Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Democrats are back in array!

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

When we show up, we win.

The words do not have to be perfect.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

You are here: Home / Politics / Presidential Debate Open Thread, Part III (and Post Debate)

Reader Interactions

273Comments

  11. 11.

    jl

    Nothing about huge manly dumps stuck in the toilet, very strongly, because no water… did I miss that?

  12. 12.

    Emma from FL

    Why is everyone so het up about this? The cake is baked. The loons, racists, and greedheads aren’t going to have a road to Damascus conversion. The rest of us are voting Biden.

    All Biden has to do is repeat facts and keep himself from strangling the dimwit.

  13. 13.

    FlyingToaster

    I’m gonna blame Trump for the power going out in Boston’s Back Bay and South End (basically the length of Mass Ave, including the Pru and Copley).

    Heh.

  17. 17.

    laura

    Sweet meteor of death please end this cavalcade of mendacity. And that manic dance of the hands…..

  18. 18.

    jl

    @ant: Fumes? Windmills run on air currents, air currents are fumes. Fums from windmills.

    It’s basic physics, a genius like Trump can do it on the fly in his head.

  26. 26.

    Ella in New Mexico

    Still waiting to be given the gift of the “Cloak of Invisibility’ for purposes I won’t divulge here in order not to implicate my fellow BJrs in any imagined or actual crime that cloak would enable….

  27. 27.

    cain

    Trumps judgement on India is going to be piss off all the Modi people. After all, India cannot do wrong – and this attack on their pollution is going to piss them off.

  28. 28.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    judging from the center-right Daniel Drezner’s twitter feed, full of very serious people, Biden is winning

    trump is not bite-the-head-off-the-chicken crazy, but Biden is turning in his best performance of the last two years

    Marc Ambinder @marcambinder 21m
    This is the Biden of 8-12 years ago. And the Biden who has waited four years to say all this to Trump.

  31. 31.

    dmsilev

    @ant: It’s a common fallacy that right-wingers like to throw around, claiming that the cost of manufacturing wind turbine and solar panels results in more carbon emissions than burning fuel does. It’s false; people have done “lifecycle carbon cost” calculations that have showed it, but you need numbers and graphs to debunk, so the conservatives like it.

  38. 38.

    John S.

    @Elie: Yes he did. But the better interpretation is “How much longer do I have to deal with this fucking guy?” as opposed to “I’m getting tired and it’s time for bed.”

  39. 39.

    jl

    @cain: Are Modi supporters as touchy as Trump supporters?  Does that one little thing, which accidentally, from Trump, is a fact, make them close the iron door on Trump?

  45. 45.

    Amir Khalid

    When they do these debates in 2024, the moderator should have the mute button in front of her. And she should warn both/all candidates that, if they speak out of turn or run over their allotted time, she will use it.

  57. 57.

    Mai Naem mobile

    Does anybody use the term plague for COVID19 like El Dumpo does? I’ve heard it called Rona, the Virus and even China Virus by RWNJs but not the Plague. Its such an old fashioned term for a disease.

  58. 58.

    David ?Booooooo!? Koch

    Didn’t watch, but Biden raised $3,353,000 in the last hour.  That’s a LOT of points on the score board, so I assume he did well.

  62. 62.

    dmsilev

    And we’re done.

    Not nearly as big a clusterfuck as Debate #1; doubt it will move the needle much in either direction.

  66. 66.

    mad citizen

    Just had a thought: Does the WAPO Trump lie counter add his lies in these debates.  It’s a LOT.

    Trump is DUMB.  There are energy companies, not so many plain old oil exclusive companies.  Has he never learned why British Petroleum became BP?

    It’s over.  Glad we didn’t get the Say a nice thing about your opponent (at least the part I saw, missed an hour in the middle. )

  69. 69.

    Juju

    Is it just me or my tv, or does Trump have the color of one of those hotdogs that have been on the rolling heat things at the 7/11 for the last six years?

  70. 70.

    Yutsano

    I’m glad Joe got the last word here. He ended really strong.

    And once again the Third Lady just stands next to him like a lump.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    You all probably knew this but…:

    Marc Ambinder
    @marcambinder
    · 1h
    So I read @KimStrassel op-ed. It reads out one direct alleged quote from the former VP about some version of a proposed deal with the Chinese company. The word is “NO.” This is from the testimony of someone who thinks he got a raw deal and was mad at Hunter. No there there

  74. 74.

