WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2024
Attack of the Planned Outage: We're not sure we've ever heard of a "planned outage" before, though that of course could be wrong.
That said, our part of town is scheduled for some such outage today—one of many such planned events.
(Our vicinity is listed as Planned Outage 219460. "On Schedule," The Voices continue to say.)
We're fairly sure that this mysterious operation has something to do with holding the Commies at bay. At any rate, our outage is supposed to last for roughly eight hours.
For that reason, there's a fairly good chance that we'll have no fish today!
Full disclosure: We'd connect this to the old comedy hook:
"Who ordered tax?"
Trump will not take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/trump-forget-about-the-comstock-act/
No comments just because Bob didn’t post anything? What a bunch of losers.
ReplyDeleteI initially thought it was a planned political protest.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure, but here's my understanding of scheduled outages. When there isn't enough electric power available, the power companies need to cut some people's electricity. Otherwise the whole grid could go down. The real question is why there isn't enough power. The lack of sufficient power is shows that our infrastructure is failing us.
ReplyDeleteIMO our politicians too much on side issues like politics, DEI and global warming instead of the basic function of power companies -- to provide power. IMO many other areas of government are making the same mistake, the military and the Secret Service come to mind
Global warming, a side issue. David, you’ve lost your soul.
DeleteI agree with David. Now that it is obvious that Trump is a loser, we should be cutting his secret service detail even more and redirecting the resources to other priorities.
DeleteDavid,
DeleteYou sound like a Libertarian, begging Daddy Government to fix things when unfettered Capitalism doesn't fulfill their needs.
A fairly cheap way to handle surge demand is to have essentially a jet engine spin the generator. I have been to such a place. They have a person on site that maintains and tests under load once a month. And.a couple weeks of summer when it is nasty hot it goes on the grid. Problem solved.
DeleteMakes sense. DEI is responsible for local power outages during what will again be the warmest summer in history. What a moron.
DeleteYes 11:35 global warming is a side issue for the military. Their main issue is defending us from foreign enemies.
DeleteScheduled outages are typically done for maintenance reasons, not for lack of power - this does happen but is relatively rare.
DeleteSociety is less served when essential things like energy production are left to private ownership (IOUs) and markets, however, under guidance from the Biden admin issues related to private ownership are being ameliorated.
About 25% of US electricity is generated by renewables, with about 40% from natural gas. Renewables are rapidly increasing as nuclear and coal are quickly declining, with natural gas providing the bridge until renewables take over in the next couple of decades.
In CA you can choose, through your electricity provider, to have 100% of your electricity come from renewables and it is about the same price. In recent years, solar panels have boomed, along with batteries as net metering is on the decline.
The DOD sees climate change as an existential threat and a primary focus in the defense of our country.
Deletehttps://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD-CLIMATE-RISK-ANALYSIS-FINAL.PDF
Furthermore, a portion of the enormous budget of defense should be repurposed to develop green tech, that would serve both the military and civilians - this is something that has been done in the past to great success, much of our tech advances we enjoy today had their origins from defense/military.
@2:47 wrote “The DOD sees climate change as an existential threat and a primary focus in the defense of our country.”
DeleteYes. That’s what I am complaining about. The threat from global warming is decades on the future. The threats from China, Russia, Iran, Hamas etc are here now
Come on now David:
Deletehttps://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/rising-seas-imperil-us-sites-military-bases-worth-387-billion
Just saying something is not an existential threat does not make the threat magically go away.
We threaten Russia, China, Iran, and the Palestinians. We should stop it.
Delete@DiC
DeleteThe military has plans--long term plans--for just about everything. They can think about climate effects without taking their eye of military adversaries.
Also, David, Our Host provided a link to the announcement from the power company. This is not a brown-out. They're doing work on the infrastructure.
DeleteIt's telling that all of your "guesses" about things have the same ultimate political target. You live in a frightening world, don't you?
3:02 The threat from Hamas is here now? I live in the US. I am not the least bit threatened by them unless our military is diverting valuable resources in a conflict they have with Israel. Israel under Netanyahu can manage their own conflicts at this point; they clearly have little or no use for our advice.
Delete4:48 DIC is a study in Pavlovian behavior ran amok , in which all varieties of stimuli result in the same response. And for the nth time formulates an opinion that is easily debunked by the touch of a finger.
