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adequate

I don't think that's how I would describe the care given by the VA.

... and the refineries ca. 1903 and forward.

Texaco, Gulf Oil, Mobil Oil, Shell, ...

Port Arthur is the place the injection would go if Texas got an enema. Janice Joplin thought so.

I just had to get out on the Texas plane, Lord, well it was bringing me down Yeah, I had to get out of Texas, baby, Lord, it was bringing me down I been all around the world, but Port Arthur is the worst place that I've ever found I guess they couldn't understand it there, honey, they'd laugh me off the street! Lord, I guess they couldn't understand me, baby, honey, they'd laugh, I said they'd laugh me right off the street, yeah I said I want to keep on moving, baby, be the last person I ever wanna meet Yeah, yeah, yeah, honey ain't it hard when you're all alone Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, honey ain't it hard, Lord, when you're all alone I might die real old lady, but I'd never call Texas my home, no, no, no, oh!

I worked at Texaco 7 (1974 - 1981) years as a journeyman instrumentman.

I asked the guys there, "Where's the goddam golden statue of the fucking mayor?" I told them "There must be a gold statue somewhere because Port Arthur is poor as dirt and has billions of fucking dollars flowing in and out of the port. Where's the prosperity? Why is Port Arthur such a fucking violent racist impoverished piece of shit?"

They said the refineries often threatened to leave (as if they would take the tanks and towers anywhere) if the city taxed them. The plant managers and suits didn't live in Port Arthur. They commuted from Houston and Dallas. The money never landed in Port Arthur.

Nowadays, the Saudis own the whole goddam town and the buildings are painted with murals in a pitiful attempt by the downtowners to revitalize.

Saudis take 100% control of America's largest oil refinery

I'm an area photographer and I won't go to Port Arthur in the daytime.

To me personally the golden age of air travel was the early Seventies. Everyday passengers could enjoy the mass comfort of three competing widebodies, while wealthy early adopters could go supersonic on the Concorde.

You mean back in the 1970's when the government mandated that flights costs three to five times more in inflation adjusted dollars. You can still get that service, just fly first class which provides those same amenities at those 1970's prices. Also, those supersonic flights weren't really that comfortable - the seats were cramped, and it was super noisy - the only redeeming grace was that you saved an hour or two on your flight, and you could brag that you had the money to blow on such a "luxury."

Boeing is having a record year. 2018 was a record year and 2019 looks to be even better. The 777x platform has a huge backlog, mostly taking customers away from the older A380.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/30...

Yeah, Nope. Altria bought a 35% interest in Juul.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/19...

Wow, you have really drunk the MAGA Kool-Aid, haven't you? Have you looked at the national debt lately?

US national debt rises $2 trillion under Trump in just 2 years.

> [Citation Needed]

Basically Everything Trump Said About the Economy Was a Lie
President Trump’s repeated claim: 'The greatest economy in the history of our country'
Trump’s Tax Cuts: The Rich Get Richer

> Recessions are a thing of the past now.

It's far more likely that our current policies will eventually lead to complete economic collapse, but party on.

Key obsolete features were abused early on, defining the 90's web. A web page divided into frames. Server-side image maps. CGI-BIN. Tables with the 3D borders. The ubiquitous single banner at the top of the page.

The biggest differentiator when you go back to handwritten HTML pages from before the dotcom bubble popped - ones you would have seen using Mosaic on Windows 3.11 even - they were formatted for 640x480 screens and are relatively tiny today.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/...

Actually objectively it was a very bad commercial. Sales went down after it aired due to massive boycotts.

Citation needed.

The only report I could find was from P&G who said "sales haven't budged". (of course they're not a disinterested party; but I couldn't find anything else). https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23...

In other related sales reports https://www.gq.com/story/gille...

Nike’s revenues leapt after unveiling its campaign starring Colin Kaepernick, Patagonia posted massive sales after directly attacking President Trump

Who do you expect would believe "the US and it's poodles haven't been deliberately ruining Venezuela's economy and impoverishing it's people" ?

Anyone who isn't engaging in gaslighting and willful dumbfuckery? Sanctions have specifically targeted Venezuela's #1 industry, but have also made it nearly impossible to borrow money or even get diapers. Venezuela has billions in gold abroad that it could use to buy food - but America's lapdogs are refusing. The US has been openly funding opposition parties while whining about supposed Russian interference in its own elections.

