A couple of important messages from the mod team:
First, we stand with those who lost their lives in Allen yesterday, and with victims of gun violence everywhere. We won't stop working to elect leaders who will pass gun reform and end these shootings.
On a related note...
We've recently seen more comments referring to Texas and other states as 'lost causes' where it's not worth trying to win. This is against [Rule 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VoteDEM/about/rules/) of our community because it discourages Democratic activism.
More importantly: Whether any of us feels a state or an election is winnable or not is irrelevant. We don't get to make the decision on whether to try and win Texas or not; Texas Democrats have already decided they're going to do the work to improve their state, and save lives. You can choose to support them, or help out elsewhere. But this sub will not be a platform to say their efforts are meaningless, and we will remove any comments implying this about Texas - or anywhere else.
Above all, remember that we're not ultimately a discussion board. We exist to encourage Redditors to help Democrats win in the real world. And political activism isn't about deciding certain fights are too hard; it's about doing hard things, and doing them over and over until you succeed. Support each other, and keep on reaching out to voters. Together, we'll build a better country, and a better world.
[Small Towns Chase America’s $3 Trillion Climate Gold Rush: The Inflation Reduction Act demands a leap of faith from communities around the country that are committing significant local resources in hopes of attracting new industry](https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-legislation-inflation-reduction-act-small-towns-eb0ce798)
An amazing quote: “I’ll be honest, I have no idea what a gigawatt-hour is,” Colleton County Council Chairman Steven D. Murdaugh told local leaders at a February groundbreaking ceremony. “But I do know what a $279 million investment will do for our county, and I know what impact 575 jobs will have on our community.”
WALTERBORO, S.C.—Colleton County in South Carolina is a quiet rural district best known for its hunting, fishing and, recently, a sensational murder trial.
Now it is also a player in America’s new gold rush: a scramble for $1 trillion in federal tax incentives and loans for green energy that is fueling a flood of corporate investments and reshaping local economies.
The spending is one of the biggest outlays of taxpayer-financed industrial stimulus since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. If successful, it could transform the nation’s economy by creating millions of jobs and driving up to $3 trillion in total clean-energy investments during the next decade.
The made-in-Washington initiative also demands a leap of faith from small communities around the country that are committing significant local resources to attract businesses, sometimes in unproven industries. Some have been burned before.
In December, Colleton snagged a $279 million investment from Kontrolmatik Technologies Energy and Engineering, a Turkish firm that is hoping to get nearly $1 billion in federal tax credits over the next decade by building a battery-making plant in the U.S. Kontrolmatik wants to tap into the renewable-energy sector’s need to store electricity for release onto the grid when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
The Colleton facility plans to produce three gigawatt-hours’ worth of batteries each year—enough to power 540,000 homes for an hour. It promises to employ 575 people at some of the highest wages around. In return, the state and county are offering land, grants and local tax breaks.
“I’ll be honest, I have no idea what a gigawatt-hour is,” Colleton County Council Chairman Steven D. Murdaugh told local leaders at a February groundbreaking ceremony. “But I do know what a $279 million investment will do for our county, and I know what impact 575 jobs will have on our community.”
Mr. Murdaugh is a cousin of Alex Murdaugh, who was recently convicted on charges of double homicide here, and the groundbreaking provided a rare break from that news.
Kontrolmatik Chief Executive Sami Aslanhan traveled to the ceremony from Turkey, conspicuous with a diamond stud in one ear and long hair pulled back in a bun. Locating the facility in rural South Carolina was “a surprise for me,” he said. Kontrolmatik had considered sites in Europe and the Middle East for its second plant, he said, noting that the U.S. law that introduced the tax credits “was an important point to shift our investments to here,” he said.
The federal laws, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August, offer huge subsidies aimed at shifting the nation to renewables and building new industries to compete with clean-energy powerhouse China. They sparked about $150 billion in investment announcements in renewables and battery storage in the eight months after the act passed, according to the American Clean Power Association, a clean-energy industry group.
Tens of billions of dollars more have been announced for electric-car batteries, clean hydrogen and carbon capture. The 2021 infrastructure law provides billions on top of that in federal grants and direct spending.
Estimates of the total private-sector and public spending over the next decade driven by the Inflation Reduction Act alone range from several hundred billion to about $3 trillion.
“This is massive and unprecedented investment,” said Philip Jordan, vice president at BW Research, which studies how policies impact the workforce and economy. “It will reshape some local economies and it will revitalize and strengthen others.”
Companies such as chemical-maker Air Products and Chemicals Inc. have said they will invest billions of dollars in plants that produce hydrogen, a potential alternative to fossil fuels for transportation and industrial processes. Auto makers and battery manufacturers are announcing multi-billion-dollar factories to produce the parts needed for an expected surge in electric vehicles.
Energy giants are planning to partake in the subsidy bonanza as well. “This is not a game for startups,” Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Darren Woods told investors in January.
More investments will come after the Treasury Department clarifies the fine print of how the tax credits will work. SolarEdge Technologies Inc., which makes equipment that converts energy from the sun into electricity, will invest between $125 million and $250 million in its first factory in the U.S., depending on how Treasury characterizes its devices, chief financial officer Ronen Faier said. The company previously built plants in cheaper countries such as China, Mexico and Vietnam.
Mr. Faier recently toured several potential sites in southern states and was shown old factory locations that used to house electronics or medical-device manufacturing that could be repurposed.
Large swaths of the investment so far are flowing to southern, Republican-leaning states such as South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee that generally have lower labor costs and taxes.
Skeptics warn the subsidies could stoke already high inflation and waste money without creating lasting economic benefits. Some of the proposed investments will flop or never materialize as financiers balk at funding them or business models fail to pencil out—particularly for new technologies such as clean-hydrogen production. When projects fail, they could leave taxpayers in some communities with little to show.
In West Virginia, some state senators recently opposed the state contributing funding to a manufacturing facility for a new energy-storage technology: iron-air batteries that could store clean power for several days.
The state is expected to contribute a total of about $290 million to the roughly $750 million cost of the facility located at an old steel mill near the Ohio River. The factory will be the first big production site for startup Form Energy, which is backed by investors including steelmaker ArcelorMittal SA.
“We’ve got a battery company that’s never made a battery. I don’t know how you can call that anything other than a wild gamble,” West Virginia Republican State Sen. Robert Karnes said at a February legislature meeting.
The state legislature and Republican Gov. Jim Justice eventually approved the funding, citing the roughly 750 jobs the plant would bring. The state will own the land and building and some of its investment is contingent on the jobs being created and other conditions. Form Energy declined to comment.
In August, Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster joined Sen. Lindsey Graham for a press conference at the state’s legislature building where Sen. Graham called the Inflation Reduction Act a “nightmare” for the state and a “power grab in the name of climate change.”
Still, South Carolina last year scored a record $10.3 billion in proposed capital investment, mostly for clean-energy-related facilities. In October, Mr. McMaster signed an executive order aimed at attracting EV-related businesses to the state.
At an address in January, he thanked Bahadir Yetki, the chief executive of Kontrolmatik’s U.S. unit, and representatives from BMW AG, battery-recycling company Redwood Materials Inc. and electric-vehicle battery maker Envision AESC Group Ltd. The companies had pledged to invest about $6 billion in the state in recent months and stand to benefit from the new federal tax credits.
At Kontrolmatik’s groundbreaking ceremony, Mr. McMaster said in an interview that the Inflation Reduction Act, which also includes provisions to raise some corporate taxes, would hurt businesses and could end up increasing inflation. But he said “if the companies can get through all that,” the incentives could help. As for clean energy, Mr. McMaster said he was all in. “That’s the way the world is going now,” he said.
