Texas Governor Knew of Natural Gas Shortages Days Before Blackout, Blamed Wind Anyway (arstechnica.com) 265
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes Ars Technica:
Texas Governor Greg Abbott's office knew of looming natural gas shortages on February 10, days before a deep freeze plunged much of the state into blackouts, according to documents obtained by E&E News and reviewed by Ars.
Abbott's office first learned of the likely shortfall in a phone call from then-chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas DeAnne Walker. In the days leading up to the power outages that began on February 15, Walker and the governor's office spoke 31 more times.
Walker also spoke with regulators, politicians, and utilities dozens of times about the gas curtailments that threatened the state's electrical grid. The PUC chair's diary for the days before the outage shows her schedule dominated by concerns over gas curtailments and the impact they would have on electricity generation. Before and during the disaster, she was on more than 100 phone calls with various agencies and utilities regarding gas shortages.
After the blackouts began, Abbott appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that wind turbines were the driving force behind the outages.
Abbott's office first learned of the likely shortfall in a phone call from then-chair of the Public Utility Commission of Texas DeAnne Walker. In the days leading up to the power outages that began on February 15, Walker and the governor's office spoke 31 more times.
Walker also spoke with regulators, politicians, and utilities dozens of times about the gas curtailments that threatened the state's electrical grid. The PUC chair's diary for the days before the outage shows her schedule dominated by concerns over gas curtailments and the impact they would have on electricity generation. Before and during the disaster, she was on more than 100 phone calls with various agencies and utilities regarding gas shortages.
After the blackouts began, Abbott appeared on Fox News to falsely assert that wind turbines were the driving force behind the outages.
Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Republicans lie (Score:2, Insightful)
As an European I am really scared about Trumpism. It is by far the most eminent danger to western society. The next danger is the lefties, their "wokeness" and cancel culture: that is also poison for a functional democracy based on free speech. That danger is just less eminent.
Please USA, get rid of those radicals and let the middle
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Trumpists lie. The republicans weren't worse than other politicians, but Trump have shown them that telling outrageous lies doesn't matter: the "believers" believe anything.
Abbott was a piece of shit before Trump, and he'd still be a piece of shit even if there was no such person.
As an European I am really scared about Trumpism.
That only trumpist republicans scare you is proof positive of ignorance. They were just as corrupt before Trump showed up. They will rally around anything that gets people to vote for them, so what Trump really does is demonstrate the selfishness and ignorance of the median republican voter. Many republicans despise Trump, but they act in lock step which is why they are effective, and Trump has galvanized their base so they refuse to distance themselves from him. With any luck, this will continue all the way into the total demise of the republican party.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the main concerning thing regarding Trump is that he showed everyone that YOU COULD LIE OVERTLY and idiots would believe it.
And yes, your previous shitbags will still be shitbags, but now with the added 'you can lie and be deceitful and get away with it a lot more' sprinkled on top.
That is concerning.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
But that shits been going on since friggin Barry Goldwater (The donald trump of the 1960s), trump was an egrariously bad case, but its not new. The republicans realised you can just lie about shit to get people to vote for you a very long time ago.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
The districts are so gerrymandered, the winner of the Republican primary is guaranteed to win the general election. The turn out is so pathetically low, only the seriously committed ones show up.
Republicans in these counties are 60% of the population. Primary turn out is around 20%. That is 12% of the population votes in Republican primary. You need 50%+ 1 to win this primary. 6% of the population. This is how the 6% tail end bat shit crazy partisans end up representing the remaining 94%. Thats why agenda that is acceptable to 60% of the Republican population is ignored and painted as "socialism". To win these counties Democrats take up position not acceptable to 60% of Democrats and still lose.
The quick way to fix this problem is to go for a top two primary. Allow one more Republican in these districts, he/she will win. We will get Republicans in the House and Senate, but not the crazy ones.
Alaska has such a system and Lisa does not fear Trump. We can liberate Republicans from their crazies, but the radicals will not let it happen. They know the power is in playing up the fear of Democrats among the Republicans.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
And this right here is the mentality of the majority of the Republican party! They will accuse one of their own as the enemy. They're more scared of centrist RINOs than they are of the far left. They don't want the Big Tent GOP party, they want a small tent with only those inside who pass their political correctness tests.
Probably one of the top 5 most conservatives in Congress, Liz Cheney, is persona non grata to the Trumpist Republicans. That's all you need to know to understand what modern Republicans think of conservatism.
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Anyone else enjoy the irony that the biggest RINO of them all - Trump - is slinging around the "RINO" label onto real conservatives whose greatest sin is to refuse to amplify his bullshit?
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It's new in that it's so widely accepted. Sure Barry Goldwater was very influential within his party but he lost by what anyone would call a landslide when he ran for president https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and that was against Lyndon Johnson who would go on to be one of the most Leftist presidents this country has ever had. A landslide loss like what he experienced heavily implies Republican voters switched sides to vote for Johnson.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Do Democrats lie? Most certainly yes. Just as much and as egregiously? Not even close the last 12 years. You could make that case in the Clinton/GWB years.
