Trump Administration, In Late Push, Moves To Sell Oil Rights In Arctic Refuge (nytimes.com) 373
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies in a last-minute push to achieve its long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. That sets up a potential sale of leases just before Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, leaving the new administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has opposed drilling in the refuge, to try to reverse them after the fact.
The Arctic refuge is one of the last vast expanses of wilderness in the United States, 19 million acres that for the most part are untouched by people, home instead to wandering herds of caribou, polar bears and migrating waterfowl. It has long been prized, and protected, by environmentalists, but President Trump has boasted that opening part of it to oil development was among the most significant of his efforts to expand domestic fossil fuel production. The Federal Register on Monday posted a "call for nominations" from the Bureau of Land Management, to be officially published Tuesday, relating to lease sales in about 1.5 million acres of the refuge along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. A call for nominations is essentially a request to oil companies to specify which tracts of land they would be interested in exploring and potentially drilling for oil and gas.
The administration's announcement establishes a tight timeline for lease sales, with the earliest they could occur being on or about Jan. 17. The call for nominations will allow for comments until Dec. 17, after which the bureau, part of the Interior Department, could issue a final notice of sales to occur as soon as 30 days later. Normally the bureau would take time to review the comments and determine which tracts to sell before issuing the final notice of sale, a process that can take several months. In this case, however, the bureau could decide to make the entire coastal plain available and issue the notice immediately. Any sales would be subject to review by agencies in the Biden administration, including the bureau and the Justice Department, a process that could take a month or two. That could allow the Biden White House to refuse to issue the leases, perhaps by claiming that the scientific underpinnings of the plan to allow drilling in the refuge were flawed, as environmental groups have claimed.
The Arctic refuge is one of the last vast expanses of wilderness in the United States, 19 million acres that for the most part are untouched by people, home instead to wandering herds of caribou, polar bears and migrating waterfowl. It has long been prized, and protected, by environmentalists, but President Trump has boasted that opening part of it to oil development was among the most significant of his efforts to expand domestic fossil fuel production. The Federal Register on Monday posted a "call for nominations" from the Bureau of Land Management, to be officially published Tuesday, relating to lease sales in about 1.5 million acres of the refuge along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. A call for nominations is essentially a request to oil companies to specify which tracts of land they would be interested in exploring and potentially drilling for oil and gas.
The administration's announcement establishes a tight timeline for lease sales, with the earliest they could occur being on or about Jan. 17. The call for nominations will allow for comments until Dec. 17, after which the bureau, part of the Interior Department, could issue a final notice of sales to occur as soon as 30 days later. Normally the bureau would take time to review the comments and determine which tracts to sell before issuing the final notice of sale, a process that can take several months. In this case, however, the bureau could decide to make the entire coastal plain available and issue the notice immediately. Any sales would be subject to review by agencies in the Biden administration, including the bureau and the Justice Department, a process that could take a month or two. That could allow the Biden White House to refuse to issue the leases, perhaps by claiming that the scientific underpinnings of the plan to allow drilling in the refuge were flawed, as environmental groups have claimed.
Of course he does (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course he does (Score:5, Insightful)
On the plus side, it's pretty much a tacit admission he won't have that power much longer.
Re: Of course he does (Score:4, Interesting)
What is bothersome is how much these top trumpsters are not only kowtowing to Putin's wish list, but they are now being put in various places to cause as much harm as possible in our business areas, military, but esp national intelligence.
Right now, trump is pulling down troop levels in Afghanistan to 2500, even though military, national intel, and even senators are fighting this.
trump has loaded our intelligence top ppl with absolutely NO Intelligence experience, but are pure yes men.
Add to all this trump working hard to deny Biden access to at least internal information, it will likely mean that it will be easy for foreign enemies to attack our allies right at the end of trump's term, allowing him to declare martial law (gads, would GOP allow this or will the republicans left in the GOP fight it?), Or will attack in the 6 months of bidens term.
Keep in mind, that because W did not really care about national intelligence that much in his first year, it enabled 9/11. Intelligence is what kept us out of MAD, stopped Soviets from putting nukes 90 miles off shore ( combined with a strong president ), stopped numerous attacks on the entire West, etc. It has even stopped attacks of many undeveloped nations, as we worked to contain AQ, etc.
Trump most likely is causing far more damage to the west/America, than Manning and snowden caused.
Re: (Score:3)
I recently had a post with three or four dashes in it that was rejected as "ASCII art" - Yet two freakin' giant banners? No problem at all.
I can't even use the word that symbol represents in a post without triggering a "lameness filter."
Re: (Score:3)
I did think of ways to beat most of that (swastika made of common words). The hard bit would be getting past a filter that looked for too high a ratio of non-alphabet characters and too many spaces. Of course this would prevent code from being posted but that's already the case anyhow.
I have a controversial opinion about swastikas - stop shunning their use by religious groups the way they were originally used, IE to mean peace etc. Do the opposite, stick rainbow coloured swastikas every where along with the
Re:Of course he doesn't (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, I sincerely doubt anyone will be dragging him out, cathartic as it might be. Trump has excellent instincts for what plays well to his audience and what doesn't, and getting physically dragged out of the White House would make him look weak. He'll want to avoid that playing on the news at any cost. If it's clear he'll be dragged out, he'll leave voluntarily before it happens. Screaming on Twitter and TV every step of the way about how he was cheated, but he'll leave.
