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Thorgi Duke of Frisbee
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  1. 1. Death Penalty

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So apparently the FBI, when interviewing people who were at the Capitol, got a lot of statements along the lines of "I did it because Trump told me to" or "I was invited there by Trump." This is really an open and shut case for a conviction. It already was, frankly, but if the GOP bails him out a second time then it'll just be a completely naked admission that they never really cared about justice or the law in the first place.

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Of the 9 presidential inaugurations that have occurred during my lifetime, this is the first time I'm going to actually watch it.

 

I hope to the gods that Pelosi is staying away. She's third (second? I'm never sure how that's counted...) in line for President after Kamala Harris, and gods forbid there be a mass casualty event...

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These EOs (I need time to read through them) are basically the bare minimum that Trump had to do back in March/April " to protect, test, vaccinate, and take care of our people". Sure there probably would've been issues with who's in charge (lol fuck Jared Kushner) but it probably would've gotten the ball rolling and saved many many lives. Hell, Trump probably would've gotten a passing grade (at least initially) on his response but instead we got what we got and with me wanting to prosecute them all. Fuck do I hate them.

 

Biden's team now have to figure out what can be saved or repurposed. In some ways it's probably harder to do than starting from scratch. I'm actually doubtful that a 100 million Americans will be vaccinated in 100 days but I think they're capable to surprising me. I'd love Trump to surprise me but he was likely never capable of such feat.

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  • 2 weeks later...

See, it's stuff like this that make me wonder if the Republicans even have any strategists in their ranks. They had their foot on Trump's throat, all they had to do was press down, vote to impeach, and everything would have gone back to normal. Not that "normal" is great, but it's better than having Trump ride roughshod over your entire party.

 

If they had convicted, Trump would have been barred from running again, Reps would have had the perfect "we were left with no choice" excuse, and even if Rep voters were pissed off, are you really telling me that Trump's base would vote for a youngish, female, black/Indian candidate over whichever old white dude the Reps roll out in '24? Come on!

 

 

 

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He's still an useful idiot. We all know how Trump functions, especially on getting to his good side so he does things for you. No way the Republicans don't know and hell, we do see lots of them kissing Trump ass to get what they want. If he dies before 2024 then whatever.

 

And Thursday, you must be under the mistaken impression that they care. They will shred every norm and decency in the federal (I think this is a key word) government to get what they want. Like shit, the president technically can do anything. It's a win if they can get someone in there and if not and the person acts anywhere near like Trump but against them, they'll rally against the executive office.

 

And you got a Dem leadership that wants to play nice... !?!?!!?!

 

What a shitpost of a reality.

 

Edit:

 

Also I think the Texas snowstorm/power outage will be the national news, especially the aftermath. Like I knew there would be a winter storm for a few days before (hinted with a 100+ vehicle pileup) but then suddenly on Twitter I see people I follow starting to breakdown pallets and other wood furniture to burn for heat and asking how to stay warm. Like wow, what a massive failure of systems in Texas with 4 million plus households without power in the freezing cold with poorly insulated houses.

Edited by Mal
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3 hours ago, Mal said:

And you got a Dem leadership that wants to play nice... !?!?!!?!

 

Boy oh boy am I sick of seeing this from the Dems. The GOP has already proven they don't even pretend to care about bipartisanship and will ram through anything they can while they're holding the stick. The Dems are in power now and they should be flipping the GOP the bird and doing what needs to be done but almost none of them have any balls except for a small handful of people. Hell, I wouldn't even bother having the GOP in the room while policies are being worked on. Fuck 'em, the Dems don't owe them shit.

 

Regarding that Texas thing, I actually have family down there right now and they are fucking miserable. If there is one silver lining in that shitshow it's that it provides a good window of opportunity for Biden to have the grid infrastructure updated and to see to it that it also facilitates the implementation of green energy sources. Getting Texas' grid to go clean would do wonders for expanding the idea to the rest of the country.

Edited by Mister Jack
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18 minutes ago, TheMightyEthan said:

Texas' grid is already more than 50% renewable, that's part of the problem, wind and solar farms don't work in this weather.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/17/conservatives-falsely-blame-renewables-for-texas-storm-outages

 

According to the Graudian, (and an ERCOT press conference which I have not checked myself) there were twice as many outages caused by gas, coal and nuclear than renewables.

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Yeah, I didn't mean it was the whole problem, just that renewables didn't solve it.

 

*Edit - Really what we need is for the regional grids to actually be linked together, so a generation failure in one region doesn't bring down that whole grid, because power can still be brought in from other regions.

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On 2/17/2021 at 7:31 AM, TheMightyEthan said:

Texas' grid is already more than 50% renewable, that's part of the problem, wind and solar farms don't work in this weather.

It should be said, the ones Texas had mostly didn't work if they didn't winterize them in some fashion. Wind farms are regularly placed in far worse conditions. Honestly though, it seems like the biggest issue isn't production (besides coal, heard the coal supply literally froze together) but everything else related to the power plants (whatever they may be).

 

On 2/17/2021 at 9:20 AM, TheMightyEthan said:

Yeah, but it's not just Texas, the grid we're on mostly only covers us and Oklahoma, etc. There's like 8 major regional grids in the US, and they mostly don't connect to each other when they should.

 

nercmap-2006-04-07.jpg

Also, that doesn't quite tell the whole story.

Nercmap.JPG

Each interconnection regularly sends power within itself. The Western Interconnection and Eastern Interconnection are also linked up in a few places.

 

As a personal anecdote, I was getting calls to reduce my power usage in the San Francisco Bay Area so power can be sent back east. I bet it was kind of like a bucket brigade sort of thing with say CA power goes to NV/AZ and NV/AZ power goes to UT/NM/CO then NM/CO can use the few links to the Eastern Interconnection to send power to like Oklahoma. Not sure how regular this is or how pricey.

 

Then of course there's ERCOT and the Texas Interconnection. There's a few connections with the Eastern Interconnection (and Mexico) with special rules so they don't get federally regulated but those are few and far between, and I don't think they typically use those connections since it just brings those special rules/exceptions back into the spotlight. So they go without and we get whatever the fuck happened. 

 

At the worst, you can basically outline the Texas Interconnection. The areas that are mostly fine are with one of the other interconnections. Other states that got similar conditions like say MS and LA got battered but nowhere near the level of TX. The entire Texas Interconnection failed (even if a majority of customers had power).

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Very local but... 

We'll see how this goes and if it spreads to other California cities. The city next to mine*, South San Francisco, is considering the possibility of ending single-family zoning (SFZ). I also know Sacramento is considering it too. The idea now is to allow up to fourplexes to be built on where SFZ exist now. Mind, this doesn't have to mean tearing down the old building (thus probable displacement)!

Though, fourplexes, no matter how you get it done, are not enough so hopefully so maybe it'll go up to the likes of apartments and the like. 

 

Maybe this is the turning point for ending this nightmare of suburban sprawl and addressing so many issues that stems from the lack of housing (be it luxury, market rate, affordable or low-income. 

 

*My city, Daly City, actually do kind of well for apartments for seniors or 55+. My grandma just rented a brand new place for herself (with help of my mom and uncle). While it's great to have more senior housing but it doesn't address it for younger folks who are likely to be displaced as they get priced out. Gentrification doesn't have to mean getting displaced because of new buildings but because the existing ones becomes more expensive due to lack of supply. How the building looks is not the entirety of neighborhood character. The most important part is the people. 

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