i try not to do these cheap shots at entire states because everyone is at the mercy of the governments they elect, especially people that didn’t vote for them. anyway good luck this month texas, remind your senator he is a piece of shit. pic.twitter.com/hfopmAK3nm
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) June 14, 2021
Your Republican rulers have decided they’re only gonna bail their end of the lifeboat. And when that doesn’t work… how’s the power grid in Cancun?
BREAKING: ERCOT is now asking people to conserve electricity through Friday, saying there are a significant number of power plants offline and expecting possible record use for June. pic.twitter.com/zWZkf0bkPq
— Matt Largey (@mattlargey) June 14, 2021
ERCOT's reserves are continuing to fall.
Down ~300 MW in the past 20 minutes. pic.twitter.com/wN9ujbvYra
— Matt Largey (@mattlargey) June 14, 2021
Five days apart. pic.twitter.com/BYGHtcZr45
— Parker Butler (@parkerbutler10) June 14, 2021
Greg Abbott, last week: "Everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid."
ERCOT, this week: https://t.co/tRGgfVVVOJ
— Boot Texas Republicans (@BootTexasGOP) June 14, 2021
Texas governor blasted as electric authority warns of power outages — this time in a heat wave #AbbottFailedTexas #Cancun https://t.co/8mPHqY6ivi
— Raw Story (@RawStory) June 14, 2021
"let's be totally separate from rest of the country's power grid, because reasons" does not seem to have worked out so well, but also the people running the state do not seem to care all that much
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) June 15, 2021
I pledge allegeince
to the grid
that sometimes supplies electricity
to some of the public
I represent
one texas
under ercot
with liberty for just us in cancun https://t.co/ILkgHHflTv— kilgore trout, offer expires june 31 (@KT_So_It_Goes) June 14, 2021
I could believe this, because the God these Texans keep talking about is a sadist, Who would gleefully punish a lot of innocent people because His preferences were not sufficiently noted…
i don’t believe in god but if i did, i would think this is god underlining his preference for governor of texas in case you missed it the first time https://t.co/55n2ivEIuo
— FREE THE WEREWOLF MACHINE (@golikehellmachi) June 14, 2021
dlwchico
Also Greg Abbot:
https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1400971477051133956?s=20
Cheryl Rofer
@dlwchico: LOL, and that requires as much electric power as some countries
ETA: I doubt any blockchain magnates are seriously looking at Texas.
Just Chuck
@dlwchico: He probably thinks it’s a new form of chain gang.
cain
@Cheryl Rofer:
haha – yeah, he’s literally making the electric grid problem even worse.
On the other hand, blockchain people are dumb enough to show up and start using electricity and demand to be treated like special snowflakes.
Gin & Tonic
@Just Chuck: If Greg Abbott can actually explain blockchain, correctly, I’ll eat my hat.
Just Chuck
@Cheryl Rofer: It’s only the crypto-currency blockchains that suck up the power for mining. Other blockchains for things like ledgers are just fine. Every git repository is a blockchain.
Of course Abbot doesn’t know any of this, he just heard some douchebag techbro speak and thought to himself “he’s smart. i want to be smart. if i give him money i’ll be smart”
Baud
I believe, technically, power failures in cold weather and in hot weather cancel each other out in terms of scandal.
Baud
@Just Chuck: Thanks. I was about to suggest the same thing.
Barbara
I can’t wait to hear what the justification is if they have to initiate “rolling” blackouts in the summer. Arguing against not doing whatever it takes to winterize the electric grid in Texas just to stave off a once in a decade catastrophe is at least grounded in logic. Those arguments are not available when it comes to summer heat.
Ken
Wait until Texans find the governor’s invested the state pension fund in NFTs.
Cheryl Rofer
@Just Chuck: Thanks. I follow that stuff only vaguely and was thinking about the verification of the blockchain, but I guess that’s what bitcoin mining is. Or something. Don’t bother with much explanation.
rp
This is actually Abbott’s 12 dimensional chess and good news for Texas: fewer people going inside to take advantage of AC means reduced transmission of COVID-19, an important win in a state with low vaccination rates.
dr. bloor
I find these things depressing at this point. Abbott’s incompetence and Cruz’s venality will have zero impact on Texans’ willingness to keep voting Republican.