DeleteDavid, the Labor Department has revised its job growth figures for 2023 and early 2024 from 242,000 to 174,000, a 25 percent reduction from the originally reported numbers. This is an unusually large revision, the likes of which we haven't seen in over 15 years. So the "record job growth" we hear so much about was really just horseshit.
Delete6:37 If you want to hear some horseshit, AOC said Kamala Harris "is working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home".
DeleteWho would believe that horseshit?
"Record job growth" minus a million.
DeleteLet the good times roll!
"Democrats have been creating more new jobs. Joe Biden is a successful president" (minus a million).
DeleteDoes math, 15M - 1M = 14M. The sexual assualter had negative job growth. To his credit he did convince 1,500 cult members to go to jail for attempting a coup for him. You people are futz.
DeleteIn regards to DIC's dumbass dismissal of the military worried about climate change, is the already 100's of millions and soon billions of climate change refugees. We already see how autocratic leaders are taking over their countries based on fear of others. (Same tictac your friend the p#$$y grabber is campaigning on.) This has already rocked NATO and will continue to put strain on the world's power structure.
DeleteI must say, many of these anonymous commenters are providing valuable information, pushing back against DiC’s bs. This contradicts the notion that anonymous comments are worthless.
DeleteSome Americans are not as fortunate as you. Hamas attacked and murdered a number of American civilians on Oct 7. Hamas is currently holding a number of Americans hostage
Delete@9:31 People have been warning about climate refugees, but it hasn’t happened yet. If there really large numbers of climate refuges you would be able to tell us what locations were ruined by global warming and the number of refugees from each location. You can’t do this because there is not a large number to f climate refugees today.
Delete"Recent floods in China, fires in Greece and deadly heat in the Southwest U.S. are other recent examples of how extreme weather, human-caused climate change and changes to the local environment can converge in devastating fashion."
Deletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/08/12/hawaii-fires-climate-change-maui/
https://www.climate-refugees.org/reports
Delete"We threaten Russia, China, Iran, and the Palestinians. We should stop it." What an infantile view of world affairs. Russia violates all of the norms you yourself value and take for granted -- there is no free press in Russia, there are no meaningful elections, there is no free speech (ask Navalny's widow if there is), Russia is an imperialist state that invaded a neighboring country that is a U.S. ally, began mass murdering its people, flattening its cities, and kidnapping its children; Russia undermines western democratic societies, murders journalists, has used ultrasonic weaponry to attack our intelligence community. So when you say we "threaten" Russia, what you're really saying is we push back against bad actors on the world stage. Good for us.
DeleteAs I said, the threat from Hamas is here now? There is no evidence that Hamas specifically targeted Americans on October 6, nor have they specifically targeted Americans on US soil nor elsewhere since then. So no, they are not a threat that is ongoing to US citizens.
Delete97% of job growth in the last 35 years was in Democratic administrations.
DeleteIf Somerby really cared about blogging he could take his laptop to a nearby McDonalds or Starbucks and post from there. The entire city of Baltimore will not be blacked out.
ReplyDeleteI think you should ask for a refund on your subscription.
DeleteSo snarky!
DeleteCool.
Swifties are complaining about Trump's fake endorsement claim, largely because they know Swift would never make such an endorsement. She endorsed Biden in 2020 and called Trump a bigot over his George Floyd statements.
ReplyDeleteI consider his fake endorsement to be a kind of rape. It denies Swift the chance to make her own choice about who to support, and it takes away her voice as a public figure with arguably a larger fan base than Trump's. And it is hard to remove the element of gender from his assumption that he can do such a thing without consequences. Men like Trump assault women because they believe they can, they feel entitled to take what they want. Women such as E.J. Carroll have shown there is a cost to stealing a woman's reputation after assaulting her physically. Trump (or his estate) will ultimately have to pay those damages. The damages owed to Taylor Swift may be that her fans are so upset that any chance they would vote for Trump disappears and he loses by a larger margin than expected.
Luntz complained that he could not find any "undecided" young female voters. Acts like his theft of Swift's political voice may be why. A vote is a vote. Young women who will vote for Kamala en masse are as important to this election as the truckers in red hats. Trump's willingness to alienate them by dissing Swift in such a blatant manner shows perhaps that Trump just doesn't care whether he wins or not and has given up in favor of revenge and in-your-face bigotry. That cannot be good for our country, since those Trump followers are going to have to be rehabilitated at some point, after Trump loses.