Re: Of course he does (Score:2, Insightful)
if he can't be president, he's going to do his best to take the whole country down with him.
+4 Insightful my ass. He knows damn well none of those areas will ever be touched, but Biden and the Dems will be seen as the "bad guys" when they torpedo the deal. That's the entire point.
Re: Of course he does (Score:5, Insightful)
He knows damn well none of those areas will ever be touched
True. Drilling in the Arctic is not profitable when frackers are the swing producers who control the price of oil.
This is just Trump's way to poke a stick at his opponents.
Biden and the Dems will be seen as the "bad guys" when they torpedo the deal.
Anyone who sees killing this deal as "bad" likely isn't voting for the Democrats anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
True. Drilling in the Arctic is not profitable when frackers are the swing producers who control the price of oil.
Don't you mean the Saudi's.
Re: Of course he does (Score:5, Informative)
Frackers are currently getting their butts handed to them by low international oil prices. The profit levels are razor-thin for that form of petroleum extraction. Yes, drilling in ANWR might be cheaper per barrel once all the infrastructure is built out, or it might not, but it's going to be a tall order to convince anyone to invest millions in drilling and transport against a glut of cheap crude from foreign sources and a base of established frackers waiting to jump back into the market once oil maybe tries to go back up in price.
Add to that the fact that the entire EU is going electric in about a decade's time and you do not have a great recipe for future profitability in the oil drilling business.
Re:LMFAO (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad that our only two choices are Trump and Biden.
Other candidates were on the ballot in all 50 states.
People don't get it.
Indeed.
Re: LMFAO (Score:2)
Re:LMFAO (Score:5, Interesting)
And everyone knows none of those other candidates have a snowball's hope in hell, which becomes a self-fulfilling belief. That makes it very stable. The situation is even worse, as even a slightly-successful third-party candidate can hurt their own cause. Take the 2000 campaign for example, when Ralph Nader ran. He for 2.7% of the popular vote, which is a huge amount for a third-party candidate in the US - but as his positions were much closer to those of the Democratic party than the Republicans, most of those votes would have been for the Democratic candidate had he not been running. Without Nader's unsuccessful campaign, it's quite possible that the 2000 election would have ended in President Al Gore.
The only way to avoid this is to move away from the simple first-past-the-post system that forces tactical voting, and instead move to something like instant-runoff ranked preference. But that would mean a constitutional amendment, and there's no chance of getting both of the major parties to agree on that. Such a reform would always be to the detriment of the interests of at least one of them, if not both.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And everyone knows none of those other candidates have a snowball's hope in hell
That doesn't matter. You don't need to win to change things.
Nader's 2000 campaign sent a clear message to the Democratic Party that they ignore their base at their peril.
The Republican Party has long had a conflict between their libertarian wing and their social conservative wing.
Pat Buchanan's campaign based on social conservatism, and paltry votes for libertarians, led the Republican Party to be dominated by the social conservatives. The libertarian wing is now powerless and irrelevant.
If you want to cha
Re:LMFAO (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't matter. You don't need to win to change things.
Nader's 2000 campaign sent a clear message to the Democratic Party that they ignore their base at their peril.
The very evidence you present speaks against you. Nothing changed. In fact in 2004 Nader threatened the party that he'd run again if they didn't take on some specific policies, they ignored him.
The USA's election system makes it clear that you are throwing away your vote when you go for an independent. The only message that this sends is that people who wouldn't have voted for you anyway are dumb enough to stand in line and waste their time. Nearly all of the independents run on a platform of significant difference from main parties so it doesn't even properly dilute their voter base.
Pat Buchanan's campaign based on social conservatism, and paltry votes for libertarians, led the Republican Party to be dominated by the social conservatives.
There's a causation vs correlation issue there. The republicans have been getting more and more conservative for the best part of 40 years. Pat Buchanan made a lot of noise that amounted to nothing and the voters emphasised that by ignoring him.
Re:LMFAO (Score:5, Insightful)
Nader's 2000 campaign sent a clear message to the Democratic Party that they ignore their base at their peril.
One which they COMPLETELY IGNORED ever since, and which they are STILL WILLFULLY IGNORING today.
Look at this last election, specifically not the presidential race. Democratic candidates favoring more socialism (notably medicare for all) won their seats, those which don't got creamed. But they're still talking bullshit about how they are going too far to the left. That's completely wrong. Democrats and even many Republicans wanted to vote for Sanders. Most of those Sanders-supporting Rs went on to vote for Trump, which we know because they told us.
People WANT CHANGE. They do NOT want MORE OF THE SAME, although many prefer the old status quo to this Trump shit. That's why Sanders galvanized so many, and why there is so much backlash against the DNC for opposing him (and the supposedly democratic process.) The DNC deliberately spoiled the election for Sanders, and look how that turned out. But they're just going to keep doing the same shit because the DNC is a whore to corporate interests.