Baud
RE: blockchain. (1) Does location matter to the “industry”? (2) If so, are there a lot of jobs associated with that “industry”?
Baud
@dr. bloor:
Dems have been steadily making gains every election. It’s all having some impact, just not fast enough.
dmsilev
@Cheryl Rofer: Maybe he read one of those news stories about how bitcoin mining in China is largely powered by coal plants and was …inspired?
He’s deeply stupid, is what I’m trying to say.
dmsilev
@Baud:
(1) Yes, cheaper electricity is what matters, and that varies with location. (2) No, not really.
Ken
My inclination would be to make the changes, if you truly expect the event once a decade. But that’s without any analysis of costs or other factors that would have to be made for a real decision.
The Dark Avenger
@Baud: Unfortunately, the heat will win out. While cold can cause power lines to snap, heat is bad for electrical devices in general. Even without a power shortage, you can get blown transformers and the like.
Just Chuck
@Cheryl Rofer: I don’t understand the full algorithm myself, but from what I can tell, mining more or less involves doing the reverse of a hash algorithm: the network gives you a hash based on the last mined block and the current state of transactions on the chain (I’m very fuzzy about that second part) , and you have to come up with a block that has that hash. It’s pretty much a brute force algorithm.
What I do know is that the mining process being tied to the transaction validation means BTC tops out at processing 7 transactions per second across the entire network. That’s right, the Future Of Money can’t handle more than seven people actually buying anything with it at any one second.
cain
@Just Chuck: Hell you’re basic linux filesystem is a blockchain with that definition. :-) ext2-ext4 filesystem is all blockchain related.
Just Chuck
@cain: Yep, and other filesystems were doing it before Linux. It’s the distributed consensus nature of the crypto blockchains that’s fairly novel.
MattF
The rightmost edge of Texas politics is famously crazy and has been crazy for many, many years. I used to read the Texas Republican Party platform regularly just to keep tabs on what the maniacs were up to. Less amusing now that they’re in charge. And they’re not going away any time soon.
Ken
@Just Chuck: Close. The bitcoin miners are given the transaction data that will go in the block. The block has space for additional data. They have to find a value for the additional data that gives a hash that meets certain requirements — I think it’s that the hash starts with some number of zeroes. So the miners fill in that additional data with random values and hash, over and over.
This is what slows the transaction rate so badly, and none of it has anything to do with the mechanism or use of the blockchain as a way of keeping public ledgers. If you don’t require keeping the ledger in a distributed fashion and are willing to trust one party — say, Visa — to run the ledger, they can produce blocks about as fast as the transactions stream in.
Well, when you go back to the basis for the ideal society, how many people were actually living in Galt’s Gulch? Couldn’t have been more than a hundred.
Just Chuck
@Ken: So if transactions require an active miner to validate them, doesn’t that mean as the pool of available bitcoins continues to shrink that the payment network is going to get even slower? Or are they mined at a constant rate with smaller and smaller returns?
I used to keep tabs on cryptocurrency developments more until the culture around it became too insufferable.
Josie
@Gin & Tonic: I think your hat is safe. I can’t explain it and I’m a helluva lot smarter than he is (low bar, I know).
Mike in NC
My money is on Ted Cruz winning the GQP nomination in 2024, because he’s an utterly irredeemable sack of horse manure who couldn’t even stand up to a brain dead stooge like Donald Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Magnates — how do they work?
MattF
@Mike in NC: If Trump actually runs for it, he’ll win the nom. Cruz would just be roadkill.
Ruckus
@dr. bloor:
You know, just because something didn’t work the last two hundred times doesn’t mean it won’t work the two hundredth and first time.
You just have to keep trying.
This is the 5 yr old’s explanation of why he was unable to drive the car all those times he stole the keys…..
Ken
@Just Chuck: Constant rate with smaller and smaller returns. I think this is called “halving”, meaning they halve the reward (in bitcoins) for the successful miner.
The number of bitcoins is finite, so they had to do something like that; otherwise the last one will get mined, and then what’s the incentive for keeping the ledger? But it means they’re expecting that in a few years, miners will still be willing to do the work for 1/65536 of a bitcoin (smaller fractions to follow), and I doubt the things will be “valuable” enough to pay for the electricity.
Ruckus
@Ken:
I always read NFT as No Fucks Transactions.
