Taking a moment from being swamped to yell into the void and get something off my chest. One of the most irritating things about getting older and having watched people and politics for multiple decades is that I am just sick and fucking tired of debating the same bullshit year after year after year. The shit is settled in most cases. The science is settled. The likely outcomes are settled. Just fucking do it.
The proximate source of this outburst is the slew of articles about this bullshit:
Aides to President Joe Biden were enraged when Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman abandoned a secret deal they believed they’d struck to boost oil production, The New York Times reported.
Citing US and Middle Eastern officials, the newspaper said Biden aides believed they’d reached an agreement with the Saudis to increase oil production until December.
This would’ve enabled the Biden White House to claim that the president’s controversial visit to the kingdom in July had resulted in a significant benefit, and would’ve boosted Democrats ahead of the midterms, where they are facing criticism from Republicans over high gas prices.
Biden had criticised the Saudis on the campaign trail over their human rights record, but as the war in Ukraine increased oil prices he made the trip to Jeddah over the heads of senior members of his own party and was pictured bumping fists with bin Salman.
But instead of handing Biden a much-needed political win, the crown prince abandoned the deal. Saudi Arabia also enraged Democratic lawmakers and White House officials earlier this month by announcing plans to cut production along with Russia and other OPEC nations, pushing up oil prices.
Just fucking stop negotiating with them and cut them the fuck off. They are not an ally in any meaningful sense of the term. Literally every shitty thing that has happened in the Middle East (that was not started by the Brits or the CIA, I must note), has found its genesis in fucking Saudi Arabia. You could go through and list dozens of things they are the cause of, and it does no even begin to start with the 9/11 bombers. Stop propping up this corrupt and brutal and stone age fucking monarchy, their wahabbist cult, and let them deal with their own fucking security and messes.
And while we are at it, fuck Aramco. Put the same god damned screws to them we are currently putting to the Chinese tech sector.
And don’t tell me but, but Israel. Fuck those guys, too. They can handle their own fucking messes. They’re not helping clean anything up, that’s for fucking sure.
I’m sick of these guys.
Kropacetic
Preach.
Old School
For the conspiracy minded, Trump’s Saudi-backed golf tournament at Doral took place right after Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia.
schrodingers_cat
BTW Saudi Arabia as it is currently constituted including the royal family at its head is in a large measure thanks to the machinations of the British post WW I. The shitty British Empire, is a gift that keeps giving.
boatboy_srq
Amen.
I still do not understand why efficiency, alternative power sources, and general consumption reduction are not all viewed through the lens of patriotism.
Oh, right; Texas.
JoyceH
Someone needs to remind that old king that he has plenty of other sons.
JoyceH
@boatboy_srq:
Even Texas is going alternative. Saw something where ranchers are leasing parts of their land for wind turbines. One old dude enthused about passive income – ‘for me, and my kids and probably my grandkids’.
Joey Maloney
Speaking as someone who is one of those guys, too – definitely fuck us. We’ll never clean up our act without external pressure, and I mean South Africa-strength international sanctions.
lee
The quicker that folks come to the realization that Saudi Arabia and Israel are not our allies, the better it will be.
rikyrah
They are not our friends
They need to be cut loose
Let Iran have at them
Josie
I wanted to stand up and cheer when I read this rant, John. I hope it reaches the ears of decision makers in the White House and congress. We have too many things to tend to here at home. We don’t need to expend energy on problems in the Middle East.
Betty Cracker
Yep. A good start would be for the US government to inform major defense companies that if they want to continue to sell equipment to the US, they better not supply so much as a rivet, air filter or lug nut to maintain US-built SA military equipment.
Brachiator
They are not a good friend. They would be worse as an enemy.
If the US could find a way to approach Venezuela and help them rebuild, there could be a huge boost in the oil sector, enough to shake Saudi complacency.
One problem. Venezuela has never handled their oil resources intelligently. And at times there was bad dealing and exploitation by oil companies.
The Moar You Know
I know a pair of rabid conservatives – who own a pair of Teslas, by the way – who argue vociferously that we cannot transition to an all-electric transportation infrastructure as “the grid will break”. So we have to be nice to the Russians and Saudis and keep buying oil forever, because the infrastructure they broke, sucks.
That’s all they have left, folks. They can’t argue the merits anymore, so they point at what they broke and use that as the reason.
To which my standard response is: we went to the moon and you’re telling me we can’t even fix our electric grid? And the answer shorn of all extraneous bullshit is yes. America cannot fix its infrastructure.
I can’t and won’t believe that.
ChrisSherbak
My sense was we sell a lot of military hardware and training to the Saudis and THAT is the reason. “Parity with Iran” and “Parity with Israel” is window dressing.
JoyceH
@The Moar You Know:
Geezo-peezo! Has everyone forgotten WWII? We shifted our ENTIRE automotive industry to war production.
Cameron
@The Moar You Know: Can’t fix it? That’s probably not true. Won’t fix it? Absolutely – look at how Texas handled (or didn’t handle) big power outages.
Kropacetic
Certainly not if Republicans are in charge. Dems just took a couple big bites out of the infrastructure problem, though. I’m pretty sure money for electrical grid improvements is on the list.
Cameron
I have my doubts about this NYT story (quelle surprise!). I don’t think there was anything very secret about Biden’s approach to the Saudis – hell, US has openly approached Venezuela, which labors under US sanctions. Story just seems really off to me, and definitely sounds like an effort to portray the administration as both sleazy and inept.
boatboy_srq
@JoyceH: I understand Enron a lot better after watching the TGV-meets-toxicwaste grade train wreck that is ERCOT. Between the deliberately FUBARd mess that is the grid operator and the all-hat-no-pumps urban oilmen in Big (Texan) Oil, the state can go green all it wants and energy policy will never change.
