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Tax credits are not the same as tax cuts. I'm guessing accounting wasn't your strong suit, but the math is easy. A tax credit means you can receive money from the IRS in excess of what you've paid. A tax cut simply means you pay less than you did before. As CEO pointed out, the child tax credit means filers who don't even pay taxes can receive money from the government. Calling it a tax credit was just a sop for the minority party at the time, since it was nothing less than a welfare expansion.

A new article on oilprice: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-This-The-Cleanest-Energy-On-Earth.html discusses Geothermal energy. After first confusing ground-loop heat pumps with true geothermal, the article recovers and discusses geothermal rationally. One big problem with geothermal: there are not enough suitable geothermal fields in the world. a good field needs hot wet subterranean rock. Good news: lots of hot rock deep down in many places. Bad news: most of it is dry. the answer is (duh!) wet the rock, and there is a technology to do this: hydrofracking and horizontal drilling. But now we will have deeply-conflicted knee-jerk greenies arguing with themselves about using evil fracking to produce wonderful, clean, renewable energy. Disclaimer: I am a greenie. I am not a knee-jerk greenie. If you can hydro-frack a geothermal field under my city, then please do so. If you want to frack for LTO in the Permian instead of importing oil, then please do so if you can do it cleanly.

People getting child credit is a subsidy , why should I finance someone else having kids? I already paid for mine! If we want to get rid of subsidies , then let there be a flat tax and no tax credits for anything! Simplify the tax code, reduce taxes and stop wasting tax payer dollars on all sorts of things. That is not going to happen. Tesla is thriving on tax payer dollars and tax subsidies for so called "green" cars. Nothing green about them except the green greed.

Enthalpic, You know I am neither Left nor Right. I will not vote. But... ...you gotta admit that it is extremely EVIL... to censor communication, to deliberately omit valuable information which results in the deaths of many, to mandate dictates (as in "Dictator") to businesses and individuals over how they should control their own entity and body without providing ALL THE well-sourced documented scientific studies surrounding such topics as masks and the ACTUAL WAY THE IMMUNE SYSTEM FUNCTIONS and has functioned for eons. Anyone with an eyeball, can read the many substantial peer-reviewed studies which have been deliberately suppressed and omitted from the public's view. These studies show that we should be completely open with businesses and schools, and that "social distancing" and "masks" are only a charade to manipulate and control the masses. Omission of this information has needlessly resulted in the death and misery of countless lives. This is pure EVIL. If you support this suppression of valid, well documented information, then you support EVIL. You definitely support all the Big Pharma Corporations.

When tax man decides to give you money is a subsidy, when taxman decides to not taking from you so much money for a while is a tax cut

Michael Caputo QUOTE - 2:18 mark "And there are scientists working for this government who do not want America to get better." I read this Yahoo story the other day, but the video was not embedded. I searched and searched to find the full video, but could not. This video is edited. I can not locate an unedited FULL video. I have found parts of the video which are not included in this Yahoo video. For example: https://buffalonews.com/multimedia/michael-caputo-on-facebook-live/video_bd8f50c8-f779-11ea-8827-abd983619e35.html By the way, Yahoo Finance used to have a comment section under their articles. When the Yahoo article had blatant lies (omitted facts), Yahoo members would call the author out on the misinformation. A few days following an interview with Bill Gates, Yahoo Finance clamped down and stopped the comment section. In the video interview, Bill Gates called for censored information. By the way, Bill Gates went spastic when Hydroxychloroquine was mentioned towards the last half. (An aside, Bill Gates Father, a known Eugenics advocate, died recently. He was in his 90's.) Bill Gates interview on Yahoo Finance - https://finance.yahoo.com/video/influencers-andy-serwer-bill-gates-110000273.html Bill Gates and Dr. Fauci communicate on a regular weekly basis. Gates supports Fauci's work with Foundation money. Fauci controls funding for all the American Universities in their research. If a University researcher gets out of line by promoting the truth of research results, that researcher is terminated, because the University risks losing funding. For me personally, it is a no-brainer that the government agencies want Americans sick. If Americans were healthy, the Fear Mongering Control Mechanisms of "The Powers That Should Not Be" would fall apart.

