While everyone is still pondering the assassination of Russia’s Ambassador to Turkey, there are several other breaking stories going one. The first is a truck attack on a Christmas Market in Berlin. There are 9 died and the police are treating it as deliberate:
“We are investigating whether it was a terror attack but do not yet know what was behind it,” a police spokesman told AFP news agency.
“One person was detained. The cab of the truck was found empty.”
A British eyewitness, Mike Fox, told The Associated Press at the scene that the large lorry had missed him by only about 3m as it drove into the market, tearing through tables and wooden stands.
“It was definitely deliberate,” said the tourist, visiting from Birmingham.
He said he had helped people who appeared to have broken limbs, and that others were trapped under Christmas stands.
Here’s some video of the response:
#Breitscheidplatz| enormous response by Berlin rescue services:
• 9 dead.
• motive unknown.
• ? @michelleostwald https://t.co/xfJ7OWPZn8— Mikey Kay (@MikeyKayNYC) December 19, 2016
Belgian authorities are also involved in what is being reported as an ongoing anti-terrorism operation.
#BREAKING: A number of anti terror raids currently ongoing in #Schaerbeek, Belgium pic.twitter.com/8wL03tiQNQ
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) December 19, 2016
#BREAKING: Raids in #Schaerbeek #Belgium are taking place after reports of a 'Serious threat' pic.twitter.com/0s3phQpJ4S
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) December 19, 2016
While it is still unclear if there was any larger organizational connection for the Turkish assassin, Rukmini Callimachi’s monitoring of ISIL and al Qaeda social media has turned up something interesting.
2. But I'm watching their channels on Telegram and an interesting thing is happening. Pro-Qaeda channels are celebrating; ISIS not so much
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) December 19, 2016
4. By contrast, see posts of Mustafa al-Iraqi, channel close to ISIS, who calls shooter a "murtad," or apostate because he was Turkish army pic.twitter.com/pVXSqQXQds
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) December 19, 2016
What’s really interesting about this is that while both al Qaeda and ISIL share the concept of tawheed, the radical unity of the Deity, as part of each group’s doctrine/theology, ISIL’s doctrine is built solely on it harkening back to the reactionary beliefs and radical actions of the Saudi Ikhwan of the late 19th Century. Al Qaeda’s doctrine/theology is, for lack of a better term, more nuanced – it blends tawheed with other reactionary Islamic and political Islamic concepts.
The bigger concern is what this does to the global security environment. Assassinations of ambassadors and other diplomatic personnel are rare. This is not to say they don’t happen, nor that diplomatic personnel don’t face potentially hostile threat environments, even when posted to non-combat zones. Even more disturbing are the reports that Ambassador Karlov’s assassin was a member of the Ankara Riot Police. While most/many diplomatic services have their own diplomatic security personnel, they are also reliant on the host country’s security services. Anything that calls the latter into question makes securing diplomatic personnel that much harder, which makes the important work they do around the world, regardless of what country they are from and what country they are serving, more difficult as well.
UPDATED at 4:55 PM EST
Apparently I missed a shooting near a mosque in Zurich.
Three people were wounded in a shooting near an Islamic center in central Zurich on Monday, police said.
Swiss media said a suspect was on the run after the incident near the main train station in Switzerland’s financial capital.
It was not immediately clear whether the Islamic center or any of the other businesses registered buildings nearby, were the target of the attack, or what any motive might have been.
People at the scene told Reuters they prayed at the center, which was used as a mosque, often by Somalis.
Zurich police confirmed people had been wounded in the incident on Zurich’s Eisgasse, but gave no more details. A police official was expected to make a statement.
MomSense
We have just elected the worst possible human to have to deal with our foreign policy issues. Shaking things up might be fun for a party or reality tv shownbut that was not the smartest reason to vote for a megalomaniacal moron for president.
MomSense
Was there also a shooting in a Zurich mosque today?
Jonny Scrum-half
There really does need to be something done about violent, radical Islamism. I don’t have an answer, of course, but my hunch is that the imams and other religious figures who incite people to these sorts of acts need to be dealt with harshly.
Unfortunately, my other hunch is that Saudi Arabia is largely behind the radical religious leaders for complicated reasons, so taking care of the imams is more difficult than it otherwise might appear.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone else who knows more than I do has any thoughts.
Mike in NC
We visited several Christmas markets in Germany last year and they were breathtakingly beautiful.
Mike in dc
@MomSense:
Yes. Important not to leave that out.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Are some cosmic deities playing Cards Against Humanity for reals? We keep wanting 2016 to be done, but what rough beast awaits on ’17?
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: Near.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-shooting-idUSKBN1481X0
Elizabelle
It seems impossible to me that responsibility to replying to events such as today’s will soon be in the tiny, unqualified hands of the ShitGibbon.
And pardon me, all small apes.
BillinGlendaleCA
“When news breaks, we fix it”
Calouste
The truck in Berlin is from a Polish company and was on it’s way back home from Italy, with a stop in Berlin planned. The owner of the company said that his cousin was the driver, and had 15 years of experience. One theory is that the truck might have been high-jacked.
Phoebes
I shudder to think how Trump will handle this kind of thing in 4 weeks.
MomSense
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
I’m starting to think that all the spectacular people we lost this year were being saved/spared 2017.
Gin & Tonic
@Mike in NC: We spent a week and a half a couple of Decembers ago traveling around Germany/Austria and went to probably a dozen of them (my wife really likes them.) Didn’t get up to Berlin, though.
dmsilev
@Phoebes: Has he tweeted anything about any of the attacks yet?
Calouste
@Adam L Silverman: Police have found a dead body in the vicinity of the Islamic centre. It’s unclear if it has anything to do with the shooting.
debbie
@dmsilev:
Nope. Bet he’s scared shitless.
dmsilev
@debbie: Yeah, well, my sympathies are limited. He wanted this job, and soon enough it’s going to be his.
Miss Bianca
Has everyone in the WORLD decided to take Stupid Pills today?
Tractarian
I Alone Can Fix It
debbie
@dmsilev:
Mine are too, believe me. This could just be the karma he doesn’t want.
Another Scott
@Tractarian: Indeed.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@Jonny Scrum-half: Radical Islam is the bastard child of Sykes-Picot.
PIGL
@efgoldman: or maybe it’s not all about the USA.
Chris
While not the same kind of event, I’d say the news that Trump may be planning to keep his own private security force in the White House also counts as “something breaking” today. It would mean a security force answering to him specifically and not to the office or the government, as someone pointed out in an earlier thread, which I’m pretty sure is unprecedented in modern history. (I think Gilded Age presidents hired Pinkertons for this, but nothing like that in recent times, and even an agency like Pinkerton’s wasn’t under the direct control of the POTUS the way Trump’s private goon squad is).
The differences between them and the Secret Service – i.e. the Secret Service doesn’t eject peaceful protesters from rallies, these guys do – don’t seem to indicate that we should be optimistic.
schrodingers_cat
@PIGL: Are you kidding me, I thought this was the center of the Universe, let alone, earth.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: I’m actually doing pretty well for once, which is odd for a Monday. So obviously I’m some sort of competence vampire.
matryoshka
Shitgibbon was ready to lob bombs after the Malaysian Airlines flight went down, and that continues to look like an accident of some sort. God knows what he will do with all this chaos. I guess we can hope that his non-interventional impulse not connected to his tiny little nuke fingers on Jan. 21.
PIGL
@Chris: how could that be legal?
Betty Cracker
@Jonny Scrum-half: Unfortunately, some of the people who think they know how to fix it are about to take control of the world’s more fearsome nuclear arsenal. Murderous religious kooks are certainly a scourge of humanity. But a cabal of crackpots given to believing in ridiculous conspiracy theories and prone to conflating a relative handful of nutters with one of the world’s largest religions will almost certainly make the situation worse.
Gin & Tonic
@matryoshka:
MH370, or MH17?
Dog Dawg Damn
@Chris: This is an astounding breach of president.
bystander
@Mike in NC: The Christmas market in Strasbourg is on my list of things to do again. Not a street food person, but o those Alsatians.
What is nagging me about today’s assassination is that prior to 9/11 there was a series of them IIRC. Plus the destruction of those monumental Buddhas.
max
The bigger concern is what this does to the global security environment. Assassinations of ambassadors and other diplomatic personnel are rare. This is not to say they don’t happen, nor that diplomatic personnel don’t face potentially hostile threat environments, even when posted to non-combat zones. Even more disturbing are the reports that Ambassador Karlov’s assassin was a member of the Ankara Riot Police.
Well, the jihadis have penetrated Turkey fairly extensively and there has been quite a bit of terrorist bombing going on over there.
This looks like another round of reprisals over Syria (same as 11/13 in Paris and whatnot).
max
[‘They don’t like losing ground.’]