LeftCoastYankee
@The Moar You Know:
Given that the “Free Trade” numnuts forced through a law to make Bonneville Power separate it’s transmission business line from it’s production business line, because private companies could not compete with BPA on transmission costs.
You are spot on that it was broken (or made less efficient) by conservatives in the name of “free trade”.
Nationalize the grid and call it essential infrastructure like the highways, radio, etc., and invest like hell in upgrade and expansion.
It’s only impossible if you think “government” is a bad word.
Anyway
WaPo had an article in the last week about how a large number of 4-star and above generals have cushy lucrative gigs with KSA. Saudis purchase expensive cutting-edge weapons, planes etc and cultivate congressional critters in whose districts these weapons are manufactured as well as MIC companies such as Raytheon. They have a huge constituency in the beltway — expect great pushback from the Blob.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
I’m shocked – shocked! – to hear this.
Rocks
@rikyrah: Only after the Iranian people cleanse their corrupt theocracy, which they seem to be working on, unlike the other two.
LeftCoastYankee
Also, they didn’t let Biden touch the shiny orb thingy, so fuck ’em for that too.
JaneE
US defense contractors made a mint working with the Saudi’s. I never knew anyone who worked there who felt they were our friends, either the government or the people. Do business with us yes, friends and allies, not really. Just a personal observation.
I tend to be out of step on a lot of issues. If I had my way we would keep our petroleum and other resources in the ground and buy on the open market for any commodity whose price is market based. Resources of every kind will become scarcer as they are used, and more expensive to develop and produce. I would wait to use ours until the price of using others is too great. We did the opposite on oil. The easy to get at and cheap to extract oil in this country was over by the 70’s.
Now we have other options in renewables, and we have the potential to be self reliant for energy with the conversion of transportation to EVs. And we are behind the curve again. EV’s, solar and wind power to charge them, better grid and distribution system, and we can leave the petroleum/fossil fuel based economy behind and let the Saudis figure out what else they can sell the world. They have been looking at just that for quite a while now.
Far better to put our money into renewables than Saudi contracts, IMO.
ColoradoGuy
@The Moar You Know: Well, fine, let Texas collapse if that’s what they want to do. Emperor Abbott can run it from his vacation palace in Mexico.
Meanwhile, the East and West grids can be strengthened, since the dominant players in those grids are the Atlantic and Pacific coastal cities that consume much of the electric power. No problems here in Colorado, most of the state is on the Western grid, and our power generation is decentralized.
As for The Kingdom. their collaborators in terror, Pakistan, needs to be dealt with as well. Saudi Arabia, although sponsoring Wahabbi fanaticism all over the world, does not have the technical and detailed planning expertise of the Pakistani ISI. If there is world capital of terrorism, Pakistan is it, and it was no coincidence that Bin Laden was only a few kilometers away from their version of West Point.
The problem with both The Kingdom and Pakistan is they will find other, more odious countries to ally with. Like Russia or China, who are not particular about human rights, and are all too happy to see the USA, Europe, Japan, and South Korea weakened. From the Sino-Russian perspective, they are ringed by a wall of money and military power, and they want to break out.
Bill Arnold
I see zero reasons to disagree with this:
Saudi crown prince a ‘psychopath’, says exiled intelligence officer – Saad Aljabri says Mohammed bin Salman boasted he could kill former ruler King Abdullah (Stephanie Kirchgaessnerin, Mon 25 Oct 2021)
Kropacetic
@JaneE: EVs are a bandaid at best, even if we make our energy production all renewable. Also, energy consumption isn’t the only major problem Individual car ownership brings to the table.
Suzanne
@JoyceH:
If WWII broke out today, half of the country would be begging the Axis powers to bomb US cities.
Kropacetic
…in public and it would be treated as normal by our media.
Mike in Pasadena
@JaneE: My father used to say that soon it will be a crime to burn oil and gas because there are more important things it is used for than burning it. He was 90 years before his time as he felt we should conserve our own supply, buy it from others while working like he’ll to find and develop other energy sources.
hueyplong
The Saudis are in fact an ally, but not of the US. They’re an ally of authoritarian Republicans. A staunch ally.
artem1s
We can thank the Bush Crime Family and Darth Cheney for this shit. Their slavering protection of Bandar Bush after 9/11 and their business relationships with house of Saud are shameful warmongering and pandering. Liz will do exactly the same when she tries to climb back in control of the GOP.
Time for Biden to push forward on that deal with Venezuela. F**k the Sauds
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@schrodingers_cat: Truth – colonialism is an enduring stain on history across the world
different-church-lady
OT: Everything sucks. Somebody knows what to do about it, but nobody is listening, and I don’t have their phone number.
geg6
Preach it, Cole. 100%
different-church-lady
@The Moar You Know:
If we don’t, Mother Nature is gonna fix us.
Kropacetic
@different-church-lady: Let’s have an open casting call for a benevolent dictator.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Old School: And in the middle of Trump moving boxes of classified documents around at Mar-a-Lago while he resisted the Archives’ demand to return them. I find that suspicious.