It saves time not thinking about block chains and people trying to monopolize a small fixed pool of something-something-something that might be worth something if you spend enough on electricity and computers to cancel out what you might be but very likely won’t be making.
sdhays
@Mike in NC: I’m not sure Ted Cruz will win reelection for Senate in 2024. He came within a couple percentage points of losing in 2018. I’m not predicting his defeat, mind you, but it’s not the lock you might have once thought it was in Texas.
sdhays
@Ken: I hope you’re right about that. These energy wasters are a complete and total menace.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rp: Well played. Very well played.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: History shows people get fatalistic until the stupidity gets truly out of hand, and these rolling blackout in Texas might just be that. Of course like with Trump and COVID the damage will be done by that point.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: hahaha
bnateAZ
For a party that loves to bitch about “theatrics” in politics, these GQP idiots love to try to keep filming “Patriotism: The Movie”
WaterGirl
@sdhays: All the more reason for him to run for president in 2024, before he loses his Senate seat and then would certainly have no chance.
Ken
@sdhays: Well, if I’m right it just means that bitcoin will someday have a catastrophic price collapse and never recover. Unfortunately there are other cryptocurrencies out there, and plenty of people who will ignore the failure of bitcoin — or say to themselves “I’ll time my exit to just before the collapse.”
Almost Retired
Ugh, Texas. I know the trend line is positive, but still. Ted Cruz is vile and odious – the equivalent of a mustache-twirling cartoon villain, with the IQ of a dead armadillo on the roadside. But Texans still re-elected him even when offered a vastly superior alternative.
New Deal democrat
While you are at it, Texas is also going in reverse with regard to COVID. It is among the 10 worst States for new infection rates, and the number of cases has *increased* substantially in the past several weeks.
RobertDSC-Work
I have family that lives in Texas. We don’t speak very often because of family issues, but they’re still blood. It bothers me that they moved there from California due to some thing about “taxes”. Now they live in that shithole state and are subject to this fucking bullshit. Unbelievable.
Other MJS
I don’t understand why Ted’s tongue doesn’t catch fire when he says “and to the Republic for which it stands”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
moderately good news
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The voting rights bill is more important, but normies will care more about infrastructure.
Dirk Reinecke
I realise that Senator Cruz is somewhat, well sclubby, but why on earth is his flag that wrinkled does he roll it into a little ball like laundry after he has disrespected it.
WaterGirl
If anyone is having the phone/mobile issues where the screen is fucked up, or the comment window is fucked up, or the edit window is fucked up, please send me a screen shot ASAP. I am collecting screen shots to send to John in the next few minutes.
Ken
@New Deal democrat: I expect they’ll take a hint from Florida and stop reporting daily. They may go even further, and stop reporting at all — at least Florida is still giving weekly updates.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I always assumed Cole knew how fucked up his blog was.
Ken
@Dirk Reinecke: Maybe he bought one of the flags from TFG’s White House campaign event. Those were also pretty wrinkled in the pictures I saw.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That sentence makes me sad.
dr. bloor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I guess I’m feeling depressed and fatalistic this morning, but I’m with Dick Durbin on this: Enough already, the summer session is already running short, and nothing will win any Republican votes anyways.
frosty
@Almost Retired: Cruz got into Princeton as an undergrad. His IQ is at least as high as a live armadillo’s.
hueyplong
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’d like to think that McConnell’s recent, especially noteworth assholery has moved them a bit.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Oh no! That was the intent!
rp
@New Deal democrat: Yep…low vaccination rate plus warmer weather (more people inside for AC) means spike in infections. People on the right have been saying for weeks that FL and TX opened everything up and proved the doomsayers wrong, and anyone that pointed out that they were spiking the ball five yards from endzone was shouted down of course.
rp
@hueyplong: I don’t get the point of McConnell saying this stuff out loud. I know it’s likely to move Manchin and Sinema, but it can’t help him.
Ukko
@Ken: the miner also gets to charge a bit for the transactions it is putting into the block. The idea is that those transaction fees will make it worth their time to mine.
There is a vein of goldbuggery baked into the Bitcoin thing. They love the idea that the money pool is finite.
Baud
@rp:
They are trying desperately to keep Trump voters (and donors) angry and engaged without Trump being on the ballot.
brendancalling
Good stuff, but please stop linking to Raw Story: it’s little more than regurgitated clickbait and a toxic work environment.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well played!