Obama broke Republican's brains for some reason.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
BIDEN KILLED Keystone XL.
BIDEN KILLED fracking. And you people have the nerve to blame the governor for a natural disaster when the shortages are now being INTENTIONALLY CAUSED ?
Kill yourself, AmiMoRon.
LOL, considering that Keystone XL was never constructed and put into use, I'm not sure how you think that Biden revoking the permits on Jan 20th would've been at all to blame for the power grid failure 21 days later on Feb 21st.
Likewise, Biden's executive orders on fracking affected permitting for new implementations. So exactly what new sources of fracked nature gas did you think were going to be constructed and brought online in a span of 21 days in order to save Texas from itself?
I'd encourage you to take your own advice. And to answer your question: Yes, you are MoRon.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Informative)
And just to to tack onto your absolutely correct assertions to those terrible arguments is that part of the plan for Keystone XL was the removal and conversion of an existing gas pipeline to crude oil so even if it was completed it likely would not have helped the Texas situation any (and it was only 3% complete when cancelled)
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And as for blaming wind, it certainly wasn't wind failures that cause the event in Texas. The grid must be able to ride through events with no wind available. Wind should never be expected to help during such events because it often drops very low, at times near zero output during the blackouts.
Gas carries the grid and when enough gas fails significant probl
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Interesting)
Wind helps reduce emissions, it provides essentially no reliability benefit. If they invest too much in wind and instead not enough in reliability, then it becomes a policy issue. When looking at worst case scenarios for long term planning, the expected wind output should be zero.
Except that you are looking at wind (and possibly many of the renewables) with old school glasses of how it can be used. The next generation of wind and solar isn't just wind turbines and photovoltaic cells. It is wind generators PLUS BATTERIES. The idea being to siphon as much power excess power as is available into an efficient battery storage which can then be used as a source of more reliable stable baseboard power in the grid.
The biggest downside of solar and wind is its unpredictability and its lack of being able to ramp up on demand to meet the needs of the grid (this is why gas has become so prevalent over the last 20 years because it can simply be turned on and within moments, it is generating power, unlike coal, oil, and nuclear, which can take hours/days/weeks to be able to generate power from turning them on, and not to mention the cost of gas over the last few decades being very economical).
So back to wind and solar, letting the systems generate as much as possible and then storing it in battery systems is the proper way to take advantage of the technology. Yes, there are losses of efficiency in storing to battery, but by capturing as much as possible when the generators can generate power and losing some in the storage is more efficient than ceasing generation when the demands on the grid have been met. Placing that excess into storage and then pulling from that storage when generation can not occur due to environmental conditions (i.e. nighttime or lack of wind) lets you be able to rely on the wind and solar generators for as large of a battery system that has been installed.
Now for the Texas problems, well, this is all on them. They wanted their own grid because they wanted to regulate it themselves. They are not attached to other grids in the area because they would not follow the minimal rules of those other grids with respects to stability and maintenance, and/or did not want to have to follow the rules of someone else. And they clearly did not follow their own guidelines and suggestions for cold weather maintenance which came about from the last time Texas's grid was shutdown due to cold in 2011 and 2014. Both of those events showed that the power infrastructure had insufficient cold weather preparedness (with gas generation and delivery systems, and turbines and generators all lacking enough insulation and heaters to be able to run in cold weather. A small portion of the state did something about it, requiring the new power plants to have proper cold weather functionality, but the vast majority of the state did not (as it was never a "requirement" just a "suggestion"). And when it finally happens again, and this time with a multiday event and not just a several hour event, they are all running around trying to point fingers somewhere, but the problem is the situation was created and caused by the lack of regulation along with the lack of good engineering practices by the companies involved.
Look, I get it, regulation is not always the solution, and probably should not be in many cases, but when the companies involved are not then held accountable for their own lack of preparedness, of course there will never be a market force that causes them actually provide good quality, reliable service. Why should the company spend money on the infrastructure to protect it from a 5-10 year event when the citizens of the state (and possibly the country) will bail them out if the disaster happens? There is no market force that would cause the companies involved to want to spend money insulating their own infrastructure in this situation. You will notice that you don't see this kind of problem in in other states with their natural gas power plants, extraction wells, and distribution pipelines because many of those states and power grids have regulations requiring that such infrastructure is properly insulated for cold weather operations...
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Informative)
Biden cancelled environmental disasters waiting to happen. This is a good thing.
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That pipeline was for the benefit of Canada. It was never going to do much for American, and certainly nothing for Texas except for a few jobs at refineries and ports where the oil would be shipped to China.
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Stop hiding behind your AC tag to make your bad arguments, if you can even call them that, otherwise continue to rage into the void.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a matter of believing lies, I'm sure a good fraction, maybe even a majority of Trumpists like Greg Abbott know they're spreading and receiving falsehoods. The thing about fascism is that none of the fascists really need to believe the lies powering their ideology, only in the political goals the lies empower. The lies exist to provide cover for their true motivations, both to any of their own supporters who may not be totally comfortable with the level of evil they're supporting, and to their opponents who would like to call them out for what they are. If fascists actually believe the lies that's just icing on the cake.