Doc Sardonic
@JoyceH: Texass (Not a typo) is about a generation behind Florida where ranching is concerned. When the groves got frozen the second time in 2 years, the younger generation convinced the older ones that they could make more money growing houses than oranges, grapefruit and the rest of the varieties of citrus we used grow. The younger generation of the large ranching families saw the easy money and followed suit. In a few more years the Lone Star state will be producing a lot more renewable energy than cow farts.
narya
@JoyceH: @Suzanne: @Kropacetic: I’ve been listening to Maddow’s Ultra podcast, and whoa, buddy, today’s goings-on completely echo what was happening then. We (or, at least, I) tended to see a lot of WW2 activity through a gauzy lens, but she’s doing a really good job laying out the details about how many folks IN CONGRESS were on board with and in bed with the Nazis.
different-church-lady
@different-church-lady: Update: everything sucks slightly — ever so slightly — less now that the espresso is taking affect. (or is is effect?)
Mike in Pasadena
@Mike in Pasadena: He also wanted more emphasis on developing alternatives to cars and trucks, alternative modes of transportation.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: True. Maddow’s “Ultra” podcast has been an eye-opener for me about how many Americans were Hitler fans before WWII, including media personalities and congresspeople who used government assets to disseminate Nazi propaganda.
Swap out “Hitler” and “Germany” for “Putin” and “Russia,” and a lot of the storylines sync up
ETA: Or what Narya said at #41.
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic:
TANNED, RESTED AND READY!!!
Urza
John keeps telling it like it is for simple people to understand and someones going to put him in office.
narya
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Come sit by me. I am fairly convinced that a trade was occurring. Can it be proven? Dunno. Would I sound like a crank if I claimed it anywhere other than the comments section of a top-10,000 blog (and possibly even there)? Yeah.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@different-church-lady: Effect. Affect is usually a verb
Dorothy A. Winsor
@narya: We can be cranks together
Dan B
@Kropacetic: EV’s tied to the grid would be more than a band aid.
Kropacetic
I don’t know why, I don’t trust a tan. Honestly, probably the reason for my Charlie Crist skepticism from 3/4 the way up the East coast, knowing nothing about Florida politics.
narya
@Betty Cracker: It is really kind of blowing me away, tbh. The parallels are terrifying.
different-church-lady
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Hey, this is turning into a good day for grammar improvement. (The earlier discretely/discreetly lesson).
Mimi haha
Remember when we tossed that last Bush out? It felt good. I admit I didn’t realize at the time the GOP had reserves of even worse people to tap.
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic: You’re testing my benevolence here…
James E Powell
@Mimi haha:
We didn’t toss him out. He served the full eight years, making everything worse, and pausing from time to time to have a laugh at our expense.
I really hate that guy.
different-church-lady
@Mimi haha:
We didn’t exactly toss him out, we just stopped taking his calls until his mandatory retirement.
Kropacetic
@Dan B: EVs use a lot of rare metals we need to extract and they’re still cars that still clog and create disrepair on roads. We spend too much time driving. Also, according to the University of Michigan, car use constitutes only 15 percent of our energy consumption.
Suzanne
@narya: @Betty Cracker: I don’t know if it’s possible to measure how successful Vladimir Putin has been at encouraging Americans to hate each other. If 9/11 happened right now, I don’t know if the MAGAts would be able to contain their glee.
Richard Rorty had some great things to say about good societies. I’ll try to dig it up.
coin operated
Last time I checked, wasn’t the US a net exporter of fossil fuel products? We could clip KSUs wings now, if we wanted to. I’m with Cole on this one…pull the fuck out NOW and let them become a 3rd world shithole once the petrodollars dry up.
And +1 on Israel. Every time someone brings Israel up, I have to link this clip from The Brink:
Israel and NeoCons
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden, 1939. (Some sections are silent, some include sound.)
Geminid
@Kropacetic: Gotta walk before you run. EVs will be reducing carbon emissions long before we create more efficient housing patterns. And achieving a sustainable planet requires a politically sustainable program to get us there.
different-church-lady
@Mimi haha:
It’s
turtlesdeplorables all the way down.columbusqueen
You rock, John. And I agree with narya; I think Trump was sharing good Intel with his friends the Saudis. Traitorous bastard.
Kropacetic
Best practice when selecting a benevolent dictator.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Kropacetic: You surprise me; don’t you know EVERY dictator is benevolent? Just ask them – but don’t ask their aides, as that question addressed to them will get you in serious trouble.
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic:
What makes up the other 85%?
different-church-lady
@Geminid:
I’d be more in favor of housing density if other people weren’t such assholes.
Kropacetic
@Geminid: This is true. I do worry, however, that the American public will see us transition to all electric and say “problem solved” and the 2 hour, 20 mile commutes will remain.
tybee
@different-church-lady:
amen
Kropacetic
Internet bloviating.
different-church-lady
You know, this is all so stupid: stop trying to fix energy consumption and climate change. The only thing that’s gonna solve this problem is fewer people. A lot fewer people. And climate apocalypse is the solution to that problem!
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic: Should I look into buying carbon credits?
Kropacetic
@different-church-lady: Only if it won’t hamper your posting. Your comments are worth watching the Earth end in climate disaster.
different-church-lady
I adore the fact that there’s a line at the top of this page that reads…
Yes, that is where I am. That is where we all are.
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic: I… uh…
Kropacetic
@different-church-lady: Also carbon credits appear to be an underregulated fraud if John Oliver is to be believed.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@different-church-lady: Nominated for a rotating tag!
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic:
Is there anything at all left in life that isn’t?
Kropacetic
@different-church-lady: Not if Republicans have anything to say about it. And they do. More than their numbers suggest they should.