When members of the administration are afraid to go to restaurants because they don't want their food spit on or get "flash mobs" who "randomly" show up to scream at them and are otherwise antagonized, yeah, I can see it wearing on someone. Start with lack of sleep because you're getting very specific emails about your 12 year old daughter, they know her name and where she goes to school and they give you detailed information about just what they will do to her when they catch her. But yeah nothing to see here folks, move along. The Demoncrats are evil. Democrats, not so much but they need to be judged by the company they keep. Are there Deep State operatives in government? Is the sky blue? Hasn't the CDC publicly admitted that their Covid death count is overly broad? Why yes, yes they have. Is this political? Why yes, yes it is. Was someone murdered in cold blood by members of a mob in Portland for being a Trump supporter? Why yes, yes he was. We all saw what happened in Georgia, and the losing candidate there is still claiming she won the election she lost by a million votes. This will happen when Biden loses, they've already got websites up talking about it. The last thing the Demoncrats want is another Republican administration continuing to dig into Crossfire Hurricane. As Hillary Clinton herself said, "If I'm going down, I'm taking half of Washington DC with me". But yeah, nothing to see here.

Bailouts are created by congress, not by Trump. US won the trade war with China. Once China became hungry, they decided against suicide. https://www.agweb.com/article/china-buys-us-soybeans-seventh-day-row Taxes remove money from the economy. Tax cuts let more money stay in the economy. If more taxes = prosperity, then all we have to do is set taxes at 100% and then utopia happens.

It took me awhile to absorb your question. Perhaps a thought, a new President in this US means a peaceful transition of power. And it is power. It should be quite apparent that transition has not been seamlessly achieved. Frankly a world wide resistance has been formed and now being acted out. It seems enivitable a massive uprising/civil discord is about to take place..across the world I might say. It is by no means a stretch to state we are only seeing the start of things. Jan van Eck made a statement which is rather unusual for him in this particular set of circumstances. "Trump does not know how to lose" he was correct. A flawed man yes, as we all are...all of us. Like it or not his uncanny gift of fundamentals is Eye Opening at the same time yes he is reckless....Make no mistakes here it has been fundamentals that kept him relevant for 60 years..Wealth is fleeting, animal instincts are not. Thicken your skin..it's just begun.

Just what I was waiting for because that means solar and wind are not subsidized as the gov't benefit they are given are tax cuts.

A relative of mine had a 2007 Prius that got flooded in a hurricane in 2018. After things settled down, she took the car to the dealer, and the Toyota people called the insurance agent. The insurance adjuster totaled the car, and they gave her $7000. This was an operating car - the only thing 'wrong' with it is that she could hear a sloshing noise in the back of the car. I'm presuming that car ended up in a junkyard, and the first thing the scrappers did was pull the battery pack and sell it to a reconditioning service. Replicate this for tens of thousands of cars flooded in various weather events in the last few years, and it's possible to see where the batteries are coming from that go into the reconditioned packs. Since they're saying they're reconditioning used modules, it's probably true that the batteries are the older capacity. I suspect that someone trying to save a 12 year old car is happy to get by with a cheap, older reconditioned pack.

I've been wondering if Puna was going to get rebuilt. I'm sure the local volcano worshipers aren't happy.

Actually, still WRONG. Fracking only opens up cracks to increase surface area which increases heat flow. As for wet/dry, why Iceland is king. Supersaturated with fresh water few impurities and unlimited supply of fresh water to pour down borewells and then blow out the other end as steam Why California sucks. They had great geothermal(the geysers) until the water dried up. Solution? Dump more water down. Have no water and no, you cannot use salt water for same reason one does not use tap water for boilers, but rather purified water in boilers. Of course the ground itself is usually lousy with minerals soluble in water and your "geothermal" plant, if you do not have a giant waste dump for these minerals(arsenic, lead, mercury, calcium, lithium, radium, etc) then you turn into a toxic waste dump mining facility fairly quickly. True, I just described open systems, but if you go with closed, then the only contact area is the wall diameter of the pipe... I'll let you drill 100X more distance than necessary compared to Fracking. Salton sea: Problems may become a lithium solution: https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-14/california-lithium-geothermal-salton-sea

Theres a conventional one of these I'm involved with, construction is scheduled to start next year.