The DNC learned nothing from Nader, or Sanders. They're still up to the same corrupt shit. Sure, the Republicans are more corrupt, but we're not talking about them right now. Sure, I'd rather have a corrupt Democrat than a corrupt Republican, at least they might not shit all over environmental protections. But that's not an endorsement, it's an anti-endorsement.
Whatever happened to running candidates that people actually want to vote for?
Re: LMFAO (Score:3)
"To be fair Sanders probably shouldn't have ever even been on the Democrat's ticket. He isn't a Democrat. He is and independent that only joined the Democrat ticket because he knows that there is no way to become President of the US running as an independent."
Which is why he should have been on the Democrats' ticket. Anything else is pointless. Registered Democrats wanted to vote for him. The DNC is the problem, not Sanders.
Re:LMFAO (Score:5, Informative)
Vote for something different, not get many votes.
If few people vote for X, then X will be ignored.
If more people vote for X, then X will not be ignored.
Is that really difficult to understand?
Winning strategy I'm sure.
Not voting for what you want, and then complaining when you don't get it, is not a winning strategy. It is stupid.
Re:LMFAO (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is you get one vote to apply to a huge range of issues for the next 4 years.
Maybe you really want something candidate X has, but that thing candidate Y is promising is essential and an absolute deal-break. You vote for Y and X abandons the policy you wanted.
Re: (Score:3)
And everyone knows none of those other candidates have a snowball's hope in hell, which becomes a self-fulfilling belief.
It's not just a belief, it's reality. Our two-party system guarantees it. The founders either intended this to happen, or utterly failed like chumps when it came to the fact that they didn't mention political parties in the constitution. The reason given was that they didn't want them to be part of the process, but they didn't become part of the process through law. It was organic. Believing that not putting them into the constitution would prevent them is utterly naive at best.
The only way to avoid this is to move away from the simple first-past-the-post system that forces tactical voting, and instead move to something like instant-runoff ranked preference. But that would mean a constitutional amendment, and there's no chance of getting both of the major parties to agree on that.
Right. It's going to take a l
Re:LMFAO (Score:5, Interesting)
The founders either intended this to happen, or utterly failed like chumps when it came to the fact that they didn't mention political parties in the constitution. The reason given was that they didn't want them to be part of the process, but they didn't become part of the process through law. It was organic. Believing that not putting them into the constitution would prevent them is utterly naive at best.
I'm not exactly a historical scholar but from what I've read I get the impression that they had bigger fish to fry. It was basically all they could do to come up with a compromise on how to choose the president in general. There was a very strong push for congress to choose the president, and almost no one at the time wanted the people to choose directly. To save the idea of checks and balances, they agreed to the electoral college which at least meant that states could have some say internally as to how they want the president to be chosen. First-past-the-post voting from electors was probably an afterthought. That's actually the main problem. Some states do actually have ranked choice or runoffs of some type, but it really doesn't matter if the electoral vote is first-past-the-post.
Re:LMFAO (Score:5, Insightful)
This time around you had half the people scared of communism voting against Biden,/em
What's crazy is that people have got so insane that they think Biden of all people is a harbinger of communism.
Re: (Score:3)
I think even they realized how ridiculous trying to paint Biden as a socialist was, so the conspiracy theory became that he was a puppet of Sanders or something, or that he would die a few days in to his presidency and Harris (!?) would turn the country Soviet or something.
Re: LMFAO (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Of course he does (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that the process to buy one of these mineral extraction leases takes longer than the 60 days this administration has left. He can start the process and waste a whole lot of lawyer time, but the President-Elect is going to shut this shit down before any contracts can be inked. Oh, no - Biden is going to look like the bad guy with petrol companies? Shit, this is doing him a favor with his base - it's a god damn gift.
This is nothing but a lame duck delusional President trying to play political games, and he's playing them badly. If he really wanted to do this, why didn't he do it over the last 3.8 years?
Re:Of course he does (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Of course he does (Score:5, Interesting)
And never forget, the damage that he does is looked on fondly by 73 million of your fellow americans. I think it's very important that he's able to enrich his cronies by throwing crumbs to his rabid fans. It's (almost) painful to see just how his voters are being treated like the marks that they are.
he picked up almost 10 million votes in 2020. 10 million people saw the shit-show of the last 4 years, and thought, yeah, more please, got off their couches and out of their basements and voted.
There are some seriously awful people in this country, like there are in any country. The current burn the house down attitude is happening across the globe.
And climate change is going to pour gasoline on that fire.
Re:Of course he does (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to think that people who voted for Trump were mostly just afraid of communism and Antifa, the two big boogymen of the Republican campaign. Fear is a powerful motivator and stops people thinking clearly.
At least I hope so, the implication if they actually wanted more Trump is pretty scary.
Re:Of course he does (Score:5, Informative)
You mean disenfranching those NOT white and republican. Like only having a no place to vote in a 500,000 people mainly black city
Re:Of course he does (Score:4, Informative)
Vote suppression, not voter fraud but vote suppression, is widespread in the USA, and it aims at disenfranchising chiefly those demographics that are white and Republican.