Kay
How many cops should we have, I wonder? One for every ten people? They already have HUGE budgets. We should just keep hiring more and more of them? No requirements at all that they show they’re solving crimes or issuing citations or responding to calls- just unlimited increases in funding, forever.
Baud
@Kay:
Treat them like public schools! Cut their funding if they don’t perform.
gvg
@The Moar You Know: Completely different things and the grid is a much bigger more complicated problem. The moon shot was the US government with good support from both parties and US contractors. It was hard and complicated and something to be proud of but its just not the same thing.
Not that we can’t fix the grid. We can and must, but it is a long term project with a lot more entities involved. States, utilities both public and private of varying quality, regulators, many many landowners and easements, lots of legal issues and not so much support.
Democrats need to keep winning for a long number of years.
James E Powell
@different-church-lady:
This source says 67.2% of oil goes to transportation. And in the chart further down, quick division shows 44.58% for gasoline.
I’m guessing the 15% for car gasoline is a percentage of the whole of energy consumption, including coal, natural gas, hydro, sun, wind, nuclear, etc.
Alison Rose
Can I just say that one of the reasons I love this place so much is that there’s a post category called Go Fuck Yourself.
Kay
“More cops and longer sentences”. That’s the response to crime. So exactly what we’ve done every year for the last 50. Police and prison spending should be, what, FORTY PER CENT of budgets? That’ll be a great quality of life.
Sickens me that we’re doing this again. What a dumb, knee jerk waste of funding.
Balconesfault
With respect to Texas and wind, the state is actually been way ahead of much of the country in developing both wind power and the transmission systems needed to bring it back to the large cities.
There are times during the year now we’re around 50% of Texas grid energy is coming from wind, and over the entire year wind and solar are contributing around 20% of the energy the Texas grid uses.
The weird thing is that you deal with these ranchers who are basically having their fat pulled out of the fire by the steady income some wind turbines on their property gives them for keeping ahead of their tax bills,but they still turn around and vote for Republicans who spend all their time bashing clean energy.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Yes, but we have to start cheering for it again, especially when they shoot 12-year-olds.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Balconesfault: Forget it, Balconesfault, it’s Texas.
eversor
Comically we produce, and have more, oil than the Saudis. We also produce more, sell more to Europe, and have more LNG than the Russians. We don’t need either of these fucks. We are net exporter of both oil and LNG. We have shit loads of it. We are not going to run out. We are also not short on uranium, mass deserts to place solar plants, and shores to place wind on, rivers to dam, or underground thermals to tap.
Norway and others are in a similar situation. Spoiled for resources. Same with Canuckistan. We could bottom out these markets overnight if we really felt like it and bankrupt both Saudi and Russia.
Why we are propping up these markets when we totally have everything we need is insane. And if we must buy from “the market” the Scandanavians and the Canadians are perfectly good producers of fossil fuels and rare earth minerals. One of them we share a border with and pipelines with to our refineries!
Kropacetic
@James E Powell: If both numbers are true, that means about 52 percent is transportation of a not personal nature; moving goods to market, commercial airlines, cruises, public transport, etc. I know there must be categories I’m missing.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: The thing about Loomis etc. is that they’re almost at the point where if they were right, it’d imply that we should be encouraging school shooters.
Kay
@Baud:
San Francisco has 45 traffic cops. 45. They issue only 10 citations a day. They’re effectively on strike until they get more and more funding. No one knows how much they will need to write a traffic ticket. Could be a billion dollars.
In response to this police performance problem, they fired the liberal prosecutor, which amazingly did not fix the police performance problem. They can hire as many as they want. If they’re only issuing ten tickets a day it won’t matter.
Citizen Alan
@Mimi haha: There is no bottom. The next GOP president will be worse than Trump.
Matt McIrvin
@Kropacetic: Yeah, most non-personal transport uses fuels other than gasoline, mostly either diesel (which is basically the same as home heating oil) or Jet-A (which is basically kerosene), unless it’s electrified.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Ugh. A hiring craze will be a complete fucking disaster. What do you think the quality is for an unemployed high school graduate in this job market? Bottom of the barrel. The unemployable 5%. That’s the pool they’ll come from.
Kropacetic
@Kay: Maybe San Franciscans are just incredibly good drivers.
Kropacetic
@Matt McIrvin: Id have to check back to the study, but yeah, personal transport uses a disproportionate amount of fossil fuels wrt its total use of energy and it wouldn’t surprise me if that extended to a few other transportation sectors also.
Alison Rose
@Kropacetic: LOLLLLLLLLL nope.
Matt McIrvin
@Balconesfault: I think it’s interesting that the Trump administration was actively hostile to renewable energy and not only did it not stop the introduction of renewable energy, it barely slowed it down.
JimV
That is the dumbest idea President Biden has had in a long time. They are rich due to a commodity that is going to run out, and they can get more money out of it by restricting how much they supply. What can or should we offer them that is better for them than that? At the same time, the less of it that is used, the better it is for the world’s climate.
If you have to abandon science and principle for the sake of getting elected, do it by offering a tax rebate based on oil consumption or something like that–something that has a chance of working.
Gravenstone
They’d probably cheer the NYC strikes, but would still get angry about the Pentagon one, because reasons…
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic:
I’ve always suspected a huge part of our problem is that it became cheaper to move goods across continents than make things locally. Expensive fuel is a check on that, but we’re lost when it comes to even conceiving being local again.
