No he is not. He has no power to start wars. or kidnap people. he can make emergency defensive moves. that is why they are bending over backwards to make up imminent threat emergency excuses to give them legal cover that itself is pathetic. even bush had to work at it to do his war; this idiot just picks the worst option people give him -- just as John Bolton said he did previously.

Trump put crooks in charge and maybe you've noticed a huge increase in small delivery companies you never heard about bringing your packages when it used to be the USPS? Also the time delays of having your neighborhood letters being sent 1000 miles away to be sorted only to arrive later down the street...

Plus they hired a military contractor to waste money making stupid ugly delivery vans that are way way behind schedule; also they use plenty of gas. The EV company that bid for the contract would never be allowed to get the contract. Would have built a fleet by now and they'd be running CHEAPER. My USPS is using a minivan because they couldn't get what they were supposed to-- the good part is the minivan is far better than the shit being slowly made in Wisconsin.

Also they seem to like spending money on ads for the USPS. I don't know if there are more of those or not. I don't see enough TV.

FYI, right now they are set to have major delays and money problems likely to screw things up with delays for the election. Plus they don't timestamp letters locally so it appears later than it was mailed...

I thought the Ring was a metaphor for technology/industrial revolution etc. not generically all oppression.

This one way to keep him nice about being censored...

He's a super nerd on lord of the rings. Not sure this will turn out well except Jackson will tone it down like he did the books... but hopefully not pad it out extremely like he did the Hobbit. Perhaps this is the job-- make the padding not so bad as they stretch out more and more from little.

Interesting his son took his mother's last name.

I wonder if Lord Trump orders this project scrapped out of spite? It could happen and likely would if the Eye of Trump notices.

Good! thanks, you gave me a chuckle.

Now pitch it to a streaming service so I can torrent the show later. (just have a chat bot write most the script... it'll likely be better than some of the crap human "bots" are churning out.)

MOST of today's Democrats are not like they were a century ago... not as bad as Republicans, who've turned full Fascist and practically confederate. Go listen to the Lincoln Douglas debates, often still performed and don't watch, but listen without knowing who is Lincoln. Well, one I listened to left all that out on purpose. You certainly figure it out but you can hear a huge difference and which party he'd be in today.

China heavily subsidizes its steel industry, providing roughly ten times more support per unit of revenue than OECD countries.

China is aggressively subsidizing its power grid infrastructure to support electric vehicles (EVs), focusing on building widespread charging networks and advanced, two-way Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) systems.

China is heavily subsidizing electricity costs by up to 50%.

https://www.csis.org/blogs/tru...

No, US cars are not heavily subsidized unlike China. American auto regulations favor manufacture in America, but not American auto manufacturers. That's why foreign automakers such as Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, and Volvo make cars in America for the American market.

The fact that so many auto manufacturers make cars in the US shows your "make the world reliant on a small handful of corporations and subject to the whims of the US Government" statement to be nonsense. The rest of your statement is BS. Comparing China to the US is a joke.

Corporations aren't governments. They support their products because they want repeat customers. Yes, they're greedy. They also want repeat business. Due to that, they generally try not to screw over customers too much and ruin repeat business.

Governments are different. Authoritarian governments such as the CCP are the worst of all. They don't give a fuck about anyone outside their country. Hell, it's arguable how much the CCP cares about Chinese citizens. If subsidizing electric cars means screwing over America, Americans, Europe, Europeans, or anyone else in the whole world for the benefit of China or Chinese companies, you bet your ass the CCP will do it without question.

These vehicles have been heavily subsidized by the Chinese government to win market share in markets long dominated by other countries.

Just like everything else from China, it's meant to kill domestic manufacturers and make the world reliant on China and subject to the whims of the CCP.

It's not in the interest of anyone living outside of China to buy these cars. China doesn't care about you. The CCP doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about making a good product. They only want your money. The CCP is perfectly happy to lie, cheat, steal, and fuck over your country to make money, obtain, and hold power.

