Comments by "Theodore Shulman" (@ColonelFredPuntridge) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1. My dad was a cryptanalyst in the Korean War. The high-security intelligence complex where he worked was color-coded, everyone wore photo-ID and the color of your ID determined which buildings you were allowed to enter, and the guards had orders to carefully check IDs every time you entered a building. When my dad first arrived, during the orientation, the officer in charge (General? Colonel? I don't know what his rank was) emphasized the importance of security and encouraged new arrivals to undertake personal projects to improve security on their own initiative. Well, my dad was buddies with the guy in charge of making the photo-IDs (using a primitive laminating machine), and he got this guy to make him an ID with a photo of Stalin! And my dad wore this ID and went in and out of buildings for MORE THAN SIX MONTHS before a guard noticed. (Guard: "Wait a minnit, you don't have a mustash!" --Dad: "Well, I shaved it off!" --Guard: "Lemme see that!") So dad went before the disciplinary committee, and said "The [Guy-In-Charge] said to undertake personal security-projects, and that's what this was, and I'd say the security here needs some work!" We asked Dad several times whether that was a true story. He always confirmed that it was.
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  2. Criminal alteration of business records in order to conceal an underlying crime, which in this case was paying hush-money in excess of campaign restrictions on how much a campaign can spend, and without paying taxes on it.
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  3. It’s difficult for me to imagine ObAma saying “I’m the smartest [… etc.]” He never seemed that arrogant, (and he never seemed clever enough to conceal such arrogance from us if he were that arrogant). He was too smart to say something that obnoxious.
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  4.  @juliodiaz7249  You didn't go to law school, and you didn't talk with anyone who did, I see.
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  5. How does he hold his video camera so steady? You can see from the reflection in his mirror glasses that he’s actually holding the thing and yet the background scenery doesn’t wobble or wiggle or anything even though while he’s talking, he twitches his head and moves his body. How is the camera so steady when he’s not???
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  6. “The GreenPeace Faction”??? I don’t get that. Why not call them “The Groucho Faction”? Groucho Marx sang: “ I don’t care what you’ve got to say; it makes no difference anyway, whatever it is: I’m against it! Your proposition may be good, but let’s have one thing. Understood: whatever it is, I am against it”
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  7. But not all iron mines are rich in rare earths. Only some are.
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  8. But paying a large amount of hush money without reporting the payments to the IRS, is a crime.
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  9. TWO criticisms (I'm sure you won't mind): 1. Rare earths are common, and present in waste from other mines, but not very densely so. Deposits dense enough to be useful are unusual and important. 2. The fact that China has gained control of the industry by subsidizing it so that rare earths are cheaper, doesn't really help us all that much. What I mean is, history is full of situations where making something cheaper makes society more dependent on it even though the guys who make it cheaper are doing us a favor, not hurting us, by doing so. Your argument about this is like saying if the car companies stopped making cars (or started overcharging us for them) we could just go back to using horses and make the car companies back down. OR, like saying if the makers of laparoscopic surgical instruments went on strike, we could just go back to doing heart surgery by cutting people's chests open and breaking their ribs. Sure, we didn't lose anything when the laparoscopic instruments came out, but we would still lose a lot if they were taken away now. Returning to a previous status quo can be much more painful than never having left it would be.
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  10. Cecily: "This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade, I call it a spade." Gwendolen: "I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different." ― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
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  11. Why not? Physically, 18 to 19 are the years when you are best capable of handling the physical challenges of childbirth. All the arguments for waiting depend on cultural conventions like, having higher income later in life and having small families rather than larger ones.
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  12. He doesn’t really exist at all! He’s like George Kaplan in NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
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  13. Re: “Whenever the White House and Congress are in different hands, whoever is in Congress tries to use this issue as leverage to get political concessions in one way or the other” Refresh my memory: when was the last time Congressional Democrats tried to use the threat of default (refusal to raise the debt ceiling) as leverage to get concessions from the Republicans???
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  14. As I recall, and I’m not an historian, so I could be wrong, but as I recall last time, Germany, invaded Poland, they did so, with the blessings of a lot of the Polish people by promising to protect them from the Soviet union and from the Jews. So, if Poland is requesting that German be stationed in Poland, that’s not very reassuring.
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  15. The Jones Act was passed in 1999. It says that if you sue the president for sexual harassment, then you have to fight Tonya Harding on celebrity boxing. (That’s the Paula Jones act, I mean)
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  16.  @iraobryansmith9700  For some of the 34 counts, it was failing to declare the payment on tax-related documents, and for others, it was paying more than campaign-finance law allows.
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  17. Well, not all the bio labs, but many of them. The Department of Energy funds a lot of chemistry research, including biochemistry.
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  18. Wrong, and wrong.
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  19. Do war-crime laws actually prevent war-crimes? Does obeying the laws prevent or dissuade the enemy from committing war-crimes against the one who obeys the laws?
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  20. Russian third-graders are pretty smart, on average, relative to ours in USA.
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  21. But did he really say that? I think he is too smart to say such a stupid thing.
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  22. That’s the paradox: more kids would be better for our country, but worse for the world. It’s a matter of perspective.