Kropacetic
@Alison Rose: You’re right. I found this footage of four typical San Francisco drivers.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: It’s less of a check than you might think–the amount of monetary value you can stuff into one shipping container of manufactured goods is immense and the fuel cost of pushing it across the ocean is a pretty small part of that comparatively speaking. A lot of futurists thinking about Peak Oil got this all wrong. With a lot of these goods there’s no particular hurry, either, within limits. They’d probably find a way even if they had to use sails (or solar-electric propulsion or something).
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
Everything looks impossible to someone looking for an excuse not to do it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Our traffic cops are stationed downtown, trying to find meters that have expired. trying to find people whose times have expired on ridiculously expensive parking, so that they can slap $50 tickets on them.
Traffic cops are not out in the neighborhoods.
So, if they don’t produce income, they should lose their cushy assignment.
rikyrah
@Kay:
That’s why you have standards. To be honest, I was tired of the High School at being the minimum for a police officer. I want a full college degree. At least an Associates degree. So someone, who will be permanently earning $100,000, once they hit 18 phucking months on the job?
Hell yeah, we need to have higher requirements.
I don’t resent Policemen earning a good wage. Paying their salaries doesn’t chafe my hide.
Paying for when they ABUSE THE CITIZENRY CHAFES MY HIDE.
Abuse lawsuits have cost the city 500 MILLION DOLLARS in the past 7 years.
THAT’S PHUCKING RIDICULOUS.
That money should come out of the Police Pension Fund.
Kropacetic
Pithier than I’ve ever been able to make that argument to unpaid oil company spokespeople (MAGAts). I’ll try to remember that one.
Geminid
@James E Powell: I think that (very) roughly, transport accounts for ~30% of energy consumption, electrical generation ~30%, heating ~25%, and industrial processes ~15%. Most of this is from fossil fuels, but nuclear and hydro have long accounted for 20% of electrical generation and wind and solar are rapidly picking up more of that load
Transitioning to 90% clean energy in electrical generation is technically not that heavy a lift, even with the increased demand EVs will bring. In a few years, fulfilling long term contracts and paying off utility bonds for gas and coal plants may be the major constraints.
Heavy transport is a tougher problem, as is industrial use. Concrete production alone is thought to account for as much as 8% of global carbon emissions.
In the long term, the EU (at least) plans to cover much of those needs by using “green” hydrogen. Many are sceptical that this is possible, but there are already heavy trucks running in Switzerland, built by Hyundai and powered by hydrogen fuel cells. A German company has ordered a couple hundred for starters.
Conservation is generally the most important component of a transition to a net zero carbon world. One good estimate is that we could save as much as 40% of carbon emissions through greater efficiency.
Betty Cracker
@narya: Same. I knew about Father Coughlin, knew there were some right-wing extremist Hitler fans in the pre-war period, etc., but I had no clue how big the movement was or that Nazi agents had compromised so many congresspeople to spread disinformation, etc. In a sense, it’s comforting to know that American democracy has survived a sustained and large-scale assault before.
Suzanne
@rikyrah:
ELITIST.
Just kidding. I agree with you.
If for no other reason (there are other reasons), having a degree means you are riding out more of that time before “full brain maturity at 25” before you have a gun in your hand.
pieceofpeace
At times I worry about a larger worldwide conspiracy”. US (under Maga), Russia, Saudi A, Brazil (where Bolsonaro’s son mentioned how Brazil will be proud to lead South America into a new world…), Italy and Germany for the EU, and maybe others I’m not aware of yet. Bannon took some leadership with attempts at setting connections and probably more, such as the ‘training and educating’ facility in Italy, which never materialized when Italy refused.
Likely my imagination is allowing fear and some paranoia to invade my mind without my personal due process permission, Yet one wonders what the rightwingers learned from previous wars.
Kay
@Kropacetic:
They’re not, and they’re upset that no one is enforcing the traffic laws. They should be upset! I am baffled why they would look to someone other than police for why that is though.
Isn’t San Francisco only 7 miles by 7 miles? Do they need….90 traffic cops?
rikyrah
Renee (@PettyLupone) tweeted at 10:39 AM on Thu, Oct 27, 2022:
So the Biden-Harris admin is cracking down on overdraft fees and other hidden junk fees but none the money raging twitter fingerers are talking about it? https://t.co/M8o4zYQtIN
(https://twitter.com/PettyLupone/status/1585657427533254657?t=6CseDlGXXKNZKVnoH7S5Dg&s=03)
rikyrah
Connie Schultz (@ConnieSchultz) tweeted at 7:34 PM on Tue, Oct 25, 2022:
My God, the blue-check people here mocking John Fetterman during this debate, as if they are immune from the randomness of illness and infirmity. Time catches up with everyone, no exceptions. Few would have his courage to recover so publicly.
(https://twitter.com/ConnieSchultz/status/1585067394460168193?t=a6Hmdx5jvHEA8sgmv3RmeA&s=03)
Frank McCormick
@JoyceH:
It’s a common error to confuse Texas leadership with the businesses and people of Texas. Wind energy currently is our second largest producer of electricity after natural gas. One article I just scanned stated we have the capacity to generate more, but the capability to transmit it is limited by the current state of our grid.
The traffic jams that occasionally occur here in Austin area due to the transport of the turbine blades (it takes two trucks with one at each end of the blade–those suckers are huge) tell me construction of windfarms is ongoing.
Between 26 and 29 percent of our energy comes from windfarms, with one article stating we lead the nation in the production of wind energy.
The ongoing lesson: pay no attention to what Republican politicians say. They lie.