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Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
And it started on day one with the biggest most blatant lie about the size of the inauguration, where it is defended vigorously by press secretary and other Republicans, despite it being clearly wrong. Then every time some admin member gets slightly cold feet, they're out. Even Trump ass lickers got fired for recusing themselves, claiming that a mistake was made, or questioning if activities were legal. Yes, parties were corrupt in the past but this went to all new levels of insanity, even Nixon would be embarrassed.
Trumpism isn't even conservatism, not even close. And yet hardcore conservatives stuck with him because they wanted the judicial appointments, and were going to put up with whatever crazy shit happened as long as the judges got through. Hardcore evangelicals were looking the other way at his utter lack of morals or family values, because they wanted the judges. Members were appointed to the administration based upon their willingness to break down the system and undermine the deparetments from within; that's what the actual 30% core Trump base wanted, the rest were just along for the show and the judges.
I hate to say it, it sounds like a bad alternate history novel, but we came extremely close to have a dictator come out of this. The parallels with the Weimar republic were close. We even had brownshirts. The fragility of democracy is that the laws and norms can be completely ignored if the people don't pay attention to what the leaders are doing, and especially if the people encourage those leaders by thinking that democracy hinders them in getting their goals.
And still, the Republicans have not changed. They still don't want to piss of Trump by having a commission look at what went wrong on Jan 6th and how to prevent it in the future. Trumpist Republicans in Arizona are having a circus with the auditing, they're even talking about how to do things differently in the 4th audit! States run by Republicans are not passing bills to strengthen democracy, but instead to make voting even harder. They lost at national and state level and so they're spending their time fighting with each other, censuring those who don't kiss Trump's ass, accusing each other of being RINOs, all the wrong things to do to try and bring a party together. When before in American history has the loser of a presidential election remained the de-facto leader of the party?
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Don't forget that people who were intentionally targeted by Trump repeatedly with personal attacks managed to forget all that in order to carry his water. The word "integrity" should not be used without a negative modifier of some kind in regards to Ted Cruz (wife attacked, nicknamed "Lyin' Ted", father baselessly accused of conspiring to assassinate a President, etc.), Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Devin Nunez, etc. - they abandoned any shred of righteousness they may have held at one poin
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The most concerning bit is the complicit news media. Not all of it, but there are divisions through media, especially cable news, that act as echo chambers for the divisions through politics. When you can pick your biased sources, all you hear is bias. It makes the lies go down easier when "reputable" news organizations are willing to repeat and amplify them because they don't want to lose viewers to other orgs that are eager to do so. And heaven forbid that they call out the lies, as that's a direct ti
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Interesting)
With any luck, this will continue all the way into the total demise of the republican party.
Without luck this will continue all the way into total demise of America as a country and democracy.
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Without luck this will continue all the way into total demise of America as a country and democracy.
America has literally never been a democracy, except in name. It functions as an oligarchy, and always did.
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America has literally never been a democracy, except in name. It functions as an oligarchy, and always did.
Wait a minute here, I’m starting to think the ol’ National Socialist Workers' Party isn’t actually socialist or for the workers...
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
If history has shown us anything, the democrats always take this opportunity to cave to their most radical base and force people to switch sides again.
Tens of thousands of Republicans are leaving the party and switching sides [nytimes.com]. Why? They're fed up with the lies, the corruption, the embracing of white supremacists, the batshit crazy people the Republican party keeps fielding and the attempted overthrow of the government, egged on by the con artist.. This is in addition to Republicans continually using hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out multi-billion dollar international companies time and again as well as the bullshit which is trickle down economics.
Republicans have successfully destroyed the middle class and do everything in their power to prevent people from moving up in the world. When it comes to pulling yourself up by your bootstraps or personal responsibility, Republicans only talk the talk.
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Trumpists lie. The republicans weren't worse than other politicians
Look at that: someone young, dumb and/or delusional enough to have written G.W. right out of history.
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Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Funny)
Ike was the last decent GOP President.
Very true.
However, we live in a Democracy, where evil dumb asses deserve representation.
Well, they are the very best that the process of intelligent design can produce.
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Ike was the last decent GOP President.
Very true.
However, we live in a Democracy, where evil dumb asses deserve representation.
Well, they are the very best that the process of intelligent design can produce.
Bravo! Come on mods - this is simultaneously +5 Funny, +5 Insightful.
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Ike was the last decent GOP President
I won't say Kennedy was the last decent Democratic Party President but he couldn't have been that bad or he wouldn't be dead.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
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I understand what you are saying, but I still prefer what we have, to what could be under a "popular" vote regime. Running up the score in California should not be valued over speaking to real issues of people that live between the coasts. California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York - they all get plenty of attention under the system we have now, because they still have far more electoral votes and representation in the House than less populous states.