That, sir, is a lie. Vote suppression IS widespread in the USA, but most of it in this election came directly from Donald Trump and his postal appointee. For example, removing mailboxes people need to use to vote, attempting to stall counting ballots, etc.
You're right about voter suppression (Score:5, Insightful)
There has been zero evidence of postal workers destroying ballots in numbers that would effect the election (also that's fraud, not suppression, but whatever). There have been a few cases... of Trump supporters getting caught doing it.
Meanwhile in Georgia it takes average 6 minutes to vote if you're white and 51 if you're black. Nearly 10 times, and that's the average, not the median, meaning you've got 6-10 hour waits in blue districts. There's also Nixon's Drug War, which disenfranchises millions.
But facts don't matter. You picked your side and will defend it to the last. I wish I knew how to reach you. Go watch Beau of The Fifth Column on YouTube. I think that's the best thing for you right now.
Re: (Score:3)
At least Trump is actually working to protect American workers
Really.
So the 25% reduction in price for hog futures since he took office and fucked over pig farmers with their #1 market of China is looking out for American workers?
So the grand total of zero non-law-enforcement labor unions that endorsed him [wikipedia.org] means he's working to protect American workers?
Oh but hey good job on buying the propaganda line. I had no idea that diagnosing mental conditions via television camera was so easy for... what's your medical degree in now? Oh, you don't have one?
Did you know that B
He's doing both (Score:3)
Re:Of course he does (Score:5, Insightful)
If he can't be president, he's going to do his best to take the whole country down with him.
Nah, he's just trying to fill his pockets for the upcoming debt repayments, messy divorce, income tax trial (he's gonna need to pay for some protection when he's in prison), etc.
Never put down to malice that which can adequately be explained by greed and ass-covering.
Re: (Score:3)
Malice, greed and ass-covering are not necessarily mutually exclusive ... it can be all three at the same time.
Re:Of course he does (Score:4, Interesting)
You got modded funny, but I think you should have been modded insightful.
Last I looked, funny mods didn't increase karma, so the funny mod can be weaponized by using it against comments/posters you don't like. I've lost about 10 karma on a single comment (back when karma scores were revealed) by it being modded alternately funny and troll repeatedly.
All positive mods should increase karma. All negative mods should decrease it. That's not how the system worked, again, last I looked. If it works that way now, I'm interested in hearing about it.
Betting on the cornered rat? (Score:3)
If he can't be president, he's going to do his best to take the whole country down with him.
Quoting against the troll mods, even though I think you're looking in the wrong direction.
The puppeteers are the ones who are in a hurry to finish destroying the country. "He whose name need not be mentioned" is merely scurrying around in a panic, but sometimes he pauses in his scurrying to sign things that are shoved in front of him.
At this point I'm not much interested in the tax returns. I want to see the phone records that identity ALL of the puppeteers.
Snowden pardon (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is an alternative explanation [newsweek.com] though. That is, despite whatever good he may have done in drawing attention to surveillance practices, he also caused a lot of damage. A whole lot of damage. Maybe more than anyone really knows - bear in mind that the NSA was still tr
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I can't understand why Manning was pardoned and Snowden still remains in exile.
Manning *wasn't* pardoned. Her sentence was commuted and there's a huge legal difference between the two. She very much still was convicted of multiple crimes.
While you can pardon someone who hasn't been convicted, you can't commute a sentence they don't have. In this regard Snowden and Manning are being treated no differently by the United States government.
Re:Snowden pardon (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Nixon confessed, Big difference.
It's technically not true that you have to be convicted to be pardoned, but you still do have to be culpable for whatever you are being pardoned for.
Whether that culpability is determined by due process, by being caught red handed, or by virtue of a legally accepted confession is irrelevant.
Re:Snowden pardon (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Nixon confessed,
Nixon was pardoned in 1974. His "confession" (if you want to call it that) was in a 1983 interview with David Frost.
Trump has the legal authority to pardon Snowden. I think it is unlikely. His base would not like it. But who knows? Trump is erratic and unpredictable. So anything could happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Technically, it's also illegal to arrange a pardon with someone in return for a favor. Thus there is still debate about whether Nixon and Ford set up an arrangement in advance of him becoming vice president, which would be illegal, or if it was just an implicit understanding.
Re: (Score:3)
It is not illegal. It can be quite unethical, but it's not per se illegal: conditional pardons have been granted to many for enlisting in military service, for accepting exile to the colonies of the English or French or Spanish empires, or for recanting opposition to the ruling party.
Re: (Score:3)
Presidents commonly pardon big donors just before leaving office. Clinton made one of the more outrageous ones, shocking his fans, though the more cynical of us were merely "shocked, shocked".
Re: (Score:3)
Only guilty after the pardon is accepted. It kind of surprises some who accept pardons that it technically is a legal admission of guilt, even though there's no practical effect of such admission.
Re:Snowden pardon (Score:5, Informative)
This is false and would be determined with less than a minute of research.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
https://www.quora.com/Can-a-pr... [quora.com]
https://slate.com/news-and-pol... [slate.com]
Or read the text of the supreme court that ruled such: https://www.law.cornell.edu/su... [cornell.edu]
The act for which a pardon is issued must have already took place, but pre-emptive pardons are very much available to the POTUS.
