The USA is still the greatest country in the world.

[Walker]

...
Trump is zeroed in on the oil. It’s about energy. Babble this and that about vague confidences, but globally it’s about energy. Germany can have all the windmills it wants and see how far that goes. ...

Pretty far it seems -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable ... in_Germany
and possibly much further
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable ... in_Denmark

I'll be interested to see if he can get the oil barons to open their pipes cheap but I thought he was about Coal as well?

Forget the vague theoretical flutters of whimsy.
This sums up why Trump won, and why the world should take notice of the echoes.
Of interest to the West.
Victor Davis Hanson - The Mythologies of the 2016 Election
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7pQdqPzozc

Interesting and pretty much what I thought about what happened as I had friends travelling in America and they were telling me that outside the cities all you could see were Trump signs.

For me the issues are fairly clear in the UK, the working and lower middle class have seen no appreciable increase in their wages compared to increased cost of living since the late 70's whereas the upper-middle and rich have more than doubled theirs, with the super-rich getting vastly more than that. Add to that the changing immigration demographics(although in reality immigrants are still a very small minority over here) which disproportionately affect the working classes, an increase in divisive religious belief and you have the perfect storm against the moribund and complacent political classes. Personally I think this is one of the Marxist/Leninist historical political tipping points and am optimistic that it doesn't have to be to the far-right but could be captured by an innovative new political movement that comes up with new ideas to address the problems and has a clear vision for the future, especially since there is about to be a massive tranche of new unemployment due to robotics, automation and AI(I don't mean 'skynet').

Coal? One can only hope to see the heads explode in fireworks.

Houses and cars are the big retail items. They’re still fairly labor intensive, even though robotics have gotten involved. I’ve worked in a labor intensive factory. It’s long gone, replaced by fancy buildings for shopping. Sometimes I go in them and orient myself in the old space, imagining the conditions that defined the coordinates back then. Same space, entirely different reality. And it’s not like China is filled with robots.

It’s simple in the mass mentality. Notice how Trump says China? He bites off the word, like a curse. The conditioning: China is the enemy. It’s a simple cold-war tactic. Sounds shocking to we-are-the-world. It’s like the ME. The US doesn’t need the ME, not since Oklahoma started shaking. The US only fears the strength of other alliances with the ME. However, a strong negotiator knows the needs of the ME, and just may own it.

[Dalek Prime]

Define great. Does it mean 'suck' in this context?

[Walker]

Define great. Does it mean 'suck' in this context?

Elevate the defining focusing sights.

It means to be king of the hill, top of the heap, as a stark manifestation of the defining principle in the city that doesn’t sleep, must necessarily be.

“I felt as I had always felt about New York – that it is the most horrible place on God’s earth. No matter how many times I escape I am brought back, like a runaway slave, each time detesting it, loathing it, more and more.”
- Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.

[Dalek Prime]

Define great. Does it mean 'suck' in this context?

Elevate the defining focusing sights.

It means to be king of the hill, top of the heap, as a stark manifestation of the defining principle in the city that doesn’t sleep, must necessarily be.

“I felt as I had always felt about New York – that it is the most horrible place on God’s earth. No matter how many times I escape I am brought back, like a runaway slave, each time detesting it, loathing it, more and more.”
- Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.

You either love or hate NYC. Or any big city for that matter.

[Walker]

Define great. Does it mean 'suck' in this context?

Elevate the defining focusing sights.

It means to be king of the hill, top of the heap, as a stark manifestation of the defining principle in the city that doesn’t sleep, must necessarily be.

“I felt as I had always felt about New York – that it is the most horrible place on God’s earth. No matter how many times I escape I am brought back, like a runaway slave, each time detesting it, loathing it, more and more.”
- Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.

You either love or hate NYC. Or any big city for that matter.

"They see a beautiful, shining car which purrs like a cat; they see endless concrete roads so smooth and flawless that the driver has difficult keeping awake; they see cinemas which look like palaces; they see department stores with mannikins dressed like princesses. They see the glitter and paint, the baubles, the gadgets, the luxuries; they don’t see the bitterness in the heart, the skepticism, the cynicism, the emptiness, the sterility, the despair, the hopelessness which is eating up the American worker. They don't want to see this - they are full of misery themselves. they want a way out: they want the lethal comforts, conveniences, luxuries. and they follow in our footsteps - blindly, heedlessly, recklessly."
- ibid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMiY_ekrPSk

[thedoc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLmVGdMoyv0

[attofishpi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLmVGdMoyv0

Not sure about that Doc - Gene Pitney - now there's a great USA e in. The miming is terrible tho!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cxhl8AwOf0

[Walker]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLmVGdMoyv0

Roy Clark Cornpone lasted about 5 seconds.

