[Plantagenet]

Okay folks there is a 90% plus chance Nancy Pelosi will be the new speaker come January 2019, what do you think will come of this change?

Full blown resist, investigate, and attempt to impeach. That is the message they ran on.

I think Adam Schiff and the Ds will unleash the House intelligence committee to chase the imaginary collusions between and the Russians. And Maxine Waters will go into full impeachment mode.

But Nancy Pelosi is a lot shrewder then that. Remember when the Ds said they opposed Bush and they would stop the War in Iraq? But then when they took over the house and Nancy became speaker the Ds just quietly passed budget after budget that fully funded the war in Iraq. I expect the same dynamic here.

Plus, Nancy already is in Trump's debt. Trump tweeted this morning that he would get some Rs to vote for Nancy for speaker if another D candidate opposed here. That guarantees Nancy will face no real opposition. Nancy owes her job to Trump now, and if she doesn't play along at any time Trump could withdraw his promise of R support.

Cheers!

[Tanada]

I wasn't done talking about the election, but the other thread is closed. Trump is perfectly capable of deciding he will run as a Democrat in the 2020 elections. It is after all a much closer match to his Liberal NYC roots. If he decides to take the Democrat ticket, there is nothing much the media, the titular leaders of the DNC, or anybody else could do about it. Remember when NOBODY believed he was a viable Republican candidate? Being a Democrat is less of a stretch, by a considerable margin.

That is Kalifornia logic if I ever heard it. President Trump knows a) the D's will never accept him now and B) he would lose his loyal base of voters if he tried a stunt like that. He did not get to be a Billionaire by acting like a fool in his real life, his public persona aside. The D's are going to run another woman, possibly the HRC rerun or a switch to a Kalifornia senate democratic woman like Harris. They have already declared all 'white males' as persona non grata and they are doubling down on that, not turning back from the precipice.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I wasn't done talking about the election, but the other thread is closed. Trump is perfectly capable of deciding he will run as a Democrat in the 2020 elections. It is after all a much closer match to his Liberal NYC roots. If he decides to take the Democrat ticket, there is nothing much the media, the titular leaders of the DNC, or anybody else could do about it. Remember when NOBODY believed he was a viable Republican candidate? Being a Democrat is less of a stretch, by a considerable margin.

That is Kalifornia logic if I ever heard it. President Trump knows a) the D's will never accept him now and B) he would lose his loyal base of voters if he tried a stunt like that. He did not get to be a Billionaire by acting like a fool in his real life, his public persona aside. The D's are going to run another woman, possibly the HRC rerun or a switch to a Kalifornia senate democratic woman like Harris. They have already declared all 'white males' as persona non grata and they are doubling down on that, not turning back from the precipice.

Plus the majority of the D's hate Trump. If you doubt that, peruse the comments section of many, many left leaning editorials and quite a few articles discussing Trump or his policies in the NYT, for example.

The idea that Trump could win the D presidential nomination strikes me as full on delusion.

Nothing personal there KJ -- I just think you completely jumped the shark on this one.

[KaiserJeep]

Like the majority of the R's don't hate and despise Trump either. The problem is that both traditional R and traditional D politicians are obsoleted by a Populist. All of you fail to appreciate how Trump manipulates BOTH the R's and the D's to his personal advantage. Now remove your heads from your nether regions and THINK outside the confining box called "partisanship".

BOTH the R's and the D's are obsolete political parties built around traditional power structures that are also obsolete in the era of online social media. Trump's presence as POTUS proves this to be so. I believe he should sow on the D's the very same chaos that he used to dominate the R's. In fact, I think it's the obvious move, the one few would expect or even believe, which in the new online reality makes it the easiest way to succeed.

The weakness of both parties is that they are virtually identical, differing only in rhetoric. What they actually DO, the explicit political corruption that defines both parties, is identical. I worked for a corporation that gave the D's approximately 55% of the funds, and the R's 45%, to cover all bases.

Folks, Trump doesn't CARE ABOUT THE MONEY. He's playing a game, amusing himself, and jerking around both parties, who are too stupid to know that in this day and age, political parties will either rapidly evolve or become irrelevent.

In case any of you haven't figured this out yet, Trump is the last thing from a Conservative. He even smirks for all to see when he pretends.

[vtsnowedin]

Well the house can investigate and impeach all it wants and when it goes to the Senate it will go down in flames. Waste of time but they will have their fun at our expense.
Now consider this with the house so closely divided Trump will only have to swing perhaps a dozen Dem votes on any issue to win a vote. How many of the 230 odd Dems. have a good stinking skeleton in their closet that Trump or his teem might find out about? Where is J.Edgar Hoover when you need him, or his files at least?