1) Comparing with all home ownership is improper. The only part that matters is % of buying in the active market or constraining the active market. It only needs to be in certain market segments to have a big impact as well. By # of people and not the $ amount within a range; so if they did 100% of mansions it doesn't impact normal people much and if you counted that by # it would be relatively tiny % too. Rental stock is not everything. They also just sit on things too; also they flip and sell in various schemes.

2) Both the mega building corps had CEOs talking about not returning to pre-COVID building rates because the low construction rates boosted their profits; which they said openly. That is not buying, but simply limiting supply to drive up demand = profit.

3) Loans. tons of games around loans. they created the depression in 2008 doing complex fraud games with home loans. Nothing changed except aspects of the game. Huge amount of investment is around the "industry" of home loans/rents/management/building/supplies/insurance....

4) INDIRECT. Wallstreet has been waging a class war for generations and attacking anybody who points this out as "socialist" etc. Class war is older than civilization itself! It never stops. Even with equal demand, wages have been doing DOWN and only masked by technological advancement lowering some prices. It can't lower land prices; but it has taken a little out of construction cost (most savings go to the top, as they always do.) You can be poor and own a smart phone super computer. thank you technology. The richest generation in the USA could only afford 1 TV per house at it's peak. Easily fooling people into thinking things are better because they had more distraction tech; but in real $$$ they are poorer!! It hits when they need a house or healthcare or buy organic food or when gas prices rise a little (like now) then they feel some reality... but don't realize that they are paying for that record number of billionaires out of their pockets. Construction workers and trades can do well, they can have income that didn't get hit as hard by inflation; but they give up a bigger portion to the top than they should or used to. So you can't as easily afford a newly built house...

5) Climate change. resource demand is increasing. more disaster repairs than ever before. it's so bad insurance is pulling out of hard hit areas. Big chunk of investment is in the biggest defenders/creators of climate change. This one is a long term problem. Also indirect but also demand is hiding higher profits exploiting that demand. They will rob desperate people, nations etc. if they can.

Decades ago I tried to lobby officials and convince people we need solutions. It was utterly hopeless and people were not even ready to take measures to begin with.

They don't know what Identity is or Authentication or Certification or any of the specifics they should know to write laws. Not. that. interested. Certainly, in the USA we can't have government do anything productive and useful; that is forbidden by the libertarian morons.

Government can provide anonymous digital credentials of various sorts; including a simple rule that OS have an adult user group parents can keep their children out of; and any software should be able to probe if a user is a member of the adult group. ISPs need to be forbidden from any involvement.

A photo ID with embedded digital verification of it's validity and an adult and drinking status. no birthday, no identity. Somebody just checks your face as they always did but now they can use a phone app to catch fake IDs. The photo doesn't need to be detailed enough to be perfect - it has to be generic enough to not let you be face tracked from it. It is more tricky to use online, but building upon that for online age verification. Government walled off services that are secured stronger than the IRS was... you're a fool if you think private corps can be trusted. If you can't trust government to do this, then your country is incompetent and you have bigger problems... which is the case for the USA already.

None of this should be fool proof and only minimal protection for incompetent parents; because the real defense is competent parents.... so rare, that it seems hopeless to depend upon them. It doesn't help that we don't allow people much parenting time...

Also cancer makes for a great cover-story for a fatal STD... especially given his business, they certainly don't want that kind of death!

I can see the future:
How much more personable and "human" Mark has become in recent years he has really grown as a person, perhaps that MMA trainer or a therapist or his children have helped him grow as a person.

All along, it will be his personal Chat Bot that finally made him seem human. Maybe he'll eventually be able to go back to his home planet or area 51...

Already did... we will never see all the files. Nobody seems to realize the files are not comprehensive there is likely far more data they don't even have in the files. For example, tons of video cameras including special hidden ones but no recordings; except whatever Israel, Russia, or the NSA are holding onto (I'd bet Israel has the most, Russia second.) Why Israel? the guy had a former PM as a "client" and you don't mess with a head of a top spy network and not become their bitch.