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The 2019 Trump Presidency Thread

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I also fail to see how revoking emissions legislation for vehicles could help make them safer. I'd love if someone could explain that. I get that heavier cars are less likely to crumple, and heavy beats light, and heavy cars use more fuel, but in terms of implementing measures to make the emissions as clean as possible (which is what we're talking about, right? A big part of these measures to weaken emissions from, for example, coal power, is in removing the mandate that measures are taken to clean up the emissions that are being given off), I don't see how removing these could have any impact on the safety of a car.
 
It's just a way for him to troll his opponents in the culture wars. The auto manufacturers don't even want it, so it's being marketed as a move towards benefiting the consumer...as if there was widespread public dissatisfaction that more smog isn't polluting their skies.

Unfortunately this is a very serious time for our species, IMO, and he's not taking the problem seriously at all. Moves like this just serve to reinforce that perception and reality. Lately it seems like there's a torrent of ongoing news about the disintegration of our natural world and this is the kind of thing he devotes state resources to. It's something historians in the future will be amazed by more than any other aspect of the entire Trump saga, IMO
 
Agreed. I think in the future none of this drama or the immigration stuff or abortion or anything like that is going to be focused on by historians. It's going to be "how the fuck did those idiot fuckers sit back and let this happen??" It's still possible to deny it right now, but it won't be eventually. The coral reefs are already dying from ocean acidification, there is already a 75% reduction in the total biomass of flying insects including pollinators (!!), here is already mercury in every single living thing in the ocean, microplastics have already infiltrated microorganisms, big cities in places like China and India without pollution regulation (or perhaps just beginning to regulate pollution/emissions) are seeing millions of people getting sick and many of them dying, we're already having new "worst in recorded history" hurricanes every year... it amazes me that people can still stick their heads in the sand, but at some point it will get to be too much and everyone will wail and gnash their teeth and lament why they didn't react when they still could.

In the past 27 years, there has been a 75% reduction in flying insect biomass. 3/4 of all flying insects. That's horrifying. Honeybees are dying at alarming rates in many places. Imagine a world without pollinators. It would be a crushing blow to so many species, including us. Is it hard to imagine that we could get there, and soon?

I dislike Trump for a variety of reasons, but by far the #1 reason I do not support him is that he is pushing for environmental deregulation and has already done much damage in that area. To me that's inexcusable and overrides anything else.
 
Yep the insects, the birds, the marine mammals (and marine life generally-speaking), etc...it's horrifying. I'm a fisherman so my livelihood depends on the natural world...my livelihood, my community, my cultural identity, my sense of "useful purpose". I hate what's happening...the only spot of optimism I feel is that the large majority of the general public hates it too, and desperately wants to DO SOMETHING about it. I live in a rural "red state" (AK) but you'd be hard pressed to find people around here who'd publicly deny that climate change exists or even that it's a serious issue that merits more attention than its receiving.

If Trump truly wanted to assist consumers who were affected by predatory business practices he should look at the healthcare industry, both in terms of Rx prices (which are definitely not determined by market forces) and the health insurance industry, which fraudulently bills government programs like Medicare/Medicaid to the tune of billions. That'd probably be too hard though :rolleyes:
 
People with a severe lack of empathy don't base their actions on "what's best". They base their actions on the belief that they are of a divine right. Similar to how psychopaths will target people for what appears to a layperson to be almost no reason at all, the mentality is that somehow what they are doing is justified. The journey to "cleaning up your act" starts with realizing your actions were not done or presented in a way that was "to the best of your abilities". I strongly believe Republicans just simply DO NOT understand or even fathom sarcasm. And that is possibly why the importance of getting a joke as opposed to burning down a rainforest is... well... important.
 
alasdairm said:
can anybody - @Captain.Heroin, @TheLoveBandit - explain how weakening emissions standards makes cars safer?
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My previous post was tongue in cheek humor regarding the type of people who want "old clunkers" etc.

I like walking.

Like I've said, largely in real life not here, the ONLY DEMOCRAT I WOULD HAVE VOTED FOR WAS INSLEE for putting global warming as his #1 issue and the only one to do so. 1% polling, dropped out.

This is why Trump is going to win again and you all deserve it. College for all, medicare for all? Take away the guns? No, thanks. I'd like to save the earth. Get behind the scientists. You can't out-bully a real bully like Donald Trump and I don't know why Harris slung shit in Biden's face and took us back to the GOOD OL' BUSSING ERA. Bitch, I'm moving FORWARD with a racially integrated society. I'm not going back to the days of SEGREGATION, or the LA RIOTS. Fucking bitch.