Elizabelle
We live in a country that would not give the Presidency to an extraordinarily well-qualified woman who has been a Senator and Secretary of State, and devoted her life to improving the lives of women and children. And to learning about the world as it actually exists. Goddamn right-wingers and dudebros saw to that, with huge lift from Clinton Derangement Syndrome media.
Went with a reality TV star. Who is not that talented at anything but marketing and self-aggrandizement, but I do have to give him points for being shrewd about what a bizarre edifice is the current media and political climate.
Jeffro already pointed out K-Thug’s column today. Dr. Krugman is saying the same things Kay has been saying for weeks, with added emphasis on the fall of the Roman Republic history.
How Republics End
catclub
@schrodingers_cat: OTOH I agree, on Sykes-Picot. I would like to see a partition
that would provide a home land for the Kurds. ( I would also like a pony.)
OTOH, Saudi Arabia was least split up by Sykes-Picot and has been the source of the most radical fundamentalism, plus money.
catclub
@matryoshka:
The one shot down by Russian ground to air rocket? That accident?
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
If I didn’t already love Krugman, this one sentence would make me want his babies. Good for him!
Chris
@Mike in NC:
@bystander:
Obligatory though almost certainly unnecessary clarification emphasizing that Strasbourg is, of course, not in Germany, despite certain unfortunate historical events that moved the border back and forth a few times.
(I love the Strasbourg Christmas market as well, and have been there several times).
Calouste
@Elizabelle: Krugman makes the mistake to think that America ever was a democracy. An easy mistake to make of course if you are a rich white man.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: He sounds shrill.
BillinGlendaleCA
@catclub:
I’d hold out for a unicorn, but that’s just me.
trollhattan
Somebody’s trying to arm America’s toddlers to fend off these dangers. Nice to know you can freely ship our Precious Guns ™ around the nation.
EBT
GOPers don’t even like their own children. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/huizenga-son-broken-arm Good fuck these people should be sterilized and their children given to foster care.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: I thought shipping assault rifles by mail was outlawed after the John Kennedy assassination.
Guess it’s back. Insane.
gene108
@Chris:
But I do not think there was an actual Secret Service back then. Presidents were sort of on their own, regarding what to do about their security.
LAO
I take it, from the comments, that the great orange one has yet to chime in on Twitter.
EBT
@Elizabelle: You need some paperwork and you can’t mail it yourself. An authorized dealer with an FFL has to mail it to another authorized dealer with an FFL.
Elizabelle
I love K-Thug.
Wonder how much longer he will stay with the quislings at the New York Times. He’s called them out, several times, for their malfeasance.
Courageous man. They need him more than he needs them.
matryoshka
Trump said Russia was behind the downing of behind flight 17, then he said it probably wasn’t. I meant 370–I remember hearing him comment about “knowing” it was terrorism that brought it down when no one actually knew anything yet. Sorry for the confusion.
Adam L Silverman
@trollhattan: Someone mangled a delivery to someone else’s Federal Firearm Licensed gun dealer. Ooopsie!
Chris
@gene108:
Yes, I think that’s right. (Or if there was, they hadn’t transitioned to presidential protection yet). That sort of thing is much more excusable in the Gilded Age when the government was still a work in progress. More than a century later, deliberately unwinding the government to return to those kinds of more ad-hoc arrangements, that’s something else.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Dr. Krugman K-Thug has made the “it’s not both sides” emphasis in a lot of columns. Brave and truthful man.
Chris
@Elizabelle:
I don’t think he’ll ever get a better platform than he has with the quislings, though. And at least one person there should be speaking out like this. I hope he stays.
gene108
@EBT:
From your link.
Maybe people do not know the differenc in price because medical pricing is one of the most opaque and convoluted things ever created in human history.
The providers don’t even know how much something will cost until they bill it to the it to the insurance.
Elizabelle
to Siobhan: ETA: As you know! That sounds a bit condescending — apologies.
K-Thug has absorbed the virtues of repetition. I wish more on our side would. Take the time to remind people. It’s how the rightwing inserts its poison. Constant repetition.
I think Trump’s voters proved, among other things, they liked a guy who spoke his “mind” and stuck to his guns.
K-Thug does that, and I think a lot of Democrats should sound less afraid of pissing off the other side. There’s a lot of room between cerebral and pugnacious to the point of obnoxious. Find a better balance. There’s an audience out there, waiting.
Good parents don’t always use their “indoor voices”, in every situation. I mean, except Obama, but he’s a very special case.
Get out there and mix it up.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: Agreed. Plus it’s hilarious when he subtweets Brookie in column form.
Botsplainer
Warmup to 1/21/17. Some practice, and not a little probing. The bad guys now have some Americans among their number.
I’m thinking it’ll take the form of attacks against “soft” American interests, energy supply infrastructure and not a few Trump properties from Djakarta and KL to Lisbon. Economically, it’ll be catastrophic – fuel prices will skyrocket, it will destroy international leisure travel – which in turn will hammer airlines and hotel chains. Like a DOW market index of 8000 on April 1?
SiubhanDuinne
@gene108:
The Secret Service itself has been around since right after the Civil War, to root out counterfeiting operations, but only started routinely guarding Presidents (Veeps, families, etc.) in 1901 after McKinley was assassinated.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Interesting. I would have guessed Garfield.
So: bad for McKinley, but we got a professional Secret Service AND President Teddy Roosevelt out of the deal. Not too shabby.
tobie
Off-topic: I gather the only candidate to lose electors today was HRC. One Bernista in Maine voted for her only on the second ballot; one Dem elector in Minnesota had to be replaced because she refused to cast a vote for HRC; 3 Washington State electors voted for Colin Powell and one other elector voted for a leader at Standing Rock. All Republican electors voted for Trump, as expected. I wish I could say I’m surprised by any of this.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: Some nomenclature cleanup:
Assault rifles are a standardized, but inaccurate term, for AR pattern rifles. AR pattern rifles come in two classes: AR 15 pattern, which are semi-automatic and can be purchased in almost every state in the US. By semi-automatic I mean they are magazine fed, self-loaders, but the trigger has to be pulled each time one wants to fire. And M4/M16 pattern, which are select-fire weapons used by the military and some law enforcement. By select fire I mean they are magazine fed, self-loaders, but there is a choice in regards to fire. Single shot like on an AR 15 pattern rifle. The other two settings are three round burst and fully automatic. On the former one pull of the trigger will allow three shots to be fired before the trigger must be released to reset and pulled again to fire. On the latter one pull of the trigger will discharge the weapon until the magazine is empty. These rifles come in a variety of calibers, specifically the NATO 5.556/.223 Remington, which is the default, as well as everything from .22 Long Rifle to cartridges much, much larger than the .223. The 308 Winchester/NATO 7.62X.39 single fire is specifically known as an AR 10. The AR pattern rifles, AR 15s regardless of caliber, AR 10, and M4/M16 all share basic/similar cosmetic features.
All semi-automatic rifles, just like all other single shot, though not self-loading rifles may be purchased online or at licensed FFL dealerships around the country and then shipped to the purchaser. However, unless it is a purely private sale, as in from any commercial gun dealer/gun store, it must go through a Federal Firearms License (FFL) bearing gun dealer/store to ensure that the background checks for Federal and whatever state requirements are met. Given that there was paperwork, including copies of the purchasers driver’s license, in the box, this was clearly meant to go to a FFL bearing gun store so that the purchaser could go and pick up his gun according to applicable Federal and state laws.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
It is quite possible to have a democracy without universal suffrage. The US has failed to live up to its highest ambitions in terms of who has been allowed to participate, but that doesn’t mean our government wasn’t democratic.
BillinGlendaleCA
@LAO:
GOO, I like it!
Adam L Silverman
@LAO: Not that I’m aware. If I had to venture a guess, President Obama may have called him directly and asked him to leave this to the current administration.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
No need to apologise! It didn’t sound the last bit condescending. And I agree with you — PK has indeed “absorbed the virtues of repetition” (what a great phrase!). Another NYT columnist who’s doing that recently is Charles Blow. I’m scared that one or both of these guys will wake up to find themselves fired some day soon, leaving all that nice Opinion Page real estate to the David Brookses and Ross Douthats of this world.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
The Secret Service has been involved in protecting the President since right after the McKinley assassination.
Mnemosyne
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Define “harshly.” This summer, local authorities in France were forcing Muslim women to remove their religious garb while on the beach. If you don’t think that pissed off Muslims who were not actually “radical,” I have a bridge to sell you.
Also, WTF Belgium? That seems to be a huge breeding ground for terrorists right now. That’s where the most recent Paris terrorists came from, too.
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Why thank you.
Maybe the dudebros can raise a shriek about the driver’s license and permit going out in the mail. Privacy issues. Identity theft! Wolverines! Big
SisterBrother.EBT
@gene108: He chose to let his kid suffer for an extra 12 hours so he could save some money, when he could afford to treat his kid. He is shit. Almost as bad as my child murdering mother. If they both burned alive I could cheer.
rikyrah
@EBT:
Evil AZZ muthaphucka.
