US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1270

On April 02 2019 16:23 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

Yes, western climate fanatics like to croak how China is a renewables powerhouse while failing to mention the massive three gorges dam is the worlds largest power plant.Actually news just came out that China was using 17% more coal than claimed by their government.Many new coal power plants being built there.Westerners focused on Europe where emissions peaked in 90’ and USA where emissions peaked in 07’.

On April 02 2019 16:23 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

Yes, western climate fanatics like to croak how China is a renewables powerhouse while failing to mention the massive three gorges dam is the worlds largest power plant.

On April 03 2019 00:26 farvacola wrote:
If Trump actually goes through with closing the southern border, the resulting shitshow will be truly remarkable. The economic effects cannot be overstated.

On April 03 2019 00:35 Mohdoo wrote:


Won't happen. There are clearly a few people who are always able to step on his neck when he gets truly out of line. He just wanted to feel powerful, so here we are.

On April 02 2019 16:17 EnDeR_ wrote:


Not true as of 2018:
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/

From the article:


Investing in renewables is a sound economic plan no matter which way you look at it.

Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn’t resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.

Interviews with a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials confirm Biden’s account, though they claim the pressure was applied over several months in late 2015 and early 2016, not just six hours of one dramatic day. Whatever the case, Poroshenko and Ukraine’s parliament obliged by ending Shokin’s tenure as prosecutor. Shokin was facing steep criticism in Ukraine, and among some U.S. officials, for not bringing enough corruption prosecutions when he was fired.

But Ukrainian officials tell me there was one crucial piece of information that Biden must have known but didn’t mention to his audience: The prosecutor he got fired was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings that employed Biden’s younger son, Hunter, as a board member.

U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.

The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.

Shokin told me in written answers to questions that, before he was fired as general prosecutor, he had made “specific plans” for the investigation that “included interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the executive board, including Hunter Biden.”

...

But then, as Biden’s 2020 campaign ramped up over the past year, Lutsenko — the Ukrainian prosecutor that Biden once hailed as a “solid” replacement for Shokin — began looking into what happened with the Burisma case that had been shut down.

Lutsenko told me that, while reviewing the Burisma investigative files, he discovered “members of the Board obtained funds as well as another U.S.-based legal entity, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, for consulting services.”

Lutsenko said some of the evidence he knows about in the Burisma case may interest U.S. authorities and he’d like to present that information to new U.S. Attorney General William Barr, particularly the vice president’s intervention.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Biden had correlated and connected this aid with some of the HR (personnel) issues and changes in the prosecutor’s office,” Lutsenko said.

Nazar Kholodnytskyi, the lead anti-corruption prosecutor in Lutsenko’s office, confirmed to me in an interview that part of the Burisma investigation was reopened in 2018, after Joe Biden made his remarks. “We were able to start this case again,” Kholodnytskyi said.

But he said the separate Ukrainian police agency that investigates corruption has dragged its feet in gathering evidence. “We don’t see any result from this case one year after the reopening because of some external influence,” he said, declining to be more specific.

...

But what makes Lutsenko’s account compelling is that federal authorities in America, in an entirely different case, uncovered financial records showing just how much Hunter Biden’s and Archer’s company received from Burisma while Joe Biden acted as Obama’s point man on Ukraine.

Between April 2014 and October 2015, more than $3 million was paid out of Burisma accounts to an account linked to Biden’s and Archer’s Rosemont Seneca firm, according to the financial records placed in a federal court file in Manhattan in an unrelated case against Archer.

The bank records show that, on most months when Burisma money flowed, two wire transfers of $83,333.33 each were sent to the Rosemont Seneca–connected account on the same day. The same Rosemont Seneca–linked account typically then would pay Hunter Biden one or more payments ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 each. Prosecutors reviewed internal company documents and wanted to interview Hunter Biden and Archer about why they had received such payments, according to interviews.

On April 03 2019 01:40 Plansix wrote:
Alternative theory: Both Biden and Biden Jr. and Manafort are grifters, but Manafort spent more than he took in and got stupid and sloppy because of it. Also he is really stupid and brazen.

Seriously, given how Manafort conducted himself during his trial and plea agreement, its pretty clear he was never all that bright to begin with. He just never ran afoul of the FBI until he joined up with a successful president campaign.

But I do agree with the point that Biden should stay on teh sidelines. Not just because of this, but because he represents some of the worst aspects of 90s era democrats.

On April 03 2019 01:42 xDaunt wrote:

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Manafort is clean. What was uncovered against him certainly proved that he's not.

On April 03 2019 02:37 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
So why is Trump now posting stuff against the release of the Mueller report when it ' totally exonerates' him and he said earlier he was fine with it being released?

On April 03 2019 01:22 Nebuchad wrote:
One thing that we don't always say about climate change is that it won't affect all places with the same violence. The main image that pops in my head when people go "We won't be able to do anything, so we might as well do nothing" is the image of everyone dying and people shrugging about that, which is weird. But that's not necessarily what they think. Maybe they think a bunch of other people will die elsewhere, and we first world ( / white) folks are mostly going to be fine, but they don't think they can say that out loud because it's politically incorrect.