Random Politics & Religion #07

Wtf is up with Trump singing Saddam's praises? Of course the GOP is running not walking away from him today.

There are alot of liberal voices against nuclear in the same way that alot of liberals buy into the woo surrounding green-living. Magic crystals, healing herbs and alot of unproven ***. The same type of *** that has people buying into chopping off tiger testes and rhino horns for folk medicine. But those Asians are craaaaazy. Now gimme my magic antioxidant, skin revitalizing kale shake or whatever.

That being said, the push for nuclear isn't there because we can't even be arsed to improve our infrastructure nevermind make the kind of future-forward thinking that nuclear reactors would potentially provide. People think reactors are *** bombs, ignorance is rampant, pols rather talk about other green energy sources that are less scary (windmills, yo) or domestic oil/natural gas.

Lol, is that even surprising. Trump gets a hard on for fascists and has been running his fascism-lite campaign much to the delight of patriots who want their strongman.

I can't for him to apologize for Trujillo, Franco and Pinochet.

they are bombs.

you should see the idiots they have running them.... /shakes
people no smarter than you or I!!!

and don't even get me started on the outside contractors they bring in... If I have to watch one more safety video about johnny dumbass...

I don't think Homer Simpson is rl!

well then let me ask you this....

have you ever met an american that you would willingly hand over the keys to a nuclear bomb with a 500 mile blast radius?

/waits

that's what I thought....

I'm a bit confused. Probably not a good play for him, but haven't people been in general been complaining about the destabilization in Iraq that occurred as a result of Saddam being ousted? It sounds like Trump just took it one step further by praising him for his anti-terrorism actions.

One thing is saying the war in Iraq was pure idiocy, another is saying Hussein was a cool guy.

Beware of people with a mustache.

I'm trying to figure out what "anti-terrorism" actions Trump is referring to. Perhaps when Saddam used chemical weapons on his own people? Or maybe when he was attacking Israel? He only spent most of his tenure on the state sponsors of terrorism list, reimbursing families of suicide bombers and all that jazz. Trump seems to have a fascination with lauding enemies of the free world, its another one of these "omg will you shut up" moments.

Anti-terrorism? What kind of *** spin is this. The guy was a totalitarian dictator that killed anyone who got in his way of absolute power.

You can lament Iraq post-Hussain but the kind of gymnastics required to make Saddam into some democratic hero.... just wow.

Yes, and no, considering those are tradeoff parameters. One could also argue that hydroelectric/geothermal/wind and to some degree solar don't follow the same population-density basis, being more availability/resource specific. There's a neat map over at http://www.eia.gov which is a good point to get an overview of relative placement of different types of power generation.

You can certainly see the effect that solar subsidies has had in North Carolina, for example.
.

Who's making him out to be a democratic hero? Maybe I'm just weird because I don't turn everything Trump says into extreme hyperbole like everyone else, but this is what he said:

Huh that makes zero sense...

Point: "Water is wet"

Response: "Actually by looking at the consistency of this glass we can deduct steel is hard"

It's trump, he could comment about the blue color of the sky and Democrat talking heads would then reply how he's a racist *** for excluding pink and grey.

I'm sure Harvard really appreciates that. The crickets in the room that met Trump after that sound byte say it all really. Also, Saddam's definition of terrorists vastly differed from the free world's. Oh yeah, did I mention chemical weapons against every Iraqi that opposed him?
Why is Trump even talking about Saddam? If he isn't talking about Clinton, he shouldn't even be talking. Nobody is interested in any more of his stupid foreign policy ideas.

well... iraq under saddam was a secular country. the baath revolution was a socialist movement. he did execute a lot of terrorist, but it's the stagnant economy that overtime lowered education standards, and pushed iraqi's to the brink. those factors over several decades created an environment prime for being exploited by jihadi's. which is part of the reason we're in the situation we are now. yeah, the us busted the pipes by taking out the guy "holding it together", but there was decades of a majority being repressed my a minority. it's kind of to be expected. that doesn't mean a brutal dictator is a good thing, it just means that you can keep a lid on sectarian violence by uniting the people against a brutal dictator.

i typed that out while being distracted at work, and didn't really proofread. my apologies for the hot mess.

Well, let's see if we can put it a different way.

Dogs ***. Horses ***. Elephants ***.
The logistics necessary for handling dogshit versus elephant ***, even if the total ***output is the same, is different. Let alone the differences in complexity in handling the unique actors producing the equivalent amounts of ***.

Just because the general concept of a problem isn't unique, doesn't mean that here are critical differences in how it should/needs to/will be handled.

Trump praises the lack of due process yet it's the opposition's fault for reacting to "hyperbole". Okay.

In this care there isn't.

Utility grade power is generated centrally for a really good reason. Nothing created thus far shows and change in that reason.

For example your about to spout out about solar panels. Terrestrial Photovoltic cells are the least efficient way to generate power from sunlight. The better way is to direct all the light to a central collector that's material absorbs all the light and converts it into thermal energy that's stored in either water or a special thermal fluid. It's converted into steam to turn a turbine and *poof* power.

See the problem is our atmosphere diffuses incoming solar energy into so many different wavelengths that it's possibly to convert only a small fraction of it directly into electricity via PV cells. There is no magic "green technology" that fixes this, it's just physics being a ***. The thermal way, while having more steps, enables a significantly larger portion of the original light energy to be rendered useful. The issue with this is the large capital and maintenance costs of such a facility. Those costs don't scale much with size and so you build a really large facility and just deal with the power loss on the transmission lines. They have been working on miniaturizing the conversion equipment for years in the hope of building many smaller plants, but the capital costs are still really high.

I know everyone has this idea of all these solar panels somehow "powering" the world, but it's a false and unrealistic idea. First world nations simply use so much power, not just for residential but also commercial, government, military and industrial. PV Solar panels serve more as a power reduce, helping to offset the power usage, especially from Air Conditioning and other daily activities. Along this line of thinking I fully support putting PV solar everywhere it can fit as a way to reduce our swing / peak load, but it's not going to replace any base load.

Democrats attempt to pass a law preventing Americans from purchasing firearms who have been placed on a government watch list without due process: *Applause*

Trump praises the elimination of terrorists without due process: *Boooooooo*

Conclusion? Due process is for terrorists, not Americans.

Jesus Christ

Don't call them terrorists, they are misunderstood freedom fighters who are merely showing their discontent at the evil oppressive capitalistic American empire.

You're lying to yourself if you think that Democrats were the only ones to sponsor list-based restrictions. But yeah, both sides equally bad. Vote potato.

Twist as much as you want, there is no defending Trump's pathetic praise of Saddam Hussein. No one is taking it out of context, no one tricked him into saying it, he got up there on stage and was met with near silence.

"Finally, the recognition I deserve!"

Wow I must say I expected at least some of the lefty crowd to be justifying he innocence. At least no one here tried to still spout "she didn't do anything wring".

I'm proud of you for once.

Now start feeling some shame over still rooting for Americas own post menopausal version of Cersi Lanister. You only perpetuate the "rigged system" by aiding her election.

Sunlight at the 45th parallel = 15 horsepower per square freaking foot. All we need to do is learn how to collect it.

P. S. I live in a state that could be entirely self sufficient in renewable energy if everyone owned an electric car and we didn't provide electricity to 1/3 of the entire nation.

Please remove your sensory cluster from your waste chute.

Mmmmm, carbs.