A Ghost to Most
Breaking my self-imposed silence to say how tickled I am with shitgibbon.
Also, if you haven’t listened to Drive-By Truckers American Band album, you are missing out on the most timely,most relevant, and the biggest Fuck you to those assholes album of the year.
Now back to plotting the restoration of our democracy.
Wolverines!
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: Interestingly, you don’t have to declare what a package’s contents are for a UPS shipment when you’re mailing it out, but you do for a return label. Not sure why that is, but so it is.
Chris
@tobie:
Naturally. Fucking shitbirds.
ETA: and vanity-voting for Colin fucking Powell, of all people.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
I guess I would have, too — at least, I hadn’t necessarily connected SS protection directly to a presidential assassination, but I did think that that part of their mandate went back further than 1901. I don’t know, though, whether Presidents before TR paid for their own security, or chose who they wanted but taxpayers footed the bill, or did without if they felt like it, or what.
I’ll bet Adam knows, though.
rikyrah
@Chris:
If he pays for them, fine. But, the taxpayer dollars for a private goon squad?
Hell muthaphuckin NO ????
Elizabelle
@A Ghost to Most: I think I heard a song on the radio, and it was good.
Thanks for the reminder about the DriveBy Truckers.
Mnemosyne
I just had to ruin my coworker’s day even further by telling him that the Russian ambassador was assassinated the same day that Trump was confirmed by the Electoral College.
Jesus fuck, this is a terrible year.
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: when they go low we kick them in the face… NNT never normalize trump
Elizabelle
Breaking news: the shitbirds of the Electoral College hung the shitgibbon around our necks. For dog knows how long.
Mike in NC
@gene108: A few months ago I got a bill from LabCorp for some routine bloodwork ordered by my doctor. Almost $2000 because someone neglected to send it to Tricare. I went online and resubmitted a claim and the revised bill was for $42 and change. Some difference!
Another reason I’ve avoided doctors all my adult life.
Baud
@tobie: No more goddamn open primaries. And change Washington state from caucuses to primaries.
Schlemazel
@Mike in NC:
I am crushed. The Christmas market is a special event, a tradition in every village since the Middle Ages. A simple celebration of community and the winter solstice. They are beautiful both in appearance and spirit.
Behind that is the knowledge that we built this. Our benevolent behavior in the Middle East set the wheels in motion and it appears we may yet end civilization as a functioning community.
One little CHristmas market is nothing compared to Aleppo but the forces that murdered 10s of thousands triggered this attack so they are joined.
Chris
@gene108:
The private health insurance industry in this country is organized crime. Full stop.
@rikyrah:
Well, of course he won’t pay for them. As has been pointed out multiple times; rich people don’t become rich by spending their own money, and this rich person in particular certainly won’t.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Every time I hear this kind of thing, it makes me go back to the Kaiser integrated payer/provider network model. It eliminates entire layers of of this kind of bullshit.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: No worries. It is its own subculture with its own language and customs. I’m in it because of the work I do, but if you’re not in it a lot of the stuff seems somewhere between “huh?” and “WTF? That’s nuts!”.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: And in related news, the ShitGibbon’s choice for OMB is a Bircher and a Goldbug, a twofer!
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Coincidence?
Elizabelle
@Baud: Yeah.
And I think, get rid of Iowa going first. It’s just a chance for the most rightwing evangelical to suck up the GOP vote, and it’s not worth it, bang for the buck, for Dems. Outlived its usefulness, and is not representative.
Series of rotating regional primaries.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Here you go from the National Archives:
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix7.html
A detailed history is at the link!
Baud
@Elizabelle: Agree. Iowa going red gives us an opportunity for reform.
Bobby D
@A Ghost to Most: Thanks for the tipoff. I dig the DBTs, kind of a bummer that the bass player left a while back. Still don’t think they’ve topped Dirty South, but I’m going to give the new one a listen as soon as I get home and give praise to jah.
ETA: I grew up in not far from where DBT formed, long family history there and pretty much all over the places DBT writes about. They nailed the culture better than anyone I’ve heard, and the storytelling in the songwriting is my favorite of any band.
Schlemazel
@schrodingers_cat:
This! A hundred years of meddling in the Middle East culminated with that ugly agreement and a hundred years of worse yet to follow. The US could have done something useful but instead decided to joint the feast. The cold war made it even more acceptable to carve the people of the region up and build up the empire on their corpses.
I am not a believer but whatever you conceive to be the source of this universe can substitute for “God” in President Lincoln’s address.
debbie
@Baud:
You know, if the party’s organizing was solid, open vs closed primaries wouldn’t matter. I don’t like the perception of a closed organization. That’s the GOP way.
Calouste
@Roger Moore:
Nope.
You can pretend to have a democracy, and the US have been very good at that over the years.
? Martin
So, a few energy numbers have come out recently. It is important to recognize when policy gets overshadowed by economics.
Last year we retired almost 3GW of coal based electric generation and added 9GW of renewable. The cost of solar and wind are now half the price of coal in most of the western US and parts of the south. The price of solar has dropped 80% in the last decade, mostly on the strength of China adding massive manufacturing capacity and dumping it below cost. They were selling solar at the future cost of manufacturing, not the current cost. Effectively, they were treating the inevitable declining cost of production as a capital expense in order to secure volume to drive that cost down. It’s a no-no on the international trade stage, but it’s also the exact same strategy that Intel pioneered to drive the cost of integrated circuits down to kick off the digital revolution, so, shame on them I guess for stealing our idea. Bottom line, China owns the solar industry because we tied our cash up in propping up the oil industry because Al Gore is fat.
But the other bottom line is that no matter how badly Trump and company want to bring coal and oil jobs along, they’re lost. Policy isn’t driving this change – not the EPA, not the energy department – it’s all being driven based on price now. Unless they are planning to massively tax renewables, the game is up. That said, Exxon has a lot to lose in this game, and taxing renewables is I’m sure on the table – which the are doing in states like Oklahoma.
What we need to recognize is that the oil companies have massive influence over policy relative to other industries. The question is what is the countervailing force? Democrats running the EPA is the usual one. But economically, there aren’t really any. The power utilities are small and fragmented, etc. This is one reason why I think the tech companies like getting into the electric/autonomous car space. They are comparably massive. Google and Apple can go toe-to-toe with Exxon and Chevron. They can be a countervailing force in favor of charging infrastructure, policy, and so on and they have the cash to win. They also have a state government in CA that wants them to win and will support them over the oil companies (even though Chevron is also a CA company). To Google and Apple, energy is a large market for them to grow into, and Apple created an Apple Energy subsidiary to do exactly this. They just bought capacity that they plan on selling to their suppliers in China. It’s growing apparent that they may be willing to build out renewable capacity on a scale that normally only government (or huge multinationals like Exxon) can afford to do but which your local utility provider may not be able to afford:
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think Apple is being altruistic here. I think it’s basic brand management and an opportunity to make money, but the main challenge that renewables bring is a large shift in capital spending. Apple can spend $3B a month on energy capacity, and do that indefinitely. Where the economics favor renewables, they can bury Exxon. Google is in a similar if weaker position, as are a few other tech giants.
Baud
@debbie: Open or closed, those electors never should have been appointed. It’s an embarrassment to have so many not support the nominee. They probably didn’t even vote for her in the election.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Nothing justifies terrorism at all. The problem is that there is so much discrimination against Muslims in Europe. The unemployment rate is sky high and so you have all these young people who feel hopeless and angry and sick of being treated poorly because of their religion. This presents the perfect conditions for recruitment by horrible people who exploit the hopelessness and resentments. I’m worried about the same thing happening here.
Baud
@Calouste: BTW, the GOP way seems to be working for them.
aimai
@Jonny Scrum-half: You know, I think that all the time about Christianist Neo Nazis and anti abortion terrorists!
Aleta
Powell, the guy who lied to the world so Bush and Cheney could swagger, profit from deaths and horrendous injuries, and betray the whole region? Good choice.
Tazj
@tobie: You know when I heard that on the radio in the car all I could do was laugh. The only “profiles in courage” came from the Democrats, typical.
Schlemazel
@gene108:
Lincoln formed the Secret Service to end counterfeiting. . They did not become responsible for the President until there were a couple more assassinations, shortly after 1900 I believe.
Adam L Silverman
@? Martin: Your link goes to coverage of the most recent WWE pay per view, not to anything having to do with Apple’s renewable energy initiative.
debbie
@Baud:
That means we should abolish the Electoral College.
Miss Bianca
@tobie: I think I’ve decided that “princpled leftist” purity ponies are the enemy. Worse than out-and-out teabaggers. No wonder we always fucking lose, and the radical reactionaries always win. May those electors go straight to hell where they belong. They can hug themselves in the knowledge that they’re doing their bit to drag the rest of us along with them.
Baud
@debbie: That would be ideal, but not something that’s within our sole control.