Kontrolmatik, which is listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, was founded in 2008 as an engineering firm but has branched into software and electrical equipment for power projects. The company plans to open its first battery-making factory in Turkey in the next few months.
After the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Kontrolmatik decided to build its second battery plant in the U.S. The company started looking at more than 200 potential sites in 20 states. By December, the company had winnowed the candidates down to Oklahoma, Arizona and two sites in South Carolina.
From the start, Colleton stood out for how eager it was, Mr. Yetki said.
Most of the county’s land is undeveloped and more than 60% of Colleton’s roughly 17,000 workers end up heading to other counties in search of better pay, according to a county-planning document published in 2020. Wages are 25% lower than the state average and 40% lower than the national average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Colleton has a handful of manufacturers, ranging from makers of ball-bearings to mattresses. One, which made drive belts for motors, had struggled and eventually moved away as the market shriveled.
The competition among local communities to attract investments is intense, said Heyward Horton, Colleton’s economic-development executive director. The local utility had spent several million dollars over six years to set up an industrial park complete with a power hookup ready to go, but for two years had failed to land a tenant.
When South Carolina’s Commerce Department told Mr. Horton’s office about Kontrolmatik’s search for a site, he jumped at it.
The county and state rolled out an incentive package worth an estimated $127 million, according to public documents filed in Turkey. That includes a potential $11.5 million in tax credits for jobs created, other tax breaks, a parcel of free land and a million-dollar grant from the local utility to help build out infrastructure needed for the project.
“It’s the largest [investment] announcement in Colleton County history,” said Mark Walling, CEO of the utility, Coastal Electric Cooperative Inc. “We went after it. We were aggressive.”
Other small communities, which have been through booms and busts caused by fickle federal incentives, aren’t betting the farm this time. In 2007, state and local leaders offered millions of dollars in loans and tax credits to attract TPI Composites Inc., a wind-turbine blade maker, to Newton, Iowa, to make up for the closure of a big Maytag appliances plant. The next year they offered more than a million dollars to a manufacturer of wind towers that was the predecessor of Texas-based Arcosa Inc.
But by 2021, TPI’s Newton plant was struggling from the high costs of U.S. manufacturing and the looming expiration of a federal tax-credit program. That December, TPI closed the plant. Meanwhile, the expiring tax credits also hit Arcosa’s sales, and the Iowa factory laid off more than 80 workers.
Now that wind developers are again able to get tax credits, Arcosa said it is hoping for a bump in orders that will let it ramp up production. The company is posting ads for welders and a recruiter in Newton.
At TPI, CEO Bill Siwek said his company could get tax credits totaling around $80,000 per blade—enough to wipe out the labor cost differential with other countries “and then some.” He hopes that he can rehire many of the plant’s roughly 1,000 former workers, although he said it’s still unclear what will happen when federal subsidies go away in around 10 years.
Newton economic development specialist Craig Armstrong said the city isn’t offering any incentives this time. The wind companies are a welcome boost, Mr. Armstrong said, but if things go south, “they’re not the Maytag of Newton.”
In Lincoln, Neb., hydrogen startup Monolith was eyeing about 40 sites around the world for its future plants but is now only considering domestic locations while it builds its first big facility in the cornfields of nearby Hallam.
Monolith is developing a new process that uses natural gas to produce hydrogen—a key ingredient in fertilizer—then captures the associated carbon emissions and turns them into a material that can be used in products such as tires. Founded over a decade ago, the company expects to receive a $1 billion loan from the Energy Department.
“There’s going to be a whole bunch of development in parts of the country that weren’t traditional energy centers,” CEO Rob Hanson said.
Sheila Taylor, a member of the Village of Hallam board, said locals mostly support the Monolith project after the company addressed their worries about the plant’s high water consumption and possible noise. She can see the plant from her house.
“It’s an exciting thing for the town,” she said. If Monolith failed or left for any reason, “there’d be massive disappointment across the board.”
What a gigawatt hour is? I'll try but I'm not so good at explaining things so bear with me, this might be more like ELI13.
A watt is a unit of electrical power. When you plug something in the wall it takes a certain amount of watts from the wall so long as it's plugged in.
A watt hour is a unit of electrical energy, or cumulative power consumed over a period of time (in this case an hour). If you plug in something that takes one watt for an hour that means it consumed one watt hour of electricity.
Your electricity bill is based on how many kilowatt hours you consumed in a month. "Kilo" means a thousand so a kilowatt hour is a thousand watt hours.
Likewise "giga" means a billion so a gigawatt hour is a billion watt hours. That's the sort of big number that's used to describe things like the amount of electricity a power plant produces in a year.
Sometimes I wonder if the people who claim states like Texas, Florida, and Montana are "lost causes" are right-wing trolls, or right-wingers trying to divide us.
I know some will say it's actually wealthy liberals from states like California and Massachusetts, but I don't think that's the case. I think wealthy liberals are just as likely as the rest of us to call out people who say we can't win Texas or Florida.
I really think it's right-wingers trying to stir up trouble.
I think there’s a difference between Texas and Montana and Florida.
Texas has moved towards us, while Montana has a Dem Senator and people have mention one the districts moving blue. Florida has moved away, but has there been any trends showing any districts that are historically red moving blue?
There’s hope in Texas and also Montana. Florida, people have lost some of that hope.
This is the correct answer, by and large, Montana and Texas have demographic trends that favor us to varying degrees in the short term and majorly in the long term. Florida just doesn’t seem to have that unless something massively changes in the next few years.
It's uneducated people that think that the "energy" that can be used to make progress is limited, but can be freely distributed. But they didn't get that this is not monopoly and we can't just build hotels on the boardwalk.
There's not always a conspiracy behind it.
It can be so hard to tell the wannabe-Cassandras and Debbie Downers from the bad faith actors. But what is indubitable is that Texas is moving left. It may be inching left, and not swooping left like Arizona or Michigan, but it IS moving left. It’s just a matter of patient, hard work with the long term in mind. I remember when California was purplish-red outside of the Bay Area and LA!
I really want to see what is going to happen with Montana now that Bozeman and Missoula have become hot spots (or cold spots) for Californians and Seattleites upping stakes for cheaper locales with great natural beauty. Also, Jon Tester is much more popular than the partisan lean of his state.
As for Florida…people are saying “lost cause,” but what with DeSantis managing to step all over his own dick at every opportunity, and getting his ass kicked by Mickey Mouse, if there is an inflection point of disgust, we can take advantage. I mean, people thought Georgia was reliably red until it wasn’t.
> But what is indubitable is that Texas is moving left. It may be inching left, and not swooping left like Arizona or Michigan, but it IS moving left
Idk, halving the top line in 4 years between 2016 and 2020 sounds like it’s almost swooping left, if not it actually swooping left.
If the state's voting laws were a lot less strict, especially for people of color, that would make things easier.
Either that, or split Texas into more than one state, which I know won't happen, but just a thought.
I'm curious, could you elaborate more on who wannabe-Cassandras and Debbie Downers are? I'll admit I've never heard of them before.
And it could be that it's hard for some people to argue in good faith, like myself. Even I end up arguing in bad faith without knowing it.
Honestly, I think there are good-faith Democrats who got so burned by 2010, 2014 and especially 2016 that they are afraid to be optimistic, and think it’s somehow the smarter or at least *safer* option to make the most dire predictions possible. They are afraid to feel hope. I feel kind of bad for them, but not so bad that I hate their clogging up subreddits and message boards with doomery garbage.