A very good point has been brought up about Permian pollution. To put it in proper context, one absolutely has to compare it to the "Gold Standard" in clean, green energy. I think we would all agree that such honors go to California. Really? In 2018, California wildfires burned 1.97M acres of forest, emitting 68M tons of CO2 into the stratosphere that all sentient beings (and non-sentient ones too) share. The carbon particle count that year (calculated by a Berkley scientist) was said to be equivalent to all the energy (about 85% NG at the time) fed into the California statewide electricity grid. So far, in 2020, 3.1M acres have burned. California is just now entering peak fire season. This is said to be the "new normal." Not to pick on California but their carbon particle contribution to the world pollution seems to just keep going up--more each year. Not to beggar the issue, but this may actually be the "old normal." Scientists have looked at prehistoric data and stated that California has burned to the tune of 4M acres/year since the outgrowth of trees and shrubs about two-million years ago. No other geographically circumscribed area in the world can come close to matching this, so if you really want to get down and dirty, California has done more toward bringing on greenhouse gas induced climate change than any other place. The question has to arise: Should a carbon tax be issued country to country, state against state? I'm not out to slam California but I doubt that the Permian can come close to matching that long record of bringing an end to mammalian life. Existential truth may come down not to whether some idiot placed a smoker on his Ram diesel exhaust system, but whether or not someone removed deadwood from the forests. Secondarily, should the rest of the world pay dearly for California's long and robust serial murder spree (strokes, heart attacks, COPD, childhood asthma) using the careless weapon of forest fire? During those hundreds of thousands of years of prehistoric burns of such gargantuan proportions, China, for example, was contributing almost nothing in the way of carbon particle pollution, nor was India. Carbon pollution is nothing to be sneezed at. However, blame should be properly rationed out. Me? I strongly suspect the Sierra Club, by preaching against logging the California forests, has been responsible for more global climate change than most frackers. 😉

What a farce !!!!!! Not all diesel vehicles emit that black smoke. Unless you are driving one of those old trucks in say Bangladesh, India, Pakistan or some places like that. Some people in the US used this system on their trucks to emit the black smoke as a sign of protest some years ago. Stop spreading your deception of the facts!!!!

Not gonna lie, calling the substance that is responsible for virtually all life on earth a pollutant doesn't sit well with me. Not that I could convince you of that, it requiring scientific understanding and all… 😏

I have considered myself as an environmentalist since I first heard the word and started studying the tenets. I stopped believing the movement itself long a go though. I saw that they were unreasonable about land management for multipurpose use as it is supposed to be done in our national forests. They also took millions from the natural gas movement and then turned around and betrayed it. The Sierra Club and the other such organizations have, in many instances, done more harm than good. I have contributed to most of them in the past but no more. They are controlled by extremists in most cases. I want to see wind, solar, and batteries manufactured in America. Then I can get behind it, to work along with natural gas. We cannot enable China, at least, to grow their industrial power at our expense. They offer many good products but we need to deal with our friends not with our opponents who do not follow humane treatment of their own people and let them live free.

Give me a break. Some of us like nature, clean air, and water.

Do you drink the Edmonton fluoridated water? or are you in the Calgary area? By the way, James Corbett of The Corbett Report is originally from Calgary. Do you support the Calgary Hockey team? By the way, the Covid PCR tests are bogus...they are completely unreliable.

