15 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Good article on our critical dependence on foreign sourcing.

    

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   1. A good article indeed. Some suggest it is likely to get far worse. A looming threat is the shortage of DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) required as a pollution control measure. The two largest producers of urea (needed for DEF production) are Russia and China.  Urea is also used for fertilizer.  

      Will the current administration temporarily rescind the DEF requirements and allow trucks to keep moving?  Will we be able to direct what limited urea we can get can go toward growing food and fuel? Or will we wait until there are more empty store shelves before we act?

      Government tends to be reactionary when it needs to be proactive. We see the looming crisis – how about we take steps to avert it for a change?  As opposed to the finger pointing blame game which is all we get out of too many of our "leaders" these days.

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      1. As is almost always the case, we have technology to make all the urea we need and not be held hostage by foreign interests.  It’s almost like we don’t want to solve our problems? 

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         1. Cool article.  Thanks for sharing. It certainly seems we don't want to solve many of our own problems. 

            Our stance on rare earth minerals also leaves us vulnerable and dependent.

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2. Mahablog on Pissed-off, Raging "Moderates".

   Ousted Blue Dog Kurt Schrader Is Pissed

   So standing in the way of gun control is “centrist,” now?

   Let’s see what else is “centrist” — Last year, Schrader was one of three House Democrats who used their seats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce to block a vote on a bill to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. That’s “centrist”?

   More recently Ryan Grim wrote at The Intercept,

   "A super PAC funded by the pharmaceutical industry blew more than a million dollars in an effort to salvage the career of former Blue Dog Coalition Chair Kurt Schrader, the Oregon Democrat who cast the deciding vote against drug pricing reform in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and organized with Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., to derail President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda."

   …

   My impression of the shrinking number of Democratic “centrists” is that they sincerely believe the party belongs to them and the progressives are interlopers, even though there are a lot more people in the Progressive Caucus than in the Blue Dog Coalition. It’s that sense of entitlement that used to whiff off of die-hard Clinton supporters. They and only they were “real Democrats.”

   The problem with the “centrists” is that they most closely resemble pre-Reagan era Republicans than anything else. If they have a political future, it’s more likely in a Republican party rebuilding after Trumpism collapses. If it does. We need them in the Democratic Party like we need more mosquitoes.

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   1. ^^^^THIS^^^^

      Sho 'nuff!

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   2. These things are cyclical.

      I'm old enough to remember the days of McGovern, Kennedy (Ted) and Mondale. That begot us 12 years of Reagan-Bush which ended when the Democratic Party decided it was too tired of losing and repositioned itself with candidate like Clinton and Obama who could actually win elections.

      It was the economy in 1980 (inflation, recession, or as Jimmy Carter put it "malaise") and people reacted.

      It was the economy in 1992 (out-of-touch G.W. Bush) and people reacted.

       

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   3. Where do you think they came from? The older ones are the Republicns who washed their hands of the party when it took that hard right turn.

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3. The Pathology of the Republican Mind, explained

   This is just a piece of it:

   Here is the Republican message on everything of importance:

   1. They can tell people what to do.

   2. You cannot tell them what to do.

   This often gets mistaken for hypocrisy, there’s an additional layer of complexity to this (later in the thread), but this is the basic formula.

   You've watched the Republican Party champion the idea of "freedom" while you have also watched the same party openly assault various freedoms, like the freedom to vote, freedom to choose, freedom to marry who you want and so on.

   If this has been a source of confusion, then your assessments of what Republicans mean by “freedom” were likely too generous. Here’s what they mean:

   1. The freedom to tell people what to do. 

   2. Freedom from being told what to do.

   When Republicans talk about valuing “freedom”, they’re speaking of it in the sense that only people like them should ultimately possess it.

   So with this in mind, let’s examine some of our political issues with an emphasis on who is telling who what to do. And hopefully there will be no ambiguity about what the Republican Party message is ever again.

   Let’s start with the COVID-19 pandemic. We were told by experts in infectious diseases that to control the spread of the pandemic, we had to socially distance, mask, and get vaccinated. So, in a general sense, we were being told what to do. Guess who had a big problem with that.

   All Republicans saw were certain people trying to tell them what to do, which was enough of a reason to make it their chief priority to insist that they will not be told what to do. Even though what they were told to do could save lives, including their own.

   As you can see, this is a very stunning commitment to refusing to be told what to do. So much so that it is not in fact “pro-life.” But Republicans will nevertheless claim to be the “pro-life” party. That is because they recognize “pro-life” can be used to tell people what to do.

   The reason they say they are “pro-life” when they are trying to tell women what to do with their bodies is not out of genuine concern for human life, but because they recognize that in this position, they can tell women what to do with their bodies.

   That’s why when you use that same appeal—“pro-life”—when you ask Republicans to do something about gun violence in schools, it doesn’t work. Because you are now in the position of telling Republicans what to do. That’s precisely why they don’t want to do anything about it.

   Anyway, gun violence in schools is not a problem, but their children having to wear masks in schools is. Because somebody is telling their children what to do. Dead children don’t bother them, but telling their children what to do? Only *they* should do that.

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   1. 

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4. PATRIOT FRONT in Idaho.

   You probably read that 31 White men were arrested on their way to Pride in the Park event in Idaho. To numerous people’s surprise, police were NOT stopping an act invited to perform on the main stage of the event.  Instead, the group, all stylishly clad in navy shirts and khaki pants, apparently roused suspicions of one watcher by wearing masks and climbing into the back of a U-Haul truck.  Initially “arrested on a charge of criminal conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor,” all were out on bail by Sunday afternoon.   Arraignment will be later in the week, trials or guity pleas even later, and punishment (if any) after that.  However,

   For many in the neo-Nazi and extreme-right communities, few punishments carry as much weight as being identified and held accountable for their online activities and racist activism. So many took it as an attack when cops arrested 31 members of Patriot Front, a group of khaki-clad white supremacists known for their propaganda videos, from the back of a U-Haul truck in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

   The Sheriff’s Office said the men were from all across the country, including , Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming, and Washington.

   Presented as a public service, here are those from the Front Range and nearby.

   • Nathan D. Brenner.  26. Louisville, CO.
   • Dylan C. Corio. 21. Cheyenne, WY.
   • Forrest C. Rankin. 28. Wheat Ridge, CO.
   • Conor J. Ryan. 23. Thornton, CO.

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   1. If identifying the racists is such a powerful counter blow, shouldn't there be a progressive organization focused on identifying as many as it can?

      And setting up the SEO so any search on the individual's names brings up that org's web page describing that individual?

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5. Wait there's more for Boebert to answer for: 

   https://www.fireboebert.com/boebertabortions?emci=7940f6c6-14ec-ec11-b47a-281878b83d8a&emdi=37a643b5-19ec-ec11-b47a-281878b83d8a&ceid=24196098

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   1. These releases are interesting but… the way they present it on their website is about as ineffective as possible. Don't they have any marketing sense? Because that site is pretty much guaranteed to immediately drive away anyone who doesn't already hate Boebert.

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6. BIG FOSSIL’S DISASTER CAPITALIST RESPONSE TO RUSSIA-UKRAINE

   But the facts don’t matter if you’re the first one to frame a story and you repeat it often enough. A new report out this week shows that consistent messaging, coordinated messengers, and a massive advertising blitz combined to deliver major policy wins to the fossil fuel industry as early as two weeks from the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    

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