presumably, never gonna be as bad as Dick Cheney. Cheney may or may not have started a war because he could profit from it. We do know that he profited from a war he had a central part in starting.

Just a wild guess, but Trump and the GOP brass both want no part of an impeachment process. That takes up valuable time that could be used on things both would benefit from them. There will surely be a meeting of the minds in which all the creatures in the swamp realize they are ``stronger together''. Unless Trump gets sick of this and wants to play martyr, or unless the results indicate a bloodbath in the next general election. I don't know.

[froot loops]

There has been no solution on Flint, nothing has been done. They have give out filters and fought to supply bottled water. The GOP congress Sat on their hands, this issue has been going on for years and nothing has been done. The GOP is in control of both houses in Lansing and both houses in Washington and they've done bubkus.

[entropy]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2607940/

Wait... what???


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[froot loops]

There is no chance whatsoever of the GOP ever approaching impeachment. There is literally nothing he could do for those guys to consider it. Put that out of you mind, he could sell the Presidency in plain view and they would cheer him on. A clown like Jason Chaffetz would notarize the sale of the Presidency.

[Da Geezer]

Hack:

Just for giggles and grins, I looked up Reagan's lifting of regulations on oil and gas in 1981 as the first act of his presidency.

Remember, we were in a period of price controls (mostly instituted by that uber-prog, Nixon). There was "old oil" which was price controlled so as not to give the oil companies a windfall profit. That was around 24. Then there was "new oil" which was priced at market, which at the time was roughly 40. Reagan decontrolled everything. Oil went up for a short period of time and then dropped into the teens where it stayed for about 25 years. Gasoline prices doubled overnight, and slowly declined to about half of what they were.

That is just history. Let's take today. The Keystone Pipeline project was designed to safely and cheaply move "heavy oil" from Canada's tar sands to the TX coast where the refineries for that type of oil (similar to Venezuala's, which is no longer a market factor since the socialist government's policies have led to the normal outcome of any socialist state) are already in place. The EPA has required environmental impact statements ad nauseum under both the "Waters of the US" act and the Endangerment Finding in the "Clean Power Plan". In actual fact, this was all part of trying to wring carbon out of the economy.

But, as luck would have it, the Buffett railroads could haul the oil for a far higher price of transit. So the oil got to Houston and was refined and sold. The additional cost of transit got added into the price of the finished product. And this doesn't consider other environmental regulations from the tar sands themselves to the refinery itself.

I have no doubt that we could replicate the 1980's if we just lifted the most onerous environmental regulations. That would be oil at say 25 and gasoline at the pump around $1.70. We didn't know in the 1980s until we tried it, but to somehow say that regulation is not an added cost of production gets into the realm of religious belief once again.

[Da Geezer]

Entropy: I heard about that Sheriff Department fine, and I actually didn't give it much thought. To me, it seems part and parcel of the DoJ for the last 8 years.

Guy attacks a policeman in his car, tries to shoot the cop with the cop's gun, backs off, then charges the cop ignoring repeated warnings until the cop shoots him. Result: DoJ investigation against the police department for a hate crime.

[hack]

I don't get the bolded part. As you know, oil prices weren't set by market, but by government-to-government deals, until the late 1980s. Whether that was to prevent winfalls for private companies or for Saudi Arabia and other major OPEC states is a different question, but, prices in the teens for 25 years? What the? Here's a chart: http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crud...-history-chart.

I don't know what costs problem you are talking about. Energy costs here are the lowest amongst all competitive global economies. Here's the data, and I'm pretty sure I've posted this before: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/g...d-States:USD:g. The at-the-pump price is lower in only ten countries, and you can see which ones they are and see how competitive those economies are. In terms of what kind of a bit it takes out of the average person's earnings, a gallon costs 1.58% of a day's wages in the US, which is lower than every other country but Venezuela. Are you suggesting we are losing out on competitiveness to Venezuela?

[hack]

Also, I've posted this exact link before about the Keystone issue being largely nonsense:
https://rbnenergy.com/need-for-keyst...t-refining-hub. Feel free to vet the source. See who the guy is and where he gets his revenue.