    SenyorDave

    @khead: Of course it is not going away, so why say it.  He was supposedly tied in TX, he wasn’t going to win it but this inured thta he won’t

  77. 77.

    FlyingToaster

    @evodevo: The Danes did a study with their first offshore windfarms:  there was a 1 season jump in seabird deaths (theorized as “killing the stupid birds, who the predators woulda gotten anyway”), and then back to the previous average.

  78. 78.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Juju:

    Do NOT mock those 7-11 roll-y hotdog things. Sure, the one you picked up may have been there for 4 days, but it is some protein, salt and grease, and with some cheap mustard and some onions is a fine treat.

  80. 80.

    Mary G

    The new tone folks are on their 1000th Lucy and football. I mean tiny windows? What?— Neera -Vote Early- Tanden (@neeratanden) October 23, 2020

    I have some channel on with Jon Karl, who said Twitler might have been better, but Joe Biden was excellent. Another lady says he did great. Another guy very positive about Biden on pandemic.

  81. 81.

    different-church-lady

    @FlyingToaster: The birds probably figured out they needed to stay away from those things. A whole farm probably doesn’t kill as many birds as one glass tower does.

  83. 83.

    laura

    My lasting impression will be the statement in defense of child separation is that the carcereal conditions were very nice. Only a monster could make an argument that a clean floor and a fresh mylar blanket is preferable to the arms of a mother and a father.

  85. 85.

    mad citizen

    Chuck Todd: Trump stopped the bleeding, but didn’t do anything to bring back the middle, mythical suburban woman.  He also pointed out trump was speaking “evening Fox viewer” and everyone else would have no idea what trump was talking about.

    Mrs Greenspan says best debate she’s ever seen from Biden.

  89. 89.

    zhena gogolia

    @laura:

    This is exactly what Melania said on that tape that should have been front-page news for a while but has gone virtually unnoticed by everyone.

  90. 90.

    John S.

    @SenyorDave: Maybe. But even the oil companies know they have to eventually transition to renewable energy. This is not a controversial or taboo subject.

  92. 92.

    Mary G

    Chris Wallace: "First of all, I'm jealous. I would've liked to have been able to moderate that debate and get a real exchange of views instead of hundreds of interruptions."— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 23, 2020

  99. 99.

    David ?Booooooo!? Koch

    As of 9 PM Eastern, at least 48,583,126 votes have been cast (including 5.9 million in Texas).

    There will be one last update around 1 AM and the early vote could go over a staggering 50 million tonight, with 11 days left to go.

    As a point of reference, there were 137 million votes, including 9 million in Texas, for the 2016 election (turnout 60.1%).

  100. 100.

    patroclus

    @SenyorDave: Agreed that it was an own goal.  He should have just said something like we need to continue to transition to renewable resources and not mentioned oil and gas specifically.  It would have sounded better.

    But he’s not wrong.  We DO need to transition to renewables to reduce our carbon emissions (and we really need to reduce fracking as well).

  101. 101.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I’m listening to this turkey from the next room. My wife has CBS on I think. Reince Preibus is on, saying Trump was “charming” tonight.

    He has a weird idea of charm.

  105. 105.

    Suzanne

    Mrs. Greenspan just said, “the fact-checkers are having a field day” and “the facts are with Joe Biden”.

  106. 106.

    RinaX

    Trump was much more coherent tonight, but Joe was excellent. My mother, who constantly grumbles that Joe seems old and slow, felt he cleaned Trump’s clock.

  107. 107.

    SenyorDave

    @John S.: My final thought on this is that it was a statement that served no purpose, it couldn’t do anything but hurt him.  Probably no big deal but should have been said.

  110. 110.

    Amir Khalid

    @dmsilev:

    Shock collars for both candidates. The first time the moderator has to mute you activates your shock collar; thereafter, whenever you get muted you get shocked too.

  111. 111.

    Kent

    Bottom line?

    I don’t think this debate changed the course of the race in any way.  And that’s good for Biden.

  114. 114.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’m surprised Biden has never (that I’ve seen) given Nicolle Wallace a half hour or so one-on-one interview. If I were him, I still would

    Glad people are talking about the kids again, I hope it sticks this time.