"actual innocence" (Score:5, Informative)
First, pardons have been used before conviction many times.
Carter did so with 200,000 draft dodgers. Reagan did so with people who had entered the country illegally. A pardon prior to conviction, or even before criminal charges are filed, is also called clemency.
Those who are bothered by a preposition at the end of a sentence would say that if it's done before it should be called clemency and the word "pardon" should be used for after there is an indication of guilt - whether by conviction or some other means.
In many states, one of the official statutory rounds for a pardon is "actual innocence". The pardon says they are pardoned because they are innocent.
At the federal level, there is no Congressional statute because the Constitution explicitly assigns the pardon power to the president - not to Congress. So there isn't a statutory list of reasons. Presidents have pardoned people for various reasons and don't need to state the reason. In many cases the president may have thought the person was not guilty *of the crime charged*, though they were guilty of a lesser offense.
Historically, over 100 years ago, accepting a pardon had the connotation of admitting guilt, of accepting grace. Obviously that doesn't apply to the modern system in which "actual innocence" is a listed reason for a pardon.
Because the pardon power is the last resort, how justice and mercy can be given in situations not predicted by statute (such as the civil war), the president can grant pardons, amnestys, and commutations for any reason at any time. That's the role it traditionally fills - fulfilling the interests of justice when the rules didn't predict such a situation.
Vs applying for a federal pardon on defendants mot (Score:3)
My previous post was long enough, but I wanted to mention one other thing so I figured I'd make this a separate post.
I had mentioned:
--
Because the pardon power is the last resort, how justice and mercy can be given in situations not predicted by statute (such as the civil war), the president can grant pardons, amnestys, and commutations for any reason at any time.
--
(Though presidential pardons apply to federal law.)
I should mention that while the president may do so for his own reasons in his own mo
Scorched earth. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just the beginning of his scorched earth exit. Since he can't have power, he's going to make everyone suffer the most that he can. He will try to make this as much of a Pyrrhic victory as possible. This is narcissism and it's only going to get worse until he's removed.
Re: (Score:2)
He does seem to think he'll be back in 2024. Hard to make a come-back after you salt the fields. Or maybe he thinks he can't do the come-back?
Re: (Score:2)
No, it will be easier in 2024. He won't be remembered for salting the field. People will blame Biden. It's virtually guaranteed that morons will vote for him in 2024, the same idiots that voted for him in 2020 .. all 72 million plus their newer brainwashing victims.
We're fucked in 2024. He will be 10x more vindictive when he comes back.
Re: (Score:2)
Hard to make a come-back after you salt the fields.
His base doesn't see this as "salting the fields". Millions of Americans are pro-drilling.
Re:Scorched earth. (Score:4, Interesting)
Believe it or not, many military people (and their families) are not pro-war ... because they are the ones who die.
That's why the establishment does its best to prevent military votes [apnews.com]. Why let the people who sacrifice the most for our nation have any say? That's inconvenient.
Re:Scorched earth. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Scorched earth. (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not saving anything. He's making the friends he's going to need once the hypothetical legal shield of the presidency no longer exists. To threaten the ecology of the region isn't salvation, it's just petulant vandalism
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
He is an idiot (Score:4, Informative)
He called Bush a fool for selecting John Roberts to the Supreme Court .. now he is saying many of his own hires are idiots.
For example Trump hired John Bolton, now he says John Bolton was bad. He hired Rex Tillerson, now he says Rex Tillerson was bad. He listened to Fauci, now he says Fauci is bad. There are many other examples too. So if Trump's judgement is so bad, when he said he would "only hire the best people" .. what the hell are we hiring him as president. Now he claims he knew the electoral system was corrupt, but let himself lose the election? What a joker! Why do people worship and follow him like he can solve everything? He didn't do any of the things he said he would. He didn't reduce crime. He allowed a virus to come from China and devastate the economy and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths (indirectly and directly). He's allowed states to descend into chaos. He's destroyed any trust in the electoral system. On Trump's watch we are more divided than ever. The world is no safer (North Korea has built a massive nuclear arsenal) and Iran has been purifying Uranium for nuclear weapons at a massive rate. He's literally got nothing done in 4 years as president. Why is he portrayed as a big hero by all the right wing idiots? .. massive government spending that will be impossible to roll back. He's legitimized it.
he's done nothing for conservatism, if anything we've become MORE socialist under his reign
Re:He is an idiot (Score:5, Funny)
He certainly has followed through with his promise of not recognizing the results of the election if he lost.
Re:He is an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
He called Bush a fool for selecting John Roberts to the Supreme Court .. now he is saying many of his own hires are idiots.
Trump is one of those people who claims credit for everything that goes right and blames others for anything that goes wrong. It's always some else's fault ...
Re: (Score:2)
Two wrongs don't make a right. Why did you vote for him, knowing he is a liar?
Re:so... (Score:5, Informative)
He's like Obama?
Obama blamed every bad thing in his 8 years in office on Bush(43), Mitch McConnell, and the TEA Party people, and then had the audacity to claim credit for Trump's economy.
See how easy this sort of political attack is?