It's important to remember that under
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
> The republicans weren't worse than other politicians
Trump is the symptom - the metastasized cancer that has been growing in the Republican party since Richard Nixon. If you have even a shred of doubt about this, consider how the entire Republican party - at every level - has circled the wagons in defense of Trump and his administration and actively ostracize ("cancel") anyone in their ranks who dares to say anything that goes against the narrative.
Also, thanks to decades of normalizing their bullshit, what you call "the middle" is, to the rest of the world, hyper conservative lunacy.
=Smidge=
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Politicians rally around someone with popular support because their jobs and the associated "benefits" are why they are in it to begin with.
The error people make is in asusming their side are the real angels. Hint: That's a meme your side wants you to believe, so you will vote for them, so they can get "benefits".
Re: Republicans lie (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Republicans lie (Score:2)
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
That and the party has been steadily moving right for years. Take a Reagan era republican and they look like a leftist to the current day party. The hypocrisy is mind blowing. Just look at the new abortion law they signed in, the most restrictive law ever. All life is sacred they say. Except if you're on death row, or want to shoot a robber in the back. More good news in that department as you won't need a license to carry a gun anymore.
Now what if someone didn't have that abortion and their child needs medical care or food? Well tough shit the all life is sacred crowd couldn't care less now. You're on your own.
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Anti-abortion advocates simply use religion to hide their true motive of misogyny. They lost the battles of women voting and birth control so now anti-abortion stances are simply their way of enforcing subservience and puritanical moral policing.
Also the welfare state is in fact a good thing and you have presented zero arguments as to why those programs are bad.
Also no one should be allowed to talk about "Critical Race Theory" anymore without providing a definition of what they think it actually is first.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently talked to a friend about "critical race theory". My friend is a Marxist and I am more of a socialist with a distinct feeling that politics is fucked and anything good that could of come from a globalist agenda has been perverted by westernization.
His critique was that at a fundamental level the theory is good but at a policy level it still fails. His main example was the struggles of the Hawaiian natives with the largest issue basically being an inability to address class struggles. A minority of native Hawaiians are wealthy but majority aren't. The same can be said of Native Americans. Likewise these wealthy individuals essentially have no care to restore their culture, so the irony of racism is that it can be culturally instituted even when in a racial group.
He also pointed out the irony that critical race theory essentially says race doesn't exist then it highlights certain races as being the target. Are they really races then or are there other more complex dynamics to "racial" struggle.
From my perspective, critical race theory treats race as totally cultural without addressing biological impulses to segregate or turn on each other.
We both essentially agree the larger issue is classes and how to solve unity in a mixed culture. Critical race theory in practice/policy never addresses these issues and instead often creates reverse racism.
It's not communist but it's also likely not very helpful in current implementations but I am willing to see more of a statistical debate that shows I am wrong.
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My dog barks at black people and I have never discriminated against black people in front of my dog.
Your dog is responding to your cues, conscious or not. It's a better judge of your character than you are.
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The ability to legally carry a gun varies state-by-state, and has varied over time.
Yeah, but we're talking about Texas right now, right now.
What restrictions do you think were in place in 1800?
In 1800? Not much. Before 1860 the only gun law in Texas prohibited pistol duels. In 1870 they prohibited carrying guns into places where people were assembled, though, or within a half-mile of a polling place, and in 1871 they prohibited carrying pistols unless one feared an attack on their life.
https://www.dailykos.com/stori... [dailykos.com]
The abortion issue is a religious problem, not necessarily Republican. Religion is dying, as it so richly deserves, and will not be a power significantly affecting abortion rights in another generation.
Catholics are only a small percentage of the population, but they are a majority on the supreme court. Religion can cause o
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I do not believe the act of abortion is explicitly called out as a crime in either the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament. Theological arguments must be based on multiple verses. That sai
Re: Republicans lie (Score:3)
You're complaining that the Dems clean house because they're not sucking up to the boss enough... not six months after out-of-control-Trump-slobbering led to an attempted insurrection. Why not just go: "these people don't represent us?"... instead of perjuring yourself in the party's defense?
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no getting rid of them, they've been here since the founding of the Republic and before that. The isolationist strain in America has a long sordid history. They almost prevented the U.S. from getting into WWII and only Pearl Harbor blew through their opposition.
The last alleged administration was strictly bush-league. The R's in Congress have now sold what was left of their soul to a fast talking New York grifter who thought it a bright idea to mark up a hurricane tracking map with a sharpie and attempt to pass it off as legitimate. That's the level of intelligence left in the Republican Party. The Democrats are a step above that, but only a small step.
And the Republicans have finally woken up to the fact that they won't win elections on ideas or inclusion. The only way they'll win elections from here on is by curtailing the voting of people who do not agree with them. It is a party of losers.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:4, Informative)
Trump lies even when he doesn't gain anything by it.
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Trumpists lie. The republicans weren't worse than other politicians, but Trump have shown them that telling outrageous lies doesn't matter: the "believers" believe anything.
NIce sentiment, but if you have been paying attention to the Republican party as of late, Trump is the leader of the Republican party, and they do as he commands.
