Octopus Overlords

El Guapo wrote:

Hamlet3145 wrote:RedState calls on Paul Ryan to throw trump under the bus for the sake of down ballet elections.

http://www.redstate.com/jaycaruso/2016/ ... ald-trump/

I really do wonder if we haven't reached a tipping point where republicans are realizing that they need to cut their losses and pivot to focus on 2020 instead.

Ted Cruz right now:

I'm glad that Red State did that, although I think the polls need to get much worse and remain there before Ryan or McConnell would consider throwing Trump under the bus. I think Trump would need to be down by double digits for at least a couple weeks.

I just want to see what GOP ballet is...

Hey, speaking of which, while Trump is shitting all over this family...

I've seen a lot of complaints from military types that this family would speak out and politicize their son's death by attacking Trump. Where the fuck were these people the week before when the RNC trotted out the mother of the dead Benghazi guy to tell us that Clinton personally murdered him?

RunningMn9 wrote:Hey, speaking of which, while Trump is shitting all over this family...

I've seen a lot of complaints from military types that this family would speak out and politicize their son's death by attacking Trump. Where the fuck were these people the week before when the RNC trotted out the mother of the dead Benghazi guy to tell us that Clinton personally murdered him?

I give them a pass because this is not about pro/con-war, it's not even about veterancy, it's about targeting an entire religion for discrimination while some members of that religion fight and die for your country.

The conversation is about Muslims. A dead soldier is just the underlining.

RunningMn9 wrote:Hey, speaking of which, while Trump is shitting all over this family...

I've seen a lot of complaints from military types that this family would speak out and politicize their son's death by attacking Trump. Where the fuck were these people the week before when the RNC trotted out the mother of the dead Benghazi guy to tell us that Clinton personally murdered him?

I only see this from people I can't have a conversation with anyway. It's also what I heard on the radio. Axe grinders who want to be heard without listening. It used to be surprising, either how many there are or perhaps how good they have become at making their present felt. Now I see it as an indicator that they are desperate to be heard and I'm hoping it's because they are dying breed.


What I really saw was from the military was the VFW collectively telling Trump to Fuck off.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/01/politics/ ... index.html

Holman wrote:Stone is vile in every conceivable way.

Just to expand context - Stone literally has a portrait of Nixon tattooed on his back. He is as close to the bottom of the barrel you can get. And Trump is obviously still using him off the books.

RunningMn9 wrote:Hey, speaking of which, while Drumpf is shitting all over this family...

I've seen a lot of complaints from military types that this family would speak out and politicize their son's death by attacking Drumpf. Where the fuck were these people the week before when the RNC trotted out the mother of the dead Benghazi guy to tell us that Clinton personally murdered him?

Tribalism. Not our people. Hypocrisy. Crazy times. Trumpaloos are bending over backwards to defend a man who attacked the family of a dead soldier -- where is the bottom with these nihilists?

malchior wrote:

Holman wrote:Stone is vile in every conceivable way.

Just to expand context - Stone literally has a portrait of Nixon tattooed on his back. He is as close to the bottom of the barrel you can get. And Trump is obviously still using him off the books.

Isn't Manafort one of Stone's "guys"?

RunningMn9 wrote:

malchior wrote:

Holman wrote:Stone is vile in every conceivable way.

Just to expand context - Stone literally has a portrait of Nixon tattooed on his back. He is as close to the bottom of the barrel you can get. And Drumpf is obviously still using him off the books.

Isn't Manafort one of Stone's "guys"?

Yeah - they had a lobbying firm back in the day. Stone is best known recently for dirty tricks and basically being a hire guns for literal rabble rousing. That is why he is probably trolling around on Alex Jones. For what it is worth - they knew what barrel to scrape. Which in my mind is even more terrifying.

Pyperkub wrote:

El Guapo wrote:

Hamlet3145 wrote:RedState calls on Paul Ryan to throw trump under the bus for the sake of down ballet elections.

I just want to see what GOP ballet is...

Strong in the Dark Side, the GOP Ballet is.

Wind Power

Donald Trump bashed renewable energy sources Monday night, saying solar power doesn’t work well and wind turbines kill birds.

The GOP presidential nominee has stated his preference for coal and natural gas, and has previously said that solar power is unreliable and wind turbines are unsightly and harmful to wildlife.

