Preview of Inauguration Day 2025

[Joe Guy]

MAGA people at the Capitol January 20th 2025
after finding out the inauguration ceremony is taking place indoors

[Bicycle Bill]

It's being held indoors, supposedly because it's going to be cold (in the 20s).   20 degrees in January?   Hey, I'm from Wisconsin.   Me and anyone else who lives up in the Illinois/Iowa/Minnesota/UP Michigan/Wisconsin area would tell him to button up his coat and stop being such a pussyl
Truthfully, I think the reason he's moving it inside is because there's supposed to be 20 mph winds blowing as well — and we all know just how far Donnie will go in order to avoid the draft...

-"BB"-

[Joe Guy]

I....and we all know just how far Donnie will go in order to avoid the draft...

chuckle....

And I'm sure that cold weather aggravates his bone spurs.

[BoSoxGal]

Too bad was hoping he might catch an inaugural chill like Harrison did . . .

[Burning Petard]

Yeah, I know the legend, but the actual evidence says it was more likely typhus from lousy (typical for the time and place) sewer management around the White House. So a heart or stroke problem from the Prexy's own life style is more likely. I wish Trump lives out his entire term--his Veep scares me for all the usual reasons. I hope Trump's inaugural speech goes even longer than Harris' record. The longer Trump talks, the more he goes off script and reveals his own line of thinking (or not).

I am anxiously awaiting dinner time on Tuesday when there will be no war in Gaza or Ukraine, and eggs will be 99 cents a dozen at my grocery store.

snailgate.

[ex-khobar Andy]

What BP said - I want him to live. His saving grace - if the last time is any indication - is his sheer incompetence at getting anything done.

[liberty]

Trump did it this time, I understand that he has delayed the banning of tick tock; that's a bad idea. I can only hope he changes his mind or that Congress will override him. It's just downright nonsensical to give a hostile government that kind of access to the US.

[Joe Guy]

It's interesting how Trump is suddenly for keeping TikTok running. Xi Jinping probably promised him he could build a golf course in Beijing.

[Big RR]

More likely he told Trump to do it and Trump complied, kind of like Michael Correleone telling Fredo to do something (but like Fred, Trump is likely to screw it up anyway). Trump knows who he serves.

[Burning Petard]

Trump blesses the short attention span of most Americans. A typical whipping boy for any problem, right behind the invading immigrants is China.
China is eating our lunch. (such a metaphorical contrast with 'clean your plate, remember the starving people in China). So he will place a terrible import tariff on any thing from China. Almost simultaneously he brags about all the stuff we are selling to China at fire sale prices. He brags as a great achievement that Somebody From China has shown up with big bags of money to buy up our cheap labor, cheap real estate, and cheap potable water.
And tik-tok is no national security danger--oh look, a squirrel!

snailgate

[Sue U]

And tik-tok is no national security danger--oh look, a squirrel!

snailgate

Every data-scraping internet app is a potential "national security threat" (for a given definition of "national security," YMMV). But the (presently most effective) solution is not to ban apps, it is to regulate how much and what kind of information can be collected, and to make that collection activity transparent. Tik Tok is no more (and no less) a threat than Facebook, Xitter, or Amazon.

[Big RR]

[Burning Petard]

No more threat than. . .

I dunno. The ones mentioned are all run by Western greedy robber barons. I have an email address I have only used at Amazon, since the first week amazon opened a warehouse in New Castle DE. I have NEVER received any spam at that address. I have always used a Discover card for my transactions and the only information Amazon has for me is my name, mail drop, and purchases, and whatever they can find on a credit search. (which is alot.) I have nothing to do with X or Twitter of Facebook. Tik-tok is different.

The Chineese culture and its current government have a completely different vision of what it means to own property or be a good member of the community. Transparency as the term is used in our commercial or political culture is incomprehensible to the Chinese. The Carter (and Biden) administrations' attempt to put human rights and self-determination at the center of US foreign relations is only understandable to China as a tactic for concelealment of actual intent or agenda.

Yes, in detail, a contradiction to every thing I say here about China could probably be referenced. That does not remove the practical usefulness of generalities. China uses Go as a war exercise. America uses Chess.

I don't see a similar threat to national security among these organizations, except for potential piracy or insurrection. There has always been certain business opportunities for profit in war and suffering.

snailgate.

[Joe Guy]

Just a thought for your consideration....

[Sue U]

[liberty]

Trump blesses the short attention span of most Americans. A typical whipping boy for any problem, right behind the invading immigrants is China.
China is eating our lunch. (such a metaphorical contrast with 'clean your plate, remember the starving people in China). So he will place a terrible import tariff on any thing from China. Almost simultaneously he brags about all the stuff we are selling to China at fire sale prices. He brags as a great achievement that Somebody From China has shown up with big bags of money to buy up our cheap labor, cheap real estate, and cheap potable water.
And tik-tok is no national security danger--oh look, a squirrel!

snailgate

The Chinese are eating our lunch. Here's one example the US develops a superior battery and a Chinese American, Gary Yang, gives it to China. He was born in China but became an American citizen. Why did he give it to China; my suspicion is his loyalties are to China; he may even be a plant. Your stupid political correctness is going to kill us or make us slaves.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/11149642 ... a-vanadium


When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.