There are one or two outliers, and the party is doing their best to cancel them - if you are Republican, and do not take the knee to Trump, and obey his dictates, expect to be treated as Liz Cheney was.
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and will remain so even when he is wearing an orange jumpsuit 24/7
The GQP will try to do away with what remains of democracy in the USA. If you aren't white then you won't be able to vote. That means the GQP dumbasses will remain in power forever. Then it will be a real fascist state rather than pretending to be one.
Not really. We do something a little differently here. When one party is in power, it's adherent's tend to attempt to advance their agenda a another notch or two. This tends to eventually get the party out of line with the majority of people, and they end up abandoning the party, whether through voting or leaving the party.
So the process was starting after seeing the results of a Donald Trump led Republican party, which merely amplified all of the latent tendencies. Then the January 6th insurrection wher
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You haven't been watching. That may have been the case historically, but the Republicans have ramped up their gerrymandering and voter suppression so that they can move further to the ri
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Fascist states fall apart pretty quickly.
Do they? While the ones that go to war are defeated and removed, lots of peaceful ones such as Spain last as long as their leader is alive and capable of governing.
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That's kind of the point. Without a demagogue to hold it together or a war to fight fascist states will always implode or eat themselves. It's not a actual system of governance, it's an aesthetic holding on through collective grievance and emotions.
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Guess it depends on how pretty quickly is defined. In the case of Spain, it was about 35 years and it seems that Spain was a success story due to the successor believing in democracy. Some of the S. American countries seem to be stuck in authoritarianism, though not consistently fascism and I'd argue that all types of authoritarianism are bad and sometimes it is hard to say if a country is fascist or communist like China..
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That's kind of the point. Without a demagogue to hold it together or a war to fight fascist states will always implode or eat themselves. It's not a actual system of governance, it's an aesthetic holding on through collective grievance and emotions.
If you think this is a right or left thing, you are lost. Weak systems need demagogues to provide an ideology that distracts the population from the failures of the system to deliver basic services (power, water, low corruption, etc). If a state fails it is not because of ideology, it is because the resources of the state were redirected in a way that failed to keep key parts of the population happy. I'm sure you wish this just applied to the other side, but it applies to all governments, fascist, commun
Trump didn't show them that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Trump didn't show them that (Score:5, Insightful)
History is turning out to show Reagan as one of the worst Presidents in history in terms of outcomes.
- Complete economic failure of supply side "trickle down" policy
- Dismantling of the welfare state, demonization of the people and programs
- Completely wrong on energy policy, killed any progress made coming out of the oil crisis in the 70's
- Escalated the War on Drugs into hyperdrive, drove up our huge incarceration numbers.
- Exacerbated the trend of rampant inequality we are mired in today.
You can take just about any chart that shows negative trends today and the inflection point is when Reagan was President. The man got simply lucky to be in power during the tech boom of the 80's and Republicans have essentially been using stolen valor ever since.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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History is turning out to show Reagan as one of the worst Presidents in history in terms of outcomes.
Agreed but Clinton's terms are proving to be equally disastrous in hindsight. Globalism is proving so unpopular that the Neoliberals in the UK ended up losing the BREXIT election. People like to say that Hillery didn't win because she was a woman or some such nonsense. But what really killed her was a combination of the poor aging of Bill's policies (what fired up the other side) and their inability to get socialized medicine passed (what pissed off their base). And the fact she lost to an idiot like Tr
Re: Republicans lie (Score:2)
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Probably true. The American system does not mandate only two parties, but the winner-takes-all system ensures that only two major parties will exist at one time, and that both parties will tend to split over every issue large or small. Countries that do have viable systems with more than two parties that lasts for more than a couple of decades with with proportional voting, which most parliamentary systems use.
Modern ideas used in some places in the US, like ranked choice voting or top-two primaries, do t
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to vote purple because yes, there are competent people in both parties, and it used to be the case that both parties were somewhat equally corrupt, but that's been changing since about Reagan. At the moment, we have one moderate liberal party and one, well, I'm not sure what the other party is. It's barely conservative, heavily populist, angry as hell, barely even bothers to hide the racism, and their voters have mostly lost the ability to select the best candidates in their primaries.
One party basically supported a violent coup attempt on Jan 6 2021. The other didn't.
One party has fine churchgoing men like Mat Gaetz and Roy Moore. The other party has far fewer of these types
One party puts their wing nut leaders in top leadership positions. The other party does have wingnuts but keeps them away from the drivers wheel.
Independent fact checkers have heavily documented that one party lies WAY more than the other party.
While both parties gerrymander, one party does it a LOT more.
One party is actively trying to suppress voters. The other party wants to expand voting.
I have no use for socialism, Bernie Sanders, or AOC. Yes, wokeness and cancel culture can be taken too far and "defund the police" is the dumbest, oh so incredibly dumb slogan to use for pushing badly-needed police reform. But one party has tracked extremely far to the right while the other party has MOSTLY stayed in the same place. if you want moderates to run the US, there's only one game in town for the time being. I don't consider myself a partisan, but one of the parties has a LONG way to track back to the center before I consider voting for any of their candidates again. The past few years have changed my voting habits for a long, long time.