But it's also true Chavez, and now Maduro, have stole and rigged many elections since then

Everyone who actually looks at Venezuela's elections, as opposed to parroting US propaganda, says they are free and fair. And if they were rigging elections - then Juan Guaido wouldn't be head of the national assembly, you dumb fuck.

Dumb.
Fuck.
Er.
Eee.

This is how fucking DUMB we have allowed someone to be in the executive leadership position in this country. So fucking stupid. Unfixably stupid.

wow that will buy a whole rocket engine and maybe enough paint to put a nice logo somewhere

i am sure *this* time we will go to the moon

not like these losers

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9705/2...

"Japanese construction giant Shimizu plans to open a space hotel by the year 2020."

i guess you're right we should still wait one more year

what is it with you nerds and space

https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/...

There is an opinion piece up entitled "The Worst Super Bowl Ever". The author even looks like Comic Book Guy.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/04/opinions/super-bowl-pearlman/index.html

The U.S. government needs FAR better management.

One example is the problems at the IRS:

The IRS Really Needs Some New Computers (April 17, 2018) "The tax agency's embrace of IBM in the 1950s helped drive down audit rates. It's still depending on the same code."

IRS says it's using technology from JFK's time (Feb. 3, 2015)

TurboTax, H&R Block Spend Big Bucks Lobbying for Us to Keep Doing Our Own Taxes (March 23, 2017)

How the IRS Was Gutted (Dec. 11, 2018) "An eight-year campaign to slash the agency's budget has left it understaffed, hamstrung and operating with archaic equipment. The result: billions less to fund the government. That's good news for corporations and the wealthy."

Who's More Likely to Be Audited: A Person Making $20,000 -- or $400,000? (Dec. 12, 2018) "If you claim the earned income tax credit, whose average recipient makes less than $20,000 a year, you're more likely to face IRS scrutiny than someone making twenty times as much. How a benefit for the working poor was turned against them."

After Budget Cuts, the IRS' Work Against Tax Cheats Is Facing "Collapse" (Oct. 1, 2018) "Audits and criminal referrals are down sharply since Congress cut the tax agency's budget and management changed priorities."

There are much earlier reports about IRS under-management: Internal Revenue Service is a den of thieves. (April 2, 2000. Not a "den of thieves", just terribly undermanaged, apparently.) "The GAO audit compared the agency to someone who can't balance his or her checkbook and instead just adjusts it to agree with the bank statement."

While I generally agree with what you are saying I think it is even more complicated. When situations become complex (war, economics, life) you will find experts disagreeing on fundamental courses of action.

Sure, but if qualified people can end up choosing A, B, or C that doesn't mean you should start choosing at random.

Not only are you less likely to choose the right among A, B, and C. But once people learn you're evaluating on the wrong criteria they're going to give you variants of A, B, and C that are much crappier that they should be.

So my point is that it is hard to find the right expert for a given situation.

But Trump isn't even getting the situations themselves right. Look at NK, there are two big directions pushed by the experts. 1) Be harsh and threatening enough that they have too cooperate, and 2) engage diplomatically and try to reduce the threat and liberalize the regime that way.

Trump started with #1 and almost started a Nuclear war by inflaming tensions with personal insults. Then he switched to #2, but he's doing it on the theory that NK is giving up its Nuclear weapons, which absolutely no expert thinks that's going to happen.

So what will happen? Either Trump will keep ignoring the situation, and give NK a deal where they're obviously cheating. Or the deal will fall apart and we'll be back to #1.

Despite what you and a large part of the media say, many people that have worked with Trump say he is a good listener and asks good questions and he expects you to be prepared and know your stuff.

Where is the evidence of this? Maybe it was true decades ago, and I'm sure there's a few current quotes since it's very obvious that he likes to be praised. But I haven't seen a single clip or even quotation that shows sharp attentive questioning.

So I am not convinced that Trump is clueless, but I think that is largely what the left media and Hollywood have conditioned us to believe.

So how do you explain my two original examples? Syria and the shutdown. Any informed person knew how they were going to end.

How do you explain him being off by orders of magnitude on the cost of health care insurance.

Or constantly confusing tariffs and interest rates.

How many times has he completely misunderstood some piece of legislation being debated?

He's really not in the loop.

With ISIS, Trump asked his chosen expert General Mathis to come up with a plan within 30 days to defeat ISIS. While the strategy did not change drastically, things did change.