Kropacetic
@rikyrah: 👏 👏 👏
Roger Moore
@Kropacetic:
Yes, but a much larger fraction of our crude oil use, which is the big issue with Saudi Arabia. Things like solar and wind aren’t subject to the same kind of political problems that oil is. Since John’s original post was about the political side of things, that needs to be taken into account.
Even if you’re looking at the overall energy picture, we can’t ignore a sector of our energy use because it’s only 15%. Energy consumption is divided lots of ways, so a lot of our use is in sectors that small or smaller. We can’t look for a single magic solution that will fix everything. Instead, we have to look at each part of the overall picture and solve them all separately.
One of the ways we can start doing that is to move sectors of our consumption away from fossil fuels. We know it’s possible to generate electricity with renewable energy, so moving things that currently use fossil fuels to electricity is a possible way forward, provided we also push to use renewable energy for new electrical generation. That’s a big motivator for EVs, and also for things people are talking about like phasing out home appliances that use fossil fuels.
Geminid
@rikyrah: Rachel Bitecofer had a personal comment about the debate:
different-church-lady
@Geminid:
Hate to be a downer, but I just don’t know how much luck we’re gonna have looking for empathy from an electorate half-addicted to playground cruelty.
prostratedragon
@Cameron: Kind of how I read it, and why I haven’t paid much attention to it. Biden’s foreign policy has hardly been naive.
Kropacetic
Yeah, this and everything else you say is true. I just worry EVs aren’t the fix people are hoping or we will achieve an all electric vehicle fleet and people will call it a job done.
We need to be laying the groundwork for more diversified personal transport and more reasonable layout for housing.
narya
@Suzanne: @Betty Cracker: It’s really clear how much effort the germans were dedicating to amplifying divisions that already existed–which is, of course, exactly what Pooty did.
Betty Cracker
@pieceofpeace: I don’t know f there’s an organized conspiracy, but there’s definitely a global hard-right movement with players who support and promote each other openly and disseminate propaganda and undertake rat-fucking on each other’s behalf.
Geminid
@different-church-lady: Don’t worry, I understand that.
Kropacetic
@Betty Cracker: A global
white supremacistnationalist agenda? A vast right-wing conspiracy?Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: Hydrogen fuel cells for personal transport seem like a hopeless infrastructure problem to me–EVs are already on the way to wiping out that solution–but for heavy transport, that’s not quite so unreasonable.
Subsole
@different-church-lady: Effect.
Effect is a result.
Affect is a behavior.
Trollhattan
Can anybody recommend a place I can hang out with grumpy people?
Kropacetic
@Trollhattan: The Seven Dwarves’ cabin. There are also dopey and bashful people available.
Omnes Omnibus
@Trollhattan: Balloon Juice?
Roger Moore
@Kropacetic:
It took me a few tries to boil it down to its essence. It’s an important general principle far beyond politics. It’s useful with any group that’s nominally working to solve a problem. You can quickly sort the group into people looking for solutions and people looking for excuses.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: I love that nym, Petty Lupone.
sab
@Subsole: I feel better that that is one set of grammar rules that I could never figure out. Even very literate jackals have trouble.
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
Some parts of heavy transport should be pretty straightforward. Trains are relatively easy to electrify, and they really ought to be a bigger part of our heavy transport than they currently are. Electric trucks should work well for things like local deliveries. For ships and planes, we may need to look harder at biofuels.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I think that Toyota and Hyundai are the only car makers considering fuel cells, and they are only running prototypes now. Fuel cells may potentially have wider use for heavy trucks because batteries are so heavy in comparison to a fuel cell and a tank of hydrogen. They would be much quicker to fill up too. They’ll initially be used in fleets with a common fuel station at the depot.
Europe is some years away from producing green hydrogen in the requisite quantity, but the EU seems very serious about this power source. So are American truck maufacturers, although they have a cautious and tentative projected timeline.
Subsole
@Kay:
Hell, if the cops are so special, why all the clamoring for open carry everywhere?
Said it before, saying it again:
If I have to carry a gun to church, school, work, the grocery store, the movies, and everywhere else including the pediatric ward of my local hospital, then why the HELL am I paying the cops? Fuck them. They outsourced their job to US. They don’t need a slice off OUR paychecks.
Nevermind they threaten to walk off the job they aren’t doing whenever anyone has the temerity to suggest they don’t deserve a 24/7/365 fellatio-parade just for showing up to the job that we taxpayers ended up doing for them! It’s asinine.
You can have hero cops who deserve the massive budget, OR you can have pervasive no-limits open-carry. You can’t have both. They refute each other. If one is working, you have no need of the other.
ColoradoGuy
Good point about wind generation is Texas. Our state has wind, but nowhere close to TX.
Farmers want an added steady income stream because of the unpredictability of farm prices, while farms have on-going capital costs that never stop. A few bad years and the farm (or ranch) can go under. Having a steady revenue stream, uncorrelated with farm prices, can make the difference between profit and bankruptcy. Farmers know this, but the GOP never mentions it, for some reason.
Wind installations have the significant advantage of not risking groundwater contamination, a small but finite risk with fracking that grows with each well drilled.
Roger Moore
@sab:
“Effect” and “affect” are especially bad because they are also verbs with close but not perfectly matching meanings. “Affect” means to change, while “effect” means to implement. So I can effect a change, and the change affects me. Most of the time, though, affect is used as a verb and effect as a noun. So when I affect you, you feel the effect of my action.
Martin
@Roger Moore: You could equally sub in ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.’ Same basic sentiment.
brantl
@schrodingers_cat: But the shitty middle east situation is as much the US’ fault as theirs, with what we’ve done in the last 70 years
Kropacetic
@Martin: But his doesn’t require the exchange of money.