Somerby will, of course, never discuss this.
He did the same to Beyonce and Celine Dion, using their music at rallies without their permission. No wonder Melania is endorsing Kamala.
DeleteThey begged Melania to give a speech at the RNC, but she refused.
DeleteRemember that time Melanoma actually plagiarized the wonderful Michelle Obama convention speech at her convention speech? The convict and his wife. You end up with piles of crap no matter what they try.
Delete"Somerby will, of course, never discuss this."
DeleteYet another entry in the genre of "Criticize Somerby for not saying X."
Well, you have to wonder why Somerby doesn’t discuss the fact that Trump is just revenge campaigning at this point. Bob is supposed to read their anonymouse minds and discuss this and all the other stupid stuff anonymices pull out of their rears.
DeleteIts much more important to talk about the aimless ramblings of Gail Collins and Bret Stephens.
DeleteAnonymouse10:12pm, Collins and Stephens have the advantage of being columnists in the NYT.
DeleteSo yes, it’s “more important” to speak of them rather than Bob somehow divining and then opining on your silly crap.
Bob runs a faux media criticism blog. He has no time to listen to his "Others".
DeleteAnonymouse 6:27am, if anonymices were here to listen you might say something worth listening to.
DeleteJohn Legend will perform for the Democrats tonight.
ReplyDeletePBS is reporting that Trump has been pleading with Netanyahu to avoid agreeing to a cease fire deal because it would “help the Harris campaign.”
ReplyDeleteReminds me of how he did the same thing to quash the bipartisan immigration bill.
If true, this needs to be front page news at the NYT and WP.
DeleteActually, that was horseshit. The PBS reporter has apologized, stating that it was a mistake to report it.
DeleteFrom TNR yesterday:
Delete"Woodruff clarified on Wednesday that the anecdote was not based on her original reporting, but rather on an an Axios story last week that cited two U.S. sources as claiming that Trump and Netanyahu had spoken on the phone about cease-fire and Gaza hostage talks. Netanyahu’s office and Trump both separately denied the report."
I too apologize - for reprinting an AXIOS -originated report. I do not apologize for the 2nd sentence.
The real horseshit is the denial by Trump and Netanyahu. Of course they would deny it. You believe them over Axios's two sources? Are you new to the world? And we already know Trump would literally do ANYthing if he thought it would help his chances in the election. So this would be in perfect keeping with his past behavior. He told Bob Woodward how dangerous COVID was before the pandemic hit the U.S., but then downplayed it to the American public, because he thought being truthful about it would hurt his election chances. As a result of this (and other Trump malfeasance), hundreds of thousands of people died unnecessarily.
DeleteIn 2019, after polls showed Biden as the strongest contender against Trump, Trump held up critical military assistance to Ukraine in an effort to extort Zelensky, to strong-arm him into making a public announcement that Ukraine would begin an investigation into the Bidens over supposed corruption. He didn't even care if there WAS an investigation. He just wanted the public announcement and the headlines that were sure to follow, to politically damage his likeliest and strongest opponent in the upcoming presidential race.
Trump welcomed and encouraged Russian interference in the 2020 election. He and his campaign showed themselves willing and eager to collude with Russia, regardless of whether collusion actually happened.
Trump almost certainly engaged in a quid pro quo with the Egyptian prime minister, to obtain an illegal $10 million campaign donation.
Trump engaged in various efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election -- the fake electors scheme, pressuring election officials to "find" just enough extra votes for him to win, pressuring Pence to not certify the election results. And when all of that failed, he incited a violent attack on our capitol, as he sat and did nothing for three hours.
Trump deliberately killed a hard-won agreement between Republican and Dems in Congress to better secure the southern border, because keeping the border issue alive is better for his election prospects.
So, would Trump encourage Netanyahu to do something that would undermine his political opponents' foreign policy efforts at a crucial moment in the campaign? Please. It would be more surprising if he DIDN'T do that.
Using past actions to justify a specific claim, without verifying the credibility of sources or presenting evidence, creates a one-sided, propagandistic narrative. Let's focus on evidence related to the specific issue and avoid personal attacks to ensure a fair and rational discussion and avoid propaganda-like reasoning.
