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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Edited by speedyboris on Feb 22nd 2021 at 2:23:28 AM
That Guy
Well, that and Selfishness and Vindictiveness are Traits Trump and his Qultists are well known for.
So if they're going to go down, they're going to drag their co-conspirators with them.
Edited by Pendrake on Feb 22nd 2021 at 2:28:22 AM
Semper Fi. Semper Paratus. Vigilo Confido.
The FBI are still asking for help identifying people who invaded Congress, so expect more arrests in coming.
That Guy
They should ask Congresswoman Boebert, I'm sure she can ID a few.
She did give them a tour, after all.
Edited by Pendrake on Feb 22nd 2021 at 2:36:28 AM
Semper Fi. Semper Paratus. Vigilo Confido.
A procrastination in of itself
Also there’s a pretty decent chance that the Justice Department is holding back slightly due to lacking an AG.
Garland has come out strong against the insurrectionists during his first day of conformation hearings, the current schedule expects for him to be approved by the committee Monday next week and voted on by the full senate a few days after that.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
I would like to note that one reason for the rather lax charges at the moment is that that's how the justice system works.
They charge with minor crimes first to get then into the system, and then charge with harsher ones later.
You only have so long after filing the charges so you go with easy stuff first to make them easier to track later, or get them off the streets if you can while you build your case.
The justice system even when it's working doesnt work fast.
Edited by Imca on Feb 22nd 2021 at 3:00:24 AM
Who Am I?
@Morningstar re the Breathe Act: According to Wikipedia, the BA "would "divest" federal resources from incarceration and policing, institute changes to pretrial detention, sentencing and prosecution, and also reduce the Department of Defense budget. It would establish a Neighborhood Demilitarization Program that would collect and destroy military-grade equipment held by law enforcement agencies such as armored vehicles.[11]
The bill also would end life sentences, abolish mandatory minimum sentencing laws and create a specific timeline to close federal prisons and immigration detention centers. Some of the proposals in the bill, such as the plan to abolish ICE, piggyback on similar calls dating back to 2018.[11]
The BREATHE Act's most notable diversion from past reform efforts is its explicit demand that Congress repeal the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, colloquially known as the "crime bill."
So no chance in hell. I would even argue that these aren't the police reforms we need the soonest right now.
@Speedyboris re "4 In 10 Republicans Say Political Violence May Be Necessary": The thing is, they may be right. It won't be long now before the US becomes a "Minority Majority" country. Pretty much the only way they can stop change from happening is to overthrow the government and impose a dictatorship in the name of "restoring" the Constitution.
"Also, what is "the traditional American way of life"? What specifically have Democrats done to make it disappear?"
I've asked conservatives that very question. The answers they give include using taxes to prop up poor people, promoting a homosexual lifestyle, killing unborn babies, and eliminating Christianity from public life, among other things. It's pretty much all about the hot button issues.
The thing to understand about that survey is less than 3 in 10 Americans agree, which means they successfully alienated nearly all the independents. I wish them luck with their insurrection (not really) because they sure as hell just threw winning national elections away.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
Not a cat
Lauren Boebert wants flags set half-mass to honor Rush Limbaugh.
It went as well as you'd expect.
If I had a nickel for every film where Emma Stone falls off a balcony... I'd only have two nickels, but weird that there's two of them.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I'd argue they are, but I also despise the police with a burning passion that's reinforced with each passing day a different *** does something truly heinous and isn't punished for it.
Today's What The Fuck Just Happened Today?
https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2021/02/22/day-34/
that the coronavirus is “going to go away,” because “we’ve had no deaths” and “we have it very much under control in this country.” The coronavirus has killed more than 2,462,000 people worldwide. (NBC News / New York Times / ABC News / Politico / Washington Post / CNN / The Guardian / Wall Street Journal)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-reaches-500-000-deaths-coronavirus-n1257992
U.S.: Total confirmed cases: ~28,175,000; deaths: ~500,000; vaccinated: ~13.3% of total population
Source: Johns Hopkins University / Washington Post
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
First doses of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines have reduced Covid-19 hospital admissions among the elderly in the U.K. by up to 85% and 94%, respectively. (Washington Post / Wall Street Journal / Bloomberg)
2/ Biden altered the Paycheck Protection Program to direct more funding toward very small businesses and those owned by minorities or located in underserved communities. Starting March 9, businesses with more than 20 employees will be shut out of the PPP for two weeks. Biden criticized the PPP’s early rollout for privileging larger businesses with existing banking connections while smaller businesses struggled to obtain relief. The administration, however, has not said whether it will seek to extend the program after the current funding expires March 31. (NBC News / Washington Post / New York Times / Wall Street Journal)
3/ The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s last-ditch effort to keep his private financial records from the Manhattan district attorney. After a four-month delay, the court denied Trump’s motion in a one-sentence order with no recorded dissents, clearing the way for prosecutors in New York City to receive eight years of his tax returns and other financial records as part of an ongoing investigation into possible tax, insurance, and bank fraud. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance can now enforce a subpoena to Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA, to turn over records Trump has repeatedly refused to surrender. Mazars previously said it would comply with the final ruling of the courts. “The work continues,” Vance said in response to the Supreme Court order. (Politico / Washington Post / New York Times / Bloomberg / NBC News / CNN / ABC News / The Guardian)