Agree I'll take the vaccine day 1

I remember, while I was in school my teacher asked us to write various uses of coal. As a kid, I know that only power can be generated from coal. I wrote power. Then my teacher started writing a list of uses of coal: coal is used for steel production, coal is used in the cement industry, coal is used in alumina refineries, coal is used in the paper industry, coal is used for making activated carbon filters, coal is used for making carbon fibers, coal is used for manufacturing fertilizers, coal is used for…….coal is used for……so this list was never-ending. Now the message is bold and clear. This world cannot survive without coal!!. The global steel market size is expected to reach US$ 1.01 trillion by 2025 registering a CAGR (Cumulative Annual Growth Rate) of 2.6 %. Steel is one of the most important resources for infrastructure development of every city, town, and village on earth. Growing demand for sustainable, low cost, and durable buildings in the residential and commercial sectors is driving this demand and this will keep growing in the future. Global steel export volumes have risen from 29% in 2014 to > 31 % in 2018. Top export countries are China, Japan, Russia, Ukraine, and Brazil and the top importers are the US, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the European Union. In the last few years, Russian exports showed a steep climb, from 27% to 31% and Ukraine from 17% to 18 %. Next to steel is the cement industry with a current CARG of 7.8% and with current global market size of about US$ 683 billion. There is no point in mentioning the global market size of other industries like fertilizers, the pharmacy that depends on coal. China leads the way in cement consumption and production in the world. Interestingly China also is a major cement exporter country. Major cement importing countries are the USA (> 33%), Spain (11%), Italy (> 4 %). This trend is continuing for decades. Since there is no substitute for cement, this will be a green industry forever and coal will tag along with these industries together with the steel industry!! The cement industry is the only industry where CO2 emissions come from two sources.......coal and limestone. Since the cement is essential for infrastructural development, no country will pledge to reduce cement production and utilization. I have not included thermal power here!! the USA was not keen on signing the Kyoto Protocol, for these reasons. To reduce CO2 emissions IPCCC recommended a 5% cut in the CO2 emissions by all countries. Imagine ....to cut 5% reduction in emissions means the use of coal has to be cut by all industries. This will affect the financial growth of, especially, countries like India. Don’t you think the USA was cleaver in moving away from this clause while all other countries kept discussing this issue and supporting the development of renewable energy sources for power generation especially like solar pv. Germany produces a large chunk of lignite in the world and uses it for power generation. Nearly 22 % of electricity comes from coal here. Lignite emits more CO2 than normal coal. Although Germany has abandoned its 200-year-old hard coal mines in the Ruhr region, it continues to generate power from coal imported from Russia, Canada, and the United States!! Its steel industry consumes nearly 40 % of coal. Replacing lignite will be a tough job for Germany. One has to wait and see its future. Russia is a big exporter of coal and the buyers are China, India, and Vietnam. China is a major importer of coal from Russia. Currently, China is importing 30 million tones of coal/year and planning to increase it to 55 million tones in the coming decade. In southeast Asia, Indonesia is the largest exporter of thermal coal. Russian largest coal mines, the Elginskoye coal mine, were sold to an IT company recently planning to escalate the exports to the above figure. Coal will stay in Russia for now. Greta Thunberg’s protested to reduce CO2 emissions by Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, and Turkey. Somehow China was not on her radar ...surprising. It is more surprising how China’s new 148 GW capacity thermal power plant has escaped Greta’s attention. All efforts by other countries to reduce emissions are nullified by China!! It is ironical.....China has pledged to reduce its CO2 emissions by 2030 as part of the Paris agreement but started building mega coal-based power plants! The emissions by China in 2030 will be more or less equal to that of Europe. Last year China’s added 25.5 GW of coal-based power while the rest of the world reduced coal-based power by 2.8 GW. The US is clever again......left the Paris agreement. Besides, China has merged the Shandong Energy group and the Yankuang group, two coal mining company and created a mega coal company. This mega-company will contribute 7% of the total country’s coal output. These mega industries cannot thrive without coal and renewable cannot support these mega industries. The so-called crusaders of CO2 emission reduction targeted Solar PV as the best source that can substitute coal or gas in the power sector. But what the pundits did not realize is, solar PV is not like apples that can be plucked and used. Manufacturing solar PV cell is a process, starting from mining quarts, refining, and preparing electronic-grade silicon from quartz. It is a highly energy-intensive process. Coal also forms a part of this process. During this process, the amount of CO2 emitted is more or less similar to small coal-based power plants. Replacing coal in the industries discussed above is not possible at least for now. No country will be able to reduce their economic developmental activity. Solar PV however discussed, supported, and encouraged cannot meet the demand and over some time this will be a declining source........Sun may be eternal but natural resources are not! Quartz and Li are the two important ingredients in solar PV based energy. Quartz may be in plenty but Li is not. By giving subsidies countries think that solar PV can compete with oil/gas and coal. But the truth is the supporting ancillary industries. If solar pv is not supported these industries will collapse throwing millions jobless, especially in Europe. This story will unfold once the subsidy is removed for solar. Everyone knew about it. Whatever said and done the giant will rule the world....that is coal.