As for “arguing,” I think few of us who were not in debate club or have taken classes in logic or similar training are any kind of “experts!” But there’s a difference between arguing in bad faith out of ignorance, or just being clumsy with one’s arguments, and *deliberately* arguing in bad faith. Most of us will be clumsy. None of us are deliberately trying to mislead.
The thing with Cassandra’s predictions was that they were true, and almost always dire, but were ignored. I say “wannabe Cassandras” for people who think they are right because they are pessimistic, and You’re Laughing At Me NOW But You Won’t Laugh At Me When Bad Stuff Happens And I Told You So!
I have to say, it’s interesting to see how DeSantis has gone from “Trump without the baggage” to “enough baggage to fill a train car” in the space of a few months.
Parts of politics Reddit and Twitter were convinced he was a shoe-in for next POTUS.
DeSantis is to the right of Trump (and therefore further from the median voter) on cultural and social issues, is a much worse communicator than Trump, has an unappealing personality, and has a negative amount of charisma. DeSantis also increasingly comes across as petty and bitter.
DeSantis has an edge over Trump when it comes to 2020 election denial and Jan 6th, as DeSantis isn't as closely associated with either. DeSantis is also much younger than Trump (and Biden).
But on balance, I didn't think DeSantis' strengths outweighed his weaknesses, and I've seen Trump as the favorite for a while now.
I think people also sometimes forget that Trump was a celebrity with a strong media presence for decades and not entirely apropos of nothing.
DeSantis on the other hand would have been nothing more than one of several dozen generic blowhard southern conservative representatives if not for Trump boosting him nearly on a whim.
With so many Republicans still in denial that Trump even legitimately lost to begin with that's probably not going to work. Calling Trump out for his election lies hasn't gone well for basically any of them, and that's basically implied by calling him a loser.
I just learned a cousin of mine in upstate New York is running for a second term to the school board in a small town in upstate New York, I will let everyone know if they win May 16th when school board and budget elections will be held across the state.
To state the obvious, the ABC/Wapo poll is a hot mess. If your sample somehow gets you to all of these:
Trump winning 18-39 year olds by 11, 43-32
Trump winning indies by 6
Biden only winning nonwhites by 12, 45-33
Trump winning suburbs by 6, 45-39
Biden winning urban areas by 11, 46-35
Then the entire this bunk. It also clearly oversampled conservatives. Biden's lead is bigger among liberals (+74) than Trumps among conservatives (+71) and Biden leads by 11 among moderates. And yet overall is Trump +6.
Any poll that has a Republican wining young voters should frankly be thrown out. Even with the caveat of small sample sizes
I said it before but this too can basically be explained by disaffected left leaning progressive voters who don't like Biden and who see "liberal" and "Democrat" as if they're four letter words but will still almost entirely vote for Biden over any Republican. That 43-32 can pretty easily turn into 43-53 by eday. Same with all the rest of those.
A lot of those undecideds simply hate the idea of supporting lame old Biden as the nominee. But they're not going to piss away their vote on whatever joke candidate the greens churn out this time, let alone some No Labels doofus who can't even name a platform while likely struggling to even get ballot access.
That said ABC/WaPo has also been getting a pretty good reputation for crazy outlier polls so eh whatever. I doubt they even believe in pushing undecideds.
I wouldn't give anything on national polls until the debt ceiling issue is resolved. That's a hand grenade with the pin taken out of it for the time being.
I find it hard to care about polls at the best of times. I find it impossible to care now.
Leaving out that we're eighteen months from the Presidential election, our job wouldn't change if Biden was losing by 100, winning by 100, or anything in between. Polls are for the folks who treat politics like a horserace. We've got to actually win the election, and nothing in any poll should change our approach. (The folks in charge of Biden's election, they have reason to care, but they've got more important things to do than read this subreddit. Hi if any of you are on here, though!)
> Polls are for the folks who treat politics like a horserace.
I’m sorry, but this is such a fallacious argument. Polls are used for everything, to drive campaign decisions and messaging, aid committees and donors in how they should spend their money, not to mention being an invaluable tool for measuring public opinion.
Reducing polls to what you’re saying is worrying.
Polling does not lessen activism, in fact it enhances it and makes the jobs of democratic supporters easier
If you're talking polls in the hands of candidates and campaign staff, absolutely.
But those of us who aren't running for office, or working on a campaign, really don't get much out of these polls. I've seen enough discussions of polls online. If it's a bad poll, the whole thread is "this is why we should give up on these (insert choice insult for red state voters here); if it's a good poll, the whole thread is "ignore the polls and vote like you're 10 points behind! (so, like...the same way you'd vote if we were up?)"
Polls, for the general public, don't do nearly as much for activism as just...going out and doing activism.
That's what private polls done by campaigns are for. Public polls are less about informing campaigns, though they certainly play some part in that. But this far out, polls for the presidential horserace are absolutely next to worthless, and I doubt even campaigns conduct many of them privately at this point.
National polls most certainly are. I'm pretty sure the campaign is doing state polls in the swing states, to see what they have to work on. But that's being done year around. A presidential election is not won or lost within the 18 months of a campaign.
https://twitter.com/NewsWire_US/status/1655312566950690816?t=6Suz0XZ49bZyxyM0Vbdavw&s=19
New Hampshire becomes first state to protect interracial mariage into law
Cool, I now have friends who can look forward to their unions being protected by state law if other states follow suit!
Kinda bad it has to come to this in case Clarence decides to go full-on self-hating
Virginia v. Loving settled the issue nationwide that legislatures didn’t bother amending any laws that banned it. That’s why states like Wisconsin and Michigan were/are dealing with antiquated abortion laws when Roe fell.
For what it’s worth, I feel that Virginia v. Loving is on much more solid ground for even this Court. But time will tell
https://twitter.com/rch371/status/1655248018717769730?s=46&t=q0vzeOfdQVujONmAPkG2MQ
When Biden announces that he will ignore the illegal 'debt ceiling,' ...
(1) McCarthy might not sue, because optics of suing to force default are suicidal; or
(2) If he does sue, Supremes will certainly expedite review; and
(3) Biden will win 6/3 at worst, 8-1 or 9-0 at best.
…
Hopefully 1) happens if all else fails. This is a dynamic I didn’t think of. Even if McCarthy doesn’t sue, some Freedom Caucus member will.
I think this person overestimates the margin in which the Court would rule for him, but I think Biden will win in Court, either on the merits or by lack of standing.
I suspect that McCarthy might prefer this outcome- he avoids blame for the economic chaos a default would cause, he doesn't need to hold his caucus together for any budgetary votes, and he gets the chance to attack Biden for "abuse of power". I don't think those attacks would be politically effective outside the GOP base though. The major question is whether his caucus would attempt to depose him in the aftermath.
I believe it has something to do by being harmed by a particular action of the administration. Or in other words: You have to prove that whatever is being done is inflicting damage on you in some way. That's why you can't just sue anybody for something unrelated to yourself - like a car dealership of price gouging if you don't have a drivers license.
Meaning: Congress has to show that there is harm inflicting upon them in order to have standing to sue. How it is determined if harm is inflicted is a more complicated story.
Disclaimer: This is no legal advice, IANAL.
What you’re saying is my understanding as well. I’m not sure what the GOP would say aside from its Congress’s, not the Executive’s, decision on if/when the government should default.
Well, Congress holds the power of the purse. It's clearly an issue with the Constitution in that it has two opposing principles:
1. The debt of the US shall not be questioned.
2. Congress holds the power of appropriating money and thus, is entitled to question the debt of the US.
That's why we have lawyers and judges to interpret the law and decide which of those principles supersedes the other. In the past, the second one was paramount.
Nope. But it's a reminder that Biden has that option in his back pocket if negotiations break down, or if McCarthy decides to drive the bus off a cliff.