Kathleen
Kathleen
rp
@rp: (Obv. I meant it’s *not* likely to move Manchin and Sinema.)
Nora Lenderbee
“Let them roast in the dark.”
germy
Meet the new generation of Republicans:
“Oh Lord, give me the self-confidence of a mediocre white man” etc.
rp
@Baud: True. But why not wait until he’s closer to the 2022 election? As many others have noted in the past, I don’t think he’s the brilliant strategist he’s often made out to be.
jeffreyw
@WaterGirl: I’m usually on a windows pc and things have gotten a lot better. No more back all the way to the top on a refresh. I fired up an android tablet and my android phone when I read your comment and both look fine to me.
eta: Firefox on the PC, Samsung Internet on the android stuff. Adguard on everything.
sdhays
@rp: The people he “leads” are stupid and lazy (Republican Senators). He doesn’t need to be very competent to get them to do what he wants.
What really pisses me off about all this bipartisanship bullshit is where in the entire Republican Caucus is the analog to Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema? Where are the 2 or 3 Republicans who dug in their heals and said to Moscow Mitch, “If you want to pass these tax cuts, I’m not voting for them unless it’s a bipartisan vote.”
There’s not one Republican who said this. They didn’t do jack shit about bipartisanship when they were in power. Why is it Joe Manchin’s job to resurrect bipartisanship when no one made a comparably serious effort when Republicans were running the chamber?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Guessing that you unintentionally left out the word “not” ?
Or maybe a Freudian slip?
Speaking of freudian slips, I always loved the B Kliban cartoons where he has some guy dressed in a slip, looking at himself in the mirror. I suspect he also had a name tag or something to make it clear that the fellow was Freud. I wonder if those are available online somewhere.
brantl
@frosty: I think you’re grossly underrating an armadillo, 60 out of 100 times, they make it across the road, without getting squashed.
Ken
In one of the linked twitter threads:
Whatever ERCOT’s analysis may report, I suspect the real answer will be “We noticed we make a lot more money when we shut down some of the generation capacity.”
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Just a failed attempt at semi-self-deprecating humor. Not worth it if it made you sad.
zhena gogolia
Reposting to relevant thread. The great Blair Erskine.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw:
Interesting! John got rid of the awful Zergnet ads – permanently, I believe – but we still have the others.
If that popping up to the top is gone for everyone, then it’s pretty clear that Zergnet was the culprit there.
trollhattan
I’m not about to get all cocky about Calif vs. Texas because in two days we’ll have our first real test of the year if the predicted record heat arrives. OTOH Texas is the special brand of stupid due to their preening ignorance–feature, not bug.
The Flag Day shot of Cruz implies he’s the guy most likely to ask, “You gonna finish that?” at the dinner table. Not a good look, Ted.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
Holy shit, he’s running for office but doesn’t even know the difference between the US Congress and the State Legislature?? FSM spare us!
Doug R
@Ken:
When the biggest blockchain pyramid scheme fails, the rest will follow.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Haha.
WaterGirl
@Baud: My second reply to you was because you said this:
Where it appears that you were saying that making me sad was the intent. Which I was pretty sure was not your intention. :-)
Betty Cracker
@Mike in NC: I think it will be DeSantis unless by some miracle he loses the gubernatorial election next year or is embroiled in some hideous scandal. DeSantis as the nominee is an even scarier scenario, IMO, because I think DeSantis would have a much better chance of winning than Cruz, and he’s every bit as horrible — maybe even worse.
trollhattan
In a normal year we in the West would be getting significant hydropower right now but because it’s drought year 2, in California ATM we are getting 0 MW from large hydro into the grid. Shocking, given June runoff in the mountains is usually quite high.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Yes, that’s missing a not.
I should give up on today. I’m failing more than the Texas electric grid.
Doug R
@Ukko:
Yeah, now every bitcoin transaction has added “fees” like a “tip” for the miners. Sounds like a couple steps back-to serfdom- like most restaurants.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, he’s sort of a genetic splice of Trump and Cruz. And, also yeah, if the various voter suppression laws hold up, he could very likely win.
germy
@SiubhanDuinne:
Details, details…. he seems confident, though.