ISIS was already collapsing when Trump took office.

The military was given the freedom to take action without having to go through layers of decision makers.

Perhaps he did, now here's a question. If he did remove those layers, why were they there in the first place?

If you don't have a deep understanding of what they were actually doing you can't actually be certain removing them was a good thing.

There's a lot of things that sound like really good ideas but never actually get done. And one of the main reasons that happens is that doing them actually turns out to be a really bad idea.

This is one area where Trump's instinct to judge a situation based on a superficial understanding tends to have very bad consequences.

They surrounded the enemy strongholds and destroyed them rather

I have not tried to investigate this issue very much, but I am not convinced. There are many experienced experts (border patrol) who say the wall helps (though it

Recall DAPA, based on the same questionable view of Presidential powers relating to immigration as DACA, had already been shot down in the courts, and Trump faced a deadline from about a dozen states that promised to challenge DACA the same way they just challenged DACA and won.

Remember also that Trump pre-emptively declares DACA ended some number of months later (6 months?), and PLEADED with Congress to come up with a constitutional response to DACA in those 6(?) months.

Congresses failure to address a crisis created by the previous administration is not only the fault of the President's.

Trump offered 1.8M so-called "Dreamers" paths to legal status last year in the state of the union address, we'll after he announced the end of DACA - all DACA offered was 4 years of possibly renewable protection from deportation for $429 in fees...

Trump offered a solution, Democrats wanted their unconstitutional protection racket reinstated.

The Village of Mount Pleasant and Racine County, where the plant is to be built, have also agreed to provide $764 million in tax incentives to help get the facility constructed, including buying the land and giving it to Foxconn for free.

I don't see any provision for clawbacks by the state or local officials.

It's treason albeit without war "declared" - but Russia is absolutely not a neutral country, they are an adversary / enemy under Putin. It's treasonous.

Yes, I'm aware "treason" as a formal requires war declared, thank you pedant. Every single other aspect of that term is met. It applies just fine.

How to solve the world’s plastics problem: Bring back the milk man https://www.cnn.com/interactiv...

It speaks only to political intolerance, i.e. intolerance of political views. But liberals are more tolerant of literally everything else than conservatives.

Pay attention!

You are lying with statistics: CNN Sept 17 2018

For the first time in a decade, Corporate America is steering more money into stock buybacks than investing in the future.

The CEO class is lining their own pockets with tax cut profits. Their personal stock grants have multiplication factors leveraging stock price increases. They have raised their compensation by factors over 100%, perhaps as high as 500%.

I quoted the Comcast annual report numbers on capital expenditures. The CNN link you sent adds nothing to that.

For the first time in a decade, Corporate America is steering more money into stock buybacks than investing in the future.

S&P 500 companies rewarded shareholders with $384 billion worth of buybacks during the first half of 2018, according to a Goldman Sachs report published Friday. That big bonanza for Wall Street is up 48% from last year and reflects spiking profitability thanks to corporate tax cuts and the strong US economy.

But that doesn't mean companies aren't spending on job-creating investments, like new equipment, research projects and factories. Business spending is up 19% — it's just that buybacks are growing much faster.

In fact, Goldman Sachs said that buybacks are garnering the largest share of cash spending by S&P 500 firms. It's a milestone because capital spending had represented the single largest use of cash by corporations in 19 of the past 20 years.

And the trend may not be done yet. Goldman Sachs predicted that share buyback authorizations among all US companies in all of 2018 will surpass $1 trillion for the first time ever.

Apple (AAPL) alone spent a whopping $45 billion on buybacks during the first half of 2018, triple what it did during the same time period last year, the firm said. That included a record-shattering sum during the first quarter.

Amgen (AMGN), Cisco (CSCO), AbbVie (ABBV) and Oracle (ORCL) have also showered investors with big boosts to their buyback programs.

...

Even though CEOs continue to green light vast buybacks, they have been quietly taking a different approach with their own money. Corporate insiders sold $10.3 billion of shares in August, the most since November 2017, according to research firm TrimTabs.

The CEO class is lining their own pockets with tax cut profits. Their personal stock grants have multiplication factors leveraging stock price increases. They have raised their compensation by factors over 100%, perhaps as high as 500%.