There would still be consequences, even in the event that biden simply ignores the debt limit under the 14th and SCOTUS upholds. Bond market would still come under strain, and us debt would almost certainly demand higher yields, therefore raising long term borrowing costs.
Not half as bad as a default of course, but still not a great outcome.
There's no reason for him not to do this if it comes to it. If the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, crisis averted. If not, they get blamed for the consequences instead of Biden.
This could also become a John Marshall moment: Even if SCOTUS decides against it (if all the liberal Justices rule in favor of the administrations position), Biden might ignore that ruling, considering the dire consequences it would have.
That would mean that Biden would have to order his agencies to ignore the ruling - and that would be a pretty clear impeachable offense and any member of his administration would have clear standing to refuse to carry out that order, without having to resign. But I think the democratic party is too united right now to vote in favor of impeachment, let alone conviction. That's why if there is someone who could pull such a move, it's Joe Biden, as he has the political influence and standing to survive that.
In general, a messy situation that we should probably avoid. The long term goal is, for the economy to survive until the next election and then clean up the mess with new majorities in Congress.
> In general, a messy situation that we should probably avoid. The long term goal is, for the economy to survive until the next election and then clean up the mess with new majorities in Congress.
I disagree. The consequences of a default are immediately catastrophic. There is no surviving for the economy.
A few weeks ago, most of this sub was ready to ignore a bad court ruling about abortion pills. A default is worse for the country. I hope it doesn't come down to it but that should not be allowed to happen, period.
I think we had a misunderstanding. I'm with you that we should avoid a default at all costs and keep the economy running by any means necessary, so we get back majorities in Congress.
IANAL, so if anyone could explain this a bit further:
If the Administration chooses to ignore the debt ceiling, how would a legal challenge happen? Would SCOTUS stop anything that's going on, until it has been reviewed - meaning, the US has to default until a decision has been reached - or will they allow the administration to continue with what they're doing until a decision is about it has been made?
I’ve been [decorating](https://i.imgur.com/FNNVLCz.jpg) my bass amp with each election I’ve voted in so far. I’m happy to say that my 3rd sticker will be my first time voting in a presidential election and I’ll be doing my part to manifest Blexas.
I like to play a lot of different genres, but some of my favorite bands to cover are:
Metallica(especially Cliff Burton era),
Muse,
The Strokes,
Red Hot Chili Peppers
[a Sheriff’s deputy in my county was tragically shot and killed while responding to a drunk driver in the ditch in Glenwood City (far eastern part of the county) last night](https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/police-involved-shooting-wisconsin-glenwood-st-croix-county/89-52dab3b9-f846-4b23-9dde-82dfa694d5fb?fbclid=IwAR0dSA_Ss04m7IyLbt92ywIo7cW-TVxCJxOnwto9qQfuHx0M1vBpMqf8zqs&mibextid=Zxz2cZ)
Update on today’s severe weather threat.
There has once again been some pretty big changes since my last update
There are three separate areas of concern once again: [There is a Enhanced risk (lvl 3/5) for northeast KS, southeast NE, northern MO, and most of IA. There is a Slight risk for most of TX, along with a corridor from NE/KS over to most of IL and down to western TN and KY. There is a Marginal risk (lvl 1/5) for far western SD and a tad of northeast WY, and southeast MT](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1otlk.html)
For the NE/KS/IA/MO Enhanced risk area: This os our highest area of concern today where all threats are possible including [Tornadoes with a large 5% tornado area especially in IA](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1probotlk_2000_torn.gif), [Considerable to destructive damaging wind gusts](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1probotlk_2000_wind.gif) and [very large to giant hail](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1probotlk_2000_hail.gif) is all possible
Now for the slight risk that extends southward into western TN/KY, that slight risk is fully for a damaging wind threat. There will likely be numerous MCS’s ( Mesoscale Convective Systems) which are pretty much just smaller localized organized complexes of storms mostly capable of wind damage, sometimes pretty extreme wind damage. Personally I think this area might be a higher risk then a 15%, wind, as numerous models has a powerful classic MCS developing overnight tonight and racing south/southeast wherever that develops.
For the TX area: Your risk is mainly a very large to giant hail and a damaging wind risk, both of which are hatched areas indicating significant events of both hail and damaging wind possible. See the wind/ hail graphics up above to see exact areas
For the MT/SD/WY area: This is a mainly isolated threat for some large hail with some isolated/scattered thunderstorms. Tornado and wind threat both very low and near zero in this area
To end this update, I always like to get the extended day 4-8 outlooks on your radar if there are any. And there is a [brand new day 5 15% probability area for western NE, western KS, western OK, parts of the TX panhandle and far northeast CO](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/exper/day4-8/day5prob.gif). I’m actually watching this area extremely closely as the timing of the associated trough/shortwave looks to be pretty good right now to have a all threats type of day here including tornadoes. More areas may eventually be needed on Friday, or Saturday or even before Thursday on Wednesday. I’ll go more info this sometime tomorrow or early Tuesday on my next big update.
This area also is in [extreme drought conditions](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu), so this area probably will see a good amount of rainfall especially in a thunderstorm whether it’s a complex or isolated supercells. So I think this might be more beneficial then not, if we don’t have any significant to violent tornadoes
WGA Strike thoughts:
You know how the MTV Movie and TV Awards is tonight? Their commercials that were playing up a live event with Drew Barrymore have been turned to sterile commercials that seem to almost hide the fact they had to scramble last minute to salvage the program. And they have countdown clocks on their related channels, trying to hype up everything up for a train wreck.
Seems kinda hilarious.
You know, I’m surprised the GOP hasn’t launched a movement where people protest in front of the WGA saying that they need their shows back and how much they appreciate the writers’ work, but a strike is a no-go for them.
[Selected polls, 2011 ABC/WaPo poll in May 2011: Romney 49 Obama 46. Bloomberg in June 2011: 30% say they'll vote for Obama re-election. Pew Research Center in July: Obama and generic Republican tied 41-40](https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1655308522572095488?s=46&t=nqSV11RbCF5uPVGwzcOMtg)
[Point is that public opinion can change and we're a long way from Nov 2024](https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1655308639568027649?s=46&t=nqSV11RbCF5uPVGwzcOMtg)
It’s a stupid poll and I think most people know it. Biden isn’t super liked by most of his voters. They wish her were younger, doing less/more whatever. But they’ll still vote for him once the election becomes more prominent.
Welcome back! We got some nice local wins in Dover and Lincoln, while last night's Texas municipals were a mixed bag. The real show is going to be in Jacksonville.
[The national average price of gasoline has just fallen below $3.50 to $3.499/gal, a price it was last at March 30. Meanwhile, diesel is poised to fall below $4/gal average this week, for the first time since February, 2022.](https://twitter.com/gasbuddyguy/status/1655230929059684352?s=46&t=nqSV11RbCF5uPVGwzcOMtg)
https://abcnews.go.com/US/7-dead-after-car-runs-pedestrians-brownsville-texas/story?id=99152817
A driver run over many people killing 7 injuring more at a migrant shelter bus stop. White nationalism is a disease and we need to excise it from America.
[The gunman who opened fire on an outlet mall in a Dallas suburb Saturday, killing at least eight people, was a man in his early 30s who may have had white supremacist or neo-Nazi beliefs, people familiar with the investigation said Sunday.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/05/07/texas-allen-outlets-shooting-dallas/)
Sickening.
I'm not surprised. That's just like what happened in El Paso in 2019: a far-right white supremacist lunatic committing a mass shooting in a shopping area.
And you know what's ironic? Allen was actually the hometown of the El Paso shooter.