Gravenstone
@Cheryl Rofer: The man clearly has it in for ERCOT.
cain
@RobertDSC-Work:
I understand that Idaho is now the great new frontier for right wingers – but hilariously the housing market has exploded and it’s hard to afford a house there – crazy. It’s not like ID has any kind of major industry – I have no idea what is driving that market other than right wing hell hole
yellowdog
@sdhays: THe laws they are passing will insure GQP victories in perpetuity.
cain
@Doug R:
I had an opportunity to do mining way back when it first started. I recognized it for what it was and simply refused to. I could have been a “millionaire” in bitcoins but I’m not really interested in being rich anyways. That’s how you get fucked. Shoot for being comfortable. You’ll be happy for it.
germy
Nikki Haley, Bibi, and this guy:
cain
@Betty Cracker: That delta strain is going to be his undoing – right wingers are not great at taking responsibility despite all their rhetoric. He’s going to double down and that shit is going to spread through his primary constituents – conservative voters.
laura
@Ken: It’s exactly what ENRON did to California under the guise of planned maintenance. Restrict generating supply when demand is on the increase and profit by fucking over Grandma Millie. Of course this was after all the generating capacity was sold off at well and far above book value. (I did a legal fellowship at the CPUC and was tasked with reviewing these sales to determine if it would be possible to overturn the sales. It wasn’t and I learned a lot about FERC, how to read a prospectus and such like and I got a front row seat as PG&E ringfenced its profit from the divestitures and started a new broke as a joke PG&E Corp to force ratepayers to eat the high prices- which had been promised to not occur.)
I’m watching ERCOT repeat the experiment in Texas.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Her clip was featured on Brian Williams’s show last night. And #ACorAOC is trending on Twitter.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Well, he just doesn’t know which one his opponent is in. Big difference. ?
CaseyL
GOP Governors had a playbook: “Use the Governorship to fuck up your state as much as possible, and then use that as a springboard to the Presidency.” It worked pretty well for Bush the Lesser, but not for his brother “Jeb!” or for Bobby Jindal. DeSantis is betting that third time is the charm. Abbott seems content to fuck up Texas indefinitely.
All of them have reduced their states to, essentially, “developing nation” status. Which still has them a leg up over perennial not-even-developing-nations Alabama and Mississippi.
Strange to think we have multiple entire states that wouldn’t be considered First World status if they weren’t in the US. And their history of failure goes back multiple generations, if not centuries. Outside of a few urban centers, the people there have never experienced a fully functional liberal democracy, or a fully functional municipality system.
I’ve been saying for years that what the GOP really wants is for every state to be Mississippi. But the current crop of GQP contenders seem to be bypassing that: what they seem to want is for every state to be Syria.
WaterGirl
@Baud: You can never fail, Baud! It’s we who fail you. :-)
There go two miscreants
Avoiding work is the whole point of being a magnate!
West of the Rockies
@trollhattan:
The profile shot is not a good one. Billy goat whiskers over
Ted’s non-sharp jawline above his well-fed belly…
ian
@yellowdog:
They sure will if you think like that.
We overcame Jim Crow, the 3/5ths compromise and its effects on the national system, and mass poll tests designed to disenfranchise entire segments of the population. That some of these may return is frightening, but we should not assume they are forever written in stone.
Betty Cracker
@cain: Maybe. Presumably it’s mostly “conservative” jerks who are refusing to get vaccinated, and a deadlier outbreak could make those folks “unavailable” to vote next November. Also, IIRC, Florida’s worst outbreak was in the summer because, unlike most other states, people are indoors/windows shut here then and outside/windows open the rest of the year. DeSantis definitely used that accident of geography to pat himself on the back over the winter.
That said, Florida is in the middle of the pack in vaccination rates by state — neighboring Southern states are much worse. I credit our older population, which took the pandemic seriously. Even the wingnuts! All my Trump-voting 70-something relatives got their vaccinations, and they’ll be voting for DeSantis, as will most of the people in The Villages, who are also vaxxed.
SFAW
I SO wanted that Raw Story tweet to read “Texas governor blasted into outer space, along with both US Senators and the State AG.”
Alas, it was not to be.
Cameron
OT, just saw a headline at MSN that the White House is advising Dem senators that they’ll likely be going it alone on infrastructure – apparently WH will allow bipartisan nonsense for another week or so, then forget it.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
“Let’s see now: ‘The party of the first part shall be known as the party of the first part.’ ”
“No, I’m-a no like that”
usw
ETA: Of course, Abbott would think that explanation is too Marxist.