A lot of people have called out the 2 party system for being bought out by big oil. I don't want a socialist government but it is worth breaking the bank over saving the earth. I don't get why all the democrats couldn't try SUPPORTING EACH OTHER, GETTING BACK BEHIND A HUGE PANEL OF RICH REPUBLICAN-TYPE SCIENTISTS THAT ALL AGREE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, and push on FACTS versus Trump's LIES. Get a fiscally responsible plan, or ONLY break the bank over global warming. Nothing else is worth it right now.

And instead "Yeah I'm going to take your AK's" and "You worked with segregationists!" is what I'm hearing.

alasdairm said:
trump showing his class today by mocking and belittling greta thunberg.
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This is what makes Trump an INTERNATIONALIST and when he and his puppets call him a "nationalist" I laugh out loud IRL. Can't wait for an actual white nationalist to kill him like they did JFK. Add 1-2 trillion to the deficit for your border wall while we pull from the Paris agreement? For continued big oil subsidies, tax breaks, connects through the cabinet? Yeah, that's part of the internationalist type American government or illegitimate Russian government(s) that have collectively ruined the world as we know it today.

Do not listen to Trump's "lies". He is not a nationalist. He just pays lip service through code speak to white racists who are LARGELY AMERICA'S LOWEST IQ POPULATION and they drink the kool aid because #1 THEY CANNOT DO MATH, evidenced by #2 liberals LOVE of the public education system (the system that educated a nation of people into VOTING FOR DONALD J TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT for fucks sake) and #3 they somehow demonized HRC about 1000x worse than the entire right-wing media (i.e. CNN) has demonized DJT for FUCKING YEARS (not without merit in many instances) in a very short amount of time. That kind of libel and slander is illegal and Trump should face charges after he leaves office for some of the things he's said about HRC if they are indeed false (and I think the entire rational world doesn't believe him on many of his HRC claims).

The 0.00000001% of white nationalists who aren't fucking idiots realize Trump is a race traitor and that white people aren't doing any better under him than they could otherwise. Trump has fucked the nation, big time, for short-term stock exchange surge so the rich can get richer while the poor get poorer.

Think about all the millions of Americans who echoed Trump's lies. None of it was true in any way. Just like all the people who drank the "Trump is a nationalist" kool-aid because they don't understand politics.

(I'm sure you get it Alasdairm, but a lot of people don't so I wanted to include this for the wider conversation; I know you are very well-versed in politics - sometimes more so than I am :))
 
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Before any Trump haters get excited about the "coming impeachment" headlines in the news right now, here's the real story.

Back in July, Trump talked to new Ukrainian president Zelenskiy in an attempt to expose the fact that Joe Biden's son (and likely Biden himself) had been involved in corrupt practices in Ukraine in relation to the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, of which Biden Jr. is a board member.

So yet again, we have a situation similar to the Russiagate hoax, where Trump is being accused of wrong-doing (obstruction of Mueller) for attempting to expose wrong-doing (the fabricated hit job that was "Russian collusion")

This latest attempt will, like the last, go nowhere (for obvious reasons) and can only be described as more evidence of the desperation and delusion of many members of the Democratic party who think that they can both 'impeach' Trump by attempting to cover up the crimes of their own favorite for next year's election (Biden), when in fact Biden is probably the LEAST electable of all Democrat candidates.

Amazing lunacy.

p.s. see video below for evidence, from the horse's mouth, that Biden essentially blackmailed Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk (President and PM of Ukraine at the time) by threatening to withhold $1billion dollars of US taxpayers' aid money to Ukraine unless they fired the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Biden's son's illegal activities in Ukraine.

And Trump's the bad guy, apparently.

 
alasdairm said:
can anybody - @Captain.Heroin, @TheLoveBandit - explain how weakening emissions standards makes cars safer?
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The argument is stricter emission standards drives innovation (good thing!) to achieve better efficiency (good thing!) but the paths to that end have largely relied on shiftng away from a 'mostly metal' vehicle to ones made of a lot more plastic. Lighter weight means a gallon of gas can move the car further, thereby achieving less fuel used or emissions created in an average drive. The argument lies in that there are many paths to better fuel efficiency (changes to the fuel, to the combustion process, etc) but to meet the requirements by the times dictated, auto makers simply went to plastic body panels and as light as possible vehicles. The argument then says that two vehicles travelling at equal speeds collide (or hit a tree), the heavier one remains more intact and protects it's riders, whereas the plastic get destroyed and likely kills the riders. Supposedly, there are strong arguments that with the rise in emission standards, there has been a steady increase in vehicular deaths and accidents in general. It's somewhat counter intuitive that a big heavy vehicle cannot control itself as well, but basic physics says you have a better chance of survival. If I could find the article I read, I'd link it, but I haven't found my way back to it. I do recall this argument also did a poor job of all the safety features built into today's cars (lane keeping, collision warnings and even braking, etc). I'm not sure where I sit on this one, because I am strongly in favor of innovation (maybe those safety features would have come anyway with big heavy cars?), and I do like better fuel efficiency (doesn't mean we drive any less, just that we burn less fuel doing so). But I'd like to get a look at those stats on how vehicle deaths rose with emissions.

