While the Republican party is busy eating itself, here's a video from Hillary w/ a really ambitious goal on climate. https://t.co/zHpG2m1VJn
— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) July 26, 2015
Of course I’m an easy mark for ads like this, but I think it’s pretty effective.
What say y’all?
redshirt
Let them eat photons.
Major Major Major Major
Got stuck in a bomb threat area earlier.
That wasn’t fun.
I’m fine.
BillinGlendaleCA
@redshirt: Photons; great taste AND less filling.
mclaren
Liberals keep saying they’re not impressed with HRC and would rather someone else ran, but she’s been hitting all the right talking points and her policy proposals look serious and detailed. The rest of the candidates are spewing generalities and HRC has a white paper out talking about detailed ways of increasing the percentage of working adults and raising the median income while increasing aggregate demand. That’s serious policy. Not bullshit pie-in-the-sky or vague generalities. Also, HRC’s kick-off video was letter-perfect.
So the more I see from HRC, the more I like. Yes, of course, it could be the case that Hillary is just telling everyone what they want to hear, and when elected she’ll reverse course and betray her promises like Obama did.
But if you’re that cynical, what the hell is the point in even voting?
Meanwhile, the Republican candidates are blowing smoke out their asses. Like Jeb’s genius idea for getting to 4% GDP growth: “People should work longer hours.”
Brilliant.
Compared to that brainless crap, HRC’s proposals are the real thing.
redshirt
@mclaren: You are on the HRC bandwagon I take it? Completely and utterly?
redshirt
@BillinGlendaleCA: Quick too, for those busy modern families on the run in the morning.
Fred
Photons are good for trees and the people who love to hug them.
sparrow
@mclaren: She still hasn’t said shit about how she’s going to fix the banking industry so that 2008 doesn’t repeat (historical evidence suggests 10 – 15 year cycles when there are not regulations in place — see late 19th cent. – early 20th cent). She’s a corporate whore, fake, and narcissistic. I don’t think she’s a naturally good leader. But, I’ll be super happy to be pleasantly surprised — that’s the upside to low expectations. And I have no intention of staying home and giving it to the republicans (mainly because of the supreme court — that’s a big one).
But it all starts to feel like picking what color of boot is up your ass sometimes.
redshirt
From a photon’s perspective there is no time nor space. Interesting to consider the implications of this.
Tommy
I am as well. I just know, maybe 20 years from now I’ll be having dinner with my niece (she is six now) and she will look me in the eye and ask why didn’t we do anything?
Tommy
@mclaren: I will be the first to say I am not a huge fan of Hillary. I don’t dislike her, but not a raving fan. But I won’t have ANY problem voting for her if that is how is on the ballot. Because there is one thing I really like about her, and you touched on it, she is serious about policy. Even the Republican in the Senate said she put her head down and worked her rear end off. I think that is kind of important and something I can respect.
Tommy
@sparrow: I wouldn’t be as harsh on her as you were, but she knows she needs a billon dollars for her campaign and you have to go where the money is, and that is on Wall Street. IMHO she won’t do anything to piss them off.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: While it pains me much, I really agree with mclaren on this. The more I’ve heard from Hillary the better she seems. The only concrete proposal I’ve heard from Bernie is that he’ll raise everybody’s taxes. That may be necessary to lessen income inequality and do the backlog of things that government needs to do, but I heard a guy promise that 31 years ago, it didn’t end well.
David Koch
@sparrow:
I don’t see how this kind of vitriol helps your preferred candidate.
I’m a well known and long time critic of Hillary, but these kind of vicious personal attacks have made me sympathetic to her.
Major Major Major Major
My husband was mad because I always seem to get into trouble even if I’m sober as a nun.
But it’s not my fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time when a bomb threat is called in. Christ on a cracker. I was walking home from dinner with a friend!
Anyway he’s furious.
Bleh.
Tommy
When the debate was going on related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act I figured as most did here we needed to spend more money. I kind of fell down the rabbit hole that is Wikipedia reading about what we did in the 30s to try and learn what was possible.
I was frankly a little stunned by how little I knew about all the “workers” programs we put in place. How much stuff we build then we are still using today. Things like the Tennesse Valley Authority. Heck we built Red Rock.
Could you imagine what the Republicans would do today if Obama said he wanted to fund a program to built a concert venue in the side of a mountain :)?
The idea to help with climate change I’ve been thinking about is putting solar on every public school building. The Federal government would fund the installs. Then as the schools started to generate more power than they need and sell it they pay back the Feds.
It is just a win, win across the board.
Major Major Major Major
@sparrow:
@David Koch: Read about her, her record, read anything literally anything about her. She is not her husband, and I want to repeat that: she is not her husband.