If I missed your sarcasm, many apologies. Otherwise, for you/those that don't know any better... Ya, 'cause *none* of those people ever gave Obama or the Democrats any trouble or obstructed them in any way. /obvious-sarcasm :-)
The Republican House and Senate leaders, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell were quoted as follows: (from The GOP's no-compromise pledge [politico.com])
Here’s John Boehner, the likely speaker if Republicans take the House, offering his plans for Obama’s agenda: “We're going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
and the TEA Party, was/is filled with people like this: (from The Truth About the Tea Party [rollingstone.com])
As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — “Government’s not the solution! Government’s the problem!” — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.
“The scooters are because of Medicare,” he whispers helpfully. “They have these commercials down here: ‘You won’t even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!’ Practically everyone in Kentucky has one.”
A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.
After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.
“I’m anti-spending and anti-government,” crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. “The welfare state is out of control.”
“OK,” I say. “And what do you do for a living?”
“Me?” he says proudly. “Oh, I’m a property appraiser. Have been my whole life.”
I frown. “Are either of you on Medicare?”
Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!
“Let me get this straight,” I say to David. “You’ve been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?”
“Well,” he says, “there’s a lot of people on welfare who don’t deserve it. Too many people are living off the government.”
“But,” I protest, “you live off the government. And have been your whole life!”
“Yeah,” he says, “but I don’t make very much.”
Re:so... (Score:5, Insightful)
After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.
“I’m anti-spending and anti-government,” crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. “The welfare state is out of control.”
“OK,” I say. “And what do you do for a living?”
“Me?” he says proudly. “Oh, I’m a property appraiser. Have been my whole life.”
I frown. “Are either of you on Medicare?”
Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!
“Let me get this straight,” I say to David. “You’ve been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?”
“Well,” he says, “there’s a lot of people on welfare who don’t deserve it. Too many people are living off the government.”
“But,” I protest, “you live off the government. And have been your whole life!”
“Yeah,” he says, “but I don’t make very much.”
A microcosm of a fantastically widespread phenomenon. They gleefully rush to the polls to vote for a party who has explicitly and repeatedly said that one of their fondest desires is to fuck Janice and David Wheelock, fuck them as hard as they can, fuck them until they literally die of starvation and lack of medical care. Luckily the massive hypocrisy of the Republican party means they haven't actually implemented the genocidal policies they claim to support.
Personally I don't understand how people can live with fundamental cognitive dissonance such that this long-running Republican election strategy is so successful. And make no mistake, it is exclusively an election strategy, not policies they have any intention of ever implementing. It has worked for decades now and Republican voters have never noticed that it has never been implemented or noticed that if it were, it would kill 30% of them. Literally kill, no exaggeration, no hyperbole. Their lives and their livelihoods are utterly dependent on the welfare state they claim to oppose.
Of course, to them, it's not cognitive dissonance. Instead it's racism. The Republicans back in the '80s explicitly cultivated the belief that US government welfare supports Black crack babies exclusively and no one else. These people want that kind of welfare eliminated. Of course the welfare they receive is right and proper and only their just due as God-fearing moral upstanding white people. And if you ask them if they're racist, they'll deny it. They internalized that racist view of welfare so long ago that they have completely forgotten its origin.
I usually prefer not to ascribe anything to racism because the shrieking idiots on the far left have so devalued the term that they're making it as useless as N@zi as a descriptor, but the racist origins and extensions of America's drug policy are extremely well documented at this point, dating back more than a century. Anyone who lived through the '80s and '90s can tell you that racism against Black welfare mothers was the rallying cry of the Republican party of the era. It was explicit, it was public, and it was pervasive. Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law that was fueled by that racism. Funnily enough, it substantially contributed to the decline in American birth rates of all races, something which has totally escaped the notice of Replacement Theorists who lament the decline in white birth rates. They don't realize the Republicans gave them exactly what they asked for, with Clinton's help, and it didn't do what they thought it would do.
Re:He is an idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
That's one thing I never understood, no matter how much the Republicans accuse Democrats of profligate spending, it turns out that the deficits increase the most in recent decades under Republican administrations. I mean they can't be that stupid, but they're so intent on giving out the tax breaks that they are willing to ignore the cost of it in order to bribe the voters. If you give tax breaks you need cuts to pay for it, probably with the military.
Re: (Score:2)
That's the beauty of their evil plans (Score:5, Interesting)
When Republican's are in power, they cut taxes and run up the deficit.
When they aren't in power, all they care about is the deficit.
They simultaneously get to be the good guy who is always giving people tax breaks while hamstringing the administration that comes after them so they can't enact the policies they want. The responsible people that come after them have to spend most of their time cleaning up the mess and then by the time things are getting back to working the Republicans get back into control, take credit for things going well and then break them again.
It's easy to be the person who doesn't want the place they work at to be effective. Imagine a company where half the board of directors and managers want the company to go out of business. It shows you just how good government is when it can function at all like this.
Re:That's the beauty of their evil plans (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine a company where half the board of directors and managers want the company to go out of business. It shows you just how good government is when it can function at all like this.