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+1 Insightful
+1 Pragmatic
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the constant in-your-face soviet-style outrageous lying that bothers me the most. Downgrading the truth and emphasizing loyalty is a bus ruin. The GQP even now claims "fact-checking" is editorializing.
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Please USA, get rid of those radicals and let the middle rule again.
Again? Weren't the genocidal religious extremists that flooded over from Europe to the American continent over a couple of centuries radical?
As a western European & from what I can make of American politics & public sentiments, the USA's left is far to the right of our far-right govts., e.g. Washington is going bonkers over Venezuela trying to push its society to be a little less right-wing & more like Germany's.
Re: Republicans lie (Score:2, Troll)
Re: Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
Trumpists lie. The republicans weren't worse than other politicians, but Trump have shown them that telling outrageous lies doesn't matter: the "believers" believe anything.
Sure about that? [politifact.com]
In making its bed with the religious right the GOP always had an odd relationship with the truth. But the moment Obama took power they became the party of "say whatever the hell it takes to get elected". The problem with that version of the GOP is the people in power understood that Obama wasn't actually a Muslim atheist out to destroy America and so they never really acted as such.
Trump is the natural evolution of that GOP. The major difference between Trump and the party elders is that Trump acts like be believes the lies he's saying.
Think about it, Trump and the GOP establishment publicly "agree" that Democrats hate America and seek to destroy it, yet only Trump is the only one willing to use whatever means necessary to stay in power and try to throw the Democrats in jail. Why is it a shock that he's overtaking the party?
As an European I am really scared about Trumpism. It is by far the most eminent danger to western society. The next danger is the lefties, their "wokeness" and cancel culture: that is also poison for a functional democracy based on free speech. That danger is just less eminent.
Please USA, get rid of those radicals and let the middle rule again.
There's some weirdness on the left to be sure, but it's more the next iteration of the 20s, and 60s, and every other cultural revolution. Minorities ARE exposed to a lot of subtle BS and discrimination people that non-minorities don't pick up on, and there's a lot of dudes in power who have gotten used to the idea that they get to abuse that power.
Right now you're seeing those problems exposed and people trying to find the new normal. The extremes of the drugs culture and 'free love' of the sixities turned out to be too far and people have largely pulled back from that. But our culture now is certainly better off for having gone on that journey.
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It's strangely comforting knowing that even as Americans starve shivering in the dark they will still be arguing whether it was red or blue's fault.
Actually, this time, ... apparently the wind did it!!!
Re:Republicans lie (Score:5, Insightful)
there is no argument.
this is not 'both sides are bad'. if you think bsab, stop reading right now.
the R's dont stand for anthing but pure power and control. not a single thing other than loyalty to one failed, doubly impeached, past president.
they used to stand for christianity (which has no place in politics, but here we are..) and they used to stand for enriching the top 1% and abusing the lower and middle classes. they still 'enjoy' doing all of that, but they dont even talk about it anymore, they ONLY talk about the orange turd man. that's it. that, and denying any reality that goes against their selfish life goals.
even when there was a so-called 'healthy' republican party, they still basically just wanted to obstruct ANYTHING the dem's did. perhaps this is the only long-term 'principle' that continues to guide them. whatever the D's want, we want to stop it - that's their single M.O. other than loyalty to idiot-45.
we've long been past the 'both sides are bad' phase. anyone who brings that out chestnut out - immediate ignore-list time. really, if your reaction to the R's going off the rails is to find fault in the other party - you are a lost cause and not worth discussing this with.
we do need honest and mature discussions on this if we are to fix this bug in our country. but we need people to own up to what their party is now about and to say that they do NOT approve of its current direction. if that happens, we might be able to start to get back to a sense of normal. but as long as you R's keep swearing fielty to someone who broke this country worse than anyone in its past - we'll continue to be at each other's throats and all the important things we need to get done will NOT get done.
tl;dr: hey idiots, we have real work to do. you with us or not? if not, just shut up, get out of our way and let the adults fix what you broke over the last 4 years.
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There's only one side of this debate, in which the question is whether Abbott was knowingly lying or not, and the answer is yes.
Some Texans are smart enough to know that lifting mask mandates was stupid. I know this because some of them are my friends. Some of you aren't. Shame on you!
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Wind was supposed to take over gas as a base load source in Texas. The green movement lied.
Don't blame greens for your inability to tell the difference between base load and non base load sources.
The governor gets news that there MAY be shortages has nothing to do with base load wind freezing over.
That's right, it has nothing to do with it whatsoever, since wind was actually delivering more power than projected during that time.
God DAMN you'd be dangerous if you knew anything
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He removed Red Light Cameras. He lifted the mask mandate and opened Texas businesses. He believes people, not governments, can be trusted to make the best decisions for their families and for themselves. We Texans love Governor Abbott. Thank you! Slashdot. When you write about politics, show both sides or none at all. Shame on you!