Schlemazel
@Mike in NC:
And if you check the insurance probably only paid a couple hundred bucks. The system is rigged to fuck poor people that can’t afford protection provided by insurance negotiated rates.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: I blame Trump.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Baud! ‘ll fix it!
SatanicPanic
@tobie: That made me so f*cking mad. What is wrong with these idiots? We’re looking at fascism people, we need unified opposition. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Good slogan. Will test it with the focus groups.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
OT, but I finally remembered to email you about your Jane Austen friend. It’s coming from my Gmail address under this nym.
EBT
@SatanicPanic: But a lot of them are white so they don’t see what the big deal is.
SatanicPanic
@debbie: Doesn’t seem to be hurting the GOP.
FlipYrWhig
@Aleta: Yeah, what the fucking what-the-fuck? “I cannot abide the neoliberal warmonger Hillary Clinton, so to keep my precious conscience white as snow I’m voting for the guy who covered up My Lai, lied to the UN about WMD, and suggested setting up a non-government email server!”
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
Another important point is that the Trump maladministration is likely to drive fossil fuel prices up, at least in the short term. That’s what all the oil producers- including his crush Putin- want, and that’s what additional chaos in the Middle East is likely to create. Rising oil prices will only make renewable energy more attractive and potentially profitable- and drive down consumption, which is highly desirable from a climate change POV.
tobie
@Miss Bianca: They are horrible. I was talking to a friend yesterday, who voted for Stein, and she thinks it’s good that Trump won since everything will collapse and then socialism can be installed. She was convinced that HRC was for the 1% only and her proof was her “many” speeches to Goldman Sachs, her support of fracking around the globe, and her brother’s plantation in Haiti. I kid you not about the last point. God knows where she got that piece of gossip–I think it’s from Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now–and why the friggin hell it would even matter what HRC’s brother did. Bernie’s less than immaculate record on a host of things from gun control to the crime bill to detention of undocumented people was of course excusable because…whatever.
SatanicPanic
@EBT: But literally everything else they are concerned about is going to get worse!
Schlemazel
@MomSense: “Nothing justifies terrorism at all.”
I will disagree with you depending on how you want to define “justifies” If a giant power was destroying my life, crushing my city and standing on the necks of my children I would gladly strap on a vest and take out a target. When there is no other option but to roll over and die terrorism become the logical choice. We may not like it, particularly when it is aimed at us or people like us but it it totally understandable.
? Martin
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks Obama! Try this one.
How strange…
trollhattan
@? Martin:
Aren’t server farms the biggest growth segment for power consumption? Generating power seems like a natural addition to the corporate portfolio and also as a buffer against price spikes caused by volatile fuel costs. Not that that ever happens.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I’ve seen various criminologists and terrorism experts say that the US has not had the same problems with homegrown Islamic terrorists because we don’t systematically discriminate against Muslims like some countries in Europe do. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our homegrown Islamists have only started popping up in the last couple of years as the right wing pumped up the anti-Muslim volume. Apparently one of the factors in the San Bernardino murders was that one of the guy’s co-workers was a right-wing asshole who was constantly needling him about it.
(And the co-worker was apparently one of those Christianists who have decided to cosplay at being “Jewish,” which is its own fucking level of crazypants.)
Schlemazel
My cable converter decided to go belly up today so I am without the benefit of our modern media. I am thinking this was a good day for that.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: But you like it that Putin’s stooge/unwitting ally damaged the eventual Democratic nominee and gave the other side ammunition for their crooked Hillary attacks?
Miss Bianca
@tobie: I suppose if you said, “Nach Hitler, uns” to this person you’d just get a blank stare, amirite?
Schlemazel
@Mnemosyne:
Well we are going to fix that horrible ‘inclusiveness’ problem now aren’t we? Nice we can create a problem the military and police state can fix
Baud
@tobie: They exist, so we have to deal with them. Just stop thinking of them as allies, and for God’s sake don’t hand them power within the party (like making them presidential electors!)
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
As I’ve been saying for a few months now, this election season’s been revealing to me in terms of just how much the “true leftist” assholes are identical to the Joe Liebermann type “Blue Dog”/”DLC”/wev crowd that they claim to despise.
@SatanicPanic:
The original rise of fascism in Germany, IIRC, included a massive nationwide dose of what TVTropes calls “Wrong Genre Savvy.” The “center” right elites and the extreme left both thought they were living in the final stages before a communist revolution, and acted accordingly – the elites by going all in behind the Nazis as their last hope against the commie horde, the extremists by sitting back and not-so-subtly rooting for the Nazis because hey, they’re just another breed of capitalist scumbag and they’ll hasten the collapse of this decadent bourgeois society. Rationalists of all stripes in the political system deluded themselves for too long that they were just living under another normal if eccentric politician, and tried to treat him as such (“well, I’m sure he doesn’t really mean that.”) Etc. Nobody realized what was really going on until it was far too late.
(Note that Wrong Genre Savvy can apply not only to “characters who don’t realize what kind of story they’re in,” but also “characters who realize what kind of story they’re in, but not what kind of character they’re playing.” Also no shortage of these assholes, the prime example probably being the SA who thought they were the main characters until they were killed off at the end of the opening sequence).
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
Are you talking about Sanders?
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
“And waged a media war against his own commander-in-chief over Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, because some things are just too serious to keep quiet about.”
Adam L Silverman
@BillinGlendaleCA: He is in the WWE Hall of Fame…
FlipYrWhig
@tobie: “Many” speeches meaning “three.” Sigh. Also, has it EVER HAPPENED that electing a fascist occasioned a backlash that paved the way for socialism? Or is this supposed to be the first time it works?
Elizabelle
Also WRT coal: did you guys hear the NPR reporting on a particularly virulent form of black lung disease that’s affecting even younger miners now? Doctors are trying to get a handle on why the numbers are up.
Might be that the easy coal is gone; the miners are now cutting through more rock with quartz and being exposed to silica dust, which is more toxic. And: “Every other industry cutting rock has strict limits on silica exposure, except mining.”
Imagine that.
One of the miners wheezed that he wanted a lung transplant, and then he’d head straight back into that mine. Because it’s his livelihood and his identity.
NPR: Advanced Black Lung Cases Surge In Appalachia
Long way of saying, it may be a traditional and well-paying job, but there are excellent reasons for coal mining to be on its way out.
May we just say, Mr. Trump is all about giving you complicated black lung disease? Cuz he loves you so much, you unschooled rascals, you.
EBT
@SatanicPanic: But not as bad as everyone else’s.
Mnemosyne
@Chris:
I suspect that Congressional Republicans are currently in the grip of Wrong Genre Savvy. They think that Comrade Putin is their friend, but they’re going to find out the hard way that he’s their boss, not their equal.
opiejeanne
@EBT: Wait, what?
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: I believe I resemble that remark. The criminologist/terrorism expert one. Not the masquerading as Jewish one.
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Yes, indeed. He carried on with his campaign even when he had no chance of success. He sure as hell poisoned the well for HRC. I haven’t heard a peep from him regarding the Russian interference.
ETA: Where are his tax returns?
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Given der trump’s statements, his choice of people like Flynn, and all the deplorables who feel emboldened to harass Muslims, I’m worried that they will create the perfect recruiting conditions here.
SatanicPanic
@Chris: This is what worries me. People are treating Trump as business as usual, even people who are calling him a fascist. We are in very dangerous times. First order of business for me is going to be making sure my representatives know this is how I view the world we live in and hopefully we can make them understand, because the sort of fools who’d cast protest votes should never have been put in place by the party.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
I think so, yes. ?
What are those cosplaying jerks calling themselves again? It’s something like “Gospel Judaism.”
debbie
He’s wrestled back his phone:
And at TPM:
I wasn’t aware they knew that only Christians were slaughtered.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Either Jews for Jesus or Messianic Jews. Depends on the group.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
Would they even recognize it if it did?
I mean, you can argue that Hitler eventually led to a more left-wing form of government, in that after the complete destruction of all of Europe, Germany was rebuilt that way. Or you can argue that George Bush eventually led to a more left-wing government, in that the catastrophe that was his government eventually led to the backlash that elected Obama.
But of course, neither the BRD nor Obama’s government are things these people would ever recognize as left wing enough for them. They’re all still just neoliberal corporatist sellouts.
debbie
@Elizabelle:
It was very difficult listening to that miner fight for breath.
SatanicPanic
@Schlemazel: This is something we can fix on the local level though. I’ve been in touch with people who work with refugees and meeting with them and helping them integrate should be our #1 priority in places where they are being brought it.
Elizabelle
@MomSense: I think so too.
And then: even more reason we need Mr. Trump and his deplorable administration, to fight the terrorists within.
I’m actually pleasantly surprised we have not have more stuff blowing up in this country.
SiubhanDuinne
@debbie:
Is he aware that the attack in Zurich was at a MOSQUE??
FFS, Donnie.
