Trump

[Absolute_Zero]

I suspect there's more to this imbroglio than meets the eye.

Clue: "Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!"

Trump wants to bind the Democrats to "The Squad." Pelosi has attempted to steer the nomination away towards the centre; in the polled knowledge that AOC et al are electoral liabilities, nationally.

It would serve his Machiavellian purposes to:

a) keep the broadly unpopular Pressley, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib in the spotlight. [Biden announced his health-care plans that day... sunk without trace]
b) force Pelosi to embrace them, when she'd rather be rid of them.

[F-ZeroOne]

There are perhaps ways to do that without Trumps racism?

[Rubisco]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48998696

Some Republicans are claiming that Trump meant "go back to the districts they represent" or similar. In the UK, "go back to where you came from" is definitely a racist phrase, and has been as long as I've been alive.

We can't really defer to precedent as I've never seen it immediately followed by "Then come back" before. Usually the implication is "and stay there".

[F-ZeroOne]

That still leaves asides the fact that three of the people he referred to were born in the US - in fact, in the original tweet he specifically states that "who originally came from countries... " (full copy of tweet here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49001236). In the same tweet, he uses similar phrases again "why don't they go back" and "from which they came".

[F-ZeroOne]

Rubisco, I'll confess, I think I grasped the wrong end of the stick regards the point you were making, but I still think its worth highlighting that Trump used a similar phrase three times in the same message.

[merman]

I suspect there's more to this imbroglio than meets the eye.

Clue: "Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!"

Trump wants to bind the Democrats to "The Squad." Pelosi has attempted to steer the nomination away towards the centre; in the polled knowledge that AOC et al are electoral liabilities, nationally.

It would serve his Machiavellian purposes to:

a) keep the broadly unpopular Pressley, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib in the spotlight. [Biden announced his health-care plans that day... sunk without trace]
b) force Pelosi to embrace them, when she'd rather be rid of them.

That would actually credit Trump and his handlers with some intelligence, rather than the orange gorilla just being sat on the can Tweeting nonsense...

He is racist, just like his dear old Dad.

[Harlequin]

I still feel it is a mistake to write off Trump as unintelligent. He may be emotionally immature and wilfully ignorant but he had a long and quite successful career in con artistry even before learning the art of media manipulation.

[Absolute_Zero]

^ huge mistake... and itself unintelligent.

Beyond Rubisco's point that racists don't typically invite return, a few policies and positions that don't fit the mould:

1) funnelling federal funds to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs)
2) moving against Harvard's quota restrictions of Asian-American applicants
3) black Americans making up 90% of those released from prison under the 'First Step Act'

I'll give short odds he'll be with us until 2024; the opposition are hopeless against his trolling manipulation.

[KlaxonCow]

Trump standing in front of a parody Presidential seal:



It features a two-headed bird - as the double-headed eagle is a Russian imperial symbol - which is holding golf clubs and money in its claws. Also, the Latin motto (hard to see on this image) apparently translates to a suggestion that Trump is a puppet.

The funny thing is that this was not some clever attempt at deliberately sabotaging Trump.

Whoever was responsible for the graphics apparently just went on Google Images, looking for "US Presidential seal" and then grabbed the first high resolution image they could find - which, umm, was this parody seal and they completely failed to notice.

Even though, bloody hell, how could you miss that the now two-headed eagle's holding a massive set of golf clubs?


Edit: Swapped image for smaller one, as the original was too bloody big.

[PFVA]

What the %&"# !?!?!

Trump strips California of power to set auto emission standards

The White House has stripped California of its right to set its own vehicle emissions standards and banned other states from setting similar rules.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49746701#

I hope the courts take that down.

[Cloudane]

Appalling stuff. No wonder California wants to become an independent country separate from that shitshow

[KlaxonCow]

Blatant corruption on behalf of his oil / petrol producing mates, basically.

As California's emissions regulations forced the hybrid / electric "compliance car" - where every manufacturer was obliged to produce a low / zero emission car, in order to get their higher emission cars into the state - and, between that and Tesla hitting great initial success (and proposed coming legislation in London and Paris and elsewhere to eventually ban emissions cars wholesale from the city centres for pollution reduction), then all car manufacturers were obliged towards hybrid and electric cars.