I think it will be hard to get half to take the vaccine. Probably 90% over 65 or with serious problems though.

A question if i may, is there a known thermoplastic that is being used in drilling/ piping.

Meredith is talking about all original hybrids which use NiMh which is fairly cheap. Of course they do not last all that long... Hate having a partial charge and energy density is much lower but hey... Yes, lithium batteries are very limited and expensive currently and chargers are expensive as they charge completely different to NiMh, cause massive fires when overcharged, or dendrites occur requiring fuses, temperature controls, etc. No one is sure which battery size will win out(seems 18650's will) so no one can make your own battery pack as one can do with NiMH. In previous discussion with Meredith, what neither he nor I discussed is that NiMh have one very BIG advantage. You and I can make our own battery packs and replace existing. The chargers are simple, the battery management is simple and replacement is simple. Lithium? Not so much other than in the Titanate variety, but those are HORRENDOUSLY expensive.

Their guards , are and have been, down. Just listen to all the antimaskers. I think anyone over 65, especially with other medical issues is crazy not to be careful until they get vaccinated. I have been holed up since March and out very little. I am just starting to take a few chances, very few. Germans are even protesting against the masks and distancing etc.

While I do agree. Theres so many battles now its "pick your battle" stage. And interweb pissing contests are likley not worth the effort. I'll vote . I'll post some info on economy. I'll highlight some obvious facts on some covid nonsense but when it gets consuming to the point it's at family conversation or making arguments it's not worth it and I'd just encourage both sides to put it down. My wife is great at blissful ignorance (in politics) and honestly it's a lesson for me at times . Apparently I'm writing novels tonight lol. But I think if recession hits hard it could wake a spirit of rebuilding and or a dropping of the political argument torch. It might mean working together with locals that have different views but its mandatory for survival.

Well, it took the US 2 decades to ALMOST get a salt breeder reactor to work and then the documents/testing samples were effectively destroyed... Now everyone wants to throw in the added problem of Thorium(not much of a problem as my ultra overly simplistic understanding is that it works just like a Plutonium reactor once it gets going)🙄

Regarding the batteries: I kinda already had some knowledge regarding used/capacity as I was looking at purchasing 2 wrecked Nissan Leaf's, about 2 years ago(memory was hazzy though) but when I looked at them, both were missing their batteries and the cost/time to combine 2 to get 1 car was not worth it. When researching came across Prius replacements and replacement would not work using Prius batteries with the Nissan Leaf whereas the Prius would use any NiMH. Also I far prefer Hybrids. Why majority of hybrids put such a tiny battery in is absurd. Newer ones have superior range though, but can't find them in the wrecker yards yet...

There doesn't seem to be any progress on Thorium nuclear. India (which has plentiful deposits) and China have been working on this for many years, but there has been no reported progress, as far as I know. Do you have any other insights?

One good reason to shut down the income tax and return it to its original unconstitutional status.

Some of the numbers I'm seeing on electric pickups are telling me there is soon going to be a new vehicle category - the road legal 'locomotive'. What this means more specifically is the vehicle has road tires, it also has rail wheels and a coupler with the air brakes. It can couple with a freight car, release the brakes, tow it some minor distance (probably from a string of cars to a loading or unloading site), uncouple, then drive 'around' the parked freight car on its tires. Once the car is finished the loco/truck can tow it back out to a siding and bring in another car. This would probably be about the size of one of the tow trucks used to recover wrecked semis.

I agree.

I live in comfort because I worked and managed my money well. Yes, some work is unpleasant. I don't do any of that anymore.