Elizabelle
@debbie: Oh Gawd. It didn’t even strike me as “War on Christmas” fodder.
The man knows his Fox and Friends memes.
Baud
@debbie: That’s the worst sound.
Elizabelle
@debbie: And talk about not being around to see his children grow up.
? Martin
@Roger Moore: Yeah, the fossil fuel industry is caught in a terrible economic cycle. Generally speaking, the cost of extraction will go up over time as the cheap to get stuff comes out first. There are shifts such as fracking which drive it the other way temporarily, but overall fossil fuel extraction is inflationary. By comparison, solar at least is deflationary – prices will likely continue to drop as panel efficiency and cost to produce come down, and because the operating cost of the panel is effectively zero – where you need to keep dumping oil into your car/power plant for it to continue being useful, the solar panel or wind turbine once built will keep producing power without putting any substantial money into it (just maintenance).
The US plays an interesting role here as we don’t participate in the cartel model for price manipulation, so we are working at odds with almost everyone else on earth in terms of price stabilization. Our industries are incentivized to produce and to drive down prices and that creates more foreign policy friction than a lot of people seem to realize. The renewable market is going to be like that but on steroids, and what’s more, since China isn’t a big oil producing nation, they’re going to try and move off of coal onto renewables as quickly as possible. As I’ve mentioned before, China and California may find themselves with similar economic goals for energy up against the US federal government (republican controlled) and Russia and OPEC. Just what sorts of strange bedfellows and alliances we’re making now.
Aleta
David Frum @davidfrum 29m29 minutes ago
Gingrich proposes advance presidential pardons for all present and future lawbreaking by Trump family.
(at Politico)
Miss Bianca
@Chris: And the thing that kills me, is that if they got their Soviet socialist paradise – on the backs of hundreds, thousands, possibly even millions of deaths and untold other miseries – I don’t think they’d end up liking it very much. Talk about “Wrong Character Savvy” – what assurance does any of these dopes feel that *they* wouldn’t end their days up against the wall? Either in the lead-up to the Great US-Soviet Socialist Republic, or afterwards.
ETA: Revolutions being messy things and all.
Chris
@debbie:
Yeah, the continued singling out of Christians as uniquely victimized irritates the shit out of me (remember when one of the candidates said in the primaries – might’ve been Trump – that we should stop all immigration from Muslim countries, “except for Christians?”) Never a fucking word for the Yazidis or the Druze or the Zoroastrians, let alone the non-Daesh-Muslims that’re the majority of their victims. At best, Jews, and even that gets left out a lot.
Just in case you were ever inclined to take their argument that “oh, we’re not Christian supremacists, it’s just that Muslims are uniquely dangerous!” seriously: they don’t believe a word of it.
(Also why you haven’t heard anything from them about South Sudan, which used to be one of their pet causes, since independence. As long as it was “mean nasty big bad Muslim regime in Khartoum persecuting poor helpless good nice Christians in the south,” it was a crisis of Holocaust-ian proportions. Now that all the killing is happening within a Christian nation, they don’t give a shit. Hey, can I ask “BUT WHAT ABOUT CHRISTIAN-ON-CHRISTIAN CRIME!” yet, or is that considered smug and elitist? Might even trigger their Economic Anxiety).
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
No, it’s a different group — they’re evangelical Christians who have decided that Judaism is cooler, so they’re now calling themselves Jews without all of that pesky learning the Torah stuff.
Davis X. Machina
@Schlemazel: My forbears were members of the ISIS and Al Qaeda of early 20th c. Britain — Sinn Fein and FIne Gael. Terrorism, and factionalism, run in the family.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
I know Bernie’s been very critical of Putin, specifically in terms of Tillerman’s nomination. I was trying to find a reputable link to share, but instead came across this gem from Ann Coulter:
So, at least in AnnWorld, they are competitors, not allies.
Chris
@Miss Bianca:
Oh, hell no, they wouldn’t.
It’s long been a staple of conservative criticism of the stereotypical college radical in his Che Guevara shirt that most of them are from well-above-average backgrounds – bankers and lawyers’ kids raised by the most capitalist parents imaginable, who have no idea just what the Glorious Revolution would mean for their lifestyle. For once, I can’t really disagree with them.
(The reverse of this, of course, is the phenomenal number of conservatives who owe their status or their success to government paychecks).
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Are you referring to Sanders? Do you mean to imply that the Democratic Party nomination should be unanimous, declared by the DNC and no primaries held? That Democratic voters exist merely to shout “aye” to whomever is selected for them?
I don’t think that Sanders “damaged” Clinton. Trump and the Republicans were going to use their strategy no matter what. And as far as I can see, Sanders soft pedaled the emails and could have hit much harder than he did.
Clinton had flaws, even if you only want to say that 30 years of attacks by her enemies had some effect. But it was up to her to fight and to win. She did a good job, but this was a crazy year. I don’t know that anyone could have prevailed against Trump. But I reject the notion that anyone owed Clinton the nomination, and that the people who were attracted to Sanders were just supposed to shut up and accept whatever the party wanted to hand them.
Did you think that Clinton should never have challenged Obama in 2008? Or, was Obama supposed to have meekly surrendered to Clinton?
NR
@Miss Bianca:
You just now decided this? This has been chapter and verse of BJ dogma for years.
Newsflash: principled leftists aren’t the reason the Republicans run most of the country right now, establishment Democrats are.
Schlemazel
@Elizabelle:
Typical liberal! You think people are stupid for wanting to earn a living without the interference of government regulations like proper ventilation and worker protection. Better to die a horrible agonizing death at 45 than have the government make mining companies provide a safe workplace
debbie
@Baud:
@Elizabelle:
COPD runs in my family. My mom had it, but cancer got to her before her breathing was very impaired. Her dad died from it. There are probably others.
When he spoke about going back to the mines, I thought of David Crosby, who thought a new kidney was a celebrity pass to a seat at the bar. “Good as new” isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: That’s the Messianic Jews.
Schlemazel
@SatanicPanic:
I love your optimism. I truly wish I shared it but I am not built that way.
Chris
Oh, wonderful. The town drunk just walked in and he’s carrying his soapbox.
All right, I’m out of here. Don’t feed him too much.
Schlemazel
@SiubhanDuinne:
Does not matter if HE does, his asshole moron brigade will not
tybee
@NR: the bernie worshiper is back. with his knee pads. how droll.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Aleta: And practiced the same Emailz!!1! policy as HRC.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Chris:
Nach Obama, uns!
NR
@schrodingers_cat: If Hillary Clinton was such a weak candidate that a primary challenge from a 74 year old socialist could cripple her, then she was never going to win anyway and nominating her was a godawful idea in the first place.
leeleeFL
@MomSense: Kindly do not say “we”, please? “They” elected the Gibbon. Thanks everso.
tybee
@NR: she beat the shit out of your christ bernie.
NR
@tybee: The illerate moron is back, with his homoerotic slurs. How tiresome.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Democratic voters chose Clinton to be their candidate this year. Not “the party.” Voters.
And, yes, once that happened, Sanders supporters needed to STFU about how they had been “cheated” by “crooked Hillary and the DNC” and work to get the Democrat elected.
I don’t know why Sanders supporters have this fucking paranoid streak that makes them insist that anyone who says that they should have supported Hillary after Sanders lost means people are saying they never should have supported him in the first place.
And if you think that the DNC emails story was not specifically designed by the Russians to alienate former Sanders supporters from the Democratic Party, you’re a moron. The only people more moronic are the former Sanders supporters who actually fell for that Russian propaganda.
Schlemazel
@Davis X. Machina:
My forebears made it possible by crushing the desire for self-rule of your ancestors. But I consider it payback for introducing bagpipes to my ancestors (and the Scots still have not gotten the joke)
Sorry but sick humor is all I have left
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne:
No. Any attack at an attack on Christendom.
tybee
@NR: you love bernie and i’m just pointing out how deep your lust for him goes.
tybee
@Mnemosyne:
that’s the thing that NR can’t quite get over. bernie got whupped and NR weeps and accuses others for bernie’s demise.
pretty funny.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
The Democratic party is not entitled to anyone’s vote. If they choose to run a candidate who doesn’t appeal to enough voters to win, that’s on them, not the voters.
Captain C
@SatanicPanic: They’ll get to feel good about themselves as everything burns down and/or implodes. They thus have their priorities straight, according to themselves.
tobie
@Miss Bianca: Believe it or not, she was born in 1944 while her parents–Polish Jews who had emigrated to Paris–were in hiding in the South of France. Given her background you would have thought she’d be a bit more sensitive to the historical parallels. I dunno. We live in an age in which self-reflection has gone out the window.