4/ The confirmation of Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget is in doubt after two Republicans and a Democrat said they will vote against her nomination. Sens. Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, and Joe Manchin said Tanden’s “past actions” on social media behavior, including criticizing Bernie Sanders and Mitch McConnell, demonstrated the animosity that Biden “pledged to transcend” and that the OMB nominee did not have the “experience nor the temperament” to lead the office. The White House, meanwhile, signaled that it will continue to support Tanden, despite her path to confirmation growing increasingly narrow. (Politico / NBC News / Bloomberg / New York Times / Washington Post / Politico / CNN)
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/22/republicans-pressure-democrats-hhs-nomination-470816
5/ The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Republican challenges to the presidential election results in Pennsylvania. Trump and the Pennsylvania Republican Party had urged the justices to review a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling, which had extended the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots until three days after the election. About 10,000 ballots arrived during the three-day window – short of the number needed to overturn Biden’s 80,555-vote victory in the state. The justices offered no public explanation for their decision, but Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. (Washington Post / Politico / CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/22/politics/election-pennsylvania-republicans-supreme-court/index.html
6/ Dominion Voting Systems sued MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for more than $1.3 billion, alleging that the Trump ally spread a baseless conspiracy theory that its voting machines were rigged “because the lie sells pillows.” Trump’s lawyers, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, have also each been sued by Dominion for $1.3 billion in damages. (Axios / ABC News / CNBC / NPR)
7/ The Justice Department and the FBI are investigating communications between the rioters who attacked the Capitol and Roger Stone. For weeks Justice Department officials have debated whether to open a full investigation into Stone, but if they find messages showing that Stone knew about or took part in plans to disrupt the certification of Biden’s electoral victory, officials would have a basis to open a full criminal investigation into Stone. Trump commuted Stone’s sentence in July and pardoned him in late December. The pardon, however, does not protect Stone from future prosecutions. (New York Times / Washington Post)
8/ Trump will speak at next week’s Conservative Political Action Conference – his first public appearance since leaving office. Trump reportedly intends to attack Biden’s immigration plan and tell attendees that he is Republicans’ “presumptive 2024 nominee” for president. (Axios / The Guardian / New York Times / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal)
https://www.axios.com/trump-cpac-speak-35724b13-6b99-4cae-bbe9-e51b24741142.html
poll/ 17% of Trump voters believe Biden was legitimately elected president, while 73% say Biden wasn’t legitimately elected. (USA Today / Suffolk University)
Edited by sgamer82 on Feb 22nd 2021 at 4:41:54 AM
A procrastination in of itself
What did the Do D do to get its budget cut as part of this thought? Likewise what’s the plan for securing offenders if prisons are to be abolished?
Much of the bill is important and worthwhile, but some of it is coming from rather left-field.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Like reflections in the glass!
Well I think the DOD budget cut stems from the Military having the lion's share of the funding which goes into things that make life worse for everyone instead of things that do (namely a surplus of weapons that eventually trickle down into SWAT teams and latter the common beat officer) so it could be taken as both a means to free up money for things that do better the standards of living and a roundabout way of defunding the police.
That Guy
I actually wanted to be Resileaf
Is this the military equivalent of too awesome to use?
That Guy
Geez, at those costs, might be cheaper to just give the money to your targets to make them go away.
Edited by nightwyrm_zero on Feb 22nd 2021 at 5:36:32 AM
Lost in Space
~Pendrake, you can masturbate to climax about the U.S. military in the appropriate thread.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
That Guy
It was on topic to the conversation at hand, but you're the moderator, I defer to you. Moving on to recent news that's specifically on-topic to the Thread.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/22/politics/oath-keepers-watkins-changed-story/index.html
That female Oathkeeper who claimed to have met with the Secret Service about "providing security" has retracted her claim.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/22/politics/clarence-thomas-trump-election-fraud/index.html
Justice Clarence Thomas meanwhile has shown he still has sympathies for Trump's "election fraud" claims, but this is also the same guy whose wife is a blatant Trump groupie.
Edited by Pendrake on Feb 22nd 2021 at 6:20:27 AM
Semper Fi. Semper Paratus. Vigilo Confido.
The article is largely focused around a 2014 incident, under which freezing temperatures knocked out 50 generators across the state and nearly killed its electric grid. But because it was a near-miss that didn't actually leave residents without electricity or heat, it was quickly forgotten by the public and also seen as a success story where operators "handled a difficult situation well" and took "prompt and decisive actions" that had prevented systemwide blackouts. The cold weather and resulting high energy prices also delivered a financial windfall to power-generating companies, which of course went on to learn all the wrong lessons - instead of seeing it as a sign that they needed to prepare their plants for cold weather, they saw opportunities for profit.
In reports, experts laid out why power-generating equipment stopped working during the cold snap and concluded that energy companies had failed to understand their "critical failure points". They also highlighted the need to winterize power plants. The PUC, which oversees electric utilities, sought changes that would require companies to "identify and address all potential failure points, including any effects of "weather design limits." But once energy companies pushed back, they softened the rules to only cover already known failures.