She’s to the left of Obama on a lot of issues actually. Nobody seems to have noticed somehow.
redshirt
@Tommy: There are TONS of WPA like projects we could be doing but aren’t because of Republicans.
Another Holocene Human
So frustrated about that thread downstairs. So here’s my cri de coeur:
Cop unions aren’t doing anything wrong. It’s the ARBITRATORS who are giving dirty cops their jobs back.
They don’t give any other kind of worker their job back for the shit that cops do. But COP gets their JOBS BACK and that’s solely an ARBITRATOR’S decision–by law.
By law, guys, unions do the shit they do because it’s our laws. Other countries have different laws.
These ARBITRATORS tend to be geriatric white dudes who were lawyers, sometimes law professors. One of them took one look at my grievant last year and decided he wasn’t trustworthy, facts be damned.
Yet these cops get their jobs back.
ARBITRATORS. Learn the word! It’s not the police and correctional officers’ union that’s wrong–they’re doing their job–look up the “duty of fair representation”.
/end rant
Another Holocene Human
@redshirt: It’s like that song “but I got high” except it’s “but my country voted Republican”.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Not a single person I wanted to win the primary for my party has. I have long ago made peace with this. If Hillary is the person I have to get behind I will 110%.
Tommy
@redshirt: I beg people that might be like me and didn’t know that much about programs like the WPA to spend some time on Wikipedia reading about it. What we did is really, really amazing. And IMHO there is NO reason, outside of stupid Republicans, that doesn’t make me think we could do it again.
magurakurin
@David Koch:
me too. I warm up to her more and more with every barb that a green robin hood cap wearing Berniac throws at her. Bernie Sanders seems like a decent guy, but his supporters make me want to eat glass and kill some motherfuckers. The sad thing about Sanders is that it will ultimately be his rabid supporters that will put the final nail in the coffin of his bid for the nomination.
redshirt
@Tommy: I did my thesis on the WPA – specifically plays – and to this day I am still blown away at what we did as a country during the depression. We built this country, essentially.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Ain’t love grand?
BillinGlendaleCA
@redshirt: That and the GI Bill post WWII.
Tommy
@magurakurin: I am pretty much with you. I don’t agree with Hillary on any number of topics but I find no need to call her names or smear her.
As my father used to say to me growing up at the dinner table each night where we’d often debate:
I’ve always thought that was about the best advice he ever gave me, and he gave me a lot of good advice.
magurakurin
@Tommy: I mean, it has been pointed out before, but it really is sad that the Democrats now have two pretty decent candidates but one side is insisting on trying to damage one of them. To his great credit, Senator Sanders is not guilty of this himself, but it still sucks. I suspect that a lot of the Sanders supporters are actually just Republican ratfuckers in disguise or garden variety “Starbucks is the real enemy” anarchist leaning types who aren’t going to actually vote anyhow.
Tommy
@redshirt: Yeah we did build the nation we know today. My great grandfather owned a construction company at the time and made a ton of money building bridges throughout Southern Illinois. I still drive across them to this day.
Now I am proud he made bridges that still stand today, but maybe, just maybe since they are almost 100 years old an upgrade is in order.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: Since you like hiking, here’s my Sunday stroll.
gene108
@sparrow:
Bill and Hillary seem pretty reality based in their decision making process.
I also think they were a lot more liberal than the political climate of 20-25 years ago would allow.
The shit storm Bill created by pushing for gays to serve openly in the military for example, met with serious resistance.
He’s the last President to pass meaningful gun control legislation.
They were for a pathway to universal healthcare and expanding healthcare access for all Americans.
Bill got FMLA passed, despite opposition from business groups, which like DADT is better than the nothing burger that existed before.
Also Stilglitz, for example, who has recently written about the pitfalls we face with rising income inequality was the Chair of the Council of Economic advisors for Bill.
In short, if what needs doing is addressing wage stagnation, income inequality and climate change, I think the Clintons are reality based enough to try and address those as the problems of today.
***************************************
Among the many destructive effects of the Bush, Jr (mis) administration was setting back actions on global warming by a generation.
President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, which was the first international attempt to address greenhouse gas emissions. The Republican controlled Congress refused to ratify it.*
And then Bush, Jr got sworn in as President and he basically crapped all over the idea of doing anything to address greenhouse gas emissions. It’s taken over 10 years, from when Bush, Jr was sworn in for his successor to try and put in meaningful policy with respect to greenhouse gas emissions; that is ten lost years.