Give it time, innocent people usually don't lie to investigators ;-)

When Democrats lie they "misspeak", if they're really important/influential, they simply refuse to testify under oath.

she did fuck up but also she did learn her lesson and is now a wonderful surgeon

My dad was treated by an oncologist in Michigan for cancer. I'm sure he'll learn his lesson, but he should NEVER be allowed to practice again.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/10...

Oh the left is much worse than that on this matter:

Math (itself) is racist!

Thats where they have gone. I dont think we have hit peek "racism!" yet.

"Truth"

https://reason.com/archives/20...
https://www.insidesources.com/...
..and so on: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+...
I'm FAR from the only one who thinks this.

Meanwhile here's just ONE proposed technological solution proposed by a Republican congressman: https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/27...
..but you don't want to hear that do you? You just want to "stick it to the liberals" regardless of logic or reason.
You're Just Another Trump-Supporting Jackass Troll. Fuck off.

all drugs, including the hard ones. Treat those (Heroine and the like) as medical conditions from start to finish. You go to a government facility, get your fix, and the moment you come down you're in treatment. Pass Medicare for All (it'll save $5 trillion a year) so we're sure there's care for everyone.

The only downside is you won't be able to use our drug war against populations you don't like anymore. Yes, that includes dirty hippies.

You mean the budget bill that Democrats passed doesn't count?

Lets see.
GM has paid America very little over the last 10 years (though they paid plenty to China's gov).
Fact is, that big auto pays very little in taxes here. Ford pays between 0-15%.
OTOH, Oil does pay a lot, depending on the year, but their subsidies are some of the largest.

Personally, I think that we need to kill all taxbreaks/write-offs, etc and drop corporate taxes for what is done in America, and a simple 25% on what is done out of the nation.

Tesla is a sewer? Please. Tesla has cost America nothing and more importantly, is heading towards major profitability and employing loads of ppl. This will be the first new auto company in America since AMC. And they are very likely going to be in the top 5 by 2025.

Windbourne (moderating).

The first time was in 2011

He wasn't waiting for the republicans to give in on something. He didn't want to sign a short-term measure because he wanted to pressure congress to come up with an actual spending bill instead of a long series of temporary ones that take the pressure off. It's called leadership.

The second time was in 2013 on ACA

This was over the republicans wanting to delay/defund obamacare (again). They tried to do this about a thousand times in various ways. Of course obama wasn't going to sign that.

The third time was in 2015 on spending again

Let's quote some less biased sources. This impasse was over the more conservative wing trying to defund planned parenthood.

Obama never refused to sign a spending bill because he wanted some wild pet project.

He's got enough here to show the judges are being paid and we need to start getting polices and sherrifs involved to investigate and ensure we don't have a pedophilia ring operating here, or something worse.

Actually, there is: Feds: Boston Children's Hospital doctor charged with receiving child porn

You're apparently not even old enough to see a need to stop lying yet. Now get into ADX FLORENCE, TRAITOR!

He's a verified traitor now.

Well, one old person's brain is about to get them hanged for treason.

From CNN December 22nd, 2018

https://www.cnn.com/politics/l...

"Any bill to re-open the government will need 60 votes to pass the Senate because of procedural rules, meaning Republicans will need some Democratic votes."

Democrats own this shut down. Republicans do not have the votes on their own to get a bill passed.

Is CNN, often called the "Clinton News Network", left enough for you? Sorry but I couldn't find you a link to Pravda, the farthest left I could find was CNN, enjoy!

Ford fact checks Trump: We will be here forever CNN(September 15, 2016):

Ford said there will be zero job losses in the U.S. as a result of the new plant in Mexico. The Wayne, Michigan, plant that now builds the Focus and C-Max that will move to Mexico will instead start building other models -- probably the new Ford Bronco SUV and Ranger small pickup.

Ford to Lay Off 2,000 Workers for Ranger, Bronco Retooling(March 5, 2018):

Workers at Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, west of Detroit, will be temporarily dismissed from around May 7 through Oct. 22, according to a notice Ford filed with the state.

Who knew liberals considered parroting evil corporations' lies to be real news.

They reported what actually happened. Ford DID say those things. Therefore it's not fake news.

If the president says, "I will build a wall", and CNN says, "The president says he will build a wall", and then later releases an article that says, "The president didn't build his wall", which one of those is fake?

Answer, none. They were all true things that happened.