And I'd say that, simply, "it's too late, mate".

Every car manufacturer now does hybrid or electric. Some, such as VW after screwing up so badly with "Dieselgate", getting caught rigging their emissions tests, have officially committed to going 100% electric in the future. The fastest cars - holding the speed records - are now increasingly all electric. These manufacturers have already put in the major investment into car battery factories. Tesla's never going to do anything but electric - and Teslas have been selling, compared to traditional cars, like hot cakes and the whole industry knows it, which is why they were keen to chase.

Those proposed laws in European and other major cities are not going to be touched by Trump's corruption, so they still have to "comply" to those in time.

And with the economies of scale of mass car battery manufacture, the price of electric is coming down - and it's the battery that keeps it higher than petrol / diesel. Because, actually, an electric car has far less components to it, so will ultimately end up cheaper to manufacture. There have been predictions - based on the investment being made into car battery factories - that estimate that "price parity" will be hit by 2025 and, thereafter, the electric and hybrid will be cheaper to buy than a petrol or diesel (which is, of course, a tipping point).

This is corruption and Trump's being a cunt here. But looking at the overall situation, I feel it's far too late and this won't actually - as it's intended to do, in order to help out his rich oil-producing mates - reverse the trend. Might annoyingly slow it down, but it won't stop it.

As with Islamic terrorism, these are just the death throes of an old order that's effectively already dead.

The future is electric, because it's simply the superior technology. We do need the price to come down - but it already has done so massively to be almost at price parity, and will continue with greater economies of scale from more adoption - and there needs to be more charging infrastructure and so forth. But it's gone too far already to fully reverse, I feel - you've already seen the TV adverts from major car manufacturers already singing the praise of electric and "one pedal driving" and such, no doubt. They've already invested and committed. Reversing course will now cost them money, not increase profits, for the car manufacturers and the oil producers can try this, but they've just got to suck up the fact that their industry has lost a foothold here.


This is not the first time that they've openly tried to kill off the electric car to protect their oil profits:

[tufty]

The future is electric, because it's simply the superior technology.

No, it's a /different/ technology, but it's far from being superior in all fields.

There's far more that needs to be fixed with electric transport than cost, too. Energy density, ecological impact of battery production, recycling and disposal, charge speed and infrastructure, etc. Electric vehicles, as a tiny minority of all vehicles, can currently piggyback on existing energy infrastructure, but if you change the entire fleet, you are going to need a lot more electricity production and distribution infrastructure. All of that has an environmental impact, and a massive lead time.

I would personally argue that the electric car is the death throes of the unsustainable dream of personal transportation for all. You want a superior technology? It already exists, and it's called "mass transportation". A bus, even an old school diesel powered bus, is far more energy efficient than an electric car, has a smaller environmental impact.

What's needed is a massive societal change. Electric vehicles will certainly form part of the future, but we need to throw away the accepted norms of society. and it's going to be painful to do.

[tufty]

None of which, of course, detracts from Trump being a cunt.

[gilesgoat]

I would personally argue that the electric car is the death throes of the unsustainable dream of personal transportation for all. You want a superior technology? It already exists, and it's called "mass transportation". A bus, even an old school diesel powered bus, is far more energy efficient than an electric car, has a smaller environmental impact.

You forgot also "all those people that can't even afford a car cause too high insurances and/or pure inconvenience to use it for 40 miles a day".

There are busses .. and trains .. or at least used to be ..

Then there's that super ecologic thing invented some centruies ago called "bycicle" that helps with blood circulation, keeps you fit and saves you costs in some gymn at least

There could be electric mopeds as well, mopeds are fun

Now I don't say they solve ALL the transportation problems but they CAN solve "quite some" where really "you don't need a car".

Then there's the old "go on your feet" which is always good, trust me I've seen people taking cars for a distance they could do 10 mins walking.

Reminds me of a comic strip of The Wizard of ID where the wizard asks to a witch to look into a globe and see the future ..


Wizard - "What can you see ?"
Witch - "I see a future where people are going around inside strange metal carts with no horses, there's lot of black smoke and their eyes are full of tears.
Wizard - "If they would use horses and normal carts instead of that they would not have all that smoke !"
Witch - ( she looks again into the ball ) .. " .. true .. but I can still see the tears in their eyes. "