Wondering who has been running the country

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lawtig02 said:
I was noticing the same thing when I looked earlier. And it speaks to something I've been noticing much more recently. The quality of reporting, even from top notch sources like the NYT, is in an absolute freefall. I read a ton of articles yesterday about Trump's imminent TikTok executive order. Almost none of them mentioned the most important fact of all -- Trump has NO LEGAL AUTHORITY to extend the time for TikTok to be sold, or to waive the fines that are mandatory under the statute. Almost every media outlet reported the story as if Trump's EO could just kick the can down the road. Did no journalist bother to look at the actual statute?

Of all the many things that have me concerned about the next four years, the traditional media's rapid decline, to the point of complete ineffectiveness, is at the top of the list. We no longer have a real fourth estate. And it's not about bias or ethics. It's about effectiveness. The news is just not getting reported anymore.
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I would quibble with the sentence, "And it's not about bias or ethics." The owners of WAPO and NYT beg to differ. The corporate press is in the business of sucking up to the Dear Leader. Look no further than the ABC settlement and the CBS consideration of a settlement. What little free press left is independent and off the beaten track.
 
Maybe Joe knew all along he was a one-term President and his plan was to position Harris as his replacement? If so, he came darn close to pulling it off and, maybe, have three consecutive Democrats in the White House. Twelve years with a D in the White House, with perhaps half that time with control of Congress, might have been enough time to undo the damage of one term of Trump. The stakes were high, but it was worth the gamble. Didn't pull it off, but was gutsy to try.

The last hurrah of America's experiment with Democracy ended yesterday.
 
chrissteel said:
Seems to me Dems should be the mad ones. Clearly he should not have run for reelection but no one apparently told him him he couldn't win or that he didn't have the mental capacity to be President. It is incredible this could have happened. This could cost dems the supreme court for a generation
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Hell, the country elected a president for this next term that doesn't have the mental capacity.
 
05C40 said:
Maybe Joe knew all along he was a one-term President and his plan was to position Harris as his replacement? If so, he came darn close to pulling it off and, maybe, have three consecutive Democrats in the White House. Twelve years with a D in the White House, with perhaps half that time with control of Congress, might have been enough time to undo the damage of one term of Trump. The stakes were high, but it was worth the gamble. Didn't pull it off, but was gutsy to try.

The last hurrah of America's experiment with Democracy ended yesterday.
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Yea
Kinda like DES timed things to get in GUT
 
rodoheel said:
I'm not going to defend any decisions Biden made but it's awfully presumptuous to think that him voluntarily stepping down and/or not running for reelection earlier would have made any difference in the election.
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While true, I believe it would have given the dems a better chance had the part been actively promoting the new candidate for two years compared to waiting until the last few months.
 
lawtig02 said:
I was noticing the same thing when I looked earlier. And it speaks to something I've been noticing much more recently. The quality of reporting, even from top notch sources like the NYT, is in an absolute freefall. I read a ton of articles yesterday about Trump's imminent TikTok executive order. Almost none of them mentioned the most important fact of all -- Trump has NO LEGAL AUTHORITY to extend the time for TikTok to be sold, or to waive the fines that are mandatory under the statute. Almost every media outlet reported the story as if Trump's EO could just kick the can down the road. Did no journalist bother to look at the actual statute?

Of all the many things that have me concerned about the next four years, the traditional media's rapid decline, to the point of complete ineffectiveness, is at the top of the list. We no longer have a real fourth estate. And it's not about bias or ethics. It's about effectiveness. The news is just not getting reported anymore.
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It's hard for reputable news sources to fact check and still complete with those who publish everything immediately and don't care if it is true.

It seems that it is proven that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
 
rodoheel said:
By the way, here's the EO Johnson was talking about, which you can pretty clearly see does not pause LNG exports to Europe:

www.whitehouse.gov

FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces Temporary Pause on Pending Approvals of Liquefied Natural Gas Exports | The White House

President Biden has been clear that climate change is the existential threat of our time – and we must act with the urgency it demands to protect the
www.whitehouse.gov www.whitehouse.gov

The US was still easily able to meet Europe's LNG demands, and in fact European demand for LNG fell in 2024, causing us to have to expoert some of our supply elsewhere:

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Link doesn't work because they shut down the white house servers, apparently.