Delete2:47,
Deleteif what you say is true, I love it. Especially, later in the Summer.
2:47,
DeleteHunter Biden's future Presidential aspirations have entered the chat.
2:47: Netanyahu shouldn't even be meeting with the felon hiding out in a tacky Florida resort. The proof is in the fact Netanyahu has not agreed to a cease fire, hostages be damned. It is no secret that Netanyahu has been openly hostile to every Democratic president since Clinton and has repeatedly come to this country to stick his nose in our business while spitting at the president.
DeleteBob and the rest of the press (and Dems, to be fair) that Trump now signs off on Obamacare. The Commie baiting is just old time Republican garbage dumbed down for the sad new era where people like Bob refuse to watch MSNBC because they are afraid the Jan 6 coverage will be too one sided.
ReplyDeleteIgnore that
DeleteWhat the fuck is a "Trump"?
ReplyDeleteVoters don’t see Trump as a unique threat to democracy because Democrats break so many democratic norms themselves. The Supreme Court rules against them - let's change the judicial system, they lose an eletion, it was stolen by “voter suppression”. Democrats bend the rules when it suits them, and are not the sole defenders of democratic norms they say they are.
ReplyDeleteYou might want to think about the difference in order of magnitude between complaining an election was stolen, and actively trying to overturn one.
ReplyDeletePersistent claims of election fraud without evidence have cumulative effects that are damaging in their own right.
ReplyDeleteOkay. By far the most persistent claimer of election fraud is Trump and the GOP.
ReplyDeleteSo I'll tell Stacy Abrams to knock it off if you tell your presidential candidate and over half your party to knock it off.
Just to clarify, I'm not defending Trump. My point is that many voters don't see Trump as a unique threat to democracy because they perceive that Democrats also break democratic norms. Democrats are running someone for president who was not nominated democratically is another example.
ReplyDeleteOnce Biden withdrew, Harris was the only feasible alternative. What is it you think they should have done?
ReplyDeleteWhen Biden withdrew, the Democrat elites should have supported a national unity ticket of Trump and Kennedy.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter. Rightly or wrongly, it's not democratic which makes it harder to portray Trump as a unique threat to democracy. That's why that rhetorical tactic on the part of the DNC has largely failed.
ReplyDeleteSo in your mind a two-candidate election in which one candidate was coming across more and more like a doddering simpleton, that would have been more democratic?
ReplyDeleteBy persuading Biden not to run, the Democratic Party is giving voters a real choice. That's democratic.
Sure. Still, the rhetorical tactic on the part of the DNC trying to convince voters Trump is a unique threat to democracy has largely failed. Voters still get the impression Democrats are not the sole defenders of democratic norms they say they are despite having solid excuses for running a candidate without a democratic process.
ReplyDeleteIf voters think the sum of Stacy Abrams + the Harris candidacy is in any way comparable to Trump, then they're not reasoning correctly.
ReplyDeleteI understand the idea is confusing for you.
ReplyDeleteNot very clever of you to impute confusion where none exists. Good night.
ReplyDeleteTrump is a wannabe dictator. That is his threat.
ReplyDeleteIs it short for Trumpet?
ReplyDelete3:52: Your impressions of the convention are a window into your own selective attention span, notable for what you ignored.
ReplyDeleteI played the Coron in high school band. My best friend played the Clarin.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone is confused, it's our hypocritical propagandist, if he thinks there's anything approaching equivalency between Dems and Republicans in terms of threats to U.S. democracy. The dude's a complete clown.
ReplyDelete@1:05 AM
ReplyDeleteTrue that. Globalists a-la George Soros (currently sponsoring the Democrat party) are by definition anti-democratic. Countries, borders, citizenship, it means nothing to them.
I was going to play the Trump in high school band, but they needed a bass drummer.
ReplyDeleteWhy are they playing bridge at the Democratic Convention?
ReplyDeleteBecause they’re a bridge to the future.
ReplyDeleteJoy is key to defeating the fascists. Also mocking their bigotry and cruelty. Also too, their weirdness. Deal with it losers.
ReplyDeleteWord-salads defeat fascists. Every time.
ReplyDeleteSarah Palin has entered the chat.
ReplyDelete