“It’s so expensive,” Trump said of alternative energy at a rally in Pennsylvania.

“And honestly, it’s not working so good. I know a lot about solar. I love solar. But the payback is what, 18 years? Oh great, let me do it. Eighteen years,” he said, turning to wind power. “The wind kills all your birds. All your birds, killed. You know, the environmentalists never talk about that.”
...
At the Pennsylvania rally Monday, Trump also promised to reduce the frequency of coal mine inspections.

“I have friends that own the mines. I mean, they can’t live,” he said.

“The restrictions environmentally are so unbelievable where inspectors come two and three times a day, and they can’t afford it any longer and they’re closing all the mines. … It’s not going to happen anymore, folks. We’re going to use our heads.”

Won't someone think of the mine owners‽

What's funny is that in all of the storm over Trump's Russia / Ukraine comments, it seems to be mostly getting missed that Trump said that the people of Crimea want to be with Russia anyway.

"You know, the people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,"

RunningMn9 wrote:Hey, speaking of which, while Trump is shitting all over this family...

I've seen a lot of complaints from military types that this family would speak out and politicize their son's death by attacking Trump. Where the fuck were these people the week before when the RNC trotted out the mother of the dead Benghazi guy to tell us that Clinton personally murdered him?

Having asked the exact same explanation, I was told "apples and oranges" without any attempt to explain.

As usually, he's half way there.

Wind power does kill birds. *shrug*
Wind power is not fully reliable and will not be a sustainable solution for the US.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue it.

The real challenge to wind power as far as I can tell is storage. Not even Elan Musk has found a way to store the energy the US would need to store for wind and solar vs the on demand nature water,coal, and nuclear.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue it.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that wind turbines kill about 500,000 birds annually in total, much less than other bird threats like cats and buildings.

USA Today

Cats that live in the wild or indoor pets allowed to roam outdoors kill from 1.4 billion to as many as 3.7 billion birds in the continental U.S. each year, says a new study that escalates a decades-old debate over the feline threat to native animals.

Turbines

Approximately 1,000 utility scale wind projects – which represent 74,512 megawatts (MW) and over 48,800 wind turbines – are installed across 40 U.S. states plus Puerto Rico and Guam.

~50k turbines killing ~500k birds / year. That's 10/turbine/year.

Cat numbers

One in three U.S. households—37 million in all—has at least one pet cat, with an average of 2.2 cats living in each cat-owning household. That adds up to roughly 82 million pet cats living in people’s homes throughout the country.

But pet cats make up only part of the total U.S. cat population: scientists estimate that the size of the stray and feral cat population rivals that of the pet cat population.

So that's ~165M cats. That's 8.5 - 22.4 birds/cat/year.

El Guapo wrote:What's funny is that in all of the storm over Trump's Russia / Ukraine comments, it seems to be mostly getting missed that Trump said that the people of Crimea want to be with Russia anyway.

"You know, the people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,"

Well, that's sort of true. At least for some of them.

I did enjoy the "from what I've heard", like he heard someone talking in the lunch room and that's good enough to base foreign policy on.

LordMortis wrote:As usually, he's half way there.

Wind power does kill birds. *shrug*
Wind power is not fully reliable and will not be a sustainable solution for the US.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue it.

The real challenge to wind power as far as I can tell is storage. Not even Elan Musk has found a way to store the energy the US would need to store for wind and solar vs the on demand nature water,coal, and nuclear.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue it.

Wind power will not be a sustainable solution for *most* of the US. There are places where it is perfectly viable. Such as in front of Trump's mouth...

Trump finally went after the one demographic he hadn't yet offended - babies.

The video is great.

Pyperkub wrote:Wind power will not be a sustainable solution for *most* of the US. There are places where it is perfectly viable. Such as in front of Trump's mouth...

Isgrimnur wrote:Wind Power

Donald Trump bashed renewable energy sources Monday night, saying solar power doesn’t work well and wind turbines kill birds.

Won't someone think of the mine owners‽

To put this is perspective, Drumpf has been involved in an on going lawsuit with the Government of Scotland who want to put a Wind Farm off the coast, spoiling the pristine view from Drumpf's golf course.