* I do not know how many of you recall the right-wing mood of he late 1990’s, but “get us out of the UN” was a very prominent position. I believe Jesse Helms (may his soul rot in Hell) actually managed to block the U.S. From paying its required contribution (for lack of a better term) to the UN for a period of time. International cooperative treaties (outside of those that benefitted business interests, of course) were loathed by the Right.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Nice. I love where I live or I wouldn’t live here. But I do miss the fact there is no elevation. Speed bumps are close to “mountains” where I live :).
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy:
Went over a few of those on the way to the trailhead.
Tommy
@magurakurin: Look I am not perfect. A few times I’ve lost my temper and said some things here I wish I could take back. But the sheer anger I often see on sites like this, supposed to be progressive, around the Presidential primary always stuns me. I guess it shouldn’t because he happens like clockwork, but it still does.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: The hiking advantage I have here in Southern Illinois is forest. Forest, forest, forest. I can throw a rock in almost any direction and hit an almost never ending forest. That is nice!
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: That was an integral part of my dissertation. As LBJ signed the Vietnam Servicemen’s Readjustment Act he said the WW II version was “The greatest economic flywheel in the history of this country” .
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major: True story: On 9/11/01, the Spousal Unit woke up on the first day after his layoff to my voicemail message: I’m fine, but you want to turn on the news. He did, to the chyron that Boston’s John Hancock building (where I worked at the time) was being evacuated — and a helicopter shot of the burning tower in NYC, which in his sleep-sodden state he thought was the Hancock tower.
I didn’t make it home for over an hour, because after our department was about the last group out of the building (psycho SVP: I grew up during WWII in England! We never evacuated for faraway threats!), it took forever to get a train on the T, get to a terminus ten miles from home, and find a taxi service that could pick me up (after dropping a very pregnant fellow T passenger at her car a mile away in the wrong direction). When I finally walked in the front door, my husband was furious… with me. Because he’d been so terrified, and it’s not as though the unknown terrorists made very good targets!
Tommy
This is something I rant on here more than a little. But how are cable companies still in business? I have said I got rid of cable more than a year ago. With Hulu, Netflix, and Sling I get everything I need and more. I pay a fraction of what I used to pay Charter.
Oh and I feel a little stupid saying this, but about six months ago found that just about anything I wanted to watch I could get on Google Play. You can buy an entire season of a show for between $18 and $22.
About Sling. It rocks for $20/month. Gives me the few channels I couldn’t get otherwise. Like the History Channel and more importantly their sports package gets me a ton of ESPN channels. That was the only thing I was missing. Until I got rid of cable I had no idea how much of a stranglehold ESPN had on the sports world.
OK, my anti-cable rant ended …..
raven
@Tommy: Yea, well, since you got rid of cable Fox has been making serious moves into that area as have CBS and NBC. They all have dedicated sports channels now.
Fred
@Tommy: Wouldn’t it be nice if for a change a Democrat would take the money from the banks and then say screw them and do the right thing ’cause you know… America and the future of our children and all. It’s just a recurring day dream I have. I know I’m just being silly.
Tommy
@raven: The only thing that is killing me is I can’t get my St. Louis Cardinals baseball games. All on FOX Sports Midwest. The MLB app is only $24.95/year and wonderful. I get the streaming audio and a video game like interface of said game. I’ve never experienced “blackouts” before but that is what I get when they are on ESPN.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: Well, we do have the San Gabriels.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: The percentage of college educated folk went up a lot(my dad included).
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
She seems to get a lot of projection of the fears of the Left right now, though I think her campaigning and the mean spirited attacks on her are breaking through the trepidation.
For example, there’s a feeling on the Left blogs that she has never met a war she does not like and she is going to get us into another 10+ year land war in Asia, because she voted for the AUMF, unlike Biden, who’ll just be an extension of cool as a cucumber Obama, even though Biden also voted for the AUMF.
raven
@Tommy: I finally switched to Dish two weeks ago. Nowhere on their website does it tell you that, while you get a dozen Fox Regional channels, you don’t get the baseball programming that they carry because of a fight over the cost. That means I get no Braves on the weekends. I didn’t watch that many but it still pisses me off.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Mine too. He went to Illinois with his seabag on his shoulder. In an interesting turn of events, I had 10 days between Vietnam and Illinois 24 years later. Actually, the bill was so shitty in 69 that I was getting almost exactly what my old man got in 49!
Tommy
@Fred: That is a dream I have as well. There must be some super rich liberals on Wall Street. Actually more than a few. My parents have more money than they can spend in a lifetime.
I make a good living. I am lucky. Parents were in town two weeks ago and mom and I went to a home improvement store. I was about to drop close to a thousand dollars. I could afford it. But as I went to pay she said stop, I got this.
It is something they do from time to time. When I ask why they say they got so much, they would like to spend some on me and see me enjoy it.