I'm a Texan as well... and Gov Abbott is a little bitch. Just like his friend Ted Cruz who *fled* to Cancun when his constituents were dying. Gov Abbott gives hand jobs to oil execs while we're dying.
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He believes people, not governments, can be trusted to make the best decisions...
Well that's demonstrably wrong.
Standard political bs.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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All politicians are liars. The only surprising thing is why do we tolerate it? He has been caught red handed, needs to be fired and imprisoned.
I don't think even America can build enough prisons to cope with that kind of precedent.
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But why would we put George Washington in prison?
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But why would we put George Washington in prison?
It's a bit late for that.George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) [wikipedia.org]
There isn't even enough room for the living anyway.
Re:Standard political bs.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're on a jury, you have to assume *both* the prosecutor and defense attorney are lying, but they're using a particular *kind* of lie: lies of omission. They play up facts that are helpful to their case and they omit facts that hurt their case.
This kind of lying is just as misleading as stating falsehoods as facts, but in a trial it's harmless. That's because if the defense lawyer omits a fact that is harmful to his case the prosecutor will surely point that out and vice versa. You as a juror can pick and choose facts from both arguments, knowing that any individual fact either side introduces is reliable. If either lawyer knowingly introduces false *evidence* into a trial, that's a crime punishable by disbarment and prison.
This is exactly the way benign political lying in a democracy is supposed to work. If the Tory candidate for parliament fails to mention the impact of tariffs on the price of bread, his Whig opponent is sure to bring that up.
But just as in a trial, politicians introducing *false evidence* should be viewed as committing a serious breech, and politicians whose defense is "everybody does it" are particularly dangerous. Not everybody tells outright falsehoods, and if it actually becomes normal then political power becomes purely a matter of loyalty; truth doesn't matter at all. This is why the scholar Hannah Arendt wrote "The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any."
People who willingly accept outright falsehoods from *their* side leap past doubt and enjoy the easy and unassailable certainty that only uncritical faith in a political leader brings. That's what's in it for them.
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Yeah, the fact that free speech by public officials is limited only by the same libel and slander laws as bind private citizens is a serious problem for reliable government. Especially when "democracy" is mostly limited to only choosing between red/blue teams, one of which has an agenda you're probably largely opposed to. Direct Representation (where every citizen can support whichever sitting Rep best represents their interests, and legislative voting counts supporters rather than Reps) would probably be
Re:Standard political bs.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The "all politicians are equally terrible" thing is precisely part of the problem. It's specifically engineered to get the public into the mindset of "there's nothing to be done, so you might as well suck it up and soldier on."
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As always the great philosopher Douglas Adams put it succinctly:
Re:Standard political bs.. (Score:4, Interesting)
All politicians are liars. The only surprising thing is why do we tolerate it?
Because we'd rather have a liar do what we want, than an honest person do what we don't want.
Texas Governors can't go wrong blaming wind. (Score:2)
Not hard to know hwat happened here (Score:3)
Now if you move to just in time inventory,
A) you can move the value of the current inventory to pay and benefits while you burn your current inventory during the transition.
there is no cost you already had it on the books from earlier. A Win-Win
B) really really hope nothing happens. But they got caught.
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In normal time you keep an inventory on hand to get you through any unexpected interruptions in delivery. Now if you move to just in time inventory,
A) you can move the value of the current inventory to pay and benefits while you burn your current inventory during the transition.
there is no cost you already had it on the books from earlier. A Win-Win B) really really hope nothing happens. But they got caught.
Hope, or just typical criminal stupidity. Or perhaps a problem with memory.
It doesn't happen often, but well within recent memory, Texas can get hit with some cold weather. Why - in 2011, when Dallas hosted the Super Bowl, they got happened with cold weather during that week.
If I were to give one of the biggest problems that the Republican party has created for itself - they have demanded party loyalty over competence. So you end up getting people appointed to critical positions who have no other compet
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In many aspects, resembling early 20th century communism with demands for political correctness."
Just those republicans! got it!
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Trump not getting more appointments is actually sign of incompetence then (if it's even true).
Also considering his administration's 92% turnover rate for staff and officials it sure seems he had a predilection for trusting and hiring "unsuitable hacks".
Lead time (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, they knew the state was going to be hit with a super-big, extremely powerful storm causing very low temperatures, several days ahead of time.
So yes, they also knew that there was going to be problems with the natural gas supply because the natural gas power plants were going to have to be running flat-out. Once they lost one or two plants, there was a cascading effect that started knocking others offline. Once the blackouts hit, the power that runs the natural gas pumping system was partially cut off, so they lost a lot of the natural gas supply from that. There were some other cold-weather problems, but the major issue was loss of power.
Natural gas pumping used to be mostly run by burning some of the gas locally, but they went with straight electrical systems to "be more efficient." Oops.