The only thing Drumpf understands about wind power, is that an ocean view is uglier with them. Everything else is lawsuit fodder told to him by people he hired to stop a wind farm from being made.

If I haven't mentioned it before, Drumpf is a bad man, and it's not because he likes to make money (who doesn't?).

I said *shrug* I've long since read that an escalating cat population killing birds for sport is the biggest danger to birds with numbers similar to the ones you linked to.

http://www.wildlifemanagementinstitute. ... &Itemid=54

LordMortis wrote:I said *shrug* I've long since read that an escalating cat population killing birds for sport is the biggest danger to birds with numbers similar to the ones you linked to.

And for those in your life that are allergic to things without simple pictures, there's The Oatmeal comic on the subject.

LordMortis wrote:The real challenge to wind power as far as I can tell is storage. Not even Elan Musk has found a way to store the energy the US would need to store for wind and solar vs the on demand nature water,coal, and nuclear.

If you can store energy in water, coal and nuclear, why do you have to store wind or solar?

Forgetting that distributing production to as many local sites as possible where the storage needs are much smaller. While the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, you use as much of that as possible. When it's not, you supplement.

I've personally never heard of storage as an issue with generation wind use - it is however a " problem" for residential/commercial (local use) solar/wind. In that you can't go grid independent without storage. That said, on the grid solar/wind/nuclear get priority in each ISO as far as I know. The ISO is the authority that governs power generation in a national region. There are roughly about 10 of them across the country. Since wind/solar are variable the ISOs schedule fuel oil/oil/natural gas/coal generation after they account for wind/solar. Solar/wind "plants" (almost) always have Power Purchase Agreements that guarantee this for funding the construction projects. The gist is that with more wind/solar being produced - the less you have to use fossil fuel. Pretty straight forward from a 'math' perspective - generation balances load at all times. Anyway - that barely scratches the surface but I'm sure whatever Drumpf is parroting is not based on evidence or sound energy policy. Since it is incredibly complex and involves insane capital projects with a Street that hates them. I'm pretty sure the Donald has not a clue here.

Trump gets a purple heart from a veteran.

Nothing trivializes heroic action in combat like handing a purple heart to a guy who got five deferments and called an American POW a loser for getting caught.

I wonder what his popularity is like with the military? It can't be good, can it? Well, beyond tea party nut jobs, that is.

RunningMn9 wrote:

LordMortis wrote:The real challenge to wind power as far as I can tell is storage. Not even Elan Musk has found a way to store the energy the US would need to store for wind and solar vs the on demand nature water,coal, and nuclear.

If you can store energy in water, coal and nuclear, why do you have to store wind or solar?

Forgetting that distributing production to as many local sites as possible where the storage needs are much smaller. While the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, you use as much of that as possible. When it's not, you supplement.

Again, I believe strongly in pursuing solar and wind, I just don't think we're at a point where renewable energy is sustainable. Coal and nuclear aren't going anywhere for the foreseeable future unless we can 1) find a way we don't have now to harness more energy than we currently can from wind and solar and 2) find a way to store it for when it's not available.

But the idea that we should ignore integrating renewable resources because there is no known way for them the to solve all of our energy problems doesn't make sense to me.

malchior wrote:I've personally never heard of storage as an issue with generation wind use

No time to find sources right now. About to be in a meeting. If I'm up for it later, I'll look for consumption stats. The thing to remember is nuclear and coal are on demand sources of energy and water is a steady reliable source of energy. Solar and Wind are not either and that needs to be accounted for.

GreenGoo wrote:

El Guapo wrote:What's funny is that in all of the storm over Trump's Russia / Ukraine comments, it seems to be mostly getting missed that Trump said that the people of Crimea want to be with Russia anyway.

"You know, the people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,"

Well, that's sort of true. At least for some of them.

I did enjoy the "from what I've heard", like he heard someone talking in the lunch room and that's good enough to base foreign policy on.

There is probably at least *some* support in Crimea (though we don't exactly have reliable public polling available) for being part of Russia rather than the Ukraine, since the area is (I believe) predominantly ethnically Russian. So in that sense it's arguably the least crazy thing Trump said in connection with Russia.