  115. 115.

    Kay

    @jl:

    Wind turbines are actually very lunch-buckety. Trump is just wrong about this. His demo loves them. I have a wind turbine installer in my neighborhood. He’s never home, travelling installing wind turbines, which is how I became friends with his GF. Because she’s stuck in the middle of nowhere, alone :)

  126. 126.

    cain

    Damn, Tom Nichols was not pleased.. he felt our moderator didn’t do a good job at all. He’s worse than I am.

  127. 127.

    Kay

    @RinaX:

    I think he won too but that’s the thing with the low quality hires- they get points just for not tripping over their shoelaces. It’s unfair. Biden did great.

  129. 129.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @mad citizen: To give kids a joke about where bees go to the bathroom – the BP station.

    Oh, yeah, there were probably *other* reasons, I suppose.

  130. 130.

    Leto

    @Kay: One of the other aspects of the green energy field is that it’s not boom/bust like oil. Green jobs, while slightly lower paying, are steady revenue. It’s a reliable income source. That’s valuable.

  131. 131.

    mad citizen

    @David ?Booooooo!? Koch: Saw the end of Nate Silver on abc predebate.  He said they are projecting 155 million votes

    Solar alone and Solar/storage projects are now dominant in the grid interconnection queues.  Heard a speaker the other day say the cost of building and producing energy from solar is less that the production cost of existing coal.  An amazing statement.  Have not heard it anywhere else, but solar cost has been falling dramatically.

  134. 134.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    I don’t know why birther Melania gets a pass when Michelle Obama got endless shit for everything.

    Oh! Oh! I know! I know! [Arnold Horshack voice]

  135. 135.

    TS (the original)

    @Kent:

    What do you expect?

    From Rachel I expect truth and she usually obliges. She could have simply said the moderation improved because of the threat of trump being silenced. She could have mentioned trump getting extra time.

    Disappointing.

  138. 138.

    mrmoshpotato

    Dump is a pile of shit, but he didn’t say “Good.” about the kidnapped migrant kids before they changed topics from immigration.  He said, “Go ‘head.” to the moderator.

  140. 140.

    Bill Arnold

    @Emma from FL:

    All Biden has to do is repeat facts and keep himself from strangling the dimwit.

    I’d have been sorely tempted, well, maybe not strangling. Inducing a stroke or heart attack, perhaps.
    Fun thing was I was able to real-time fact check Trump’s lies, mostly. Had to look up a few statements to see exactly how he was lying; one could safely assume that every sentence was a lie or at least willfully misleading.
    https://twitter.com/ddale8 was excellent. I hope he does one of his patented high speed yet very long fact checks.

  143. 143.

    jl

    @Kay: Renewable energy lunch buckity and technician jobs require more skills than most fossil fuel energy work, at least that is what I heard on a recent local news ‘explainer’ segment.

    Maybe why community college tech programs are so big o renewable energy agriculture and  power grid certificates. Get higher pay.

  146. 146.

    Amir Khalid

    Biden’s absolutely right that the oil industry will have to be phased out over time. That is already happening to coal. Oil will be trickier. I think one could start by phasing it out of consumer use, and then moving on to electricity generation and industrial use and then finally transportation.

  148. 148.

    Richard

    @dmsilev: i did it “multi media ” listen on radio and watch the video with sound off. The time lapse was interesting. It was easier to listen to that thing tell his lies and then watch his marionette gestures a second or two later. In our Punch & Judy stories the bad guy always loses.

  150. 150.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Emma from FL: Thank you. It annoys me when folks burden themselves with the delusion that if Biden comes up with an Aaron Sorkinesque one-liner, Trump’s bigoted supporters with see the error of their ways. We don’t need them. 

  151. 151.

    Middlelee

    @ant:  My guess is he was referring to the embodied energy in the manufacturing process and his reference shows he doesn’t understand it.  Someone probably tried to explain it to him.

  152. 152.

    brantl

    I think anybody who really listened to their answers, Biden kicked his ass. To those who only wanted to hear the answers from their own guy, I don’t think Stump moved any of them to back him more strongly. I think that he still made some statements that, even to his own people, would make him seem like a fruitcake, mostly because he is a fruitcake. I think that Biden solidified his lead. I think anybody leaning away from Joe, but were already at least a little more for Joe than the other guy, would be brought in.  I think as far as this was Biden’s to win, I think he did that; and as far as it was Stumps to lose, I think he did a wishy washy job of that, but he did no job of winning it.