The article also details a number of bills that attempted to bring greater oversight or increase regulation on energy companies that could have forestalled the current catastrophe if they had been passed.
The incident was the second in three years for North Texas-based Luminant, whose equipment malfunctions during a more severe storm in 2011 resulted in a $750,000 fine from state energy regulators for failing to deliver promised power to the grid.
In the earlier cold snap, the grid was pushed to the limit and rolling blackouts swept the state, spurring an angry Legislature to order a study of what went wrong.
Experts hired by the Texas Public Utility Commission, which oversees the state's electric and water utilities, concluded that power-generating companies like Luminant had failed to understand the "critical failure points" that could cause equipment to stop working in cold weather.
In May 2014, the PUC sought changes that would require energy companies to identify and address all potential failure points, including any effects of "weather design limits."
Luminant argued against the proposal.
In comments to the commission, the company said the requirement was unnecessary and "may or may not identify the 'weak links' in protections against extreme temperatures."
"Each weather event [is] dynamic," company representatives told regulators. "Any engineering analysis that attempted to identify a specific weather design limit would be rendered meaningless."
By the end of the process, the PUC agreed to soften the proposed changes. Instead of identifying all possible failure points in their equipment, power companies would need only to address any that were previously known.
The change, which experts say has left Texas power plants more susceptible to the kind of extreme and deadly weather events that bore down on the state last week, is one in a series of cascading failures to shield the state's electric grid from winter storms, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.
Another federal report released three years later made similar recommendations with few results. Lawmakers also failed to pass measures over the past two decades that would have required the operator of the state's main power grid to ensure adequate reserves to shield against blackouts, provided better representation for residential and small commercial consumers on the board that oversees that agency and allowed the state's top emergency-planning agency to make sure power plants were adequately "hardened" against disaster.
Experts and consumer advocates say the challenge to the 2014 proposal by Luminant and other companies, which hasn't been previously reported, is an example of the industry's outsize influence over the regulatory bodies that oversee them.
But under this system, power companies aren't required to produce enough electricity to get the state through crises like the one last week. In fact, they are incentivized to ramp up generation only when dwindling power supplies have driven up prices.
The event quickly faded from public attention because it was a near-miss that didn't actually leave people without electricity or heat. But because the state had come so close to blackouts, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which has some authority to regulate power companies in the country, launched an investigation. The probe found similar problems to those that dogged the state after the 2011 storms, primarily equipment that failed to stand up to the freezing temperatures.
Despite the equipment failures that brought the electric grid to the brink of disaster, the polar vortex was a financial windfall for power-generation companies. In the months that followed the storm, some of the companies stressed to investors the financial benefits of the two days of cold weather and accompanying high energy prices.
"This business benefited significantly from increased basis and storage spreads during the polar vortex earlier this year," Joe McGoldrick, an executive with Houston-based CenterPoint Energy, said in a November 2014 earnings call. "To the extent that we get another polar vortex or whatever, absolutely, we'll be opportunistic and take advantage of those conditions."
In extreme weather events like last week's freeze, prices per megawatt jumped from an average of around $35 to ERCOT's maximum of $9,000.
Hirs said it's in the power generators' interest to "push ERCOT into a tight situation where price goes up dramatically."
"They are giving generators incentive to withdraw service," he added. "How else do you get the price to go up?"
ERCOT concluded that operators "handled a difficult situation well" and took "prompt and decisive actions" that had prevented systemwide blackouts. In the "lessons learned" section of its final report, the agency promoted the continuation of its winterization site visits, which are not mandatory.
The incident also highlighted the need to improve winter performance of natural gas pipelines, which NERC found hampered the ability of gas-fired power plants to generate electricity. The agency declined to comment, saying it doesn't discuss investigations.
"You need to dust off my bill, and you need to refile it," the Democrat said during a press conference Friday, referring to legislation he filed in 2011 that would have required the PUC to ensure ERCOT maintained adequate reserve power to prevent blackouts. "Because it's not about just holding hearings."
Those price caps remain the same today.
It went as well as you'd expect.
If the response wasn't "Raise your hand if you have ever felt personally victimized by Rush Limbaugh", it wasn't an adequate response.
Wow, Lauren Bonerbert really is the worst, isn't she?
I liked it better when Questionable Casting was called WTH Casting Agency
If she isn't, it's not for lack of trying.
Oh, bother.
It's a race to the bottom with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Disgusted, but not surprised
I actually wanted to be Resileaf
I would expect nothing less from someone whose last name sounds like Breibart.
It should be noted, btw, that if there is a March 4th attempt, 5000 National Guard are still on station in DC, and will likely be swiftly reinforced if needed. Though I doubt they would, given even a single Jeep with a .50 cal aimed in your direction is a pretty good sign to a crowd to piss off quietly.
One of the handy things about Force Multiplication there.
Edited by Pendrake on Feb 22nd 2021 at 2:22:14 AM
Semper Fi. Semper Paratus. Vigilo Confido.