[Tanada]

Populism has nothing to do with social media. When Andrew Jackson got elected he was purely populist and when TR got reelected he was also pure populist both disliked by their respective parties and both quite willing to do things the party elites not only did not sponsor, but opposed completely.

Your understanding of history is incredibly shallow, like you read the Readers Digest version and stopped there. I will grant Social Media has the power to ramp up 'causes' for brief peaks of interest, but none of them up to this point has had the staying power to get anyone elected to anything. If Social Media were so powerful then Bret Kavinaugh would have been pilloried out of the hearing chamber and be fearing impeachment as I type this to remove him from the seat he already held when nominated for the SC.

The nation remains blue on the coasts and red in the middle, like a slow roasted slab of meat.

I don't particularly care for Pelosi but I remember that back in the last two years of Bush's term she talked a harsh game leading up to the election but after getting her control she pretty much went along with Bush without saying she was going along. IOW she worked across the aisle while talking the good talk for her supporters to think she was fighting against it tooth and nail.

I never wanted to see her back in the seat after she pushed Obamacare on us all back in 2009 but what is done is done, time to figure out a strategy for moving forward rather than denying reality as some D's have spent the last two years doing with every breath.

[Newfie]

I do think there will be a move to impeach, no matter how futile.

And I also expect Trump to attempt to work across the isle.

[Cog]

Maybe they will charge Trump with the crime of texting mean tweets and making Democrats feel bad. Can't wait to see what they come up with.

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada, I actually believe that mankind embedded in a digital network is a new cybernetic oganism that differs fundamentally from the conventional humans which still exist but are rapidly disappearing. The transition began a quarter century back and will contine for at least that long. Then cyber humans will be the norm, and struggle to understand things that we take for granted, as today you and I struggle to understand them.

A few SF visionaries have published similar thoughts, but walk through an airport or a restaurant or a coffee shop and watch the drones with their mobile devices. Do not tell me that those people are normal by the standards of 25 years ago. I recognise the difference, so will you with a little thought.

"Social Media" is not a media, it is the neurons of the hive mind. This is extremely different from anything that happened to Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, or the only modern Populist before Trump, Ross Perot.

Hint: The man you must understand to understand Trump is Roger Jason Stone, Jr.

[vtsnowedin]

.....
Pelosi ......

I never wanted to see her back in the seat after she pushed Obamacare on us all back in 2009 but what is done is done, time to figure out a strategy for moving forward rather than denying reality as some D's have spent the last two years doing with every breath.

No once someone stabs you and your family in the back you never forget and you keep your knives sharp waiting for your opportunity to even the score.

[Tanada]

.....
Pelosi ......

I never wanted to see her back in the seat after she pushed Obamacare on us all back in 2009 but what is done is done, time to figure out a strategy for moving forward rather than denying reality as some D's have spent the last two years doing with every breath.

No once someone stabs you and your family in the back you never forget and you keep your knives sharp waiting for your opportunity to even the score.

The vendetta/revenge cycle never ends until someone is willing to move forward. We don't need to be in the viscous cycle like those folks in Serbia and Bosnia who have been feuding every generation since the ancient Romans made them settle into fixed dwellings rather than living semi-nomadic lives.

[Newfie]

Quite right TANADA. But it seems a difficult lesson to learn.

[Tanada]

Tanada, I actually believe that mankind embedded in a digital network is a new cybernetic oganism that differs fundamentally from the conventional humans which still exist but are rapidly disappearing. The transition began a quarter century back and will contine for at least that long. Then cyber humans will be the norm, and struggle to understand things that we take for granted, as today you and I struggle to understand them.

A few SF visionaries have published similar thoughts, but walk through an airport or a restaurant or a coffee shop and watch the drones with their mobile devices. Do not tell me that those people are normal by the standards of 25 years ago. I recognise the difference, so will you with a little thought.

"Social Media" is not a media, it is the neurons of the hive mind. This is extremely different from anything that happened to Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, or the only modern Populist before Trump, Ross Perot.

Hint: The man you must understand to understand Trump is Roger Jason Stone, Jr.

Yes I am well aware of your techno fixation KJ, and in general I don't mind it as I find it mildly amusing. The way I see it as a history nerd is pretty simple. Lots of cultures achieve interesting things in their declining period, and almost always those things fade with the culture that created them. The Roman Empire routinely fielded ballistae that could out shoot the first century of gunpowder cannon that arrived a full thousand years later. But when the Western Empire fell the skill and knowledge to build those catapults of remarkable ability disappeared along with thousands of other things like tessellated tile art and exquisitely accurate sculpture and formations of javelin men who were the equal to short bow archers in any other military. Everything from aqueducts to under floor heating to hydraulic cement making were lost for centuries or even millennia.