  153. 153.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    They’re all over the place in Ohio and western Michigan. Does he look out the window when he travels? They’re not exotic anymore. They’re not even remotely “Lefty” either. It’s like sneering at power lines. He’s this odd 1980’s person.

  155. 155.

    West of the Cascades

    @SenyorDave: What state in the US has the most installed MW capacity of wind energy?

    …

    …

    …

    Texas! 30,217 MW (of 109,795 MW installed capacity in the whole US — Texas’s installed capacity is three times as great as the next largest, Iowa). So renewables are a big employer in Texas, and Biden will win some voters with his answers about re-regulating industries that explode and otherwise poison people living near them. I don’t think the “oil industry will go away over time” is a killer in Texas with regular votes.

  160. 160.

    West of the Cascades

    @jl: Plus, you’re less likely to die maintaining wind turbines than in an oil refinery explosion.

  165. 165.

    Bill Arnold

    @patroclus:

    Windmills “kill all the birds??!!” This I did not know…

    Trump knows very little about windmills. He just objected to them off coast near a golf course in Scotland, and that interested him enough to absorb a little anti-windmill propaganda.
    Not my field in any way, and I’ve read a good 12+ scientific papers directly on windmills including on bird kills, reducing bird kills, etc. Trump knows no field at even an advanced beginner level.

  167. 167.

    Yarrow

    @SenyorDave:

    Terrible statement by Biden about shutting down the oil industry, total own goal.

    Agreed. Texas will hear that. He didn’t need to say it that way. I expect it to be in some ads in Texas.

  168. 168.

    Baud

    Regardless of whether it was brilliant or a gaffe, Joe’s line about oil is not something to spend time on IMHO.

  170. 170.

    Other MJS

    @brantl:

    @SenyorDave: He didn’t say shut it down, he said ramp it down over time. It being a finite resource what other approach makes any sense.

    If only this were about making sense.

  172. 172.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    Thank you. It annoys me when folks burden themselves with the delusion that if Biden comes up with an Aaron Sorkinesque one-liner, Trump’s bigoted supporters with see the error of their ways. We don’t need them. 

    Sometimes I wonder how badly the West Wing colored peoples’ understanding of politics

  173. 173.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I don’t think Reince gives a shit. There was an article about him a few months after he got kicked out of the WH. He was on the golf course making several thousand bucks  ‘consulting’ daily  and had a bunch of companies on retainer at $5K/mo. He got his winning jackpot lottery ticket.

  174. 174.

    Leto

    @Kay: They’re starting to pop up in central PA. I like that. Let the Trumper’s see them, get used to them, start working on them. Makes it easier to get away from fracking, makes it easier to transition on over to renewables. It’s a booming industry that needs so many smart/technical people and has a chance to keep the youngins in those communities. I thought that was part of what they wanted?

  175. 175.

    Geoduck

    The only reason the Shiatgibbon gives the tiniest crap about windmills is because they wanted to build some near his Scottish golf course, “ruining the view”, and he never lets go of a grudge. EDIT: I see I wasn’t fast enough, but the point stands. And I agree that he’ll never agree to attend Biden’s inaugural. But then, I hope they don’t do a big one due to the pandemic.

  176. 176.

    Amir Khalid

    @Kay:

    Trump is a property developer, or at least a wannabe, and he sees wind turbines as eyesores that bring down the value of his fancy but bedbug-ridden hotels.

    Me, I think they don’t look at all bad, certainly way nicer than a power plant that burns coal or LNG.

  180. 180.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Yarrow:

    Agreed. Texas will hear that. He didn’t need to say it that way. I expect it to be in some ads in Texas.

    Will it really affect anything? It’s just one throwaway line from a debate. Besides, most people’s minds are made up at this point anyway

  183. 183.

    Kay

    And no one call them “windmills” unless they’re wearing wooden shoes in a movie about Holland. They’re called “wind turbines”.  They’re modern.

  184. 184.

    delk

    Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
    Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
    As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
    In the windmills of your mind!

