Yeah he's so much worse than a President who lied for months about how bad Covid was and knew that wearing masks would save tens of thousands of lives.

More on point how about Trump appointing a stooge to the head of the EPA, removing countless restrictions, reducing the size of national monuments, allowing mining of national monuments and then donating $100k to the National Parks service "To repair and restore national monuments".

Your video, "Roy's Food Repair" sketch with John Candy, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

As a 'car guy', the biggest draw to a Tesla [for me] is the acceleration ... and since the model 3, handling is 'good nuff for a stock car'. A model 3 even won scca solo b street.

Eventually they can get their electronics switching fast nuff to maintain torque above 100 (or add a gear), and it will probably be a pretty good track car too.

I never cared for the self driving and whatever else. I just care about the basics. Tesla basics are pretty good.

The down side of tesla is that you can't fix it yourself. Their parts are coded to each other, and even if you replace a bad part with a good one, it won't work till the ECM is coded to it. Pretty much a repair monopoly.

You can replace some control boards/software to help with that, but Tesla detects it and punishes you with a quick charge lockout.

Don't really feel comfortable owning a car I am not allowed to fix.

For someone like me, Tesla has only 1 vulnerability : Other manufacturers can choose to make fast EVs, too.
That's all it would take [for someone like me] to change Tesla from 'the only game in town' to 'just one of many'.

-scheherazade

I'm sure the God fearing people in Louisiana will insist on not repairing it as long as God made it so.

I love the timing on cutting away from the glasses repair

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

The president controls the purse strings among other powers you ignored. This one has wasted untold trillions, and maybe quadrupled the deficit.
That alone is one hell of a lot more than any mascot.

When is the last time Republicans and Democrats came together to have the votes to veto the president, because it was the last time. They couldn't agree to veto him on anything, Republicans wouldn't dare cross this president, even when he commits treason in public. In practice, this president controlled two branches of government for two years (now 1 1/2) and has both of his tiny hands on the scales of the third, filling the judiciary with "activist judges" that believe the president is above the law...at least this president....I'm sure their tune will change when it's Biden.

I guess we won't hear a peep of complaint about what Biden gets done from you then, since he has no real power and is just a figurehead?

I agree, local government is where governing hits the ground, so get rid of any trumptards that weaseled their way into it in November....as well as the higher offices. Any left will be "shallow state operatives" (they aren't deep), only interested in delaying and muddling any legislation meant to repair the nation.

This is the repair that got me to sub to his channel.

Why don't these morons understand that facing and dealing with the problems of the world DOES THE WORK of repairing the economy?

I would be interested in seeing what the cost for the software and hardware creation services on that was. Also how do you go about repairs when one of those bargain basement contraptions break down?

They actually look pretty repairable... and the problem is that buying them all up for spares has driven up the going rate for them!

https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/singing-fish.htm

Statistically nuclear is by far the safest means of energy production, even when it goes wrong the main impact is people panicking. No one died from radiation in Fukushima and there isn't expected to be any statistically detectable radiation health effect.

The figures that say Chernobyl killed thousands are extrapolations based on the LNT model, which assumes cells are unable to repair DNA damage. In fact the cell DNA repair mechanisms are a well established fact these days. Yet we still use LNT as a model, even though at low doses there has never been any real world data to support it.

Deliberate scaremongering is basically what it is.

What about me? I do all those things and more. I didn't just change my own brakes, I swapped my own motor. I don't just plow my field, I sow, weed, and harvest that field. I've not only repaired a roof, I've built a few. I know hard work, I was a one man desert racing crew. Now that's hard work, being mechanic, transporter, driver, and pit crew....all at 112 degrees.

So, why don't I love Trump? Because I'm a real conservative....ecologically conservative, fiscally conservative, fact based, socially liberal (the government has no place in my bedroom or my body), and insistent on honesty.

Republicans abandoned conservatism before I could vote.

THEY fear us now like one fears the 100lb ranting sore ridden meth head at the bus stop, not for our strength and resolve, but our dangerous unpredictability and diseases.

BAM! You nailed it Dude!

Trump has always believed that money BOUGHT him love. His father raised him that way. He loved his father so he followed his father's teachings.

Trump would lie, cheat and steal for money as long as it BROUGHT him love.

Now, many years later, Trump has gotten angrier and angrier. He wants something else but he doesn't know what it is. Over the course of his life, little by little, he has attracted many people that kissed his feet and his ass.

This pacified him for a while making him feel special, great, "loved."

But something was missing. Could it be people really loved his money and not him? If that's true then he has fallen into his own trap. He can't trust anyone other than himself. They will always walk past him to get his money.

Now he finds himself having to sell himself as a great, great man. The best! The one and only. Top shelf saviour!

Best used car salesman EVER!

But what about his followers? They love him. Not for his money but for his anger. His anger against those pussy dems and anyone else that doesn't know how to change brakes on a car or plow a field or throw sod or repair a roof or work real hard.

Trump might not make them richer but he can punish them there weak snowflakes. Make this country tough again! Make the world submit again! Make 'em all fear us again.

Make us destroy each other again until he gets the love and happiness everyone else talks and sings about. How can those peasants be so happy without money?

"V'ger is a child" -Spock