GeorgiaDon

Oops! That's what I get for "multitasking" at work. Fixed now.

Marjorie Taylor Greene had no trouble defining "woman": weak and the property of their husbands.

There is a permitting process that allows for a certain number of bird kills as long as the company applies recommended procedures to minimize avoidable killing. NextEra Energy (the company that was fined) never applied for a permit, and they ignored numerous recommendations about how to minimize bird kills. Perhaps they got sucked in by the Trump era policy of not enforcing the Migratory Bird Act, and thought that policy would last forever.

Fixed it for you. But you would already know that, if you had bothered to read any of several links other people have posted. But then you might have to recognize that your attack on Biden is bullshit, and the lack of increased oil production is almost entirely investors putting their personal bottom line above the interests of the country. Don

Idaho just passed a law that mandates that a woman who becomes pregnant as a result of rape must carry the pregnancy to term, and if she does manage to have an abortion her rapist's family can sue the doctor, taxi driver who brought the woman to the clinic, or anyone else who "facilitates" the abortion for $20,000. Family values indeed!

Lindsey Graham made it very clear he is all for the government having the power to detain people indefinitely without trial or any access to the judicial system. Marsha Blackburn and others (such as all three Republicans running for Michigan Attorney General) have spoken out clearly that they think Griswold vs Connecticut (the Supreme Court case that legalized birth control for married couples) was wrongly decided. Republican Senator Mike Braun of Indiana thinks that the Supreme Court was wrong on contraception, interracial marriage, and same-sex marriage. Ted Cruz and most Republican politicians are totally on board about censoring any expression regarding racial history or race relations. The great majority of Republican politicians are in favor of restricting elections so that only Republicans can win. They are also about throwing out the 2020 election and installing the loser in office. Every time I hear or read that Republicans "love the Constitution" it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Every time I hear or read that Republicans "love America" it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit more.

Typical Republican MO: make a lot of smoke, then claim there must be fire. Also the smoke is from peeing on hot sauna rocks.

Apparently the family of Democratic politicians are not permitted to engage in any form of gainful employment, investing, or even purchasing any goods or services, lest such activity be construed as some sort of a "quid pro quo". I suppose they also are barred from collecting unemployment, welfare, or accepting any support in excess of $50 from their family members. Absent any possibility of obtaining an income, I suppose that means they just have to live in a van down by the river until they starve. Family of Republican politicians, on the other hand, are entitled to grift as much as they can from the government, especially if their last name is Trump. Seems fair.

Given the complete lack of anything like a chain of custody, anything on that laptop would almost certainly be inadmissible in any legal proceeding. The laptop was stolen, kept by the "repairman" for some time, then "revealed", after it had almost certainly loaded with planted "evidence". What is alleged to be on the laptop? Anything more nefarious than the Trump spawn cooking up numerous deals to line their own pockets while travelling the world on the taxpayer's dime? Enriching the Trump family cartel off of slave labor in China?

Trump and his apple-doesn't-fall-far-from-the-tree spawn have been spreading the lie that Putin didn't invade Ukraine while Trump was in office because he was afraid of Trump. A more reasonable explanation is that he was hoping Trump would pull the US out of NATO. He was likely counting on Trump being re-elected or stealing the election, but when that didn't happen Putin decided to not wait 4+ more years on the chance that Trump would get back in and wreck NATO.

If you read the whole article, maybe not so much "mercy". The conviction and fine were for "hooliganism". She is also the subject of an ongoing investigation under the newly passed law regarding spreading "false news" (IOW contradicting the Kremlin's official propaganda). That is the law with the 15 years in the Gulag penalty, and she may well still be hit with that.

Door #3 would require a country to almost completely revamp its economy to a wartime economy, without actually being at war. I submit that that would be impossible from a political perspective. Anyway what would that actually accomplish? It's not as if the Nazis would have failed to notice the Allied countries suddenly starting to recruit/conscript 10% of their population and train them to fight, or that all the car factories were suddenly churning out tanks, etc. Similarly Door #4 seems a bit silly, to declare war but announce that you aren't going to do anything until you are completely ramped up to a wartime footing? Anyway what set me off about this was your assertion that all the effort and sacrifice of the Allied countries was meaningless because they weren't landing troops on Normandy the same day that war was declared. To put a personal touch on it, my great-uncle walked with a limp for the rest of his life after some German shrapnel almost removed his leg, my paternal grandfather had nightmares all his life from his experiences fighting in Italy, and one of my early mentors was almost given up for dead on Juno Beach. I would not want to be the one to tell them their sacrifices were meaningless.

I believe the first quote is Harris trying to explain the situation to Trump. However it didn't work as some of her words had more than one syllable. The second quote is from former beauty contestant Caitlin Upton, who was auditioning to be Trump's wife # 4.