  192. 192.

    sanjeevs

    @mad citizen: Warren Buffett said in his last annual meeting that Iowa is now generating more wind power than Iowa’s total electricity consumption (he owns MidAmerican)

  194. 194.

    Ruckus

    Just from reading the threads I see that the only thing that I missed was the massive spike in my blood pressure.

  195. 195.

    Jeffro

    @Baud:I actually think his relative coherence made his lies stand out more.

    I think that’s a great take.  He was calm-ish and people still had to be wondering, “where’s the ACA replacement, trumpov?  Joe is ‘in the basement’ and half-asleep or the head of a vast criminal conspiracy – which is it?” and so on.

  196. 196.

    randy khan

    @mad citizen:

    New research shows painting one blade black prevents a lot of bird deaths.

    When I was in Denmark in 2007, they were doing that already, and our guide said it was for that exact reason.  But the Danish were way ahead of the game on wind power.

  199. 199.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, Brian Williams played a short clip in which Welker said she was going to give Trump 10 seconds to respond to something and then they would move on. I timed 30 seconds of Trump bullshit, and he was still going when BriWi cut the clip. Grr! Really want to see the talk-time statistics fir this debate.

  200. 200.

    jl

    @Jeffro: Trump’s charge: ‘IF he’s committed crimes, then he’s not so innocent… many people are saying…’ is ironclad. Biden can’t answer that one.

  202. 202.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    I was shocked by them at first- they are HUGE. The first time I saw a blade on the back of a truck I almost wrecked trying to figure out what this giant, futuristic sleek thing was. But it shifted in western Michigan- the only people who oppose them now are wealthy tourists. That’s the divide- between the people who make them and install them and the people who don’t want to look at them.

  204. 204.

    dmsilev

    @Yarrow: Something like 2/3 of Texas has already voted, not counting however many ballots are in transit in the mail. Even if you think that was a hugely damaging statement, the damage is limited because of how many people have already recorded their votes.

  205. 205.

    Kent

    @khead:

    @SenyorDave:

    The election in Texas is not going to turn on a throwaway comment in the third debate.

    I spent a decade and a half in Texas.   A very small number of people actually work in the oil industry and they are mostly Republicans.  The vast majority of Texans have the same ordinary jobs as everyone else and live in the same cities and suburbs.

  206. 206.

    jl

    @Baud: “Do they even mill anything anymore?”

    Just throw some molecules and electrons into the bin, instead of wheat and rye. Windmills they were, and windmills they are, and windmills they will always be.

  207. 207.

    Jeffro

    @jl: it is difficult to disprove a completely speculative and hypothetical charge backed up by, um, Rudy G and Steve Bannon’s fabricated laptop/emails, true.

    ;)

    It was funny watching trumpov flail in real time about FoxBubble stuff, I have to admit.

  208. 208.

    Amir Khalid

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Back in the day, when an American acquaintance was worried about the President, I would always reassure them that they had a thoughtful and conscientious leader in Josiah Bartlet.

  212. 212.

    mad citizen

    @West of the Cascades: Excellent point!  Texas spent about 5 billion dollars building transmission lines to help get all that wind connected.  And are always enabling more.  It’s economics that will doom oil and gas

    Perovskites!

    Many years ago there was a cable show following the wind turbine workers called Turbine Cowboys.  Always loved that title.

  213. 213.

    jl

    @Jeffro: Does anyone know what the pillow and sheet Biden scandal is about? I kind of tuned out Trump’s babble and didn’t catch the whole thing.

  215. 215.

    Steeplejack

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    One comment on that thread:

    She let Trump run on and gave him the last word 9 times out of 10, no matter whose turn it was. It was better, but nobody controls the beast.

    Welker was C+ at best.

  216. 216.

    Leto

    @Kay: the first time I saw them, in person, was traveling in Germany. They’re all over the landscape there. I was like… omg, they’re f’ing huge! Yeah, wealthy NIMBY’s don’t want to see them but won’t question where they get their electricity. I mean they’ll gladly look at shitty oil tankers/shipping vessels loitering 2-3 miles off the coast, plainly visible for most of the day, but lord forbid there’s a wind turbine even further off the coast… the horror!

  217. 217.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I was laughing listening to him, thinking of those pictures of the big creaky wooden ones with tulips around them. That’s what he thinks they are!