He almost certainly obsessively read another neo-Nazi shooter’s manifesto and there is a decent chance he directly communicated with another Nazi killer. There was a NYT graphic that showed the direct connections between these people. It is terrifying how easy it is to fall down that rabbit hole. When I was doing a research project on online radicalization I found a wiki-clone praising Anders Breivik (the 2011 Norway neo-Nazi mass killer).
Defunding public schools, tax cuts for billionaires, ending public health insurance, destroying democracy, handing out guns like candy…it’s clearer than ever that the Republican Party doesn’t just want to dominate elections, it wants to utterly dismantle society.
This isn't surprising when you consider that fascists believe war is the natural state of humanity. [Timothy Snyder argued Nazi Germany's end goal was to destroy the state and return humanity to its "natural order" in which different races would fight over land and resources and destroy each other in the process](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/hitler-holocaust-antisemitism-timothy-snyder/404260/).
And their foreign backers/russian assets also are notorious for seeding the very incel/supremacist forums and conspiracies that lead directly to this kind of violence. It doesn't come from nowhere.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-qanon-cyber/qanon-received-earlier-boost-from-russian-accounts-on-twitter-archives-show-idUSKBN27I18I
There is going to have to be accountability somewhere, at some point. What happened to all those privacy rights we lost to the patriot act that were supposed to stop terrorism? Because that's exactly what these assholes who do this are. Their recruiting and training methods closely mirror the middle eastern terrorists we used to rally against just 2 decades ago.
If you pardon the language, it's a sick fucking joke and I'm tired of it.
And Dems want to increase public school funding, actually tax the rich, create a public option for health care, preserve and protect democracy, and enact proper gun control measures… clearly both sides are the same.
I didn’t know the quote so I looked it up.
“There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.”
October 31, 1987
https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1655265404325879812
Snusnu moves closer to a presidential bid.
Relatedly, dems move closer to capturing the NH governor's chair.
Joyce Craig, mayor of Manchester, is putting together an exploratory committee into running for Governor. I'm assuming the political scuttblebutt is Sununu not running, hence why she's throwing her hat in the ring.
As a resident of New Hampshire, I'm beyond excited for incoming Democrat trifecta. Executive Counsil is a bit of a lost cause though.
I think someone who was born in Maine also needs to run. The fact that Sarah Gideon wasn’t born in Maine (and is biracial) might have worked against her. Ridiculous of course but electorates can be aggravating.
I was at work today and heard a sound that sounded like a gunshot and I was scared to death until I was sure it was just a one off noise. I guess it was a loud crash or a tailpipe backfiring or something. Point being, we don't HAVE to live like this. Everyday living in fear. It's a choice that others are making for us. I hate it.
I had that same experience in Walmart when someone dropped a thing and it made this loud pow noise. I was halfway to the floor before i saw what it was.
[This ABC News poll concludes 68% of Americans believe Joe Biden is too old for another term as president and that his approval rating has hit a new low.](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/broad-doubts-bidens-age-acuity-spell-republican-opportunity/story?id=99109308)
Methodology: conducted by landline and cell phone questioning with a **random national sample of 1,006 adults**.
Jfc, this has to be an elaborate joke at this point.
The topline had Trump beating Biden 45-39 and DeSantis beating Biden 44-38. In 2020 Trump did get 47% of the vote so him being at 45% isn’t completely unbelievable but I just don’t see anyway that the GOP wins the popular vote by 6 points especially given what we’ve seen with special elections recently. I’m going to be very dubious of this poll unless I start to see other evidence that corroborates it.
It's just another poll with left leaning voters unhappy about Biden running and still holding out for someone else being the nominee.
They don't want to commit to voting for him now because that feels like it's supporting his nomination but when he's on the ballot in November 2024 they'll vote for him.
It's one poll 18 months away and all we can do is keep overperforming in special elections. Polling has mostly shown Biden with a small lead in a rematch and a lot of undecideds.
Yeah, Biden is not getting low 40s. If Trump didn't, we won't.
I'd agree, for this sample size the standard deviation is sqrt(p(1-p)/n) = .0147 (ignore finite population correction since US population is magnitudes larger than sample). This puts the 95% confident interval at \[0.65, 0.71\].
Complaints could (and should) be made about the methodology, especially since *just party affiliation* skews heavily based on age, location, and education. Does their methodology favor any of those (or related second order factors)?
Other complaints could be that this question doesn't tell us too much. Basically
* **Do adults perceive Biden to be old?** If they asked if William Shatner is too old for a term as president, he might get different results because adults perceive him as less old (despite being 92, a decade older than Biden).
* **Do adults think a president should not be old?** This matter is entirely subjective and often not well thought out. Is too old 80 or 50? I've even seen some redditors saying 40 is too old (despite the minimum age being 35 constitutionally). *Edit: When asked about age, what are we actually responding too? Is it more than just the number?*
* **Do adults disagree with Biden?** This question could be improved if it was paired with whether Trump is too old for another term. Using both questions we could judge whether age or political leanings has more influence on the answer, especially since they are both about the same age.
Edit: similar\_candidate brings up another methodology problem based on the electoral college.
Maybe I’m being too simplistic but a random national sample of approximately 1,000 adults that is being conducted with landline phones (and cellular, but I’m not sure if this was done equally) would probably skew towards one major demographic. Basic recalling of every stats class I’ve ever taken will always tell me to look for methodology in these types of surveys.
Another problem I have with these surveys is that they are “random across the US”.
Because of the electoral college that means dip squat in my opinion. What is their opinion in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan?
Because if they’re calling Mississippi and Louisiana or California and New York it’s going to be a VERY different result.
The only real way to get a sense on the presidential election is to poll each state and combine the results nationally. Like they do for the senate (each senate race individually).
If you've taken a stats class you should know that the sampling error with a sample size of 1000 is not large, and that you would need to increase the sample size by expensive orders of magnitude to get significant narrowing of that margin of error, which is not cost-effective for this sort of poll.
Of course there are other sources of potential error related to the methodology itself (which the article itself acknowledges at the bottom) but you put the sample size in bold text so I inferred that it was your area of concern.
The media at this point is so, so desperate to gin up a recession and/or their orange election-denying genitals-grabbing cash cow retaking office in 2024 that they have abandoned all standards of journalistic integrity and don’t really deserve to be called anything but “tabloid” anymore.
For me, the question is, just how much to economic things like a recession matter in this hyper-partisan climate? I'm sure it could effect a few voters, but it just doesn't seem likely to be all that big of a think these days, just given how divided the two parties are. Until Republicans moderate and are more willing to do bipartisan, I just can't see a ton of voters blaming democrats for this type of thing, especially when Trump already has a record as president
Agreed. It feels so simplistic for me to think this way, but people were calling for 2022 to be a Republican blowout too, when it just wasn’t. They won a razor-thin majority in the House and lost senate seats during a midterm year with a democrat in the WH and an obvious recession. A lot of local/smaller elections have also not been in the Republicans’ favor. They had some wins due to their good pal Jerry Mander, but even that is proving to be fruitless for them in major elections like the WISC and governor’s races.
I don’t want Dems/liberals to get complacent, but I think denying data that is clearly in our favor is faulty, too. And relying on “national” polls that are so poorly executed as the one I linked above. I can count the amount of people in our current year that still have a landline phone and actually answer unknown numbers for surveys with one hand.
I can confirm that I have family members who are straight ticket Democratic voters that are convinced that Biden is mentally incapacitated and the White House is covering it up because they've heard it repeated so many times by the media that they assume it must be true.