??? That is completely different from the Allied response to Nazi aggression. I honestly cannot see any way to compare the two. The US and Britain have not invaded Ukraine BTW. Russia has, which proves that their word cannot be trusted on anything. They also do things like agree to evacuation corridors for civilians, and then bomb those civilians when they try to evacuate, which is a war crime. Good luck prosecuting anyone though.

Doesn't that set up the following choices for a country? Door # 1: permanently maintain a sufficient military to instantly respond to any situation. Judging by WWII (which is what we have been discussing) that means a standing military of no less than 10% of the total population, with all the vehicles, tanks, ships, aircraft etc necessary for them to be able to be instantly deployed into combat. Alternatively: Door #2: never ever declare war, no matter the situation. Don

Operation Torch[edit] Main article: Operation Torch American troops on board a landing craft going in to land at Oran. November 1942. The United States entered the war in the west with Operation Torch on 8 November 1942, after their Soviet allies had pushed for a second front against the Germans. General Dwight Eisenhower commanded the assault on North Africa, and Major General George Patton struck at Casablanca. Interesting! If the UK, Canada, Australia, French, etc. and (by Jerry's standards) the USA's declarations of war were ineffective because of no immediate effect, one has to wonder what happened to the Nazis. Perhaps the Soviets took care of the problem entirely on their own?

Canada (as one example) had 1.1 million people, more than 10% of its total population, serve in the military during the war. At the start of the war the total military was less than 50,000. During the course of the war Canada built and deployed the 4th largest air force and the 5th largest navy in the world. Just how quickly do you think it would take to accomplish that? Are you saying if troops aren't in theater within 24 hours they don't count? If your position is that those countries that declared war (years before the US was dragged kicking and screaming into the conflict) were "meaningless", then I would say that the 1.1 million Canadians who served, the 55,000 who were wounded, and the 42,000 who were killed would collectively say fuck you!

I assumed that oil is oil, and that loss of overseas sources could be compensated for by increasing domestic production, but it turns out reality is more complicated. Back in the '90s and early 2000s a lot of refining capacity was built to process "heavy sour" crude, which is crude with a hydrocarbon composition that is harder to "crack" (refine to make gas) and has a high sulfur content. Since then the US sources that have been developed, such as fracking, produce "light sweet" crude (low sulfur, shorter hydrocarbons) that requires a different process to refine and therefore can't be processed by refineries built to process heavy sour crude. So the problem of gas supply demands not only a supply of crude oil but also building new refineries to handle the specific chemistry of that crude, which is very expensive and takes years. Older refineries can be retrofitted but the process requires them to shut down and basically be rebuilt which is almost as costly and time consuming as building from scratch. The refining industry isn't willing to take the cost of shutting down for a few years when they can import heavy sour crude to process. Also retrofitting the refining capacity of the country would dramatically reduce gas supply for years as the new refineries are built. That is why the US finds itself being a net oil exporter: we import heavy sour while a lot of domestic production is exported to other countries that can process light sweet crude. (link here)

In summary, Republicans who support Trump are nothing more than Putin's pawns or as Vladimir Lenin is credited with saying, useful idiots.

I wish NerdGirl was still around to offer some perspective.

I assume you mean Tucker Carlson?

Is NATO ready, right now, for an all-out war with Russia, including having tactical nuclear weapons used against NATO forces and European cities? Russia apparently has a significant advantage in such weapons, and there is little reason to doubt that Putin would use them. By "tactical" nuclear weapons I mean smaller yield (but still highly destructive) weapons that can be launched as an artillery projectile to take out an airfield or similar target. These differ from strategic weapons designed to take out entire cities. The risk of an all-out war is that NATO could lose the former Eastern Block and Balkan countries if they can't achieve a clear victory over Russia. With Putin running the Russian side of things, a scorched-earth approach is all too possible.

While none (or at least hopefully few) of us would disagree, it was an astonishingly stupid thing for him to say out loud. It is a remarkable propaganda victory for Putin as it plays directly into the Kremlin line that the war was instigated by the US to attack Russia. It is already being played as such on Russian state-controlled media. Graham is a Senator, and as such his words can easily be construed as stating US government policy. This proves that he is either too stupid to understand the consequences of his actions, or he doesn't care, or (like Trump) he sees some advantage to catering to Putin. No matter the reason, he is totally unfit to be in any position of political power.

Can Trump possibly go any lower? On Fox (Faux) News: .@MariaBartiromo: "Do you expect China to invade Taiwan sooner rather than later?" President Donald Trump: "I do because they're seeing how stupid the United States is run. They're seeing that our leaders are incompetent. Of course they're going to do it. This is their time." Actually it's a rhetorical question. There is no bottom to how low Trump is willing to go for his own benefit.

brenthutch may be old enough to be retired, but calling him "dated" seems harsh. Anyway where would he put all that oil?