I’d think some of the super rich on Wall Street would get this concept. Maybe they pay a little more in taxes. Or they give it away while alive to see others enjoy it. Seems like such a basic and honest concept.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: A good proportion of LA can’t get the Dodger games since they’re exclusively on Time Warner. For example, here in Glendale, we have Charter so no Dodger games(also no PAC-12 “network”). I switched my TV to DirecTV and it’s the same story. Even if you wanted TW here, you can’t get it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: One thing I’ll give Webb credit for is the current GI Bill, it’s paying for the kid’s nursing school.
Tommy
@raven: That would piss me off to no end. I am very, very happy with the current set-up I have. Baseball is the only thing I wish I had. Dish is sending me offers where I am going to the “fine print” thinking you can’t be serious. How can I get 175 channels for $19.95/month.
But I can’t see myself changing because I have become addicted to the BBC shows I can get on Netflix/Hulu. Not sure I could give those up.
raven
@Tommy: Dish has netflix integrated right into it! There are many things I really like about Dish. The Dish app on my iPad and computers allows me to watch my tv live. It works especially well on the iPad and even has a virtual removed that functions exactly like the physical one. You just need an internet connection and away you go.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Interesting. I thought the Dodgers had their own network like the Yankees. Didn’t even realize Charter was in LA. That is what I have since they are based here in St. Louis.
I actually liked their service but they screwed me. I was paying $260 a month for every cable channel, small business 100MB Internet connection, and a VOIP line.
Every few months I’d call and ask if there was a better deal. They told me nope. Then the last time I called the lady came back and said “sure there is a better deal. How does $198/month sound?
I took the deal but I couldn’t help but think for months if not years I was paying $60/month more than I needed. That is real money and I felt ripped off.
A few months later after some research I ditched them and just kept Internet access.
gene108
@Tommy:
I think the issue with Wall Street, from the small sample size I know in the banking sector, is that they want to be able to do what they want to make money.
Someone has an idea for a new product they want to push it.
They do not want to deal with getting it passed Federal regulatory agencies.
And to be fare, there seems to be a lot of conflicting rules that come down, since Dodd-Frank was passed that keep getting changed or rescinded as more of the law is implemented, which leads to frustration.
But basically, like any other business, they want to make money with as little interference as possible.
And which political party will 100% guarantee them that?
raven
@Tommy: That’s what I did. I’m thinking about adding a second internet account, maybe shitty AT&T so I can separate work and personal use. Thoughts?
J R in WV
@Tommy:
It’s easy to give up cable TV if you have really broadband internet access.
We have 600MB / Day limit on data download on our sat internet service, and it costs over a hundred $$ a month. I don’t even watch short youtube bits more than one or two a day.
But that’s OK. We don’t have cable access either! Just old fashioned broadcast TV, which we pick up with an antenna, just like back in the 50s.
But I agree with you about the politics. I like it hate free, I can vote against the republicans without actually hating them, if I try hard enough. And I also begin to feel closer to Hill as the hate mounts against her. I don’t understand how or why some people hate the Clintons.
Bill was a good president, the country did well during his terms, and he had great approval records all the way through the republicans failure of an impeachment. No one but republican leadership thought it was a good idea to impeach a president who lied – about a blow-job. No one.
But they didn’t care, they went ahead and did it anyway, even though most of them were cheating on their wives at least as much as Bill was, probably more. Look at that twit from Georgia, Newt Gingrich. Keeps divorcing a wife AFTER he gets caught with his pants down with some other bimbo, who then wants to get married to the guy who was cheating with her.
Republicans are just so trashy. Even their politics are trashy – willing to destroy a great university to fund a gift to a ultra-wealthy contributor, who would do that? Only a piece of trash, without a shred of self-respect.
Walker is his name, shame is his game!! There’s a slogan for you!
gene108
Verizon FIOS, which is available in some parts of my area is advertising ala carte pricing. You pay for the channels you want.
The problem for me is Verizon decided to pull out of the cable business and did not wire the entire area, so I do not have access to their FIOS service and am stuck with Comcast.
Applejinx
Hillary’s cadence is really odd. She sounds like a robot. So let’s program her! Doing pretty good so far! :D
I’m still going to push for Bernie. He never expected to be doing this well and it’s a real teachable moment. The one to be learning is specifically Hillary Clinton. I like that she sounds as scripted as she does, on a syllable by syllable level, because somebody is doing the scripting and it’s gotta be voters, not bankers.
My concern here is that she’s thinking ‘encourage businesses to produce more solar and sell the solar panels to Americans to buy!’. With what fucking money, Hillary? That’s very worrying to me. Doubling down on a decline-of-capitalism economic model is gonna kill us, but she could also pursue this kind of goal in a more public-works kind of way.