Bumper
@EBT: That is unbelievable. We had a foster kid with a stomachache. I made the same calculation and waited. (We had seen the doc the day before and mentioned the ache but he didn’t think it was anything). Child went to school, school called, I still waited. Eventually pain was so bad I said screw it and we rushed to ER. ER docs xrayed, found appendicitis. Not so bad they couldn’t wait till morning to operate. Except it burst at 2am – I was sitting right there so I knew. Turned into a week long stay in the hospital. Waiting can be deadly. Nobody should have to make that decision just in case it might be cheaper. In this case waiting was hell of a lot more expensive.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
… when that primary challenge was aided and abetted by a foreign power. Or did you think all of the Russian-backed email releases from the DNC were yet another total coincidence that was not specifically meant to damage the Democrats?
Weird how all of these total coincidences that damaged the Democrats this year just happen to trace back to Russian actions and Russian connections. But I’m sure there’s nothing to see here, right, comrades?
BillinGlendaleCA
@debbie: AnnWorld is a very strange world, I believe the sky red.
trollhattan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Nobody tell him there are Swiss that speak Eye-talian. He’ll lose his shit.
Schlemazel
@Schlemazel:
My Scottish ancestors were ‘Gibbons’ and truth be told it hurts my heart every time the short-fingered vulgarian gets tagged with that title. The lesser apes known as Gibbons are sweet, peaceful primates who live lives swinging from branch to branch hurting nobody. THe great apes are the shit-throwers of the family
Elizabelle
Do you think the troll heard the news that Putin co-opted both the rightwing nut jobs and the leftwing purity ponies to help achieve his goal?
Because the dudebros were no damn help, and I’d just as soon they put up black light posters of Rand Paul and/or Bernie and toked among themselves.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
And if a hostile foreign government intervenes to make sure that the candidate is damaged, then them’s the breaks, right, comrade? Sometimes you just have to throw a few peasants out of the sled.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
So much derp. Bernie basically ran against the Democratic Party, as a non-Democrat, citing it’s corruptiness and shit. Also, too, super-duper delegates. All Hill’s fault, of course.
NR
@tybee: The only one around here talking about “lust” is you, bud. Any such thoughts about Bernie Sanders are entirely in your head.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Dog Dawg Damn
Trumps statements talking about Islamic terrorism slaughtering Christians as they worship is bone-chilling. He’s going to cast this as a worldwide religious war, fueling their insanity, and his own.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Hey, tell us all again how Bernie Sanders is a Russian agent. That one’s always good for a laugh.
aimai
@NR: But she did appeal to enough voters to win. An enormous number of voters. A landslide of voters.
Elizabelle
Fresh thread, please!
Someone: a pet picture. Recipe. Anything, really.
The Pale Scot
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Make oil worthless, problem solved
BillinGlendaleCA
@NR:
And Democrats not supporting their nominee is why we lose; Republican don’t think this way, they vote for their nominee and they win.
NR
@aimai:
Cool, when’s her inauguration then?
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
Yep. I don’t blame Bernie for running, but I do blame him for choosing to base his campaign on the Democratic Party being corrupt. That’s on him, no matter how many excuses the Berniebros come up with.
tybee
@NR:
yo, dipshit, they voted for hillary. your christ bernie lost and you need to get over it. or continue to amuse me with your whining.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Have you ever been tested for dyslexia? Because it’s kind of weird that I use very clear terms like “dupe” and you always manage to turn them into a word you prefer.
Schlemazel
@Mnemosyne:
better to ask the asshole how many voters is enough. Last I checked she had nearly 3 million more votes than the melon melanoma.
Elizabelle
Ganache.
Chickens.
Gavottes.
Thistle pink.
Whatever.
tybee
@NR: you’re the one with the knee pads.
aimai
@Brachiator: Fallacy of the excluded middle–no one thinks Bernie shouldn’t have challenged Hillary. But there are ways of running in the primary, and afterwards, that don’t involve kneecapping your opponent and propping up Trump. Bernie failed to do that–he failed to do what HRC herself did in running against Obama which is fight a hard fight but not act as spoiler.
? Martin
@trollhattan:
Yeah, and that’s certainly how these guys got into the game. But once they got there, I think they realized that there was a larger opportunity. For a company like Apple to own their electric capacity, it means that they can much better control future costs as you note. But Apple also has two other problems to contend with:
1) They already have the majority of profits from the rapidly maturing tech market, which means their ability to grow is highly constrained (assuming they stay a tech-only company). They pull in nearly 100% of the profits of mobile (everyone else is near break-even or losing) and close to that for PCs. So they need a new large market to enter. Transportation and energy are both big markets that are changing rapidly.
2) They literally have more cash than they know what to do with. Apple can buy capacity and resell it to suppliers – and indeed they are doing that.
Apple for years has used it’s cash position to its advantage because they take on the role of a bank. If a supplier needs to build a factory, Apple hands them the cash and gets paid back through exclusive access to the output of the factory. They’re obviously now doing the same thing for energy – putting up the cash to build capacity and then selling that capacity to suppliers (or to themselves). By my estimate they’re closing in on about 1.5GW of power that they’ve built out or is under construction – which is about 1-2 nuclear plants worth of capacity.
Apple is 100% renewable in CA, which includes its headquarters, stores, and data centers. They’re working toward being 100% renewable globally (pretty close now) and are working toward having 100% renewable for their suppliers as well. Granted, they have Lisa Jackson heading up the effort and making the case to do it, but I’m much more convinced that they see this as a way to turn current cash surpluses into future profits – and not just for data centers.
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Yep. Republicans rallied around Trump to give him the same percentages Romney got. Democrats split over Clinton, because she just wasn’t pure enough.
NR
@BillinGlendaleCA:
First, this isn’t how it went down in 2008 and 2012, so you’re wrong on the facts.
Second, even putting that aside, you have it backwards. It’s not that Republicans vote for their nominee, it’s that they run candidates people want to vote for.
tybee
dipshit can NOT get it through his tiny little head that his lord and saviour lost, hillary got almost 3 million MORE votes than dumpy did.
but he’s still wondering where bernie’s inauguration is. lol
Elizabelle
@aimai:
Well said.
I iz no longer feeling the Bern.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: Fresh thread with recipe up!
NR
@tybee: Like I said: the only one talking about all this homosexual stuff is you, bud. Some repressed feelings you don’t want to admit to yourself, maybe?
tybee
i voted for bernie back in january. i have come to regret that decision. he’s as big a whiner as NR.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
More.
People.
Voted.
For.
Hillary.
Than.
Voted.
For.
Trump.
It’s fascinating how you keep insisting that “everyone” hated the candidate who got 3 million more votes than the other guy.
tybee
@NR: you’re the one on your knees for bernie. and you appear to like it.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
Fixed that for you.
tybee
and she still beat the shit outta christ bernie. LOL
NR
@Mnemosyne: Don’t try to pretend that you haven’t posted over and over about his supposed Russian “connections” through his campaign manager. Because as we all know, whenever something goes wrong, it must always be the fault of someone you don’t like.
Timurid
@Aleta:
Uh, the English realized that was a bad idea all the way back in the 13th century…
tybee
i know NR is deeply in love with bernie but why he thinks bernie would have won the general with all his wife’s financial shenanigans and his other personal foils is beyond the ken of mortals.
bernie got the shit beat out of him by hillary but he’s still huffin’ and a puffin’ on old bern. what a whiner.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NR: Have you been watching “Drunk History” while drunk?
Elizabelle
Raleigh News & Observer: Franklin Graham (sigh) tweets that it was not the Russians that intervened in the election, it was God. Answering the prayers of the faithful.
First reader comment:
NR
@tybee:
Oh, so that’s what’s in your head? Is that an image you see often? Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Like maybe you like it a little too much?
Like I said: not that there’s anything wrong with that.
tybee
@NR: it’s amusing to watch you fellate old bern after giving him the tongue bath every time you post.
get over it, get up on your feet and quit whining. if you can.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
More.
People.
Voted.
For.
Hillary.
Than.
Voted.
For.
Trump.
But, hey, you keep telling yourself that intervention by a hostile foreign power was totally normal, comrade.
opiejeanne
@Baud: Amen. Caucuses suck.
NR
@Mnemosyne: We.
Don’t.
Have.
A.
National.
Election.
For.
President.
3 million popular votes and $3.50 will buy you a latte at Starbucks. You have to win the electoral college to become president. Hillary failed to do so.
Botsplainer
@MomSense:
Apartheid would still be the governmental model in South Africa were it not for a combination of passive resistance AND low level asymmetric warfare by ANC.
NR
@tybee:
Hate to break this to you, bud, but the only person seeing that is you. Hey, if those are the kinds of movies that play in your head, I don’t judge. Just don’t project your fantasies onto other people. It’s not healthy.
SatanicPanic
@Schlemazel: I’m not optimistic about many things right now, but building a community that welcomes people is something we can do. Whether we will do it is another story, but I’m going to help.
