"War, huh, good God, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!" - Trump Thread #157

[Spandauer]

It ain't nothing but a heart-breaker
(War) Friend only to The Undertaker
(Edwin Starr 1970, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong)

Unless, of course, your name ends in Trump, when it ain't nothing but an opportunity to grift, deflect and destroy.

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5496818-beware-the-ides-of-march-trump-thread-156

If you can find a copy of Rob(ert) Newmans "From Caliban to Taliban", he notes that there has only been 1 or 2 years since 1900 when the US has not been involved in some form of military action somewhere in the world.

Also has no one but me noticed the omission of "Vietnam" from that pretty picture ?

This North Sea oil thing confuses me. Are the Mail readers suddenly socialist and want a Nationalised oil industry, or do they want a free market economy, where the capitalists do what if best for their bottom line. And if it is subsidized oil they want, would they pay the required tax to fund it when oil prices are low ?

And oil has world pricing. So what little % of global oil the NS oil contributes to supply would hardly make a dent on price ?

The whole point of NSG was it's on tap. You don't "store" it except for linepack in the grid.

I did my sandwich year in the heart of the control centre for the high pressure (75 bar) gas grid. When the UK was the undisputed world leader in the tech and British Gas were doing some very lucrative work with the USSR to setup their gas grid.

I was lucky enough to meet one of the top boffins who was living over there when he popped back to Blighty. In the catch up dinner for the department he relayed how utterly utterly utterly weird Russian science was. Something I have never forgotten. Apparently they took it as gsopel that there was a layer of methane that existed between the upper crust and mantle. It was certainly how they acted.

@SerendipityJane thanks for the info I always thought it was stored.
Good to hear from someone that's been at the coalface so to speak.

Thanks for the new thread. Life is hectic right now (probably a good thing to keep me from doomscrolling the news!) but I’m checking in as and when I can.

The Russians also had some very weird ideas about archaeology.

Caught up on Drumpf's inane utterances from yesterday. He's not keeping up, is he?

As pointed out by PP, they have no understanding of what they're doing/have brought about so now, to compensate, they're (apparently) targeting domestic/civilian buildings/neighbourhoods using Netanyahu's old excuse that the buildings are being used to shield the baddies.

I fully expect that their 'winning' is going to be dependent on razing all urban settlements in Iran to the ground, irrespective of whether the building is a kindergarten, hospital or apartment. They have absolutely no idea how to deal with the fact that Epic Fury (🤮) didn't immediately produce a Super Heroes' ending in the Marvel Universe film that they all think they're starring in.

I never knew I could hold so much hatred in my body.

It's a bit "Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland / und morgen die ganze Welt", isn't it?

We MNetters know all this - but here it is neatly detailed in a Substack article:

The worst cabinet in American history
And it's not even close.
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-cabinet-worst-ever

His " Truth" is attached.

He now says he is doing it for China

Re the "Regime is hiding in urban areas". I can look out my window and see loads of "regime facilities". Government buildings, police stations. A hospital. 2 schools (one that my DD goes to). As well as state owned factories, state owned banks, a power substation and a large telecoms building.

Regime and Government are one and the same. They can't be separated.

I think it's not so much as 'groveling' expected, but that all other countries and their people should deeply admire us and seek to emulate us.

That mindset may be generational (with the exception of MAGAts). I was raised during the '60s/'70s and we were certainly indoctrinated taught in school that the US was by far better than any other country and had the admiration and envy of the world. I wouldn't say we were 'the greatest', maybe 'one of the best' as far as economy and living conditions*, but we still failed miserably as far as civil rights went. But by and large most could still have 'The American Dream'.

*So much of this is because of the WWII military manufacturing 'boom' and the fact that we had no active warfare on our shores so we didn't need to invest in rebuilding, our food supply ability wasn't decimated, and due to our varied natural resources to draw on.

They're the propaganda wing of this Administration so naturally they push their agenda.

Internal division is part of it, but I think it's mainly for indoctrination and because they don't want Scrotus to turn on them the way he's turned on responsible MSM and various journalists. After all their ratings depend on MAGAts.

Well, technically Viet Nam wasn't exactly a war, legally it was a 'conflict'. 🙄

This latest little excursion with bombs into another country isn't legally a war either, is it?

I really am at the End of the World and can only catch up with the thread when I can find wi-fi.
You're all moving so fast and talking about things I can't access!!! Waaaah!

The genius of the UK high pressure network is that by upping the pressure, you can store days worth of gas. This means that you can surf the daily gas market and buy gas at spot prices to pump into the network.

When I was there we had about 200 contracts with about 20 oil companies. Each contract mandated a total take with a weekly profile that had to fit the rig maintenance schedules. If you breached the figures you paid more for the gas.

The whole process began with a series of Telexes* from 8 weather stations with the airport weather forecast. (Because it was a set format). This was put into a program which worked out the estimated gas take per offtake, and what gas was needed at what terminal to achieve this with minimal compressor usage. (When a compressor station is a couple of Rolls Royce RB-211s,they take a lot of gas).

After that the whole matrix was mashed through a contract optimisation algorithm that created a shopping list of how much gas from which supplier under which contract. That was then used to create Telexes to the offices and oil rigs for 6pm as per contract requirement.

In my time, I saved £25,000 as we connected (via the PSS X.25 network) to the met office, thus saving 8x4x365 telexes a year.

*Ask your grandparents

The number of people on this site screaming about how we need to drill in the North Sea (with no real understanding of what's involved) is depressing.

As someone who knows a bit about drilling in the North Sea, I believe it was a mistake to curb drilling. Yes we have aging equipment and depleting fields, but the current gov't was wrong to stop the sale of new licences for drilling in new fields. New technologies can make operating in a hostile environment less expensive but adding a windfall tax was a bit unfair, given that the oil companies need to make a profit in markets that are very volatile. It's all about getting the balance right between exploiting our reserves and moving towards green energy.

$6.5 billion in ammo alone, in the first 2 days, by just the USA, is being reported.

I often wonder why they don't just bribe them.

Fun Fact.

There's actually a job title called "Pipeline Accountant".

@SerendipityJane im hitting 60 so no need to ask grandparents and if I did it would have to be with the assistance of a medium 👻thanks for the further info.

That was rather the point. But no matter what you call it, the US has been involved in something somewhere in the world for all but a year or two 1900-present.

I think Trump is in a load of shit with this war. Taken from elsewhere.

"Trump still doesn't realize what calamity he has brought upon himself and the American soldiers by martyring our Imam, and he wants to dictate terms to a nation," Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Iran's Parliament, wrote on X.
"The Americans, instead of taking a hard line, had not done so, and now they will come to understand that the fate of dear Iran, which is more precious than life, will be determined solely by the proud Iranian nation, not by Epstein's gang," he added.

('Epstein's gang ... this is how the world sees the US at the moment). With sympathy for all the sane people there.

So Iran will do what craven western politicians won't and call Trump out as the Pedos Princess ?

Have they setup a crowdfunder ?

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5775383-kevin-kiley-independent-gop/

Interesting note from Belle of the Ranch, that Trump's most recent toys-out-of-the-pram exercise, saying he'll refuse to sign any legislation until some bill or other that he favours is passed and sent to him, is a massive failure to understand that if he does this, the constitution says those bills will automatically pass after he hasn't signed them for a set number of days. His signature is not needed at all really, it's just a courtesy.