It depends on who’s really pulling the strings and who’s in charge of what department. Like if she offered Bernie the Veep slot, I’m sold, he’d be in there influencing the administration about his one big issue. If she snatched up Mark Blyth and made him an economic guru, I would suddenly become a huge Hillary booster.
Because unlike Trump and Sanders, Hillary works WITH teams and is profoundly influenced by them, and that’s why it all hinges on what her cabinet looks like. I want to know more about that. No more neoliberal hawkish bullshit, and NO neoliberal austerity economics. Whoever the next president is, cannot fuck up what Obama managed to half-do (largely because the Republicans have largely been deadlocked and unable to implement their policies except in places like Wisconsin, which Trump rightly points out is a goddamn trainwreck).
Don’t show me more commercials with possibly cool stuff and not say whether it’s a scheme to funnel MORE citizen money into the Cayman Islands, to create more consumer products for a vanishing ‘consumer’ class. Show me who Hillary’s cabinet is gonna be. I’m listening but I’m kind of a policy wonk too, and we’ve come to a state where outliers like Sanders and Trump are the only ones talking sense.
If we got a Clinton cabinet who didn’t see a big problem with what Walker’s done in Wisconsin, besides the fact that it’s Republicans and not Democrats doing it, we’re fucked and might have done better with Trump. Some of the fundamental mechanisms and directions of public governance are broken and Hillary cannot be representing more of that. And you can implement ‘massive solar panel energy programs’ while still modeling it after vulture capitalism and tailoring it for the banks…
gene108
@J R in WV:
The impeachment was setting up the Republicans for the 2000 Presidential election, so their candidate could run on a platform that included “restoring honor and integrity to the White House.”
Tommy
@raven: My first question would be do you do your own taxes? I work for myself out of my house and use a CPA. If you are using your house for business there are tax right offs I don’t totally understand. But tons of them. I assume they vary by state. Bet you might be able to write-off a portion of that second Internet connection.
Now with that said as a pure tech thing, not sure why you’d want two different connections. You’d need another router. Heck my Dell CPU cost me $3,000. Sure it won’t take multiple Internet connections.
I am sure I am missing what can be done here, but bet it would be a pain in the ass.
raven
@Tommy: I have a dual band router. I was thinking about having a completely different account with another provider. I have personal and work machines and sometimes I’d just feel more comfortable restricting my work to a work account. We have our taxes done since we have a rental property and it seemed like this thing to do. The deductions never seem to amount to much, maybe with another internet account it would be.
Tommy
@J R in WV:
Very true. I am lucky. AT&T wired my little rural town. I think there now bankrupt @home program. Well Charter Communications is based 60 miles away and they bought it.
I might have the fastest Internet connection of anybody in this nation, at least out of my house.
I have a 100MBPS connection for under $50 a month. Lets me run three Roko streaming units and a desktop, laptop, phone, and tablet all at the same time and do anything I want.
Tommy
@raven:
From everything my CPA tells me, who is also my lawyer, I should have a “firewall” between my work and personal computer. I do not. I know it is something I should do, but alas have not.
This isn’t perfect, but when I got my “new” computer I had a second hard drive installed where only work related stuff is installed.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: I still have internet access via Charter.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Hope you have the quality service I have with Charter. They totally screwed me on billing but their service where I live rocks.
Before I started to work for myself I was the VP of Marketing for a “virtual” software firm. Most in the DC area and all using Time Warner. They were all so jealous of the service I had. I had not only a better, faster service, but I paid less.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Dual band only concerns what the machines connect to, the router still will only connect to one ISP at a time.
Woodrow/asim
@raven: If you want to make simple the tax-writeoff, it’s not as good as having two, but otherwise I strongly recommend one business-class connection, leveraged for work and home, over 2 separate personal ones.
I work from home most days for the company that employs me, and found the business-class connection w/the cable provided in my area it wasn’t much more than a personal connection. Moreover, the service is so much better it’s not even funny; the rare times it goes down, I usually have an ETA I can give my boss, and I just jump to a local coffee shop for the couple/few hours if I need to. I think the last couple of times they even called me when it came back up, but I could be misremembering.
Plus, the speeds were much better; for the cost of 2 personal connections I’m getting one that’s far faster. This really matters when you’re having to push big files around, since you can’t always get a download, much less an upload, to split across 2 connections.
Seriously, if you don’t have tax concerns or FiOS, I’d take one business class line, every time.
raven
@Woodrow/asim: thx
sparrow
@magurakurin: I would and have said exactly the same things about Hillary regardless of who else is running. I’m confused why you think this is about Sanders at all. Hillary will probably win the primary and general, and probably screw things up big time during her first and only term (I see a stupid war in our future), with the bonus that the “left” gets painted with her failures even though she’s a center-right politician by global standards. Of course, as I said, I would LOVE to be wrong.