Dadadadadadada
@FlipYrWhig: Well, one of the successor states to Hitler was a socialist one, so to that extent it did work there. I’m sure there were German Communists and socialists who spent decades after the war insisting that the “Nach Hitler, uns” strategy had worked just as they liked, just as a whole lot of Stein voters will point to the coming destruction of 80% of America’s wealth (rough estimate) as the ideal next step in their plan for utopia.
NR
@BillinGlendaleCA: You mean, actual history, when the Democrats ran a candidate who got enough support to win in 2008 and 2012?
SatanicPanic
@NR:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Like Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? These were people who had to overcome some very skeptical primary voters. WTF dude, you’re engaging in some serious self-parody here. Dumbass.
J R in WV
@debbie:
I disagree. If you want a say in who runs as the Democratic candidate, join the Democratic party, long before you attempt to have a say. At least a year, unless you turn 18 between that date and the primary you need to vote in. That’s my take on it.
If you want to run as a candidate in a Democratic primary, you have to have voted in (pick a number) primaries before you can apply to be on the ballot of a Democratic party primary.
No more, “Well, today I am a Democratic Candidate!”
First you join the party and vote in the party’s primaries. THEN you get to be a candidate on our primary ballot.
Fuck Bernie Sanders with a rusty pitchfork! That guy never had a chance, and is still squealing! What a loon. Not quite a dolt, smart but crazy…
And, for Raven, a special Fuck You to LBJ, who was smarter than Drumpf, but still got us into a pointless war, worse than even Bush Jr’s war, so far. Of course W Bush’s war is still counting. Actually, LBJ’s war is still killing people as unexploded ordinance blows up little kids and farmers… so still counting.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
And, the GOP took away the money for the medical care.
Uh huh
Uh huh.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Prezactly.
Schlemazel
Congratulations to nr for shitting on the thread. You win! THe Dems are all fucked, Bernie would have walked away with this election easily and the GOP will now rule forever because we were just not pure enough
Are you happy now? Will you go the fuck away or do you insist on personal apologies from every BJ commentator for not recognizing your innate genius and absolute accuracy? Please tell us what will it take to get you to go the fuck away. Name your price
The Pale Scot
@MomSense:
Dude, they’re just a decade ahead of the curve, the rest of us will be there soon enough as climate change, financilization and overcapacity rear their heads.
debbie
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Very strange. There’s lots of pink in her Twitter feed.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
Thanks, Mnem. Have responded to you in far too much lengthy detail, and have messaged my friend to tell her about you.
J R in WV
@? Martin:
This link is better, but it takes us to page two, we need to go to the bottom and press the back button to read page one.
At first I just thought the author was taking things for granted that he knew and I didn’t, but then I saw he was a better writer than that.
NR
@Schlemazel:
You could start by not ascribing things to me I didn’t say. I’ve never said that I’m certain Bernie would have won. What I’ve said is that we don’t know whether he would have won or lost. And I’ve never said that the problem is that the Democrats aren’t “pure” enough (whatever the fuck that even means), I’ve said that they have grown to value their corporate donors more than the working-class voters they need to win to have a chance in elections, and that’s what’s caused their longstanding electoral difficulties.
But people here still want to blame “the left” for all that’s wrong in the world despite the fact that we weren’t the ones at the wheel when the Democratic party went careening off the cliff.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NR: Russian Tool, a tool doesn’t need to be in harmony to be used as a tool.
Curiously the entire game of Skyrim is about this very situation.
Adrift
@NR: Back from whence you came, heretic.
ETA: Yes, I mean it. Take your ponies, rainbows, unicorns and other assorted tat and vamoose. I don’t know why anyone (including me) feeds you.
schrodingers_cat
@NR: She beat the faux socialist, fair and square.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: He went on long after he had a plausible chance of winning. HRC’s conduct in 2008 primary was not her most shining moment but she was a much better team player than Sanders was, after she conceded to Obama.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NR: Can I ask you a personal question NR; did you have your head up your south end while going north bound last Friday? Both the CIA and the FBI agree the Russians were messing with the election.
Nothings says FREEDOM like Putin eh? So are you an Assage and Wikileaks fanbio too?
Mnemosyne
@NR:
You said the Democrats need to run “candidates that people want to vote for.” If that’s your critereon, more people wanted to vote for Hillary, and did so.
If you want to change the parameters to “candidates that Russia approves of,” then you need to say that.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@SatanicPanic: Yes, one the truely comical bits is watching conservatives twist themselves and cover themselves in slime like a hagfish to overcome their loathing in order to vote for Trump, all because they have to vote for anything with an R after it’s name.
NR
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: There is evidence the Russians were messing with the election.
There is no evidence that Bernie Sanders or his campaign manager were in any way involved.
schrodingers_cat
@NR: Where are his tax returns?
NR
@Mnemosyne:
It should be obvious that someone is talking about the electoral college when talking about the presidential election since, you know, that’s what determines who wins the presidential election.
Taking refuge in pedantry to avoid uncomfortable truths won’t help anything.
The Pale Scot
@Mnemosyne:
So, sorry Adam. They’re hopping onto the tribalistic we’re better than all the others ’cause we’re worshiping the right god the right way don’t ya know.
I feel ya. I have relatives that claim they are Catholic and Biblical literalists. I gustily laughed in their faces and told them they need to see a Jesuit stat.
We don’t talk anymore.
NR
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
By this logic, Hillary Clinton is also a Russian tool, since no one did more to get Donald Trump elected than she did.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NR: You missed the bit of Wikileaks stuff showing up on Russia Today first, didn’t you?
Tsk, tsk, living in information bubbles is what the Red teams does NR.
Adrift
O/T but to top off the day and add to the year of hell:
The war on women continues unabated:
The unelected privileged escape punishment:
Added to today’s assassination, Berlin attack and of course “Your dogs are not your children”:
I’m ready for bed or at the very least a whisky or three.
Botsplainer
@NR:
Tad Devine, Paul Manafort, Jill Stein, Mike Flynn and
Adrift
@Adrift: apparently none of the links posted, but I’m sure the point was made.
The Gray Adder
The resident conspiracy theorist who sits behind me at work used the occasion to rant for about 20 minutes about Merkel and the Syrian refugees while I was trying to work. I wanted to ask him, “what if the BND holds a news conference tomorrow informing us that the truck terrorist was a German national? Wouldn’t you feel just a little bit silly?” Alas, I’m new there, and I need to get along with people. That, and he and the rest of his section is moving to new digs after the New Year. 2017 can’t get here soon enough, Trump or no Trump.
Botsplainer
Tad Devine, Paul Manafort, Jill Stein, Mike Flynn, Rex Tillerson and Carter Page all have a relation to which Russian spymaster/autocrat?
The Pale Scot
@Davis X. Machina:
Up The Ra
Botsplainer
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Then there’s the thing about Wikileaks actually being hosted from Russia.
The Pale Scot
@tobie:
We live in an Age of Morons
FTFY I can never get the strike thingy right; I should practice
Adrift
@Botsplainer: hopefully this link will post, but here is a quick and easy to understand description
NR
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
And how is that evidence that Sanders or his campaign manager were involved with the Russians?
Adrift
@Botsplainer:
linky, linky:
Mnemosyne
@Botsplainer:
Didn’t you know? It’s all a coincidence that so many people in this election just happen to have connections to Putin.
No need to look behind the curtain.
Adrift
@NR: I think we have more pressing problems than digging up Bernie Sanders’ campaign, don’t we?
ETA: Jeez, I’m still feeding you. I’m either drunk or bored just pick one. Or both. I don’t care.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Yes, it’s just another of those strange coincidences that Russian-financed Wikileaks just happened to release stolen emails that coincidentally seemed to show that Sanders and his campaign were right to complain about the DNC hating Sanders.
But I’m sure there’s a totally innocent explanation that makes it all Hillary’s fault, right, comrade?
Adrift
@Adrift: https://snarkypenguin.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/so-is-wikileaks-really-supported-by-russia/
The Pale Scot
@NR:
Hilary failed to get the votes of ignorant Protestant savages
FTFY
NR
@Mnemosyne: You still have yet to provide any evidence whatsoever that Bernie Sanders or his campaign manager were working for Putin in the election.
Protip: “Hurr durr, look at all the coincidences!” isn’t evidence of anything.
NR
@Adrift:
Then you guys should stop doing it.
The Pale Scot
@J R in WV:
Fuck ya, you want help from the union, join the fucking union.
Or go start you’re own
Adrift
@NR: Wrong bucko, I lay that on your doorstep. Hillary’s campaign is dead and buried. Sanders’ is a rotting corpse. No one here cares about Sanders at this point, we have a pussy grabbing shitgibbon to deal with.
If you have nothing relevant to add to this discussion you are better served talking to your own peeps.
Adrift
Great, stuck in moderation while NR is free to drop cow plops at will.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.
But, hey, since it doesn’t bother you at all that a hostile foreign power meddled in our election, I guess we’d better spend all of our time figuring out how to get racist whites to luv us again.
gbbalto
@NR: NR – PLEASE run for office! You know so much more about how to win than any of the pathetic commenters here. Show us up! Dont waste your precious insights (AKA boring repetitions of the same old shit) on us, who are unworthy of your wisdom!
