Monday Open Thread

20 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. Anyone who volunteered 4 or more times for campaigns in the last election, and are willing to talk to me about it (off the record), please email me. David -at- thielen [dot] com.

   thanks

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   1. Huh?

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      1. I need some useability feedback.

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2. I see that Mother Jones has researched Santos' donors and many either do not exist or did not donate anything to him. Many of the addresses are fake as well. I never thought anyone could one up the orange manbaby for being a shameless liar, but by jove I think he's done it! My best guess is he's gone by the end of February.

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   1. I doubt McCarthy will do anything. If he did, Santos could be the one voice calling for the Speaker position to be vacated. 

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      1. I know he's desperate to hold onto that seat, but I am guessing McCarthy will eventually have to do something to end the daily drip of embarrassment as the media dives deeper into Santos' shady background. We will see.

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         1. "the daily drip of embarrassment"

            After the Access Hollywood tape, the daily drip of embarrassment is a mere nuisance to politicians.

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      2. Agreed, McCarthy cannot do anything to him without shrinking his paper-thin majority.

         Santos is safe until the GOP and Democratic primaries for NY-3 in 2024. Even if indicted, he's not going anywhere until convicted. 

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3. All-around nice guy "Tig" Tiegen is running for Mayor of Colorado Springs. Minor problem – he voted in Pueblo County in November, possibly putting him afoul of C-Springs residency requirements to run for this office.

   Complicating matters, he gave KRDO this little gem by saying on the teevee that "if they want to say anything, I guess I did voter fraud…" though y'all should watch & listen to discern context:

   https://krdo.com/top-stories/2023/01/30/colorado-springs-mayor-candidate-claims-hes-getting-booted-from-ballot-over-address-dispute/

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4. If Republicans want to investigate people so bad, they should just get jobs in the executive branch and stop wasting time, money and effort with their congressional investigations.

   Congressional investigations should exist to gather information to inform future legislation, not just be a way to publicly ask bad faith questions of people that you dislike.

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   1. Congressional investigations worked well when the Department of Justice was actually subverted by the Great Orange Menace. Kind of hard to allow that while disallowing the current witch hunts; public perception has to come in at some point to make relative judgements on them. Sad, but true.

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   2. Getting a job in the government requires a little bit of vetting and a modicum of aptitude. 

      Getting elected to Congress requires neither.

      I submit todays' Republican caucus as evidence.

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5. Professionalize the police

   In fact, U.S. cops undergo far less training than cosmetologists or plumbers — professions that don’t require people to carry deadly weapons and make life-and-death decisions.

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   1. That article by Noah Smith was very good. He doesn't jump for the quick-takes, but actually tries to address the issue.

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6. As an extension of our conversation yesterday about electric vehicles, I ran across this Op-Ed that was apparently authored by Rupert Murdoch himself and edited by Fossilonians, Inc.  Nothing but a bunch of whining about what we "can't" do.  What a bunch of snowflakes…

   Personally I'd rather own a biodiesel vehicle – there is nothing more dense for energy storage than biodiesel.  But we've made the decision to go into the future with electricity: let's embrace this transition in an Apollo-like manner.  

   Rupert forgot to mention the Toyota exec lost his job not long after the presentation represented in the article.  I'm guessing the "silent majority" in the auto trade was akin to the supposed "silent majority" of coal executives when we began the transition to renewables.  

   Not So Fast on Electric Cars

   Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda recently caused the climate lobby to blow a fuse by speaking a truth about battery electric vehicles that his fellow auto executives dare not. “Just like the fully autonomous cars that we were all supposed to be driving by now,” Mr. Toyoda said in Thailand, “I think BEVs are just going to take longer to become mainstream than the media would like us to believe.” He added that a “silent majority” in the auto industry share his view, “but they think it’s the trend, so they can’t speak out loudly.”

   They also felt compelled to give our national rural electric coop some cover.  What next, will they declare there is a War on Rural Colorado America? 

   Charging stations in rural areas with little traffic are also unlikely to be profitable and could become “stranded assets,” as many states warn. Wyoming says out-of-state traffic from non-Tesla electric vehicles would have to increase 100-fold to cover charger costs under the administration’s rules. Tesla has already scoped out premier charging locations for its proprietary network. Good luck to competitors.

   PS: Rural America was a stranded asset before the New Deal and the federal government's support of a national rural electric system. 

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   1. "Stranded Assets"? Utter Bullshit.

      Jargon dressed up as propaganda. Ya wanna see stranded assets? Look at the investment in gas stations without chargers.

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      1. “gas stations without chargers…..” Some years ago, I had to make a one day business trip from Lakewood to Telluride for an early afternoon county commissioner meeting. The timing and my schedule didn’t allow for an overnight. It was an 8 hour drive one way. An electric vehicle would not have been feasible for somethig like that.

         I also have occasional need to get to obscure backcountry trailheads. Again, an EV won’t work. While I see high value in EVs that are driven primarily in urban areas, I’ll stay with my 16 year old Xterra that still runs good at almost 196,000 miles.

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         1. Any extended range EV with a fast charger can get you from Lakewood to Telluride in 8 hrs. (Google says drive time is 6:15 and 320mi.)

            And have you seen videos of a Rivian doing various off-road challenges? With 314 miles of range on the quad motor option or 400+ with a dual motor and the max pack you can cover pretty much any off-road trail. The big downsides are price and curb weight.

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   2. The "premier locations" item is bullshit. What, the gas station in buttfuck Wyoming with 6 Tesla chargers doesn't have room for 12 non-Tesla chargers? Every rural Tesla charger station I hit driving cross country easily had room for a ton more chargers.

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      1. I wonder if Tesla gets non-competes out of them?

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