And yet the USA still has to import half of its oil needs and shale oil production in the US is rapidly declining, unsustainable at these low prices. Actually some shale oil producers are having to pay refineries 50 cents per barrel to take their high sulphur oil that they don't even want. The end result of this madness is most western nations, including the USA, will be on their knees licking the boots of terrorist Arab Petro-states so they will provide us with oil. Brilliant energy policy. These corrupt politicians deserve long prison terms, traitors is what they are.

Achieving Energy Victory, by Robert Zubrin:

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/achieving-energy-victory

I don't know how we could possibly turn the Earth into a radioactive wasteland, maybe a global nuclear war caused by allowing totally corrupted politicians making decisions based on who stuffs the most $cash in their pockets rather than a rational & sensible policy that serves the 99% of Earth's population and the health of the world ecosystem.

There is no problem for the world carrying 10 - 20 billion at a high standard of living. UN projections are population leveling off at ~11 billion by 2100, worst case scenario is 25 billion. That is no real problem. Certainly it is impossible to sustain exponential population growth, and we should use diligent means to encourage family planning & zero population growth. The current environmental problems are directly caused by greed & corruption, has nothing whatsoever to do with technological issues.

The human species ain't a cancer, that is stupid talk. The problem is our entire political systems are totally corrupted so rational economic, environmental & energy policy is forbidden by vested interests. It is no accident that the top 62 plutocrats - the corruptors - have as much wealth as the bottom 50%. And in fact that is actually a gross underestimate of their wealth.

Resource limitations are not a major issue, easy to obtain the necessary resources. Mainly we need lots of clean energy, and there is no problem for nuclear power to supply that for the next billion years. You need to understand the basics of technology before you make wild, nonsensical statements about something you don't understand.

And ultimately all our resource needs can be obtained eco-friendly by space industrialization. A single Earth crossing asteroid can easily contain $trillions worth of valuable minerals that are not difficult to process and return to the Earth.

It is amazing how religious greenies - Malthusians - serve the interests of the super-rich parasites by blaming the Earth's problems on the 99%, instead of holding the criminal plutocrats to account for the direct effects of their unlimited greed. These greenie fanatics seem to relish in mass genocide of the 99% (funny how they are happy with the 1% being exempt) and yet you never see any of them volunteering to commit suicide to do their duty to "eliminate the human cancer".

I will never forgive President Obama for this. Pushing fascist crap like the TPP is an act of treason as well as a huge betrayal. It is hardly a secret that the TPP will rob us of our national sovereignty. It would render the governments of soveriegn nations impotent against corporate power. Corporate fascism du jour.

By the way, one of my senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon, has been among the TPP’s biggest cheerleaders. He’ll never have my vote again… NEVER!

Comparing this to the amount of effort Obama put into healthcare reform six or seven years ago is like night and day. Had he fought half this hard for single payer, we might not still be at the mercy of those same old extortionists (oh excuse me — health insurance companies), who continue ripping us off with impunity. The ACA forcing us to do business with these extortionists is simply outrageous. Under corporate fascist rule, we can kiss healthcare goodbye for us "ordinary" folks, along with environmental protections and consumer protections and workers' rights and everything else that makes life worth living for us "ordinary" folks.

It horrifies me to hear Thom suggest Obama has been a good president while Obama busies himself pushing for something this awful. It makes our current president a corporate fascist as well as a traitor to our country. And with Hillary Clinton's track record, I see no reason to assume she would be any better, if elected as our next president..

Corporate Democrats flat-out suck. They are not to be trusted. At least the other party lets it all hang out without false pretense, so that we get to see them for the psychopaths and toxic clowns they actually are. Like Thom himself has said, Bernie is the kind of candidate running for president that Obama only pretended to be. Let's not get fooled again, or we're toast.

REREGULATION!

Did my Dear Hillary Letter message to Thom post? I amnew to this site. Thanks

Thom, like may faux progressives, Stephanie is so mis- and/or uninformed that it makes me cringe just watching her show. I only watch it while waiting for your show.

This is very sad, because there is very little we can do, that will affect big change.

Septic Politics

{… a limerick …}

Politics gets ever more septic, -

- and we get ever more dyspeptic.

Our mood would improve

if voters would remove

the Right from the Left-Right {dialectic} dialeptic.

=====================================

Thom, please research the facts of Hillary's rumored trip to the Bilderberger Conference in 2012. Also last year's attendence by Bob Rubin, surely well-able to speak for and be the ears for the Clintons. And please stop repeating the canard that Hillary's platform is so like Bernie's as to make her an equally good candidate. You ignore the fact that Bernie will strive to enact the laws according to his long-held principles, while Hillary will say and do anything the masters of Davos tell her to. She is a slave to ambition who will strive to protect the interests of the ruling class, only trotting out her calculated and fake liberal conscience for the cameras. She will not act on principles because she has none..a lifetime of deceit. See Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's "The Secret Life of Bill Clinton" & Terry Reed's "Compromised"..she was right in the middle of the nexus of the Worthen Bank, the Rose Law Firm, Ollie North's CIA cocaine and laundering ring, Arkansas Development and Finance Authority, a Dixie Mafia candy store,skimming and handing out cash thru the criminal Lasater & Co., the looting and bankrupting of First American Savings & Loan, all handled by lawyers HRC, Vince Foster, and Webb Hubbell, often covering the illegal machinations of Seth Ward, Webb's father-in-law, whose POM Corp. Manufactured the replacement receiver-sections (with no serial numbers) on the M-16s for the Salvadoran death squads. The list goes on and on. The difference between her and Bernie's campaign? ..Bernie's will win because it's real, her's will lose because it's fake..all smoke & mirrors. Faint hearts who are scared GOP crazies might win take note..she is a sure loser. Bernie is the real thing, a sure winner.

Hillary’s “experience” has included much practice “INside the boxes” such as those of Wall-Streetism and of foreign-policy bureaucracies. Bernie seems handy “OUTside the boxes”. … This is among the issues: “INside” or “OUTside”? - {I tend “OUT”, although I’m aware that America has in-our-past performed best when proceeding “incrementally”, - which involves attention to the Smart things “INside” and building-further on Them.}

The effective corporate tax rate already stands at 0% for many of the big operators, and hovers near 10% for the average company.

Corporate Fascists own the souls of 3/4's of our Legislative and Judicial branch employees, thus "We the People," owe no allegiance to what in essence is a Fascist regime!

You are so right, Tom, but who is going to hold the billionaires to it? Bernie is my man but i doubt he can overcome a legislative branch packed with know and do nothings elected by the likes of Kochs, Dimons and Murdochs. The revolution in thinking is upon us and growing except for the low information folks that buy the swill they are fed by the media. The media is a special interest group itself, feeding from the trough of dollars the election system creates. It is a self perpetuating spiral.