EBT
@gbbalto: The last thing we need is another of deadbeat donnie’s voters to run for office.
gbbalto
@NR: NR – PLEASE run for office! You know so much more about how to win than any of the pathetic commenters here. Show us up! Dont waste your precious insights (AKA boring repetitions of the same old shit) on us, who are unworthy of your wisdom!@EBT: good point! Not that it will actually do anything.
Adrift
@gbbalto:
Except one more a$$ in a position to line his/her own pockets come hell or high water.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I’ve always assumed that I would be one of the first up against the wall when the revolution comes. From whichever direction it comes.
NR
@EBT: I voted for Hillary. Stop lying.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
See what? Your fact-free accusations about Bernie Sanders and Tad Devine? I see those perfectly fine, thanks.
NR
@Adrift:
Bullshit. Not a day goes by that people here don’t trash him and blame him for everything bad under the sun.
pluky
@tobie: “Everything will collapse” does not logically, nor likely, lead to “then socialism can be established.” Your friend is a tool.
EBT
@NR: No one believes you. You helped bring this about, and I will never ever let you live it down.
pluky
@NR: The point is not entitlement, but pragmatic realism. Ones fantasies of how the world should be are irrelevant.
jonas
@Jonny Scrum-half: The only solution is to empower a moderate Islam that can legitimately offer an alternative to Salafist radicalism by 1. being an authentic anchor of tradition and legitimacy while 2. making peace with secularism and the West. Right now, the radicals are saying that circle cannot ever be squared and the only solution is to blow shit up, and assholes like Trump are off tweeting “damn right!!!”
It’s tough for moderate Muslims who just want to work and get on with their lives to fight radicalism if they’re continually kept in a defensive crouch by those who keep insisting that they’re all, well, a bunch of deplorables.
NR
@EBT: Your lies about me don’t say anything about me, but they say plenty about you.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: The commenter isn’t lying about you. The commenter is saying that, based on your comments here, s/he does not believe your statement that you voted for Clinton. I tend to agree.
NR
@pluky: The problem is, not everyone shares your view of the world. The Democratic party is not going to get people to vote for them because “the Republicans are worse” – at least, not enough people to win an election. That should be obvious by now.
The party and the candidate have to earn the votes required to win. They aren’t going to just get them by default because the opposition is bad.
NR
@Omnes Omnibus:
He absolutely is lying about me. He said I voted for Trump when I’ve said time and time again that I voted for Hillary.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: Read my second sentence, dipshit.
NR
@Omnes Omnibus: I did read it. Doesn’t change the fact that EBT is a liar. He states it as a fact that I voted for Trump when I did no such thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: If you can’t read for context, that’s your problem.
NR
@Omnes Omnibus: Whatever. I’m always going to call out lies when I see them.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: You brave, brave soul.
NR
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, I could never be as brave as someone who lies about other people on the internet. That’s true bravery, right there.
pedro
The first Democratic Debate was October 13th. The deadline to switch parties in my state (NY) was Oct. 9th. So anyone not dialed in, who might rely on something like a debate to make even a slightly-informed decision, was basically SOL. Am I to assume that the DNC and the Clinton campaign were both so inept as to be unaware of this fact? Did the Russians create the debate schedule? Hacked or not, the thumb was on the scale. Yes, Hillary won the primary handily. This is fruit of the poisonous tree.
No one can say if Sanders would have won the general. Maybe the GOP spin machine would have undone him. That’s a big maybe. But we know that Hillary did not inspire in ’08. Did not inspire, where it counted, in ’16. That’s a fact. Unavoidable, if not undeniable by most here. Maybe Sanders was the wrong candidate. But Clinton definitely was. If you supported her you get to own it just like you so arrogantly did when she appeared to be unbeatable.
Omnes Omnibus
@pedro: For whom did you vote in the general?
pedro
Green, if that colors my post. Given the foregone conclusion in NY, an attempt to open the system to other viable parties going forward was worthwhile, and relatively risk-free. There would have been a lot more soul-searching if I lived in PA or OH, for example. And I suspect that search would’ve resulted in a Clinton vote. Not Trump, for certain. I don’t know that any of these revelations affect my above, but YMMV.
Omnes Omnibus
@pedro:
I asked for a reason.
pedro
I should qualify that statement. I do not think Dr. Stein was necessarily the best candidate. Like many, I assumed a Clinton win. And I think equal funding, or at least an approximation thereof, is important. I’m slightly encouraged that ME has gone to instant run-off (I think?). But it seems like Citizen United is not going away. As well, it seems to me that foreign influence and fake news is actually a logical conclusion if not a feature of the decision.
taras
Didn’t Obama say we would deal with the Russian hack job, at a time of our own choosing?
Omnes Omnibus
@pedro: I think you got it wrong.
pedro
@Omnes Omnibus: In what way? That is, my vote was of no consequence in the Presidential election, and that was a deliberate, calculated decision. But neither did I endorse the losing candidate. So how exactly did I get it wrong? More importantly, how exactly did I get it wronger than you? This is the arrogance to which I refer.
Captain C
@tobie:
Just ask the East Germans how that worked out for them from around 1933 to about 1989.
Captain C
@FlipYrWhig: If you count the Red Army steamrolling over Eastern Europe and installing puppet governments as “socialism,” then yes.
Captain C
@Miss Bianca:
Given what happened to almost all of the original Soviet revolutionaries by the end of the Purges of the ’30s, I think that’s a very safe bet.
Omnes Omnibus
@pedro: What arrogance? I was being polite to you. You seem new here and I was asking about your opinion. Six of out 10 here would have dismissed you. I did not. Do you want to refer to arrogance again? I am about to go to bed. I can respond tomorrow. But, for fuck’s sake, be reasonable.
Captain C
@Chris:
I once saw a picture of a parlor left-revolutionary friend of mine with Sally Quinn(!), at what looked like some kind of dressy party or similar social function. They were all smiling in the picture. It was kind of strange.
I suspect, in many cases, that this sort of thing is more teenage/young adult rebellion than actual political commitment, or cognitive dissonance in the cases where one has a trust fund to support one’s radical adventures.
Captain C
@tybee: There are over half a dozen lines of attack ads that could have been used against Bernie, any two or three of which would sink almost any candidate:
*Taxes (using the Vox calculator, it would have been devastating; any explanations would have foundered and at best become a he said-she said thing).
*Bernie not having a clue how to break up the banks, his signature issue. This could be extended to all the times he said “I don’t know” in answer to a policy question.
*All the times Bernie walked away in a huff over being asked a tough question. “When the going gets tough, Bernie runs away.” Not fair, but likely effective.
*Bernie’s refusal to release his tax returns; though Trump did the same, Bernie ran on transparency in government.
*Bernie’s writings on sex from the ’70s. It would be child’s play to make him look like a creepy pedo perv, just by selective quoting.
*Bernie’s wife’s golden parachute from the college she bankrupted.
*Bernie basically being unemployed until he was 35. Tied into this, the story about him trying to be a carpenter and being so unskilled that he had to ask the people at the hardware store how to do the job he’d been hired to do. Plus the story about him stealing electrical power.
*Bernie being an elector for the Socialist Workers Party in 1980, probably billed in the attack ad as “a party too extreme for Lenin and Stalin.”
Are most of these at least somewhat unfair? Yes. But that’s how politics goes. AWOL draft dodger Shrubya became a war hero and Silver Star winner John Kerry became a craven coward in the eyes of too many people, thanks to Karl Rove.
Captain C
@pedro: See my comment right above, linked here. It’s hard to imagine Bernie not getting destroyed in the general by slick (and no doubt misleading, but…) attack ads.
Pedro
@Omnes Omnibus: “I think you got it wrong” with no explanation seemed dismissive to me. Apologies if I misinterpreted that. I drop in occasionally from the blog roll at ObWi and frankly I’m rather shocked at the vitriol here. “Arrogance” is not directed toward you specifically, but generally toward the not-infrequent tendency to find blame everywhere but with the candidate who lost in rather stunning fashion. I think post-convention, Clinton was saying the right things and I was surprised when the anticipated pivot back never came.
@CC: I don’t have a crystal ball, and you may very well be right. I happen to think that whatever Sanders baggage there was could be offset and that he was immune to Trumpian attacks in a way that other candidates were not. I also happen to think that Clinton’s problem was not so much influenced by attacks, but by a lukewarm message that she can “get things done” but really everything is fine so nothing much needs changing. But hey, that’s just my opinion. And I wouldn’t be the first to get it spectacularly wrong this cycle.
J R in WV
@The Pale Scot:
Ya coulda bin quotin’ me, bro’!
Thanks!
I was (unusually for me) attempting to be more professional and less boilermaker, I thought it came out OK. But I like yours too!