SFAW
Deleted duplicate
Soprano2
@WaterGirl: I’m having that problem, but I think I missed your window. The comment box “floats” and is wider than my screen. Sometimes turning my phone sideways, closing the browser, then reopening it fixes the problem for awhile. Chrome browser on an Android Galaxy S21
M31
@SFAW: hahahahaha
of course, Texas and the Sanity Clause aren’t really bedfellows
trnc
Don’t worry. With Moore’s Law, that’ll be up to 30 or 40 people in no time.
Chris Johnson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This tracks with what I read earlier about how Bernie is on board and enthusiastic about what he can get accomplished in the reconciliation process.
It sounds to me like Dems have a plan, and one that is not stupider than what the Republicans are doing. It only looks stupider if you think that the Republicans doubling down is an automatic win for them. I’m pretty sure what they’ve done with themselves has decimated their support, and what they’ve done with coronavirus has also decimated their support, and Trump is a sick old man who was never, ever who they said he was…
Even if you take ‘decimated’ to mean ‘remove a tenth’, take away two-tenths of the Republicans through going too crazy and also through death, and I’m not convinced their voter suppression will be enough. They’ve been doing the voter suppression as hard as they can this whole time. How much more can they realistically do, even under cover of law? Cover of law hasn’t been stopping them in the first place.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
I loved that! It encapsulated their shibboleth-spouting illogic so perfectly.
J R in WV
“with the IQ of a dead armadillo on the roadside…”
A notable comparison of Senator Rafael Eduardo Cruz’s intellect. What it reminds me of, though, is that after many, many tens of thousands of miles of driving in the South and Southwest, I do not recall ever seeing an armadillo, dead or alive, anywhere in the wild.
Is that weird or what?
sdhays
@Chris Johnson: Our major impediment, as always, is the geographic distribution of their decimation in support. It’s clearly been the case in California and Virginia, and has helped deliver the House. But we need it more broadly distributed to really beat back the beast. It seems like the Texas GQP are doing their damnedest to prove to their constituents that it’s time to pull the plug on Republican rule, but they’re a stubborn bunch. And the anti-voting measures aren’t going to help.
And the other wildcard is the groundswell of MAGAT’s we saw in 2020. They weren’t enough to win, but they were a lot more numerous than I expected. Do they show up again if Dumpy Dump isn’t on the ticket? They didn’t in 2018, so fingers crossed that they also don’t show up in 2022. But who knows?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Probably a dead thread but: It’s not. About. Republican. Votes. It’s about Democrats who want to appear bipartisan.
This was also the case in Obama’s first term (first congress), and still, even here on stodgy old center-right Obotty but with AOC-stan tendencies Balloon Juice, we still see that idiotic “Obama was too worried about being friends with Republicans” horseshit.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I do too and I agree he’s a threat, but OTOH I think we tend to over-value governors and think they’ll translate national and then they don’t. He’s all but lurching far Right at this point- obviously he has to- but this isn’t a far Right country.
Even I’m surprised at some of it- the anti-trans event at the school of the pedophile preacher? Just Right wing nutjob territory.
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: 2009 took Obama somewhat by surprise. He truly believed in the patriotism of his Republican colleagues and was at least somewhat surprised at how little of it they actually had. But it’s definitely true that main problem was the conservative Democrats who never got a clue, not the Obama WH.
I don’t see any suggestion that Biden is naive this time around. Manchin and Sinema, though… I’m perfectly happy to entertain some kabuki about appearing bipartisan, but when they “negotiate” by stating that Republicans have a veto over whether anything passes or not, I really don’t understand what they’re thinking.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Disagree. It’s about some Democrats who are genuinely further Right. I don’t understand why the Democratic Party doesn’t just say that. They don’t have the D votes. They’d rather their loyal voters think they’re doing some elaborate play-acting? Why?
I’m much more likely to accept “these Senators are centrists and we can’t get their votes as is” than I am “we’re putting on a theatrical production”.