The thing is, all of the non-renewable sources in Texas combined can produce about 67 gigawatts, and the demand at the time was right at 69 gigawatts. If the 20 gigawatts of solar and wind generation had been online in any reasonable amount, there wouldn't have been a problem. Or if they'd had 20 more gigawatts of natural gas power stations, they would have had 18 gigawatts of reserve if they lost a couple of plants...
Re:Lead time (Score:5, Informative)
It was sheer incompetence that lead to the plants going offline. They had problems back in 2011 and the regulatory body (if you can call it that) recommended cold weather safeguards. But thanks to Cronyism the regulatory body has no teeth and can only recommend changes. So this being Texas and you can't tell us what to do, nothing was changed since 2011. A decade later everything repeated but much worse.
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
Re:Lead time (Score:4, Insightful)
Try reading the article dipshit.
Completly off topic (Score:2)
Does the amount of time a new article is at the top of the front page point out the editors beliefs?
Sometimes something will stick for a lot of hours, sometimes it's because recent posts are slow.
Other times not so much.
I'd rather have a posting every hour or two then the sometimes 4 or 5 new posts or almost nothing overnight.
Blaming VRE is dumb anyway (Score:3)
VRE is an opportunistic power source that has to be used when it's available, or otherwise stored (not economically feasible) or discarded (standard procedure when thermal plants cannot be throttled back enough or VRE overwhelms the grid capacity).
These are basic realities of grid management, and for a politician to either feign ignorance about this topic, or lie through their teeth is... business as usual, I guess?
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They're not valued at $0 everywhere https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2021/02/20210211_pr_fca15_initial_results.pdf [iso-ne.com], but they do represent a woefully small part of the market, in part due to overly complex regulatory systems https://www.utilitydive.com/news/iso-ne-capacity-prices-fall-to-new-low-but-latest-auction-shut-out-some-re/571840/ [utilitydive.com]
Liability and deregulation (Score:2)
What the Republicans call deregulation is simply privat
Designed to fail - Price gouging required (Score:2)
The Texas power outages were not a surprise to anyone who knew anything about Texas' power grid. It is litterally designed to fail in cold weather and this has been well known for decades due to the cyclical dependency of gas production on electricity and electricity production on just-in-time gas delivery. This combined with the state REQUIRED price gouging when power shortfalls do occur mean the power companies are incentivized to NOT fix this problem.
A) 80% of Texas winter power comes from natural g
No intellectual honesty (Score:4, Insightful)
Republicans lie to ingratiate themselves to their big donors, *AND* to pass loyalty tests to authoritarian leaders and demographics.
It's a recipe for disaster in governance, of which the Bush wars and the botched response to Covid will not be the last or worst if this continues.
Re:Bill Magness, then-CEO of ERCOT (Score:5, Insightful)
and everyone on the board is at fault. This is about a government body with 1 job. Keep the lights on. And they failed. Here are a bunch of regulators who so enjoyed the government do nothing job, they did nothing as expected and got paid.
You have to add in the politicians who didn't want the be part of the national grid and well, federal gov'ment, so they setup their own little island and rather than actually regulate it cause, well regulation bad, set up a board and then had it make recommendations rather than force utilities to actually make changes to protect the grid, cause well, profits.
Pointing out officials and politicians of any party about lies is useless. ALL officials and politicians lie, if their lips are moving assume lie and go from there.
The bottom line is Texans elected, and kept electing, the very people who caused the problem.
Of course, Texas politicians, for all their rugged individual self responsibility, jumped on the utility that let market rates drive their price when the price shot through the roof. Deregualtion and individual choice are good and government intervention bad until your voters make a bad choice and get burned, then government must ride to the rescue and save them; whether its to punish a company or beg for federal money cause, well Texas needs it now. Just don't ask us to pay for someone else's misfortunate cause that's well, stealing.
Re:To all the arm chair geniuses (Score:4, Insightful)
Strange that just, what, five years ago there was an ice storm in Dallas on Super Bowl Sunday that paralyzed the city and led to dozens of lawsuits against the NFL and host club (the Cowboys) for not being prepared. Dallas looks pretty far south on the map to me.
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An event happened that has never happened before.
Only if you think time began in 2012.
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The previous freeze which suggested an upgrade was itself unusual and nowhere near this scale.
It was in fact near this scale (as is anything within an order of magnitude, however you're measuring) and it's not that unusual. Severe storms normally occur every decade or so and this isn't the worst winter they've ever had in Texas. And you can and should expect AGW to make extreme weather events more extreme, but that's just another thing these particular Texans are in denial about.
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I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure India had nothing to so with it.
Re:"The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:4, Interesting)
You realize the Marines, along with the rest of the military, are about as evenly split politically as the rest of the country? They're just portrayed as hard-core Republicans in the movies, because it's mostly hard-core Republicans that watch war movies. Don't believe the propaganda.
And actually as you get into the elite special-forces type units, an excellent education becomes essential, which tends to skew things liberal. Those guys are in the business of winning battles before they ever engage with the enemy, or better yet, without ever actually engaging. Guts and glory alone just create a fiasco of a meat-grinder.