It's worth noting that this is an explicit Republican strategy, which goes by the name "starve the beast". The notion is that the federal government is too big, too powerful and too expensive, and that since it seems to be impossible to incrementally roll it back, the solution is to drive it into insolvency which will force it to be pared back.
What's not clear to me is whether this strategy is real or just a cover to allow tax cutting. My guess is that it's both, meaning that many Republicans sincerely want to starve the beast in order to shrink it, and many just use it as cover.
As a libertarian who would love to see the federal government shrink dramatically, I strongly oppose this strategy. Even if it theoretically leads in the direction I want, it's a cure worse than the disease. If we want to pare back the scope of the federal government, we should do that, by convincing the people that it's the right approach.
Re:He is an idiot (Score:5, Informative)
That's one thing I never understood, no matter how much the Republicans accuse Democrats of profligate spending, it turns out that the deficits increase the most in recent decades under Republican administrations.
This has been true for as long as I can remember - since Carter anyway; the Republicans run up the deficit and then the Democrats cut it and then the Republicans complain about the size of the deficit at the next election. It's pathetic that people keep judging the Republicans by what they say instead of what they do.
Re:He is an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me help you understand. Both parties suck on spending, but the Democrats are much worse.
The numbers say the opposite. The Republicans spend much more when they're in power. They TALK a lot about reducing the deficit but they always increase it in practise.
Re: (Score:3)
Obama-care was never deficit neutral. It was projected to be based on false assumptions which... turned out to be false, just as was claimed at the time it was passed.
Sounds like you're living in your own reality. I already posted a link to a CBO report which directly contradicts your statement. You either didn't bother to read it or have some serious cognitive dissonance.
"Defaulting on our debt" isn't a government shutdown over the budget. That's a different kind of government shutdown, one over the debt ceiling. Try again, while noting that if the government doesn't spend more than the revenue it gets, you don't have to keep increasing the debt ceiling.
OK. I admit government shutdowns tend to come from republicans trying to reduce the deficit. Have you considered that republicans might just like talking about reducing the deficit and obstructing democratic initiatives based on that premise, but that they don't actually care about the deficit? If you l
Re: (Score:3)
The deficit at $0.9T in 2019, according to the graphics, is much better than it used to be at $1.2T, because of Trump's "working man's White House" that has seen record low unemployment in all categories - overall, black, youth, hispanic, etc. All sectors were working at unprecedented levels of employment and prosperity. That prosperity was taxed and revenues went up, so the deficit came down.
Where are you getting the $1.2T number? I'm not seeing it in the graphs on the page you provided. The last time the deficit was over $1T was during recovery from the global financial crisis when the government was pumping a bunch of money into the system (source) [usaspending.gov]. The 2019 deficit was $984B, not sure how you round that to $0.9T, even the infographic on the page you linked says "$1.0 trillion: Deficit in 2019". Here are the deficits for the last 11 years in billions:
2010 $1,294
2011 $1,300
2012 $1
Re:He is an idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
So if Trump's judgement is so bad, when he said he would "only hire the best people" .. what the hell are we hiring him as president.
He wasn't actually wrong about that. In many cases Trump did hire the best people. He fired them not because they weren't the best, but because they didn't fall in line. e.g. There's no debate about Fauci's credentials as an absolute expert and one of the best infectious disease experts in the country, but it's quite clear that the attack on Fauci only started when he demonstrated a persistent unwillingness to toe the republican party line.
25th amendment time to stop him! (Score:3)
25th amendment time to stop him!
Re: (Score:2)
True, but I think Pence being highly religious would not lie and cheat nearly as openly and brazenly as Trump.
Fuck Those Baby Seals (Score:3)
Am I right?
This guy is trying to do maximum damage (Score:4, Insightful)
Future generation will probably not remember his legacy fondly.
Throwing cushions on the landing spot (Score:4, Insightful)
Long term planning is obviously not Trump's area of strength. If he has the executive power to do this, why wouldn't he have done it sooner?
Unless you stipulate that he is doing this only to vent his rage, the only thing that makes sense is that he thinks he is currying favor with rich and powerful interests (energy companies) so that once he is out of office he can call them back up after January for political backing.
Personally, I don't think it will work, or at least it won't work very much. Most oil companies seem to realize the transition to green energy (Trump hates wind turbines) makes an the ROI on arctic development to be a chancy affair.
If the leases are sold then it will likely be for pure speculation (the intent to sell them later for a mark-up) or to hedge their bets if it turns out the price of oil starts climbing again on a long term (5 years or more) trend.
As usual, everything Trump touches dies.
Re: (Score:3)
Although Exxon seems to be doubling down on fossil fuels and mocking green energy, they would likely snatch up some of the land at rock bottom prices.
all for show (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the truth: the oil industry is in the doldrums. Demand is down, reserves are going un-used, and companies aren't even sure if demand will recover because economics of oil vs. natural gas vs. solar vs wind are changing. Not because of those pesky liberals or environmentalists, but because those other sources of energy are simply getting cheaper. It's all about the bottom line, baby.
Big oil companies are actually abandoning oil leases because the only crude that's profitable nowadays is the stuff thats very clean and cheap to extract. Here's the kicker: extracting oil from Alaska is FRIKKIN EXPENSIVE.