However, it does fit in with the broader view of Trump's views as 100% pro-Russian, and further indicates that he would indeed openly let Putin have Crimea.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=87&t=1

In 2013, world total primary energy consumption was about 543 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu), and U.S. primary consumption was about 97 quadrillion Btu, equal to 18% of world total primary energy consumption.

1 kWh = 3412.14163312794 BTUI

US uses 2842790741294 kWh per year or an average of about 7.8 billion kWhs per day. If we could somehow produce that in wind and solar, we'd still have to find a way to store enough energy meet short fall days, weeks, months(?).

In 2012 this was an attempt to estimate an answer:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... power-usa/


But none of this suggests solar and wind. Bad. Do not enter.

LordMortis wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:

LordMortis wrote:The real challenge to wind power as far as I can tell is storage. Not even Elan Musk has found a way to store the energy the US would need to store for wind and solar vs the on demand nature water,coal, and nuclear.

If you can store energy in water, coal and nuclear, why do you have to store wind or solar?

Forgetting that distributing production to as many local sites as possible where the storage needs are much smaller. While the wind is blowing and the sun is shining, you use as much of that as possible. When it's not, you supplement.

Again, I believe strongly in pursuing solar and wind, I just don't think we're at a point where renewable energy is sustainable. Coal and nuclear aren't going anywhere for the foreseeable future unless we can 1) find a way we don't have now to harness more energy than we currently can from wind and solar and 2) find a way to store it for when it's not available.

Right - totally agreed if what you are looking at is 100% green. Which I don't even think greens talk about because it is way, way, way over the horizon. As a matter of energy policy the mix is what is important and increasing green in that mix has been the trend. It isn't a sustainability issue. I don't even know what that means. The question is can companies fund solar/wind projects - put them on the grid - and not go bankrupt? The answer has been yes for well over a decade now. And that is in the probably least green friendly environment in the west. We don't have feed-in tariffs like much of Europe does (subsidizing the generation). There are other subsidies but they aren't as effective since they don't generate income such as the case in Germany where they generate something like 25% now from wind and another 20% during the day with solar. They are tax credits here generally which helps on the capital side to an extent but doesn't help much with the long-term operations side which would be exposed to market price risk hence the PPAs which smooth out income for them.

No time to find sources right now. About to be in a meeting. If I'm up for it later, I'll look for consumption stats. The thing to remember is nuclear and coal are on demand sources of energy and water is a steady reliable source of energy. Solar and Wind are not either and that needs to be accounted for.

You don't need sources - you are talking about a problem that no one in the actual business talks about. I even went into the surface of the commercial operations considerations above in my previous post. Green energy is here to stay - the trend is increasing generation especially as the economics improve both on the wind side (cost per turbine has been going down quite abit) and solar panel prices have an inverse 'Moore's Law' like effect in pricing that has crossed lines where in the next 5 years it'll become *very competitive* with fossil fuels. Coal is likely finished long-term for that reason alone.

In all the focus on Trump and Russia, not many people have been mentioning that Paul Manafort was an campaign advisor and later a consultant to Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Putin leader of Ukraine who was overthrown (and fled to Russia) in 2014.

In fact Manafort's career has been quite colorful...

In 1985, Manafort's firm, BMSK, signed a $600,000 contract with Jonas Savimbi, the leader of the Angolan rebel group UNITA, to refurbish Savimbi's image in Washington and secure financial support on the basis of his anti-communism. BMSK arranged for Savimbi to attend events at the American Enterprise Institute (where Jeane Kirkpatrick gave him a laudatory introduction), the Heritage Foundation, and Freedom House; in the wake of the campaign Congress approved hundreds of millions of dollars in covert American aid to Savimbi's group. Allegedly, Manafort's continuing lobbying efforts helped preserve the flow of money to Savimbi several years after the Soviet Union ceased its involvement in the Angolan conflict, forestalling peace talks.

...

Manafort accepted $900,000 yearly to lobby for Ferdinand Marcos. He was also involved in lobbying for Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaïre and attempted to recruit Siad Barre of Somalia as a client. His firm also lobbied on behalf of the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya (between $660–750,000 yearly 1991 and 1993), and Nigeria ($1 million in 1991). These activities led Manafort's firm to be listed amongst the top five lobbying firms receiving money from human-rights abusing regimes in the Center for Public Integrity report "The Torturer's Lobby."