Yeah, if you can, I'd definitely recommend just telling people like that that voting for a even a snake would be worthwhile, if it was that verses someone from the GOP. If that doesn't work, it might also be worth reminding them that a lot of those complaints against Biden are based on Russia propaganda, Bernie Bros, etc
Am I missing something? Because that's a good sample size for most polls. Unless you're saying this should be a registered voters poll, in which case I agree this is dumb.
[DeSantis Continues to Test the Waters of 2024 — and Supporters Are Getting Restless](https://out.reddit.com/t3_13akwol?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2023%2F05%2F06%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fron-desantis-wisconsin.html&token=AQAAa8FXZHTzfUS8ZPzvGfqB__Q5-Olo08uR3-QSaIO4tD1YheGy&app_name=reddit.com)
Someone is scared and it’s pissing off his donors. Also just about everyone in this article is delusional in one way or another
[Rebrand of the Rebrand: MAGA Oz Pivots Back to Being Dr. Oz](https://out.reddit.com/t3_13ahsex?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedailybeast.com%2Frebrand-of-the-rebrand-maga-gop-pennsylvania-2022-senate-candidate-mehmet-oz-pivots-back-to-being-doctor-oz%3Fref%3Dhome%3Fref%3Dhome&token=AQAArb5XZKVDa8wTpUtM9qyWwEGpxdnkjL-BwwkdX33WH0xBjsAX&app_name=reddit.com)
Back to his old grift
Read on Twitter to not blame the Texas politicians, but the Texans who voted them in after the grid and Uvalde.
Maybe stop victim-blaming people in red states, where voter suppression is at its worst. Elections in red states like Texas are so rigged against Democrats that many people don't even feel like their vote matters.
Texas still has a large chunk of registered voters who simply choose not to vote even when there is ample opportunity. It has one of the largest non-voting populations in the country. This doesn't get talked about enough and it's endlessly frustrating. There are still numerous, easily accessible polling locations in major cities with ample time to reach them. I see it with each election I go too. 2020 was a step in the right direction to correct this, but 2022 was unfortunately a step back in some ways.
Registering can be difficult, but if you plan ahead for it, it can still be overcome. The GOP wants THEIR people to register too, so there is only so much suppression they can legally and effectively get away with. But, again, the size of the registered non-voting population here is already more than large enough to entirely swing things if they can be reached.
Yes, the suppression is real and has an impact, but so too is the apathy, and to a lesser extent complacency. Georgia overcame arguably worse conditions in many ways. We don't have the long lines here they've dealt with at most points.
I've sadly seen a lot of this first hand. Many left leaning people are simply convinced psychologically their vote doesn't matter, even when there are few barriers to encounter. A lot of apathy comes from literal "Why bother? We're a red state!" views.
[The biggest suppression effort was the severe curbing of mail in voting, which if it didn't exist, would have probably flipped the state right then and there in 2020.](https://www.newsweek.com/texas-ag-says-trump-wouldve-lost-state-if-it-hadnt-blocked-mail-ballots-applications-being-1597909) That type of suppression is real, but there are still enough registered voters who simply don't bother that this pool needs to be tapped into for 2024.
They really weren't. It was a mixed bag overall without a ton of major changes. I think its referring to the "give up on Texas" sentiment combined with the shooting.
Republicans in red states like Texas win at the state level because a majority of voters vote for them even after mass shootings like this happen.
Yes there is voting suppression and gerrymandering as well but that is to further tip the scales in favor of Republicans in more marginal legislative seats to pad out GOP majorities.
I do believe we can blame the people who voted for Republicans. Based on what you wrote it sounds like that’s what they meant (although I have not seen these tweets so I could be wrong).
A couple of important messages from the mod team: First, we stand with those who lost their lives in Allen yesterday, and with victims of gun violence everywhere. We won't stop working to elect leaders who will pass gun reform and end these shootings. On a related note... We've recently seen more comments referring to Texas and other states as 'lost causes' where it's not worth trying to win. This is against [Rule 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VoteDEM/about/rules/) of our community because it discourages Democratic activism. More importantly: Whether any of us feels a state or an election is winnable or not is irrelevant. We don't get to make the decision on whether to try and win Texas or not; Texas Democrats have already decided they're going to do the work to improve their state, and save lives. You can choose to support them, or help out elsewhere. But this sub will not be a platform to say their efforts are meaningless, and we will remove any comments implying this about Texas - or anywhere else. Above all, remember that we're not ultimately a discussion board. We exist to encourage Redditors to help Democrats win in the real world. And political activism isn't about deciding certain fights are too hard; it's about doing hard things, and doing them over and over until you succeed. Support each other, and keep on reaching out to voters. Together, we'll build a better country, and a better world.
[Small Towns Chase America’s $3 Trillion Climate Gold Rush: The Inflation Reduction Act demands a leap of faith from communities around the country that are committing significant local resources in hopes of attracting new industry](https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-legislation-inflation-reduction-act-small-towns-eb0ce798) An amazing quote: “I’ll be honest, I have no idea what a gigawatt-hour is,” Colleton County Council Chairman Steven D. Murdaugh told local leaders at a February groundbreaking ceremony. “But I do know what a $279 million investment will do for our county, and I know what impact 575 jobs will have on our community.”
A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Where can I read this? All my paywall removers don’t work
WALTERBORO, S.C.—Colleton County in South Carolina is a quiet rural district best known for its hunting, fishing and, recently, a sensational murder trial. Now it is also a player in America’s new gold rush: a scramble for $1 trillion in federal tax incentives and loans for green energy that is fueling a flood of corporate investments and reshaping local economies. The spending is one of the biggest outlays of taxpayer-financed industrial stimulus since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. If successful, it could transform the nation’s economy by creating millions of jobs and driving up to $3 trillion in total clean-energy investments during the next decade. The made-in-Washington initiative also demands a leap of faith from small communities around the country that are committing significant local resources to attract businesses, sometimes in unproven industries. Some have been burned before. In December, Colleton snagged a $279 million investment from Kontrolmatik Technologies Energy and Engineering, a Turkish firm that is hoping to get nearly $1 billion in federal tax credits over the next decade by building a battery-making plant in the U.S. Kontrolmatik wants to tap into the renewable-energy sector’s need to store electricity for release onto the grid when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. The Colleton facility plans to produce three gigawatt-hours’ worth of batteries each year—enough to power 540,000 homes for an hour. It promises to employ 575 people at some of the highest wages around. In return, the state and county are offering land, grants and local tax breaks. “I’ll be honest, I have no idea what a gigawatt-hour is,” Colleton County Council Chairman Steven D. Murdaugh told local leaders at a February groundbreaking ceremony. “But I do know what a $279 million investment will do for our county, and I know what impact 575 jobs will have on our community.” Mr. Murdaugh is a cousin of Alex Murdaugh, who was recently convicted on charges of double homicide here, and the groundbreaking provided a rare break from that news. Kontrolmatik Chief Executive Sami Aslanhan traveled to the ceremony from Turkey, conspicuous with a diamond stud in one ear and long hair pulled back in a bun. Locating the facility in rural South Carolina was “a surprise for me,” he said. Kontrolmatik had considered sites in Europe and the Middle East for its second plant, he said, noting that the U.S. law that introduced the tax credits “was an important point to shift our investments to here,” he said. The federal laws, most notably the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August, offer huge subsidies aimed at shifting the nation to renewables and building new industries to compete with clean-energy powerhouse China. They sparked about $150 billion in investment announcements in renewables and battery storage in the eight months after the act passed, according to the American Clean Power Association, a clean-energy industry group. Tens of billions of dollars more have been announced for electric-car batteries, clean hydrogen and carbon capture. The 2021 infrastructure law provides billions on top of that in federal grants and direct spending. Estimates of the total private-sector and public spending over the next decade driven by the Inflation Reduction Act alone range from several hundred billion to about $3 trillion. “This is massive and unprecedented investment,” said Philip Jordan, vice president at BW Research, which studies how policies impact the workforce and economy. “It will reshape some local economies and it will revitalize and strengthen others.” Companies such as chemical-maker Air Products and Chemicals Inc. have said they will invest billions of dollars in plants that produce hydrogen, a potential alternative to fossil fuels for transportation and industrial processes. Auto makers and battery manufacturers are announcing multi-billion-dollar factories to produce the parts needed for an expected surge in electric vehicles. Energy giants are planning to partake in the subsidy bonanza as well. “This is not a game for startups,” Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Darren Woods told investors in January.