Let it enfold you.

“The great time-wasters, I find, are in the North, among the busy-bodies. Their whole life, one might say, is just so much time wasted. The fat, puffy, wattle-faced man of forty-five who has turned asexual is the greatest monument to futility that America has created. He’s a nymphomaniac of energy accomplishing nothing. He’s an hallucination of the Paleolithic man. He’s a statistical bundle of fat and jangled nerves for the insurance man to convert into a frightening thesis. He sows the land with prosperous, restless, empty-headed, idle-handed widows who gang together in ghoulish sororities where politics and diabetes go hand in hand.”
- ibid

[doolhoofd]

"You can say what you want about this country, and I love this place. I love the freedoms we used to have; I loved it when it didn’t take a f***in' catastrophe to get us to care for one another; I love the fact that we’re on camera all the time, from all angles. You can say what you want about America and I say I love this place, wouldn’t have it any other way, live in any other time in history or in any other place - but. Say what you want about America - land of the free, home of the brave - we’ve got some dumb-*ss motherf***ers floatin' around in this country. Dumb-*ss motherf***ers!

Now, obviously, that doesn’t include this audience, I understand that. You seem intelligent and perceptive. But the rest of them - holy jumping f***ing sh**balls. Dumber than a second coat of paint!

And this isn’t just random ranting and raving; this isn’t just blowing off steam. I’ve got a little evidence to support my claim. It just seems to me - seems to me - that only a really low-IQ population could have taken this beautiful continent, this magnificent American landscape that we inherited... - well, actually we stole it from the Mexicans and the Indians, but hey, it was nice when we stole it! Looked pretty good. It was pristine. Paradise... Have you seen it lately? Have you taken a good look at it lately? It’s f***ing embarrassing. Only a nation of unenlightened half-wits could have taken this beautiful place, and turned it into what it is today: a shopping mall. A big f***in' shopping mall. That’s all you’ve got here folks. Mile after mile of mall after mall. Many, many malls. Major malls and mini malls. They put the mini malls in between the major malls, and in between the mini malls they put the mini marts. And in between the mini marts you got the car lots, gas stations, muffler shops, laundromats, cheap motels, fast food joints, strip clubs and dirty bookstores. America the beautiful. One big transcontinental commercial cesspool.

And how do the people feel about all this? How do people feel about living in a coast-to-coast shopping mall? Well, they think it is just f***ing dandy. They think it is cool as can be, because Americans love the mall. That’s where they get to satisfy their two most prominent addictions - at the same time: shopping, and eating! Millions of semi-conscious Americans, day after day, shuffling through the mall, shopping and eating - especially eating. Americans love to eat. They are fatally attracted to the slow death of fast food. Hot dogs, corn dogs, triple-bacon cheese burgers, deep fried butter-dipped pork fat, cheese-whiz mayonnaise, barbecued mozzarella patty-mouths - Americans will eat anything. Anything! If you were selling sauté'd raccoon’s *ssholes on a stick, Americans would buy them, and eat them. Especially if you dipped them in butter and put a little salt on them. This country is big time pig time. Forget the bald eagle - you know what the national emblem of this country ought to be? A big bowl of macaroni and cheese. A big bowl, because everything in this country is king size, extra large and super jumbo.

Especially the f***ing people! Have you seen some of the people in this country? Have you taken a good look at some of these big, fat motherf***ers walking around? Big, fat motherf***ers... Huge piles of redundant protoplasm, lumbering through the malls like a fleet of interstate buses. The people in this country are immense. Massive bellies, monstrous thighs and big, fat f***ing *sses!"

- George Carlin, Life Is Worth Losing (performed live on HBO in 2005)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLODGhEyLvk

[doolhoofd]

"The blank, oppressive void facing the American consumer populace remains unfilled today, despite the recent launch of the revolutionary Swiffer dust-elimination system, sources reported Monday. The lightweight, easy-to-use Swiffer is the 275,894,973rd amazing new product to fail to fill the void - a vast, soul-crushing spiritual vacuum Americans of all ages helplessly face on a daily basis, with nowhere to turn and no way to escape." - The Onion
https://www.theonion.com/amazing-new-sw ... 1819565472

[henry quirk]

freedom, bitches

[vegetariantaxidermy]

freedom, bitches

More like 'Fuck you'. And lose the tedious macho act. We all know you are an 80 pound nerd with false teeth and no discernible muscle tone.

[Walker]

Interesting old prognostications in this thread.

[henry quirk]

moo

[PeteJ]

The idea that the USA is the greatest country is hard to compute. All we can say with confidence is that its residents are inclined to think it is. Quite why is unclear. I suspect it's the constant propaganda. Oddly, this view is less common outside the US.