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  23. The most promising recent (2022) development concerning rare-earth markets is the successful bulk-synthesis, in the lab, of tetrataenite, using a phosphorus catalyst. I'd love to hear what effect you think that will have on geopolitics and chemo-economics. (Tetrataenite doesn't contain rare-earths, but it may replace them in many applications.) UPDATE: the reason is tetrataenite can be made into very powerful magnets, competitive in power with magnets made of rare-earth alloys which are the strongest permanent magnets in the world but which require rare earths. Permanent magnets are essential to (almost) any device which converts electrical energy into mechanical energy or vice-versa : motors and turbines. If we can iron the bugs out of the process of making tetrataenite into magnets, instead of using rare-earth alloys for our magnets, then we can reduce our need for rare earths big-time.
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  24. Ronald Reagan? Or do you mean real conservatives who are still active? How about John Bolton? Judge Michael Luttig?
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  25. The stockpiles are certainly helpful.
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  26.  @joemcdermott1213  LOL!!! Wrong.
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  27.  @joemcdermott1213  Let's get something straight: I don't care about "credibility", and I don't care whether you think I'm "disingenuous". Someone asked a question and I answered it. If you don't believe me, go read the transcript of the trial for yourself. The instructions to the jury make it quite clear what the underlying crimes were. And it doesn't matter that the underlying crimes were not brought to court before this. I understand that you think it should matter, and it may seem counterintuitive that it doesn't, but as a matter of law and jurisprudence, it doesn't.
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  28.  @joemcdermott1213  The fact is, felonies are often very complicated and not intuitively obvious or simple, and anyone who has ever interacted with the criminal justice system knows this. You can commit a felony without even knowing that you are committing a crime. And I don't care at all whether you think it's a "powerful move". I decided to give you some information out of the goodness of my heart, not in order to make any kind of move.
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  29.  @joemcdermott1213  I explained the crimes to you six hours ago!
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  30.  @LTVoyager  Who? Obama???
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  31. You might want to mention the religious affiliation of Armenia, which is they are historically Christian, unlike Azerbaijan, and of course Turkey and of course, Iran.
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  32.  @TheHighborn  Thank you!
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  33. Peter: You are misusing the term "biological drugs". You are talking about genetically-tailored drug-regimens for individuals. "Biological drugs" are just medications which are made, not by mixing chemicals together and letting them react, but by growing cells which make the medication you want. Biologicals are usually protein-based and made by genetically-programmed cells. Examples include monoclonal antibodies like Humera and Eptinezumab and the two monoclonal antibodies Trump got infused with when he was sick in the hospital with COVID. But this is mostly a semantic quibble. Biologicals and genetically-tailored drug-regimens are both frightfully expensive, so your general point about them is essentially valid.
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  34. Nickel, and its many uses in many industries, and its history, are amazingly interesting subjects. Look up, for instance, the biography of the great Jewish industrial chemist Ludwig Mond who should have won a Nobel prize (except that most of his life was over when the Nobel prize was established) for his discovery of nickel carbonyl and later the discovery of the whole new class of compounds called metal carbonyls. In the first sequel to L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was called The Marvelous Land of Oz, the Tin Woodman reappears, now calling himself “Nick Chopper”, and having had his entire tin body nickel-plated. He is then always very careful to avoid scratching or damaging his nickel surface.
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  35. Too many people posting Comments here don’t know the first thing about constitutional law.
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  36. Didn’t Auric Goldfinger menace James Bond with a laser capable of “project[ing] a spot on the Moon”? And that was in 1964!
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  37. There were three young ladies of Birmingham And this is the story concerning’em: They lifted….
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  38. There are a few things we do know about Kamala Harris regarding policy; she just hasn’t said them out loud yet, but you can hear them if you listen carefully. For instance, it’s overwhelmingly likely – I would bet a great deal of money on this if I had money to bet — That she will robustly fund the basic science community and will use the bully pulpit to restore America’s faith in science and in expertise, which has been so badly shaken under Trump. This is a big policy difference from Trump and should not be discounted. It also has foreign policy, implications: she will likely support our efforts to help Ukraine, if only because we want access to Ukraine’s mineral deposits which are essential for (among other things) our chemical industries, including Pharma. It also means she will likely support international efforts to prepare for the next pandemic(which is sooner or later)
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  39. No. He is a strategist. Not a diplomat. Maybe an advisor to diplomats. A diplomat cannot speak in as straightforward a way as Peter Z does. A diplomat has to charm and flatter and make you feel like you are clever, not that he is cleaver. Like (for instance) Bill Clinton.
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  40. How about posting something specifically about the war in Ukraine, and strategic metals? It’s all about rare-earth metals, lithium, and others.
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  41. RE: "Hamas is not a unified organization. We're not talking about the Catholic Church here." Is the Catholic Church really a unified organization?
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  42. I think many people voted in what they thought were their Economic interests, but they were tricked and did not vote for their actual economic interests. What’s unique about this election is Trump‘s ability to program the voters.
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  43. Really they found him guilty? When will his sentencing be?
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  44. Precious metals (in catalytic converters) are not the same as rare earths. Platinum, and palladium, are NOT rare earths.
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  45. The President said to the Ms.: “Your mouth is a nice place for jizz, And whether it’s moral For you to give oral Depends on the meaning of ‘is’!”
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  46.  @victorcapel2755  Glad to hear it!
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  47. Isn’t his name Yevgenie? Not Dmitri. Prigozhin, I mean
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  48. Trump is not known for collaborating with other people. If he were to join forces with Bernie Sanders, he’d be fighting over trivialities in less than a week.
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  49. Not bird, not plane. It’s the wizard of Oz!
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  50. You keep saying the smartest presidents were Clinton, Jefferson, and Obama. Why do you leave out Jimmy Carter, who was and probably still is incredibly intelligent???
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