It's good and bad. I'll be running for office next term. Expect many more answers like this rather clever one. Although, if I run for Democrat office, I may be inclined to say all fire is bad. I'll need to see which way the windmills are blowing at that time.

Why blatantly lie? Why? It does you no favors. Used, half dead prius batteries and YOU do the labor is $1500. This is no different than saying you do said labor on an ICE Vehicle. The reality is a replacement + Labor will set you back $5000 for a tiny battery pack when you add in Labor and sales tax. https://exclusivelyhybrid.com/toyota-prius-battery-replacement/

I agree that some "environmental" non-profits are corrupt. That doesn't mean everyone who actively works to minimize environmental damage has a political agenda, but of course they are related. Environmental regulations are laws and politicians make the laws and fund enforcement (or not). Lobbying is an important tool, every industry does it.

Isnt everyone's mission to make money from something? Even non profits have to make money to help others !!!!!! Saint Enthalpic preach hypocrisy elsewhere if you dont like people making money! Are you the Great White Sadhu of the North? hahaha

Canada is large with cleaner air.

Personally, it seems to me clearly that at least a dozen Navalny would have to be poisoned or Angela Merkel herself would have to be poisoned so that the Germans as society would give up this project. It is true that the author of the study is the German-Russian Trade Group, but the results of the survey are rather unambiguous. If Europe ever withdraws from this project, it will only be under the dictatorship of the Americans and not that some oppositionist has been poisoned. This could be, at best, a formal pretext and, from this poll, rather a pretext that would only convince German society to a very small extent. in general, the USA has such a big problem that the German society has been more sympathetic to cooperation with Russia for a long time, and America, especially Trump's America, is not popular there. And if the Americans block Nord Stream II, their ratings are unlikely to improve. History will not change - Russians and Germans have either worked closely together for centuries or have waged wars. But for them to be indifferent to each other for long time it was probably not common in history. As part of this centuries-long cooperation, it is the USA that is a new element only somewhere after the end of World War II. Moreover, tsarist Russia was very often ruled by ethnic Germans from the Baltic states, less often from German states. One such curiosity is that the Germans from the former Eastern Bloc are even better inclined to cooperate with Russia than Western Germany. Honestly, it puzzles me because in Poland there is clearly visible anti-Russianness and in East Germany opposite pro-Russianness, although they have less experience with tsarist Russia than Poles. Anyway, Poles want to set an example and tell the Germans to give up Nord Stream. But Poland itself is such an anti-Russian champion of abandoning Russian gas but at the same time, which probably few people in the west know know, just as Germany is like a drug addict dependent on Russian gas, so Poland has been dependent on cheap Russian coal for several years - the situation is that Poland limits its own production and imports several million tons of coal from Russia annually, the more it is longer ruled by the Russophobic Law and Justice party.

I'm doing just fine for my family - despite your 'end of the world' by any means usable cult trying to 'help me' (by putting up every cost) . I'd say theres a certain group of people who dream of having everything handed to them without earning it. I'd rather be in the hardworking earn your own living group personally. But yes I do agree if you do a job worth a good pay you should be paid good. And I'm not talking about counting people in a store or taking forehead temperature readings. The ammount of fake jobs today is off the chart probably from dear old technology.

Sometimes YouTube and Google will shadowban Corbett Report videos. They will not come up on a "Search". Sometimes, a mirrored copy by another user will come up. The SEARCH mechanism on Google and YouTube is Orwellian. If the topic is on the "Blacklist", it will be difficult to locate. Information is being scrubbed from the internet at an alarming rate. Like Ward pointed out, the comments on YouTube were very interesting. I like to read them. Here is the Bitchute Channel for Corbett Report, but the video is not yet uploaded. Bitchute sometimes has issues. https://www.bitchute.com/channel/GwPziiQZrVT3/ CORBETT REPORT WEBSITE - Several Video options - https://www.corbettreport.com/ Mirrored Bitchute of the COVID911 video https://www.bitchute.com/video/nOA6rh571p6L/ I smiled at this comment: " Corbett Report is my N.I.G.G.A.!!! That boi B spittin' hot fire son! "

Tucker brings up some interesting points.