Tommy
@Woodrow/asim: I have a small business account as well. Not that much more money and the connection is stellar. Plus, like once a year or less I need somebody to come out, they come the day I call. Not days later.
sparrow
@sparrow: Also wanted to add: I like some of what Bernie says, but I am not a crazy Bernie booster for practical reasons: I’d think the opposition he would face from the center (including many dems) to right would be unprecedented and he would have trouble getting anything done. I’m also not 100% certain how he would handle foreign affairs and could see stupid decisions there. Basically, being a pessimist, I think it’s also possible he’d make a one-term president that wasn’t remembered fondly. But, his supreme court picks would probably be good.
I don’t know yet what I will do in the primary. I guess I would like another Obama on everything except Wall Street, and then I would want Sanders, but that candidate doesn’t exist. Partly this is the “fault” of Hillary being in the race — lots of people didn’t get in that might have otherwise.
Tommy
@sparrow: I like Sanders a lot. But I also like to think I am a realist and I see NO chance he can get elected.
That tends to put me in a position I am in with every primary. Do I get behind the person that holds the views closest to mine that might not have a shot in hell of getting elected or the person that I don’t often agree with, but can win.
Frankly it is a terrible situation. But I will openly admit most of the time I am a team player and I fall in line.
RK
Hillary doesn’t have much political skill, and isn’t very likable. I’m confident though that she’ll make a fine lecturer-in-chief.
Tommy
@RK: Not so sure about all of that. Given I don’t find her the most likeable person around, but she has more than a little political skills.
What since the early 90s the right has attacked her 24/7 and she is still standing. That isn’t by luck or chance.
Kay
@sparrow:
I love Sanders but I agree – he has to expand on what he’s saying. Clinton may actually reach people with the solar because it’s not a niche thing anymore- we have a publicly-funded solar field here to produce some of the power for the municipal electric company. This is a very conservative area. It wasn’t even slightly controversial. There’s also a solar panel production facility near here that expanded in 2008 and again in 2015 – the technology they use was originally developed at the University of Toledo. They sell 70% of what they produce to Canada.
I think Sanders has to start getting specific. Sanders and Clinton and O’Malley were all asked for specifics on the reauthorization of NCLB (which is moving thru Congress right now) and Sanders voted for the Senate version. Clinton gave the best answer, IMO, and this is a law Sanders is actually enacting, right now.
Tommy
@Kay: The solar thing can work for her. My parents live a few doors down from the guy that owns the largest oil equipment company in the area. He is not known as a liberal, but he just installed solar.
sparrow
@Tommy: Both Solar and Wind energy should be big winners on the “jobs” front — you need people to keep them maintained. I guess part of what I suffer from with Hillary is I just don’t believe anything she says. :(
Zandar
@mclaren:
Can’t even begin to unpack the problems with this.
satby
@Major Major Major Major: Some people put out anger as a response to deep fear. It’s a bit illogical to appear to blame the person you are so terrified of losing, but it’s a common response. Try to think of it that way, he’s not really mad at you but at the horrible situation you were put in. And you are the only person he can vent to, inappropriate as it is to blame the victim.
Tommy
@sparrow: I live in Southern Illinois. I am outside of St. Louis but my parents live directly across the state on the IN border.
Corn fields and more corn fields. Oil wells in said corn fields. I keep thinking these folks already get how they can use their land to make more money. And a footprint of a wind turbine wouldn’t be any different than the oil wells.
Added benefit they all funnel to areas to collect said oil by the side of the road. No reason those areas couldn’t collect the power.
Iowa has done it, become one of the largest producers of power via wind. I see no reason we can’t do the same.
Kay
@Tommy:
I don’t know a thing about it but the solar field here was quietly okay’ed as a kind of “no brainer”. I know they got various environmental grants and it’s a municipal utility so they just have to break even. As I understand it part of the benefit is they have total control over a predictable portion of supply. It doesn’t hurt that they’re making the panels here with a process that was invented here. That’s always a big selling point in Ohio.
Kay
@Tommy:
We have more and more of the turbines and I have to say there’s a trade-off. They are huge. They really dominate the landscape in areas where they’re clustered. There’s a rural county in Ohio I drive thru for work about every 4 months and it’s a pretty profound change for the people who live there. There are giant turbines as far as you can see from the main drag, which is a state route. They’re not “ugly” that isn’t really the word, but the scale of them makes a real impact over mile after mile of flat ground. They are so much bigger than everything else.
I see more and more of them in western Michigan too, close to Lake Michigan but in predominately rural counties.