Trump knows this. The only reason it's in the news is to make the "drill baby drill" idiots salivate down the front of their shirts. They could GIVE those Alaskan oil leases away and there probably aren't any major companies that would actually cough up the billions to develop them. The risk is being stuck with an expensive oilfield producing expensive oil that nobody wants to buy, because the Saudis are selling at 10-20 dollars cheaper and their reserves will still last for decades and no sane executive wants that around his neck.
Re: all for show (Score:4, Informative)
The wildcard is the possibility that ANWR could have "Saudi-level" oil reserves... the kind where it takes little more effort than a hole in the ground to gush oil for years. Such reserves are believed to exist there, but have never been confirmed.
If ANWR merely has California/Texas levels of oil, nobody is likely to risk spending the cash necessary to develop the required infrastructure (like a new pipeline). If it truly HAS "Saudi-level" reserves, they'll put fracking & shale out of business within 10-20 years (3-5 years, once the infrastructure is in place).
Ultimately, everyone in the industry will want to buy mining rights as a hedge against being left out of a Saudi-level oil party... but few are likely to be willing to gamble much money on actual exploration anytime soon. They're just going to buy & bank the mining rights for now.
Frankly, environmentalists should cheer this announcement. Now that we have shale available, the US has effectively unlimited future oil self-sufficiency at prices only slightly higher than today's. Cheap oil from ANWR won't make much of a difference to the price of gas at the pump (because it's mostly refining, taxes,
and transportation cost anyway), but it WOULD basically end fracking & shale, just by virtue of being so much cheaper at the wholesale level.
Of course, if environmentalists were intellectually honest, they'd be demanding more nuclear power, since it's the only carbon-free base-load power source available that can actually replace 100% of more-polluting power sources... but they'd rather circle-jerk to fantasies about wind & solar (and bitch about the gas-fired plants needed to keep the power on when it's night and there's no wind, while also moaning about how much the Earth Mother Gaia hates hydroelectric power).
It's a waste of time to even try negotiating with Meanie Greenies, because NOTHING short of de-industrializing humanity back to the stone age will ever satisfy them.
It's going to get shot down in court (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal here is to disrupt anything good Biden can do so the GOP can take back Congress in the Mid Term. It's a strat pioneered by Newt Gingrich, to the point where it's written about in his Wikipedia article.
The takeaway here is that the Republican party thinks winning elections is more important than you, your jobs and your health and well being. Remember that in 2 years.
There's a difference (Score:3)
The lesser GOP leaders spoke about it frequently (e.g. saying the "quiet part out loud") during the Obama years and even McConnell said his main goal was to make Obama a one term president. e.g. not to help Americans and the country but to make
A Last Minute Teapot Dome (Score:3, Interesting)
A last minute Teapot Dome Scandal shortly after the Great Flu Pandemic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
History is the never ending circle of events, selling off oil rights to private interests. Of course selling oil rights when oil companies are "hurting" because of the slow shift to hybrid and electric vehicles is like selling electric blankets in Death Valley, California.
Future Trump Rally playlist ... (Score:2)
I'm guessing Trump will be including something [wikipedia.org] from the Talking Heads ...
Could be worse (Score:2, Insightful)
He could try to bomb Iran [nytimes.com] with only a few weeks remaining in his term.
Hopefully someone convinced him this is a war crime and that the Democrats would happily hand him over to a foreign government for a mock trial.
The great experiment (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
A raging economy
Which was a straight-line continuation of the previous president's economy. Don't forget that part.
Re:We like cheap gas, right? (Score:4, Interesting)
we already have cheap gasoline and the USA is already a net exporter of petroleum and natural gas... this is totally unnecessary. We literally don't need any more.
Purchase (Score:3, Interesting)
we already have cheap gasoline and the USA is already a net exporter of petroleum and natural gas... this is totally unnecessary. We literally don't need any more.
Then nobody would want to buy oil fields way the heck up in Alaska, right?
Re:Purchase (Score:4, Insightful)
Then nobody would want to buy oil fields way the heck up in Alaska, right?
Irrelevant and you know it. Of course there's profit in maybe being able to sell gas for $3.97 a gallon instead of $4.00. Most of the US still doesn't need it badly enough to justify permanent environmental changes to get it.
Re: Donald J. Trump WON the election (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Umm, nothing he won't do anything. He'll continue to believe it though.
Re: (Score:2)
Please die.
Re: Headline is wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Spin goes both ways. And it will.
Re: Great waste of tax money (Score:2, Funny)
Those areas will never be mined. This whole process will cost money, and come to nothing in the end.
But that's good. The more time and money the US wastes on this political joke you call an election, the less time and money it can spend bombing other countries. Besides, it's fun to watch.
So please. From the rest of the world. Keep it up.
Re: Great waste of tax money (Score:4, Insightful)
It's fun for you to watch an authoritarian try to illegally seize control of arguably the most powerful country on Earth?
It's fun for you to watch the world's leading voice for democracy wound itself through it's current leader refusing to accept the will of the people?
You think that wherever you are, there isn't some authoritarian asshat taking notes, getting ready to try this shit in your own government?
Re: (Score:3)