    In Michigan they create the energy with the turbines and then store it by pumping water up and into this giant dam. It’s miles and miles. A whole system.

  220. 220.

    Jeffro

    @jl: I think he was referring to the ‘non-lethal aid’ or whatever that Obama authorized be sent to Ukraine (Crimea?)  Which was most certainly not just bedding.

    Total RWNJ talking point.

  222. 222.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    Last I heard, Timken, HQ’d in Canton, Ohio, is one of the leading producers of the gearboxes for wind turbines.

  223. 223.

    Yarrow

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  At this point it’s about close margins and turnout. Remember how close some states were in 2016? If Texas is a close as people say then yes, something like that could have an impact.

    The content of what Biden was fine said but how he said it was clumsy and created an unneeded soundbite for ads. Guess we’ll see what happens.

  225. 225.

    jl

    @NotMax: “Biden will immediately outlaw every BBQ joint in the land!”

    With instantaneous hi res social media graphics, it is impossible now, and forever more, for candidates to hide their betrayal and treachery regarding regional BBQ styles. Glop it up and smile in SC, TN sees it the same damned day.

    Covid prevented that this year. Some silver linings to covid… many people have said that to me, privately, weeping.

  227. 227.

    Delk

    @Jeffro: Noel Harrison, song was used in The Thomas Crown Affair. I have a Dusty Springfield version I play when we drive through windmill farms.

  228. 228.

    WaterGirl

    Tonight’s take from my niece, who is clearly voting for Biden but is not involved with politics the way we all are.  She is the one who felt Biden clearly won the first debate and thought Trump came off like a crazy person in the first debate.

    Her comments tonight were not so reassuring:

    I think they were both actually better tonight.

    I think trump didn’t totally bomb this one.

    Trump probably reassured a lot of people.

    Essentially i think he stopped the massive flooding of people leaving his side. But i don’t think he’ll win back many of the people he already pushed away.

    Trump didnt help himself by showing zero compassion for the kids separated from their parents.

    I think biden shouldn’t have let the door open on oil. Don’t think he helped himself there.

    I think trump didn’t totally bomb this one.

    Biden definitely pulled voters needing health insurance options.

    It was a HUGE point scored for biden on those with covid who have pre-existing issues.

  230. 230.

    Kay

    @Leto:

    i came around to them. They’ve gotten better at siting them too- people used to object to the shadow patterns which doesn’t sound bad, but is if it’s going on in your house. It cycles. Light/darker/light/darker. I think you could go insane. Anyway. They fixed it.

  234. 234.

    mad citizen

    @Kay: Ludington Pumped Storage, 1875 MWs.  It came online in 1973 way before the MI wind, which started 2012 or 2013 IIRC.  Ludington was recently offline for a year but still earned capacity credit.  A bit of a kerfuffle in my world.  It was off for refurbishing,  so now is good to go for a long time.  The wind energy basically goes into the grid as it’s produced, but you are right in that Ludington uses energy at night to move water up then produces energy the next afternoon pesk.

  235. 235.

    jl

    @WaterGirl: To be fair, to be realistic, Biden couldn’t do anything to force Trump to bite the heads off of live kitty cats, fling poo, and strangle canaries with his bare hands, like he did last time.

  240. 240.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, I’m reaching my BriWi limit. Over to Perry Mason (“The Case of the Haunted Husband”) in a few minutes, but I’ll keep reading this thread.

  244. 244.

    mrmoshpotato

    @HumboldtBlue: David Brooks is tweeting about having a “moral core” sweet mother of fuckery.

    So that’s what David Fucking Brooks calls the gaping void at the center of his being.  Good to know.

  246. 246.

    Adam L Silverman

    Nice clean post debate open thread is up. Bonus: I make significant fun of the most ammosexual to have ever ammosexualed!

  248. 248.

    jl

    @Baud: Spraying beer and biting the heads off of chocolate bunnies goes over better, appeals to wider audience, as your rallies have clearly demonstrated.

  249. 249.

    WaterGirl

    You guys are right, these three women do have great chemistry together.  “And now we’re gonna hand this back to Brian Williams.”

    click.

  250. 250.

    mad citizen

    I think anyone in the oil industry knows they still have enough political clout to prevent any terminal legislation.   Their enemy is economics,  not politicians.