Ford said there will be zero job losses in the U.S. as a result of the new plant in Mexico. The Wayne, Michigan, plant that now builds the Focus and C-Max that will move to Mexico will instead start building other models -- probably the new Ford Bronco SUV and Ranger small pickup.

Ford to Lay Off 2,000 Workers for Ranger, Bronco Retooling(March 5, 2018):

Workers at Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, west of Detroit, will be temporarily dismissed from around May 7 through Oct. 22, according to a notice Ford filed with the state.

Who knew liberals considered parroting evil corporations' lies to be real news.

He had to cancel (and did not give the speech) due to violent protests that did 100k in damages and injured 6 people.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/1...

Solution: get rid of the drivers!

This tree burial pod is kinda cool.

The video games sector now accounts for more than half of the entertainment market in UK, according to new figures. From a report: The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) said the gaming market's value rose to $4.85bn,

That's only true if you take a ridiculously narrow definition of the "entertainment market". The English Premier League is unquestionably a form of entertainment and that league alone had revenues of $6.4 billion last year. And that's just one sport in the UK. Add in all the other lower tier leagues, other sports, etc and it's pretty easy to show that video games are just a piece of the overall pie. I'm not even getting into forms of "entertainment" like drinking and other adult recreation which undoubtedly are far larger.

But you won't have engineers exceeding the speed limit causing the train to derail such as this one where the train was going 80 mph in a 30 mph zone.

Science is not Religion. One is for people with working minds, the other is for the rest.

Funny, because "Science" seems to be the one that's constantly telling us these days that dudes like this are the sane ones in the world or that repealing a couple regulations will extinguish all human life.

If you're not at or to the right of chemists on the Scientific Purity Scale then your intellectual authority has been, for the time being at least, revoked. I realize this is undeserved in many cases, but until someone can draw a big bright line between the parts of science that have been hopelessly contaminated with politics and the parts that haven't, it's the only solution.

We need al lot more Sheriff Taylors, a lost less Dirty Harrys, and a massive demilitarization of police forces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Taylor_(The_Andy_Griffith_Show)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Harry
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/do-not-resist-and-the-crisis-of-police-militarization

The ones with the guns (whether cop or civilian) should held to be held to a higher standard, not a lesser.
The extent and degree to which an officer can be immune from consequences for actions taken as part of official duties needs to be reconsidered.
WTF?!?!: Cop fired for not shooting armed suicidal suspect https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/us/wv-cop-fired-for-not-shooting--lawsuit/index.html

The police should be respected, not feared.
Respect must be earned.

Quote from the parent comment: "... start with letting American purchasers buy FDA-approved compounds on the world market, ..." Why pharmaceuticals are cheaper outside the United States. (Sept. 28, 2015)

Quoting:

"According to the International Federation of Health Plans, Americans pay anywhere from two to six times more than the rest of the world for brand name prescription drugs."

Compare drug prices among reputable online pharmacies. ("Prices collected March 2018")

Discount Drugs from Canada

They could still export their food, except that for some reason rats don't feature high on neighbouring nations diets.

Schumer NEVER offered $25 billion for the wall. NOT EVER. The closest he ever came was when Chuck (in his own words) ""In exchange for strong DACA protections, I reluctantly put the border wall on the table for discussion," - NOTE: he did NOT offer anything other than DISCUSSION. this was the typical Democrat faux-border-secutiry deal just like the one they made with Reagan in 1986. No actual substance and no actual border security were proposed by Schumer.

Schumer has repeatedly said NO MONEY for the wall - EVER.

TRUMP OFFERED TO LEGALIZE MORE DACA KIDS THAN THE DEMOCRATS REQUESTED IN EXCHANGE FOR WALL FUNDING, and Pelosi and Schumer walked away. This offer risked angering Trump's own supporters as even the liberals at NBC admitted.

whatever you say my dude enjoy eating your pets commie

When I watched it I thought something looked wrong, but I couldn't say exactly what.

All the major news outlets and FOX covered it:

FOX:
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/f...

CNN:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/18...

ABC:
https://www.abcactionnews.com/...

NBC:

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/new...
https://www.nbcchicago.com/new...
https://www.nbc-2.com/clip/147...

CBS:

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/...

Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

New York Post:
https://nypost.com/2018/12/19/...

Huffington Post:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

BBC:
https://www.bbc.com/news/techn...

I think the New York Times is the only major news organization that didn't cover it from what I can google, but I don't have a subscription so I may have missed their coverage.