Subsole
@sab: Yeah. That’s English for you. Shit’s absolutely baffling. I still don’t know how anyone speaks it, and it’s the only language I know.
Kropacetic
@Subsole: English has a lot of things going for it, like having been the primary language of a vast global empire.
brantl
@Brachiator: The Venezuelans and Venezuela itself got screwed by the oil companies for 50 years, their problems in their oil-base economy only really started when the price severely tanked.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
And near infinite malleability.
Kropacetic
@Baud: Right. Personally I love all the French words that are English now. And the whole concept of neologisms.
sab
@Subsole: Excellent point.
The whole reason Ohio went to open carry without a permit is that white men with open carry permits were being treated like all black men when said white men were stopped for speeding, and it scared the crap out of them.
Subsole
@Kropacetic: True.
@Baud: Yep.
“English doesn’t just borrow words from other languages, it follows those other languages down the alley, cracks them over the head, and rifles their pockets.”
Balconesfault
@ColoradoGuy:. Funny enough, 15 years ago Texas had politicians who were out doing everything they could to attract more wind and solar to the state.
That included a land commissioner who was a regular going to various industry conventions around the country to talk the resource potential for wind in Texas, and even the often (and rightfully) maligned Rick Perry supported the state paying for the KREZ lines which were designed to upgrade the system for bringing electrons back from wind farms in West Texas and the Panhandle to the major Urban centers.
I suspect that the current attitude of the Republican Party toward wind and solar has a lot to do with the Koch-suckers putting their thumb heavily on the scale.
Martin
@Kropacetic: Careful with that study. It’s only studying first order effects. A LOT of energy conservation as a result of cars is 2nd order. Arguably the 2nd order effects are larger than the 1st order in this case.
In additional to tailpipe energy costs, you have road infrastructure costs, loss of carbon capture, a shift from shared-wall city design to single structure, which drastically increases HVAC costs, and on and on. Most big picture energy analysis focuses on why cars in the US are so much more damaging environmentally than cars in Europe, and it’s because the design of cities – triggered by cars – is so radically different.
Europe never saw anything like this, except due to WWII, and after the war, Europe largely rebuilt their cities as they were before the war. What you see in that photo was the US intentionally destroying a major city in order to enrich the auto industry. You cannot tell me the former photo doesn’t have better transit, better HVAC costs, better shopping, higher economic output, better tax revenue relative to costs and so on than the latter. The latter photo is materially worse in every possible way – unless you are an automaker.
So even if you put a car in each photo and measure its tailpipe energy, it’s every other thing in the photo that changed that is the real story.
sab
@Subsole: Try learning Finnish where they have no prepositions, just declensions, meaning you pronounce the noun slightly differently depending on its use in the sentence (like we do with pronouns: he, him , his etc.)
Subsole
@sab: Figures.
wjca
@rikyrah: Let’s face it. We would be better off allied to the Iranians than the Saudis.
Sure, both are noxious theocracies. But the Iranians have at least got a couple of millenia of civilization behind them; as oppised to being barely 2 generations from nomadic camel herders. Which may be why their women look like they may succeed in toppling the mullahs. Chances of major changes in Saudi Arabia look close to nil.
sab
@Kropacetic: That’s only very recent. 17th century only Brits and a handful of Americans spoke it.
ETA I have Chinese inlaws who speak and write several dialects of their incredibly difficult language well, and still have trouble with our pronouns. And call Greyhound the “Dog bus”.
Eyeroller
@Subsole: Part of the problem is that neither affect nor effect is “native” English; both come via Old French from Latin, which had strong differentiation between e and a in words which English does not have, at least not Modern English.
Martin
I suspect it has more to do with not being able to admit that liberals and California got it right. Consider the lengths they will to do to deny obviously correct policy decisions that happened under liberals and defend obviously incorrect policy decisions they advanced. Covid is just fucking swimming in those examples. They still want to arrest Fauci. They will carry that grudge until he dies.
WaterGirl
@different-church-lady:
That’s just too funny.
Subsole
@Baud: Yep. Another brilliant Republican idea.
“Your kids keep failing the standardized test. So we’re going to cripple your budget until you do better.”
It’s like saying “Your kids are too skinny, so we’re going to cut them back to one meal a week until they fatten up.”
It’s absurd. These people are absurd.
Geminid
@Roger Moore: We’re going to see a lot of electric delivery trucks within the next few years. UPS intends to make them the mainstayof its fleet, with hybrid powered trucks for the longer routes.
Electric school buses are coming as well, thanks to funding in the much underrated Infrastructure. Cummins Engines already is producing electric power trains for buses and medium trucks, and they can be retrofitted to old ones.
Democrats in the House considered a mandate to phase in carbon neutral fuel for air transport but decided this was premature. I think it’s coming though. Airlines could buy biofuels, or fuels made from “carbon neutral” oil- that is, oil recovered through injection of carbon dioxode into oil formations.
This makes oil flow more easily and has been done for decades. Now companies project “Direct Air Capture” plants that will inject CO2 into oil fields, recover “carbon neutral oil” and collect the hefty Q45 tax credit in the process. Occidental Petroleum has broken ground on a very large direct air capture plant in Texas, atop the Permian Basin oil deposits.
Some environmentalists can’t stand the idea of producing and using carbon neutral oil. They believe the oil companies must be destroyed if we are to save the planet. Oil companies say, “Boo, hoo. Just try taking that Q45 credit away!”