Also it's not totally clear whether Manafort is off of Yanukovych's / Putin's payroll.

IMO his worst attribute is he came to the Drumpf campaign via recommendation by Roger Stone. Luckily Manafort's background in dealing with narcissistic dictator types was a perfect match.

Isgrimnur wrote:

LordMortis wrote:I said *shrug* I've long since read that an escalating cat population killing birds for sport is the biggest danger to birds with numbers similar to the ones you linked to.

And for those in your life that are allergic to things without simple pictures, there's The Oatmeal comic on the subject.

That Oatmeal comic had me LMAO in the office. Classic stuff! Thanks for sharing.

So why did Khan delete his website?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160802121 ... anlaw.com/

El Guapo wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

El Guapo wrote:What's funny is that in all of the storm over Trump's Russia / Ukraine comments, it seems to be mostly getting missed that Trump said that the people of Crimea want to be with Russia anyway.

"You know, the people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,"

Well, that's sort of true. At least for some of them.

I did enjoy the "from what I've heard", like he heard someone talking in the lunch room and that's good enough to base foreign policy on.

There is probably at least *some* support in Crimea (though we don't exactly have reliable public polling available) for being part of Russia rather than the Ukraine, since the area is (I believe) predominantly ethnically Russian. So in that sense it's arguably the least crazy thing Trump said in connection with Russia.

However, it does fit in with the broader view of Trump's views as 100% pro-Russian, and further indicates that he would indeed openly let Putin have Crimea.

You know what's great for promoting geopolitical stability? Encouraging ethnic minorities to secede from their present state.

When you refer to this as one of his "least crazy" comments, I'm pretty sure you mean because the comment actually had some factual basis (for once). But from a policy perspective, that is definitely NOT the least crazy thing Trump has said.

Rip wrote:So why did Khan delete his website?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160802121 ... anlaw.com/

I don't have a clue. Why would I?

At a guess, I'd say all the loving messages of support made him feel complete and content that he never had to work another day in his life.

Another reason is that he was a swift boater.

Whatever the reason, I'm sure it's nefarious.

Rip wrote:So why did Khan delete his website?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160802121 ... anlaw.com/

Clearly to get you all worked up over his capitalistic practices of helping folks get EB5 immigration visas and providing other immigration services that assist people to become legal immigrants. I'm sure it had nothing to do with being completely inundated with Trump's alt-right neanderthals out to destroy him. Nope, couldn't have anything to do with that. Trump supporters are very nice. How sad for Khizr to not realize this. How hugely sad.

Khizr Khan lays bare the priorities of the Republican establishment of partisan victory at any price. Racism, prejudice and xenophobia are not deal-killers for the party of Trump.

GreenGoo wrote:

Rip wrote:So why did Khan delete his website?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160802121 ... anlaw.com/

I don't have a clue. Why would I?

At a guess, I'd say all the loving messages of support made him feel complete and content that he never had to work another day in his life.

Another reason is that he was a swift boater.

Whatever the reason, I'm sure it's nefarious.

Perhaps

Areas of Practice -

Complex Litigation Electronic Discovery
HIPAA Compliance & Audit
E2 Treaty Investors, EB5 Investments & Related Immigration Services

???

Yeah, my first guess is "I just became a hated public figure by a millions of ignorant Internet Angry Mob with no protection at my disposal. How did I not see this coming?"

Geezus H. Krist.

Is that supposed to be scandalous or something? Foreign investment in the US from countries with treaties with the US, plus job creation.

Only during an election cycle could a man working to improve the US economy be branded a bad person/problem/traitor.

Rip wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Rip wrote:So why did Khan delete his website?

https://web.archive.org/web/20160802121 ... anlaw.com/

I don't have a clue. Why would I?

At a guess, I'd say all the loving messages of support made him feel complete and content that he never had to work another day in his life.

Another reason is that he was a swift boater.

Whatever the reason, I'm sure it's nefarious.

Perhaps

Areas of Practice -

Complex Litigation Electronic Discovery
HIPAA Compliance & Audit
E2 Treaty Investors, EB5 Investments & Related Immigration Services

???

Heh, I nailed it to the T.