But here a publication from the GOP House:

“Less than two weeks ago, the Biden administration announced that it would impose an indefinite ban on the issuance of LNG export permits to non-Free Trade Agreement countries while it conducts a review to consider the climate impacts of natural gas.

Which is what Biden described. Mike Johnson is either lying or remarkably ignorant or both.

Can we please change the thread title to "Mike Johnson lies about Biden," forcibly if necessary?

energycommerce.house.gov

Subcommittee Chair Duncan Opening Remarks on President Biden’s LNG Export Ban

The Committee on Energy and Commerce is the oldest standing legislative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives and is vested with the broadest jurisdiction of any congressional authorizing committee.
energycommerce.house.gov energycommerce.house.gov
 
UNCMSinLS said:
I would quibble with the sentence, "And it's not about bias or ethics." The owners of WAPO and NYT beg to differ. The corporate press is in the business of sucking up to the Dear Leader. Look no further than the ABC settlement and the CBS consideration of a settlement. What little free press left is independent and off the beaten track.
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I did notice NBC News last night spent significantly more time covering the Bills-Ravens game that had just aired on NBC and a couple of other NFL topics than they did on all the news of the day, including the hostage releases, the TikTok shenanigans and the Trump transition. The message was clear. Self-promotion matters way more than news reporting.
 
rodoheel said:
I'm not going to defend any decisions Biden made but it's awfully presumptuous to think that him voluntarily stepping down and/or not running for reelection earlier would have made any difference in the election.
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I think the primary process is a really good way of getting a good candidate, or maybe a better way to say it is that the lack of a primary, outside of an incumbent situation, is a high risk of a bad candidate.

Candidates that look really good on paper, like Hillary, can look like head scratching mistakes when they get on the campaign trail. Frontrunners like JEB and Howard Dean can get exposed pretty quickly. And really good candidates, who look like absolute long shots at the beginning of the race like Bill, Obama and even Trump, can really surprise you. The primaries kind of sort all that.

I realize that Kamala, and the Democrats in general, got dealt a bad hand but they can at least learn from it in the future.
 
UNCatTech said:
It's hard for reputable news sources to fact check and still complete with those who publish everything immediately and don't care if it is true.

It seems that it is proven that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
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... unless it's a story about the dear leader. Then you just keep the story to yourself.
 
Here's how i understand the LNG process. Plants need a permit to export. Normally the permits are for 10-20 years. The companies then enter long-term contracts for exports to specific countries. The plants cost 10-20 billion to construct and contracts in place allow for easier financing/investment to finish and put them in operation. While permits are held up other countries are getting the contracts in place. Qatar has been getting many of them in 2024. Export are growing due to prior years construction and permitting. The industry is exploding and we are losing ground.
 
chrissteel said:
Here's how i understand the LNG process. Plants need a permit to export. Normally the permits are for 10-20 years. The companies then enter long-term contracts for exports to specific countries. The plants cost 10-20 billion to construct and contracts in place allow for easier financing/investment to finish and put them in operation. While permits are held up other countries are getting the contracts in place. Qatar has been getting many of them in 2024. Export are growing due to prior years construction and permitting. The industry is exploding and we are losing ground.
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What does it cost us as a country to lose ground? I know it might cost the oil companies some profit but what effect does that have on the citizens and country?
 
korgguy1971 said:
Given this thread's title, it may not age well.
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Yep. Replacing an 82-year-old with a soon-to-be 79-year-old really isn't much of an improvement, especially when the 79-year-old is as already brain-challenged as Trump. And now that the focus will shift to Dear Leader as POTUS it's going to be entertaining watching all of these Trumpers who were so concerned about Biden's mental decline twist themselves into pretzels to deny that the same thing is happening to Dear Leader.
 
Here's the concerning aspect, and I believe it's a byproduct of today's political environment. It seems pretty clear, given that cabinet meetings were canceled in late 2023, that the people around him knew that he was no longer able to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of the presidency. That being the case, he was permitted to not only continue through the end of his presidency, but allowed to run for reelection.
 