Airline companies say, “We’ll go carbon neutral if you make us, just let us phase this in slowly enough passengers can get used to the higher ticket costs.” And Airbus says, “Just wait. We’ll be building hydrogen powered planes in 2040.”
ColoradoGuy
Another usage of “affect” is by psychologists, who use it to mean the emotional presentation of one person to an observer. E.G. “the client’s affect was morose and withdrawn”, for example.
Kropacetic
That was essentially my point prior to that. Car culture and housing development based around cars is the primary problem. EVs won’t make roads more durable or promote better urban planning.
Subsole
@Eyeroller: I did not know that.
I love this blog. You always learn something here.
sab
@Kay: Akron is battling that now. Those eight cops who slaughtered young Jaylin Walker are back on active duty. We have a ballot measure to get a citizen review board, and the cops are all “that shouldn’t be in the city charter!” Tough luck guys, you guys all moved out of town when they allowed you to, and now you can’t vote on amendments to the city charter. This used to be between your union and our officials, and now actual citizens get a vote.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
It’s a good, but not identical idea. In particular the “everything looks impossible to someone who doesn’t want to do it” covers more ground. There are plenty of times when our reluctance to do something has nothing to do with money and everything to do with our laziness or happiness with the status quo, and we’re just as prone to discovering insuperable obstacles in those cases.
sab
@Subsole: @Eyeroller:
Agreed. I did not know that and I love this blog for that reason.
ETA Not that I didn’t know it, but that now I do is why I love this blog.
Martin
@Kropacetic: EVs make the roads worse – they’re heavier. Road wear is a 4th power effect. Increase the weight of a vehicle by 25% per axle and road wear more than double (+144%).
EVs are only heavier because we choose to make them heavier. The EV breakouts in almost every other market than the US is around lighter vehicles than gas, not heavier. US is unique in this regard. We’re taking every bit of emission gains from the tailpipe and throwing them away through heavier vehicles, just as increased fuel economy lead to zero net gain in fleet economy – people just bought heavier vehicles that got the same mileage as their previous small vehicle.
Time to make every vehicle over two tons a commercial vehicle that requires a commercial license and pays commercial fees.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I doubt they will let a little thing like death interfere with their grudges.
dnfree
@James E Powell: I think she means Jeb! (His exclamation point, not mine.)
Roger Moore
@Kropacetic:
If anythings, EVs will destroy roads faster than ICE cars. Road damage goes up with something like the 4th power of weight, and EVs tend to be heavier than equivalent ICE cars because of the heavy battery packs. It probably won’t be a big deal for suburban cul-de-sacs, where weather damage is more important than vehicle travel, but it means highways are going to be in big trouble.
bjacques
Very late to the party, but funny how FTFNYT political reporters and their editors save the important stuff on GOP leaders for their book deals, until long after it can influence voting decisions, but stuff on Democratic leaders comes out in time for early voting, when Democrats are more likely to go to the polls.
James E Powell
@Trollhattan:
Any sports bar that is a hang out for fans of a team that is currently not doing well, like the Yankees, Lakers, Raiders, Broncos, etc.
Cameron
@Kropacetic: I like confusing words, like ‘neoplasm’ and ‘pleonasm.’
sab
@James E Powell: I never in a million years thought I would be rooting for the National League, but I am.
Kropacetic
@Cameron: I only just learned pleonasm is a word and kudos to the dictionary for making Glenn Greenwald the image.
Geminid
@sab: I’m rooting for Dusty Baker, even if it means rooting his team.
Cameron
@Kropacetic: Good choice…..
sab
Back to Jaylin Walker. He fled because cops were randomly stopping black drivers for nothing, and he was surviving in the gig economy where you cannot afford to be stopped by cops. This isn’t rocket science, and that two levels of governmental review haven’t noticed this is to be expected and not a shock.
Mayor I liked doesn’t want to run again with this on his record.
I have a white step-daughter who until recently was in the gig economy. Tough world out there
ETA The more I learn about Jaylin Walker and Akron’s response the angrier I get. And I am white. He was just a nice young man. There is nothing in his life to suggest he deserved what happened to him.
Kropacetic
@Cameron: If only it were true.
sab
@Geminid: I will forgive you just this once. I hate the Astros, cheating weasels when they were so good they didn’t need to cheat.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
Both my teams – Dodgers & Guardians – were eliminated, so I’m not rooting for any team, just good games.
lowtechcyclist
I’m lowtechcyclist, and I approve this message.
A-fucking-men.
sab
@James E Powell: Weren’t the Guardians unexpectantly good? Great job for the new name to the old franchise.
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore:
My understanding is that when it comes to roads that carry both cars and commercial trucks, the trucks cause essentially all the wear and tear. Which makes sense given the 4th power formula: if my car weighs 2 tons, a truck carrying 10 tons would cause 625 times as much damage. And of course an 18-wheeler’s load is going to be way more than that.
So even though EVs will be heavier than ICE vehicles, I’m skeptical that it’ll make that much difference in terms of wear and tear, except in limited situations like a parkway that has lots of car traffic but doesn’t allow commercial trucks.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: But this argument does nothing to allay people’s concerns that other people think EVs will solve all our problems!
dr. luba
@sab: Ukrainian has both prepositions and declensions, as well as gendered nouns and no articles or obvious rules for placement of accents in word.
Timill
@Subsole: James D Nicoll gets the credit:
Back in 1990, I made this comment:
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
* Usenet article <[email protected]> (1990),
YY_Sima Qian
The US can start w/ withholding arms sales to Saudi Arabia, & pressure them & the UAE to stop their intervention into Yemen.