Not partisan. Ideological. Some Democrats want to move Biden’s proposal Right and they have leverage and they’re holding it up to get concessions. 90% of the elaborate theories on “betrayals” and “secret plans” would drop out of this if they’d just trust people and say that. We all know it’s true! The 50 senators are not ideologically exactly the same! We accept this.
dr. bloor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@Kay:
This isn’t an either-or proposition, I don’t think. My assumption is that there’s a bill that will get 50 Democratic senators to vote yes without republican support, but which isn’t as useless as what it would take to get even one Republican vote. Pass that bill, take credit, and move on, or let the really good bill fail and lay the corpse at Manchin’s et al’s feet and let them deal with it as they wish.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: True. I kind of vacillate between two poles — a feeling of dread like DeSantis is inevitable, and the notion that he’s screwed himself by going too far right even for Florida.
I hope the latter is true, and it turns out as someone on Twitter suggested it might, i.e., the Politico-anointed Next Great GOP Hope often fizzles (see Pawlenty, Tim).
cain
@SFAW:
“Without Blockchains, Christianity will die”
The Pale Scot
All those Californians that Texas has been coaxing to come to Texas came and said fuck it’s hot, at least I don’t have to worry about grid shutdowns due to wild fire risk so lemme crank up the AC
sdhays
@Kay: Except this doesn’t seem to be the case. Manchin isn’t shy about pointing to things he personally doesn’t like. He cosponsored a bill in a previous session which was similar to HR1, but won’t go to the mat to pass it. Maybe there is something he doesn’t like, but he could have had that, I’m sure, if he would agree to ditch the Republicans. But that’s not what he is saying. He says he’s happy with the bill, personally, but he wants a bipartisan bill.
There is a genuine desire for bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake among some Senators, and it’s just bizarre to witness.
The Pale Scot
@MattF:
The rejection of teaching critical thinking due to it’s propensity of giving
peoplekids the tools to reject religion and authority is my personal favoriteJim, Foolish Literalist
@sdhays:
He wasn’t the only one. I always the under-discussed key to understanding Republicans in Obama’s first term is Judd Gregg. Even Lindsey Graham, per the O’Bros, thought he was gonna be the bipartisan bridge between Obama and the Rs until the McConnell-Cantor hold on the Party of No firmed up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I don’t disagree as far as it goes. Leaving Sinema aside, who I really think is just a drama-llama dingbat, Manchin is a conservative, but one who also really believes in the cult of bipartisanship. I think Feinstein doesn’t get discussed enough as a conservative because she’s a woman from California and solidly liberal on most social issues, but she voted for the first round of Bush tax cuts, the Iraq War, several highly problematic 2nd term Bush nominees… Pat Leahy was always numbered among the “instutionalists” who want to keep the filibuster, but I don’t think o him as Consercative in the way Manchin and Feinstein are. Maggie Hassan is said to want to keep the filibuster, and as she is said to be in real danger from a popular R governor Sununu, I would chalk that up to theatre/appearances. AFAIK, Kelly has been very quiet on the subject of the filibuster, faced with an election in a purple state in two years. And I think there may be a few more in that last club.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker:
Scott Walker, Chris Christie. Remember when Teeny Wienie Marco was “the Saviour”
Elizabelle
WRT Texass: louc put this link up on the overnight “haterz” thread.
Teach Texas history using Texas documents? All right already, Governor Abbott. Let’s see what we find. Threadreader from Texas teacher Brian Franklin. This is an opportunity!
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1402293239386943493.html
Michael Cain
@laura:
Differing in the detail that California stuck the electric utilities and eventually the taxpayers, and Texas appears to be going to stick just the ratepayers.
The Pale Scot
@zhena gogolia:
Hmmm.. Twitter is blocking the video function when I use either of my VPNs. Journalists in sketchy countries use VPNs to avoid censorship and worse. If this is a change in policy this is not good.
The Pale Scot
@trollhattan:
I’ve read that this years runoff just got sucked up into the parched soil
laura
@Michael Cain: Ringfencing.
burnspbesq
@RobertDSC-Work:
Yeah, the “thing” being that Texas doesn’t have an individual income tax, while California’s tops out at around 13 percent.
That is most definitely a thing. It’s not the reason I moved, but I notice it.
burnspbesq
@frosty:
Every admission office makes the occasional mistake.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@cain: mountainous & soarsely populated. like afghanistan.
the american taliban is plotting guerrilla war.
Chris T.
@laura:
Aha. I was about 97% certain this was exactly what happened in CA, and predicted that it was going to happen in TX and other deregulated markets. I’m glad to see someone with greater access and legal knowledge confirm my suspicions…