Short answer - weaker emissions in the old days meant heavy metal cars that helped people survive accidents.
 
thanks. do you think that is the reason?

or is this trump making things easy for the auto-industry and sticking one to the much-hated state of california at the same time?

alasdair
 
^ somehow I don't think that Trump has any kind of serious interest in vehicular safety lol. Good ol' Trump! He's our era's Ralph Nader, a crusader for consumers!

I doubt anyone is stupid enough to believe that. Like I said earlier, it's just another moronic chapter in Trump's kulturkampf
 


Excellent response. I rarely agree with Trump but the way he's handling this is fairly well worded and along the lines of my thinking. Many Iranians are unhappy with the gov't they have and deserve freedom they at this moment do not know.
 
alasdairm said:
thanks. do you think that is the reason?

or is this trump making things easy for the auto-industry and sticking one to the much-hated state of california at the same time?

alasdair
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Do I think that's the reason? I think it plays a part. I think it would be naive to believe there is a singular reason. One contributor I'd also look at is anywhere drinking ages have been adjusted up/down, as it could put more/less risky drivers on the road. We can also look at the changes in speed limits since CAFE was instituted (for the younger crowd, there was a period in the 80's where there were no speed limits above 55, but they eventually went back up in some interstates). So, I'll never point to any one thing on a topic and say 'that is THE reason' but I'd always be open to all possible reasons.

Burnt Offerings said:
^ somehow I don't think that Trump has any kind of serious interest in vehicular safety lol.
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Ali, you give Trump too much credit. BO has it - Trump isn't making these safety claims, it is others in the industry, and not on Trump's behalf. A better question is if he (Trump) is being led by donors or political backers who are also behind these heavy-cars-are-safer reports. It is possible, but Trump's not leading this in any way, even if he at some point tries to claim it as his idea or agenda. Whether those saying heavy-cars-are-safer are honestly presenting facts that aren't getting attention, or are driving their own counter-agenda, I can't say. But if there are facts, I'd want to hear them and have them get the same public review as those attending UN meetings to scream about destroyed dreams and stolen childhoods.
 
Supposed "impeachment inquiry" against Trump follows the same theme as everything that the US establishment has attempted to do since Trump's election campaign: Defame Trump for attempting to expose the massive corruption at the heart of US politics. 3 major corruption scandals BY THE DEMS:

Hillary's email and corruption in the DNC. Trump exposes it.

Dem Response: IMPEACH TRUMP!

Made up claims of "Russian collusion" and illegal Mueller investigation. Trump exposes it.

Dem Response: IMPEACH TRUMP!

Joe Biden using the office of the VP and US govt. aid to Ukraine to get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired because eh was investigating Biden laundering money from Ukraine for himself and his son. Trump asks Ukrainian Pres. to investigate.

Dem Response: IMPEACH TRUMP!

I hope everyone sees what's going on here.
 
Captain.Heroin said:


Excellent response. I rarely agree with Trump but the way he's handling this is fairly well worded and along the lines of my thinking. Many Iranians are unhappy with the gov't they have and deserve freedom they at this moment do not know.
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I like how you're not joking. Many Americans are unhappy with the govt they have, you must support Russia coming in, you deserve freedom.

Also the sanctions against Iran are hurting innocent poor people there
 
Captain.Heroin said:
Trump is the one who used his office to aid Ukraine for political favors.
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Biden withheld aid under the threat of removing a (likely corrupt) prosecutor, to which the Ukraine complied. << quid pro quo, bragged about by Biden

3 Dems wrote to the Ukraine with indirect, but clear, wording of withholding aid and support unless the Ukraine worked in their favor << quid pro quo, documented

Trump has provided more aid than the previous regime to the Ukraine << Fact
Trump withheld aid recently under reason of wanting EU to pay their share << Trumps words, subject to doubt as to the true reason, but a possible reason undeniably
Trump never offered aid in return for investigating Biden << Fact, no quid pro quo
Trump asked the favor of investigating US corruption in the Ukraine << Fact, and a task the President does indeed have in his purview
Trump never got a promise of compliance from the Ukraine for his request << Fact, no agreed tit-for-tat quid pro quo
Trump got a lot of ass kissing from the Ukraine President << Fact. And I'd expect ANY US President would get that from someone wanting his aid and favor in general

We have, yet again, an instance of Dems lighting torches and grabbing pitchforks when there is no substance to the claim against Trump. Moreover, they are more culpable for the claims of illegal action than what they accuse the President of. This will backfire. Again.
 
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