Peak Oil is going to drop our modern culture back to about 1750 level for the first generation survivors. If the second generation has access to good books on how to actually do things they might bounce back up to 1850, perhaps even 1900 level technology. But cell phones and digital integration and everyone having the free time and excess income to network themselves in? Not so much. That first generation after the peak is going to be very busy figuring out how to survive in their new circumstances. Good leadership will mean more survivors and more complexity but judging by my local, state and federal leadership I am not very hopeful or optimistic about that. One thing that was true for almost all humans for almost all of history, if you want to survive you spend most of your waking hours preparing for next winter. You must accumulate energy resources to avoid freezing and food to get your through the period until the next food resources are available. In the Tropics this translates into wet season/dry season but the principle is the same. When you are working 60 hours a week every week to accumulate survival necessities you will not have the personal energy or financial resources for the digital dream life. It doesn't matter if a cell phone costs $1.00, when you actually have time to use it your goal is going to be playing a game or texting a friend as a way to relax and release the strain of your very busy life, not organizing complex systems of forever digital existence.

Oh sure maybe some of your coastal elites will manage to digitize themselves. Good for them. The rest of us are going to be too busy living rather than just existing online. If the digital elites get to be too much trouble there is always the off switch. I expect if I am ever forced into a deadly confrontation I would feel awful if I were the surviving party. Flipping the off switch for a digitized personality on the other hand gives me not the slightest feeling of trepidation or remorse.

[KaiserJeep]

Tanada, the part of that whole description that you are missing is that digital technology is literally the Fourth Wave of Industrial Revolution. It enables just-in-time manufacturing, instant communications, efficient fuel consumption, advanced medicines, instant access to information, online shopping for literally everything, and numerous other capabilities that cannot and will not exist without such devices.

Without the network and digital devices, many people starve and shiver in the cold. Trying to undo these efficiencies is simply not happening. I agree that many people will spend less time in the online world, but they are not gonna substitute any other activity costing money for free online entertainment, either. Digital everything is the clearest example of Pandora's Box one will ever encounter.

Which is why the network is spreading through the Third World as we speak, why Ibon has WiFi and gives his day workers digital breaks to access the network on top of his mountain. There is WiFi and solar phone charging up in the homeless encampment above my house, the advantages are simply too much to ever allow the network to go away for less important ways of spending time, such as scavenging for food. (There are tip lines for food handouts, and good things at the curb on trash days, and where you can find day work to buy your intoxicants, etc.)

It's not a matter of "finding time", it's because you stand a much higher chance of not starving with a phone and a network. In the homeless encampment, one phone with network access enables a WiFi hotspot with dozens of other phones, tablets, etc. sharing that network. No, they cannot watch video, but they can text one another and share online bulletin boards. Zero income has not regressed them to no network access.

They used to gather around a campfire, now they are clustering around their WiFi hotspot. Drunken homeless guy staggering down the street, texting, is not something I ever expected to see.

[Cog]

Got to agree with KJ. The communication network will be preserved at all cost. Too much of what we do is wrapped up in it. Ever seen a doctor lately? Everything is electronic. Prescriptions for meds are called in electronically. Yes there is some oil/gas involved with electricity but its trivial compared to transportation.

[KaiserJeep]

Let me go geeky on you again, because we are already seeing surgically implanted WiFi links inside people's skulls. Frankly, as a pre-digital human, the whole idea makes me feel kinda queasy. But it's already a big project on most college campuses, where the student body is 100% digital humans.

[Ibon]

Luddites Unite! A modern day Amish movement without the baggage of Jesus Christ. That is what I could get behind.

[Newfie]

Ahmen to that Brother.

[Cog]

Yes lets go back to the days of small pox, polio, bleeding people to cure their diseases, lynching of uppity black people, and all the things involved into retrograding back to the good old days.

You Luddites are simply amazing.

[KaiserJeep]

I think all of us pre-digital humans are uneasy about where this is going. I remember my reaction 22 years ago when my kid returned from her Summer-long "ecological studies" in Australia. The wife and I knew what it was about, my kid was a late bloomer who experienced her "terrible teens" in college, and although the Dept. of Biology at Beloit College organized the trip and an Assistant Professor went along with a study guide, it was pretty obvious.

But we were not expecting to see a lower back tattoo and a belly button piercing when she got back, both were perfectly legal at age 18 in Australia. I imagine our appalled reactions were similar to what she and her husband will experience when their kids come home with WiFi implants. Because that is clearly where we are going, and while the wife and I (and most peakoil.com members) are pre-digital humans, she started texting in Junior High, she and her video-gaming-junkie husband are first generation digital age humans.

Our reaction was to make her repay for the tattoo and piercing, which she had put on the credit card we gave her for the trip. It was of course, not nearly enough, but it was by then a done deal. Now try and imagine your kid connected to the internet inside their head.

No, you and I are unlikely to do that. But then again I don't have any piercings or tattoos, either.