  251. 251.

    trnc

    @Kay: When I saw turbines for the first time between Boulder and Denver, I thought I had stumbled onto the set of a sci-fi film.

  252. 252.

    frosty

    @Kay: When we drove east through Kansas last spring I was surprised seeing that the wind turbines were *everywhere*!!! The Dakotas made the wrong bet on fracking. I read a few years ago that the Plains states were the Saudi Arabia of wind. We need to tap that resource and expand the grid to distribute it. (Now I don’t know this for sure) but it should be a good supplemental income for farmers.

  258. 258.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Baud: COVID-19 was the 800 lb gorilla in the room tonight, so people aren’t going to care that Trump pretended (badly) to be a human being and didn’t foul his Depends; people are going to care that Trump still has no idea what to do about the pandemic. What’s worse, he doesn’t care. The only way out is through Trump, and Biden is the choice this country has. And the voters standing in lines for hours know this.

  260. 260.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @frosty: my theory that the Bernie Sanders phenomenon is mostly explained by a generation raised on Harry Potter books is not popular with the demographic in question

  261. 261.

    Ruckus

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Fuck You Very Much!

    IOW, a very impolite no thanks. I see I didn’t miss anything whatsoever. shitforbrains is still shitforbrains and I’ve already voted.

  263. 263.

    schrodingers_cat

    Fuck the Orangina. I am going to complete my mail-in-ballot tomorrow and take it to the drop box.

    OT:

    I am feeling homesick for the navaratri (nine nights) celebrations of my childhood. It is a celebration of the various manifestations of Parvati. We would all gather at my maternal uncle’s place. Every night we would all sing aartis. It was a lot of fun when my grandfather was alive and my aunt’s mom used to be there too. Then one day on the weekend all the women in the extended family (my maternal grandmother had 9 brothers and two sisters so the extended family was huge) would gather for a feast.

    This is one of the aartis we used to sing, with  clapping, cymbals and bells,  each stanza describes  what the goddess does every day of the nine nights and ten days.

    Lata Mangeshkar singing the first (always for Ganesha) and the last aartis. These aartis are in  Marathi written about 400  to 700 years ago. When the Bhakti movement tried to break the stranglehold of Sanskrit (whose study was only open to Brahmin males) in liturgy.

  265. 265.

    tam1MI

    @Yarrow:Agreed. Texas will hear that. He didn’t need to say it that way. I expect it to be in some ads in Texas.

    Assuming the Trump campaign has any money left to make and air ads.

  266. 266.

    Dan B

    @Leto: Thank you for “It’s not boom bust like oil…”  I wish people would stop saying renewable energy.  It’s the future of energy.  It’s modern.  When you say that people who are skeptical, or violently opposed to change, are put on the defensive.  Their responses are met with the numbers.  Jobs in solar and wind are already greater than fossil fuels.  Battery and other energy storage technologies are poised to go through the roof.

    It’s the future man!  If the Fossil fuel companies can’t cope give them a little hand up and a clear message that they can get on board fast or go under like lumbering dinosaurs.

  269. 269.

    Richard

    @Yutsano: yes, you wait and see.  Tomorrow they will be saying that bad thing saved it last minute with a slam dunk of presidential behavior and brilliant policies that will help all Americans.

    They are going to say- oh look he really can be president, he represents our values. He can talk!

    I will probably get banned for saying this, but i have known and lived with dogs, actual dogs, that are more human than that thing.

  271. 271.

    LadySuzy

    @Other MJS: yep. It puts Texas out of reach probably. Republicans will just jump on that statement. Unfortunate, but I’m not disappointed in Mr. Biden. Debating Trump and working against the barrage of lies was a very perilous exercise, and he did a good job.

  272. 272.

    Mary Ellen Sandahl

    @Baud:The classic tall windmill of Midwestern farms pumped water from the aquafer for both human and animal use. As a child I visited relatives whose farms had working windmills; the rhythmic creak they make when the wind is powering them is one of those unforgettable sounds, like the distant whistle of a freight train.

  273. 273.

    Miss Bianca

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Dead thread, but I’ll never forget a T-shirt I saw at the 2016 state Democratic convention in CO that depicted Bernie Sanders as Dumbledore. As you say, it explains a lot.

    Now, what the old hippie demographic was thinking of when they saw him, I can’t explain to you. Abbie Hoffman all grown up?

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