Tommy
@Kay: My little town gets its power via a co-op of other small towns and surprised we’ve done nothing with solar.
Last year the co-op told us we needed to upgrade our powerlines or they wouldn’t supply power to us. We like how we get our power because it is kind of cheap compared to what Ameren would charge us.
We didn’t bitch and moan, we dug poles and ran lines. It was kind of amazing to watch because I hear all the “smart” people on TV say stuff like this can’t be done. It is too hard.
We put an entire new power grid/backbone in my town in under 4 months. This would have seemed to be a good time to at least put a solar test project in place. But what do I know :)!
Tommy
@Kay: I can totally see that. I’ve only seen one huge turbine in person. I was in Cleveland visiting a client and I think it was a junk yard outside of town had this massive turbine.
I’d of course seen pics and video and thought I understood the size. Seeing it in person I did not.
I would think that might have to be a consideration.
Kay
@Tommy:
We’ve had a small experimental field of them at a college near here for years, more than a decade, so I was familiar with the individual size. It’s different with hundreds. The first time I saw a huge cluster I couldn’t stop looking, just craning my head around to try to see the end of them. I suppose people get used to them if they live there, but they are NOT unobtrusive or subtle “at scale”. The one good thing is they’re quiet- people say they used to have a “buzz”, more a vibration than a sound but the engineering has gotten better so that’s less annoying if you live close-in.
Tommy
@Kay: Of course it is a trade-off. I mentioned putting them in the corn fields instead of oil wells. Well those oil wells you can smell from miles away and the gas they burn off, not pleasant.
The problem we have where I live is coal. I think this might amaze many people but Southern IL has a shit load of coal. But it is underground and not on the side of a mountain like in WV. So it is kind of out of sight out of mind. You don’t even really know the mines are there.
Heck in the town my parents live in we have the largest coal fired power plant in the world not in China. They get pretty “cheap” power, well most of this part of the country does from that plant, so there doesn’t seem to be a rush to find other ways to generate it.
Kay
@Tommy:
The people I talk to don’t mind the local landowners who lease the land for the turbines, because those people live there so will have to live with the result. They bitch about the “absentee” landlords who collect the checks and live in other places.
All of this stuff has trade-offs. We just had a local court case where farmers are suing to stop gas pipeline from going in. They just issued the opinion and the farmers lost. The judge had no choice, in my opinion- he’s a conservative, I know him personally and he would have ruled for the property owners if he could have managed it but the state law is clear as a bell. I don’t have much sympathy for them. The law went in in 2011 when they were all running around in tri-corner hats screaming about health care. Meanwhile, they were electing John Kasich and a GOP legislature and THAT’S who “took” their property rights.
Where did they think they were going to run the gas lines? In urban areas where they’d have to fight property owners every city lot? Of course they’re running it thru rural areas. They can thank John Kasich and his merry band of drillers. They won’t though- they’ll blame the judge.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Applejinx:
That’s one thing that really stood out to these ears – part of the time she sounded human, part of the time she was in her “I . must . say . this . part . very . slowly . and . clearly” speechifying mode, part of the time she was in a new speakingreallyfasttogetthisparttofitintheavaialbetime mode. It’s jarring. She and her team can do better, I hope.
On the policy side, it sounds fine, as far as it goes. But where are we now? Is 500M panels a huge stretch or just a bit of an increase in the expected installation rate? How does it compare to Germany or Japan or China? And what about the details? Is this goal going to be achieved through tax breaks (which are contra to the nearly universal speechifying of “rationalize and simplify the tax code”) or through things like vouchers or commitments for the federal government to buy x-million panels?
It’s still very early. It’s good that she’s trying to put out proposals that are reality-based and that draw contrasts with the Teabaggers. More please.
Cheers,
Scott.
Tommy
@Kay:
I can totally see that. If I had no wall in my house I could take my mouse, throw it, and hit a 5,000 acre field. Corn now. Often soy beans and winter wheat. To my left a block, and I am at the end of town, a field that stretches for as far as the eye can see.
The person that farms the field in front of my house lives next door to me. I know some that own fields all around me.
Corporate ag has not taken a hold here.
As you said when we are property owners. We work the land for a living. Funny how we tend to vote in our interest. Sorry that didn’t happen for folks by you.
gene108
@Tommy:
If you get audited by the IRS, they will check for methods used to under pay taxes, such as charging personal expenses to your business.
Keeping personal and business as separate as possible makes it harder for the IRS to ding you for not paying taxes properly, by stating certain business expenses on your tax return should disallowed as they should be reclassified as personal expenses.
satby
@Applejinx:
And here is where I call troll. Trump? Talking sense??