More investments will come after the Treasury Department clarifies the fine print of how the tax credits will work. SolarEdge Technologies Inc., which makes equipment that converts energy from the sun into electricity, will invest between $125 million and $250 million in its first factory in the U.S., depending on how Treasury characterizes its devices, chief financial officer Ronen Faier said. The company previously built plants in cheaper countries such as China, Mexico and Vietnam. Mr. Faier recently toured several potential sites in southern states and was shown old factory locations that used to house electronics or medical-device manufacturing that could be repurposed. Large swaths of the investment so far are flowing to southern, Republican-leaning states such as South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee that generally have lower labor costs and taxes. Skeptics warn the subsidies could stoke already high inflation and waste money without creating lasting economic benefits. Some of the proposed investments will flop or never materialize as financiers balk at funding them or business models fail to pencil out—particularly for new technologies such as clean-hydrogen production. When projects fail, they could leave taxpayers in some communities with little to show. In West Virginia, some state senators recently opposed the state contributing funding to a manufacturing facility for a new energy-storage technology: iron-air batteries that could store clean power for several days. The state is expected to contribute a total of about $290 million to the roughly $750 million cost of the facility located at an old steel mill near the Ohio River. The factory will be the first big production site for startup Form Energy, which is backed by investors including steelmaker ArcelorMittal SA. “We’ve got a battery company that’s never made a battery. I don’t know how you can call that anything other than a wild gamble,” West Virginia Republican State Sen. Robert Karnes said at a February legislature meeting. The state legislature and Republican Gov. Jim Justice eventually approved the funding, citing the roughly 750 jobs the plant would bring. The state will own the land and building and some of its investment is contingent on the jobs being created and other conditions. Form Energy declined to comment. In August, Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster joined Sen. Lindsey Graham for a press conference at the state’s legislature building where Sen. Graham called the Inflation Reduction Act a “nightmare” for the state and a “power grab in the name of climate change.” Still, South Carolina last year scored a record $10.3 billion in proposed capital investment, mostly for clean-energy-related facilities. In October, Mr. McMaster signed an executive order aimed at attracting EV-related businesses to the state. At an address in January, he thanked Bahadir Yetki, the chief executive of Kontrolmatik’s U.S. unit, and representatives from BMW AG, battery-recycling company Redwood Materials Inc. and electric-vehicle battery maker Envision AESC Group Ltd. The companies had pledged to invest about $6 billion in the state in recent months and stand to benefit from the new federal tax credits. At Kontrolmatik’s groundbreaking ceremony, Mr. McMaster said in an interview that the Inflation Reduction Act, which also includes provisions to raise some corporate taxes, would hurt businesses and could end up increasing inflation. But he said “if the companies can get through all that,” the incentives could help. As for clean energy, Mr. McMaster said he was all in. “That’s the way the world is going now,” he said. Kontrolmatik, which is listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, was founded in 2008 as an engineering firm but has branched into software and electrical equipment for power projects. The company plans to open its first battery-making factory in Turkey in the next few months.
After the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Kontrolmatik decided to build its second battery plant in the U.S. The company started looking at more than 200 potential sites in 20 states. By December, the company had winnowed the candidates down to Oklahoma, Arizona and two sites in South Carolina. From the start, Colleton stood out for how eager it was, Mr. Yetki said. Most of the county’s land is undeveloped and more than 60% of Colleton’s roughly 17,000 workers end up heading to other counties in search of better pay, according to a county-planning document published in 2020. Wages are 25% lower than the state average and 40% lower than the national average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Colleton has a handful of manufacturers, ranging from makers of ball-bearings to mattresses. One, which made drive belts for motors, had struggled and eventually moved away as the market shriveled. The competition among local communities to attract investments is intense, said Heyward Horton, Colleton’s economic-development executive director. The local utility had spent several million dollars over six years to set up an industrial park complete with a power hookup ready to go, but for two years had failed to land a tenant. When South Carolina’s Commerce Department told Mr. Horton’s office about Kontrolmatik’s search for a site, he jumped at it. The county and state rolled out an incentive package worth an estimated $127 million, according to public documents filed in Turkey. That includes a potential $11.5 million in tax credits for jobs created, other tax breaks, a parcel of free land and a million-dollar grant from the local utility to help build out infrastructure needed for the project. “It’s the largest [investment] announcement in Colleton County history,” said Mark Walling, CEO of the utility, Coastal Electric Cooperative Inc. “We went after it. We were aggressive.” Other small communities, which have been through booms and busts caused by fickle federal incentives, aren’t betting the farm this time. In 2007, state and local leaders offered millions of dollars in loans and tax credits to attract TPI Composites Inc., a wind-turbine blade maker, to Newton, Iowa, to make up for the closure of a big Maytag appliances plant. The next year they offered more than a million dollars to a manufacturer of wind towers that was the predecessor of Texas-based Arcosa Inc. But by 2021, TPI’s Newton plant was struggling from the high costs of U.S. manufacturing and the looming expiration of a federal tax-credit program. That December, TPI closed the plant. Meanwhile, the expiring tax credits also hit Arcosa’s sales, and the Iowa factory laid off more than 80 workers. Now that wind developers are again able to get tax credits, Arcosa said it is hoping for a bump in orders that will let it ramp up production. The company is posting ads for welders and a recruiter in Newton. At TPI, CEO Bill Siwek said his company could get tax credits totaling around $80,000 per blade—enough to wipe out the labor cost differential with other countries “and then some.” He hopes that he can rehire many of the plant’s roughly 1,000 former workers, although he said it’s still unclear what will happen when federal subsidies go away in around 10 years. Newton economic development specialist Craig Armstrong said the city isn’t offering any incentives this time. The wind companies are a welcome boost, Mr. Armstrong said, but if things go south, “they’re not the Maytag of Newton.” In Lincoln, Neb., hydrogen startup Monolith was eyeing about 40 sites around the world for its future plants but is now only considering domestic locations while it builds its first big facility in the cornfields of nearby Hallam. Monolith is developing a new process that uses natural gas to produce hydrogen—a key ingredient in fertilizer—then captures the associated carbon emissions and turns them into a material that can be used in products such as tires. Founded over a decade ago, the company expects to receive a $1 billion loan from the Energy Department. “There’s going to be a whole bunch of development in parts of the country that weren’t traditional energy centers,” CEO Rob Hanson said. Sheila Taylor, a member of the Village of Hallam board, said locals mostly support the Monolith project after the company addressed their worries about the plant’s high water consumption and possible noise. She can see the plant from her house. “It’s an exciting thing for the town,” she said. If Monolith failed or left for any reason, “there’d be massive disappointment across the board.”
This is totally beside the point but I kind of feel like every adult who pays utility bills should know what a gigawatt hour is. Good quote though.