This is an example of why it's difficult to have a political conversation with people who come at it with preconceived notions. This thread starts as an attack on Biden's mental acuity and the example is he was stopping LNG from being exported to Europe, with one of the effects being helping Putin. When that is shown to be false there isn't a mea culpa over spreading incorrect information, instead it just shifts to well the pausing of permits will put the US behind at some undefined future date. There is no recognition of the misinformation being spread by one of the leaders of the Republican party, just a shift to how even though what he said isn't true, what actually happened could be bad as well.

Nevermind that the alternative to Biden was another geezer who in addition to being old has shown a stunning lack of morals/ethics. Nevermind that the Democrats did ultimately dump their old guy while the Republicans doubled down on theirs as he was spewing complete lies. Nevermind that the original premise of the thread was based on a misinformed take. None of that matters. How do we communicate in this climate?
 
chrissteel said:
Here's how i understand the LNG process. Plants need a permit to export. Normally the permits are for 10-20 years. The companies then enter long-term contracts for exports to specific countries. The plants cost 10-20 billion to construct and contracts in place allow for easier financing/investment to finish and put them in operation. While permits are held up other countries are getting the contracts in place. Qatar has been getting many of them in 2024. Export are growing due to prior years construction and permitting. The industry is exploding and we are losing ground.
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I don't know any of those details. Here's what I do know:

1. LNG is a commodity. Thus, it's impossible to "lose ground." If Qatar takes more contracts, the US will sell more on spot market. Or take the next contracts. Price is determined by supply and demand, and all producers are pure price takers.

2. LNG is last century's technology. I think it's very stupid for people to worry about losing ground in a 50 year old industry that is declining. The money is in being forward looking. THAT is what America used to do better than anyone else, at least in private industry. Alas. MAGA, of course, is entirely backwards looking.

So, I mean, if you want the US economy to become more focused on producing low-profit commodities, with revenues at the mercy of other countries' behavior, that's the way to do it. Or you could do it the smart way, which is to establish a strong position of the high-profit technologies of the future -- that was Biden's way.

It's not actually a matter of disagreement as to which path leads to more prosperity. Prosperity comes from technology. It's just a matter of getting people like you to grasp it.
 
Enigma94 said:
This is an example of why it's difficult to have a political conversation with people who come at it with preconceived notions. This thread starts as an attack on Biden's mental acuity and the example is he was stopping LNG from being exported to Europe, with one of the effects being helping Putin. When that is shown to be false there isn't a mea culpa over spreading incorrect information, instead it just shifts to well the pausing of permits will put the US behind at some undefined future date. There is no recognition of the misinformation being spread by one of the leaders of the Republican party, just a shift to how even though what he said isn't true, what actually happened could be bad as well.

Nevermind that the alternative to Biden was another geezer who in addition to being old has shown a stunning lack of morals/ethics. Nevermind that the Democrats did ultimately dump their old guy while the Republicans doubled down on theirs as he was spewing complete lies. Nevermind that the original premise of the thread was based on a misinformed take. None of that matters. How do we communicate in this climate?
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Well, I suppose now that Biden is gone, we can put aside any preconceived notions for the next 4 years and with an open mind discuss the policies of an old geezer with a stunning lack of morals/ethics who spews complete lies.
 
Enigma94 said:
This is an example of why it's difficult to have a political conversation with people who come at it with preconceived notions. This thread starts as an attack on Biden's mental acuity and the example is he was stopping LNG from being exported to Europe, with one of the effects being helping Putin. When that is shown to be false there isn't a mea culpa over spreading incorrect information, instead it just shifts to well the pausing of permits will put the US behind at some undefined future date. There is no recognition of the misinformation being spread by one of the leaders of the Republican party, just a shift to how even though what he said isn't true, what actually happened could be bad as well.

Nevermind that the alternative to Biden was another geezer who in addition to being old has shown a stunning lack of morals/ethics. Nevermind that the Democrats did ultimately dump their old guy while the Republicans doubled down on theirs as he was spewing complete lies. Nevermind that the original premise of the thread was based on a misinformed take. None of that matters. How do we communicate in this climate?
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... you don't. You chalk up the SOBs as bad-faith actors, put them on ignore and move on to more productive discussions. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy!
 
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