Tommy
@gene108: And that is very good advice. My CPA is totally anal about this. I told him if there is any doubt go against me and not the government. My CPA is also my lawyer (nice combo BYW) and he is a pit bull. Likes to pick a fight. I tell him I am in fact paying him NOT to pick a fight.
But the few times I’ve had a client not pay me for work, well that was a joy to watch.
Richard Grant
To quote Shirley Manson, vocalist for Garbage: “I’m only happy when it’s complicated”.
Link to Living on Earth public radio program’s 8/9/1996 “Richard Nixon: Environmental Hero” transcript at http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=96-P13-00032&segmentID=2. “FITZPATRICK: The Administration’s environmental accomplishments will never outweigh history’s judgment about its actions in Vietnam and its disintegration amid the scandal of Watergate. As well, Nixon has a checkered environmental record. He allowed the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. He approved the Alaska Oil Pipeline. And he vetoed a massive funding bill for sewage treatment plants. Still, President Richard Nixon and his advisors presided over the most productive period of environmental legislation in history. They set a direction for the country that has lasted more than 25 years.”
If the 2016 Presidential election – the Horse Race to the Bottom – somehow goes over the rails, we will end up being led backwards for four years by the equivalent of Australia’s Tony Abbott. I won’t compare Hillary Clinton against perfect, just against every other announced candidate.
Dupe70
Well looks like she will be getting my money.
Applejinx
@satby: Trump is crapping all over Scott Walker. A stopped clock can be right twice a day.
Also, I’m not convinced Trump is an austerity guy. I think he may be a ‘massive deficit funded infrastructure projects named after me!’ guy. The thing is, if you’re up to speed with global macroeconomics, that would work.
He can be a jerk, a monster, and wanting the ‘Trump equivalent of the Eisenhower highway system’ for all the wrong reasons, but it would still save our asses. I never once said he was THINKING sense. He’s talking total sense by accident, because it aligns with his narcissism.
We DO call it the Eisenhower highway system, ya know. And the time is now now NOW to fire up a bunch of stuff just like it, while Europe is mired in austerity politics.
RK
@Tommy With her name, her husband’s presidency, winning a Senate seat in a blue state against a nobody didn’t require much political skill and she lost in 2008 when she was heavily favored. To those who say her lack of liability is due to the right wing machine there’s surely truth to that, but it’s not the whole story.
mclaren
@satby:
Donald Trump is talking good sense — some of the time.
Take Trump’s comments on Wisconsin. Trump correctly points out that Wisconsin is a giant disaster, he accurately directs everyone’s attention to the fact that Scott Walker claimed his tax cuts would produce a 1 billion dollar surplus when in fact they produced a 2.2 billion dollar deficit. Trump meticulously details the ways in which Walker’s crazy Randian tax-cuts-for-the-rich + attacks on unions are destroying Wisconsin’s schools, trashing Wisconsin’s highways, and wrecking Wisconsin’s public infrastructure. What other Republican is doing this?
Next, Trump accurately notes that John McCain is no hero. He graduated at the very bottom of his class in Annapolis and, because McCain was the son of an admiral, was given special dispensation when he otherwise would’ve washed out of the naval aviator program because of his crappy carrier landings. Trump correctly points out that McCain’s only “accomplishment” in the military was to free-ride on his admiral daddy’s coattails until his shitty piloting got him shot down and he was tortured. That’s not a hero, that’s a smugly entitled incompetent. And once again, no one on the Republican side is telling these truths.
You’ve been deluded by the lamestream press narrative: “Donald Trump is spewing gibberish.” No, Trump is spewing some gibberish (“Mexicans are sending rapists and diseases across the border”) and some accurate truths (“Scott Walker trashed Wisconsin’s economy and John McCain is no military hero”).
Even if someone is a member of the lunatic fringe, that person may sometimes state verifiably accurate truths. You need to evaluate what anyone says by referencing the facts, not by doing the lazy stupid thing and buying into whatever lamestream media narrative the big TV networks and big newspapers are pushing this week.
mclaren
@sparrow:
Yes, you’re right. You are correct in every particular.
Unfortunately, all the Democrats are corporate whores, fake and narcissistic. And all the people who would make good leaders are unelectable (Alan Grayson, Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren. Recall that Sanders is not a Democrat, he’s an Independent).
As everyone is fond of saying, you have the choose the least bad alternative among the candidates. If Hillary gets elected, she’ll be a shameless whore for the financial crime lords and she’ll crank up our endless unwinnable wars overseas and increase the insane Orwellina domestic surveillance. The other domestic stuff, Hillary will probably do well on.
You take what you can get. Unless you actually think Sanders can win the Democratic nomination even though states like New York have explicitly stated that they do not allow independents like Sanders to run in the Democratic primary.