They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.

[Bicycle Bill]

The Chinese are eating our lunch. Here's one example the US develops a superior battery and a Chinese American, Gary Yang, gives it to China. He was born in China but became an American citizen. Why did he give it to China; my suspicion is his loyalties are to China; he may even be a plant. Your stupid political correctness is going to kill us or make us slaves.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/11149642 ... a-vanadium


When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.

They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.

I notice your copy-and-paste stopped short of the following:

The agency issued the license, and Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies. He hired engineers and researchers. But he soon ran into trouble. He said he couldn't persuade any U.S. investors to come aboard.

"I talked to almost all major investment banks; none of them (wanted to) invest in batteries," Yang said in an interview, adding that the banks wanted a return on their investments faster than the batteries would turn a profit.

He didn't 'GIVE' the battery or technology to China ... a Chinese company invested in it and got the rights to it after the American financiers turned him down.

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

Yesterday my patient and I watched old westerns on MeTV all day, successfully avoiding all the ICK of inauguration day. This morning I had to shut off NPR and turn on 80s music radio on the way to work to avoid hearing the litany of horror already accomplished on just day one. I spent very little time on Facebook today but even that modest amount of time was too much, too many posts about the horrors. I am sending messages to friends from whom I need snailmail addresses, then will be deactivating my account there.

I'm done paying attention. If you need me, I'll be at my local library where I am utterly safe from MAGAts - they don't know where it is. If you really need me, like for the resistance, put a note in the end pages of one of the local copies of Animal Farm and I will find it and report for my mission as required. Remember that I am a US Army rated expert marksman and I have nothing to lose, so I'm all in.

Until/unless there is an uprising, I suspect the next four years will just be the most toxic TV reality show ever devised with endless opportunities for intense frustration, pain and anger - and I just can't do it again. You are all very much aware how poorly I did on the mental health front the last time around, and while my physical and mental health are loads better going into 2.0, I don't want to expend any of my remaining precious life energy talking about that toxic piece of shit and his toxic entourage. Not one minute of it, as time is growing shorter by the day.

I'm not apathetic, I think we all know that. But beyond doing the small things I can do in my own corner of this world, I don't see the point in giving a shit anymore about the political conversation. I'll vote, as I've always done. Meantime I've got just the one precious life and I think my time is better spent finally reading Don Quixote in full (sorry Professor Wicks, I skipped some parts!), and War & Peace, and Moby Dick - among others.

[BoSoxGal]

So obviously it's impossible to not hear the news and today I am outraged over the blanket pardons of the Jan. 6 perpetrators including those who violently assaulted police and PLEAD GUILTY and those who plotted the whole thing.

Meanwhile the MAGA GOP is engaging in whataboutisms about Biden's commutation of 80 year old Leonard Peltier's sentence to home confinement, where he can die under the substandard care of the Indian Health Service instead of under the substandard care of the Bureau of Prisons. No pardon, and Peltier (as always) maintains his innocence of the crimes for which he was convicted.

[liberty]

The Chinese are eating our lunch. Here's one example the US develops a superior battery and a Chinese American, Gary Yang, gives it to China. He was born in China but became an American citizen. Why did he give it to China; my suspicion is his loyalties are to China; he may even be a plant. Your stupid political correctness is going to kill us or make us slaves.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/11149642 ... a-vanadium


When a group of engineers and researchers gathered in a warehouse in Mukilteo, Wash., 10 years ago, they knew they were onto something big. They scrounged up tables and chairs, cleared out space in the parking lot for experiments and got to work.

They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid.

I notice your copy-and-paste stopped short of the following:

The agency issued the license, and Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies. He hired engineers and researchers. But he soon ran into trouble. He said he couldn't persuade any U.S. investors to come aboard.

"I talked to almost all major investment banks; none of them (wanted to) invest in batteries," Yang said in an interview, adding that the banks wanted a return on their investments faster than the batteries would turn a profit.

He didn't 'GIVE' the battery or technology to China ... a Chinese company invested in it and got the rights to it after the American financiers turned him down.

-"BB"-

You intentionally bypass or overlooked the parts where several American companies tried to get licenses and got no response. This battery was not supposed to leave the country; it was supposed to be produced by an American company, that was the rule but this one individual, a Chinese man with family in China make the decision on his own and turned it over to a Chinese company. Turning it over to a Chinese company is the same as turning it over to the Chinese government. They're really not communist anymore; they're more like the system that Nazis Germany had. However as far as murderous is concerned there is no different, they're just as bad as the Nazis and now we can see that you're one of their supporters. It is stupid, no one who has family in China should get a US government security clearance or work in a highly sensitive position of any kind.