That is only possible with huge continent scale wire transmission. Otherwise, most of the renewables are not economical where people live, and require much subsidization and acceptance of high cost electricity. At this point, if you want to lower your CO2.footprint you just need to avoid China made products, since they pretty much gave up on effectively going renewable. Coal plants still popping up - really big ones, and now have new nuclear capacity in the plan for the next few years. Their particulate plume causes less Pacific evaporation and thus less rainfall in N America and even Europe and the ME as their plume reaches the upper atmosphere over the Atlantic.

There is more than one type of coal. Don't clump them together.

See? Hate hate hate. That's all you offer. Kinda like Trump. No wonder you see him as your role model. Don't you find it ironic that a person who treats Obama like he's from Kenya gets upset when others treat him the same way? But I don't think you do. You don't seem like a person capable of irony. Or humor for that matter.

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1. First he has to win, eh? 2. Even if he does, nothing will change. Endless shit, endless hate, kinda like this thread. 3. Trump's too disorganized to accomplish anything, other then shitting on people. He's also too old, like Biden. Both of their minds have calcified to the point where both are incapable of creative ideas. The fact that the current election is Biden vs Trump, two octogenerians- one angry, the other bland- is evidence of the dysfunctional nature of American politics. If Trump is seen as the figure of American conservatism, then American conservatism is dead. The last four years under Trump has gone exactly as I expected. Endless hate, endless rage. That's what happens when a sociopath is in power. And if Trump wins again, I reckon the same shit will happen again in the next four years. EDIT: Oh yeah, one other point. All this talk about "severing relationships" is appropriate. The only thing Trump and many of his supporters are capable of are severing relationships and breaking stuff and hating on others. Building relationships or alliances or anything long lasting? Nah. Trump and many of his supporters are only capable of hate and paranoia. Trump's isolationism is playing right into China's hands.

Mr. E, I am going to Object to your characterizations, whether or not you intended them as being scornful. I don't think that Mr. Trump will "win," and this is not some football game, this is serious business, the selection by the Voters of the country's future path in history, not because of some failure of platform (and I choose not to go there), but because the deck is stacked against him. Previous cycles of politicians have polluted and bastardized the reason and the Rules of the Electoral College Convention, so that it has become a circus. If the Convention were an honest contest, with opposing ideas fairly presented from the podium by contesting speakers, then it is more likely than not that Mr. Trump would prevail. However, the system is rigged. the delegates are puppets, they simply mouth whtever their State instructions are, and you might as well not even have an electoral college. Picture, if you will, an open forum contest of competing ideas, between the Trump supporters and the Biden supporters. Toss in some minority candidates to make it interesting. Under those circumstances, Mr. Biden would be likely to fall flat. As to Covid-19, I conclude that it is a nasty disease. It can attack lung tissue and necrotize it, a daunting prospect. It can debilitate, and kill, its hosts. We have Covid thanks to the behaviour of the Han Chinese and their ideas of eating pangolins and playing with viral matter in warfare labs. It is my view that the USA (and the rest of the civilized world) can and should disengage from China completely, including a travel ban. The Chinese are not going to change; they will continue to infect the West with these diseases. Meanwhile, has the West over-reacted? It looks that way. Likely lots and lots of people are or have been infected and remain asymptomatic. Plus, you can have the disease and not be contagious. The whole "mask" thing is faintly ridiculous, an expression of politicians wanting to be seen "doing something." A mask is good (for about 3 hours, then it gets saturated and is useless) for protecting others from you if you are infected and coughing or sneezing. A mask does not protect you from someone else's infections. Is covid "serious"? That depends. It is serious for certain segments of society. It can kill, as do most diseases and pandemics. But it tends to be concentrated in cities. Rural areas might as well not bother with all the fuss, the disease simply does not get there. If I personally got the disease, it would probably be fatal. But I do not wear a mask, in that (1) a mask is useless, and (2) there is no disease in my rural area. So let's not get hysterical about this Chinese plague, but work on the vaccine (assuming that one can be manufactured).