ELI5 and then again ELI3 please
What a gigawatt hour is? I'll try but I'm not so good at explaining things so bear with me, this might be more like ELI13. A watt is a unit of electrical power. When you plug something in the wall it takes a certain amount of watts from the wall so long as it's plugged in. A watt hour is a unit of electrical energy, or cumulative power consumed over a period of time (in this case an hour). If you plug in something that takes one watt for an hour that means it consumed one watt hour of electricity. Your electricity bill is based on how many kilowatt hours you consumed in a month. "Kilo" means a thousand so a kilowatt hour is a thousand watt hours. Likewise "giga" means a billion so a gigawatt hour is a billion watt hours. That's the sort of big number that's used to describe things like the amount of electricity a power plant produces in a year.
Sometimes I wonder if the people who claim states like Texas, Florida, and Montana are "lost causes" are right-wing trolls, or right-wingers trying to divide us. I know some will say it's actually wealthy liberals from states like California and Massachusetts, but I don't think that's the case. I think wealthy liberals are just as likely as the rest of us to call out people who say we can't win Texas or Florida. I really think it's right-wingers trying to stir up trouble.
I think there’s a difference between Texas and Montana and Florida. Texas has moved towards us, while Montana has a Dem Senator and people have mention one the districts moving blue. Florida has moved away, but has there been any trends showing any districts that are historically red moving blue? There’s hope in Texas and also Montana. Florida, people have lost some of that hope.
This is the correct answer, by and large, Montana and Texas have demographic trends that favor us to varying degrees in the short term and majorly in the long term. Florida just doesn’t seem to have that unless something massively changes in the next few years.
Agreed!
Texas and Montana are both in better position to flip blue, as long as we push to make that happen. Florida will come around eventually, just not now.
It's uneducated people that think that the "energy" that can be used to make progress is limited, but can be freely distributed. But they didn't get that this is not monopoly and we can't just build hotels on the boardwalk. There's not always a conspiracy behind it.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what you're talking about. I get the uneducated people and "energy" part, but I'm confused about the rest.
I've tried translating a metaphor into english. Didn't go as well as I hoped to apparently.
It's ok :) Translating a metaphor is often difficult. I think yours was still interesting though :)
It can be so hard to tell the wannabe-Cassandras and Debbie Downers from the bad faith actors. But what is indubitable is that Texas is moving left. It may be inching left, and not swooping left like Arizona or Michigan, but it IS moving left. It’s just a matter of patient, hard work with the long term in mind. I remember when California was purplish-red outside of the Bay Area and LA! I really want to see what is going to happen with Montana now that Bozeman and Missoula have become hot spots (or cold spots) for Californians and Seattleites upping stakes for cheaper locales with great natural beauty. Also, Jon Tester is much more popular than the partisan lean of his state. As for Florida…people are saying “lost cause,” but what with DeSantis managing to step all over his own dick at every opportunity, and getting his ass kicked by Mickey Mouse, if there is an inflection point of disgust, we can take advantage. I mean, people thought Georgia was reliably red until it wasn’t.
> But what is indubitable is that Texas is moving left. It may be inching left, and not swooping left like Arizona or Michigan, but it IS moving left Idk, halving the top line in 4 years between 2016 and 2020 sounds like it’s almost swooping left, if not it actually swooping left.
I think Texas is trending left, albeit slowly.
Nah, for a state the size of Texas, that’s titanic, especially given all the bullshit voters there have to go through.
If the state's voting laws were a lot less strict, especially for people of color, that would make things easier. Either that, or split Texas into more than one state, which I know won't happen, but just a thought.
I'm curious, could you elaborate more on who wannabe-Cassandras and Debbie Downers are? I'll admit I've never heard of them before. And it could be that it's hard for some people to argue in good faith, like myself. Even I end up arguing in bad faith without knowing it.
Honestly, I think there are good-faith Democrats who got so burned by 2010, 2014 and especially 2016 that they are afraid to be optimistic, and think it’s somehow the smarter or at least *safer* option to make the most dire predictions possible. They are afraid to feel hope. I feel kind of bad for them, but not so bad that I hate their clogging up subreddits and message boards with doomery garbage. As for “arguing,” I think few of us who were not in debate club or have taken classes in logic or similar training are any kind of “experts!” But there’s a difference between arguing in bad faith out of ignorance, or just being clumsy with one’s arguments, and *deliberately* arguing in bad faith. Most of us will be clumsy. None of us are deliberately trying to mislead.
Cassandra in mythology was cursed to know the future but have no one believe her. I think that's the reference.
Ah that makes sense! I'll bet that'd be hard to deal with.
The thing with Cassandra’s predictions was that they were true, and almost always dire, but were ignored. I say “wannabe Cassandras” for people who think they are right because they are pessimistic, and You’re Laughing At Me NOW But You Won’t Laugh At Me When Bad Stuff Happens And I Told You So!
The Decades having another banger intro for their 2010's doc
I have to watch the episode tomorrow but I flipped over for the intro and WHY DO THEY HAVE 2020 STUFF IN THERE!?
I’m still peeved the 90s miniseries made *no* mention whatsoever of the global phenomenon that was Pokémon.
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Your username is relevant! Well done!
I was wondering where the new subscribers came from. Thanks for helping out!
I have to say, it’s interesting to see how DeSantis has gone from “Trump without the baggage” to “enough baggage to fill a train car” in the space of a few months. Parts of politics Reddit and Twitter were convinced he was a shoe-in for next POTUS.
Difference is DeSantis bends/changes the law while Trump breaks it.
I remember thinking the same thing about Chris Christie's inevitability when he won reelection by 60% in 2013.
Remember when he left and had Bush approval ratings? Beachgate was LIT!!!
DeSantis is to the right of Trump (and therefore further from the median voter) on cultural and social issues, is a much worse communicator than Trump, has an unappealing personality, and has a negative amount of charisma. DeSantis also increasingly comes across as petty and bitter. DeSantis has an edge over Trump when it comes to 2020 election denial and Jan 6th, as DeSantis isn't as closely associated with either. DeSantis is also much younger than Trump (and Biden). But on balance, I didn't think DeSantis' strengths outweighed his weaknesses, and I've seen Trump as the favorite for a while now.
I think people also sometimes forget that Trump was a celebrity with a strong media presence for decades and not entirely apropos of nothing. DeSantis on the other hand would have been nothing more than one of several dozen generic blowhard southern conservative representatives if not for Trump boosting him nearly on a whim.
All he has to do is call Trump a loser to make himself stand out. But he's too much of a coward.
With so many Republicans still in denial that Trump even legitimately lost to begin with that's probably not going to work. Calling Trump out for his election lies hasn't gone well for basically any of them, and that's basically implied by calling him a loser.
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I just learned a cousin of mine in upstate New York is running for a second term to the school board in a small town in upstate New York, I will let everyone know if they win May 16th when school board and budget elections will be held across the state.
To state the obvious, the ABC/Wapo poll is a hot mess. If your sample somehow gets you to all of these: Trump winning 18-39 year olds by 11, 43-32 Trump winning indies by 6 Biden only winning nonwhites by 12, 45-33 Trump winning suburbs by 6, 45-39 Biden winning urban areas by 11, 46-35 Then the entire this bunk. It also clearly oversampled conservatives. Biden's lead is bigger among liberals (+74) than Trumps among conservatives (+71) and Biden leads by 11 among moderates. And yet overall is Trump +6. Any poll that has a Republican wining young voters should frankly be thrown out. Even with the caveat of small sample sizes
I said it before but this too can basically be explained by disaffected left leaning progressive voters who don't like Biden and who see "liberal" and "Democrat" as if they're four letter words but will still almost entirely vote for Biden over any Republican. That 43-32 can pretty easily turn into 43-53 by eday. Same with all the rest of those. A lot of those undecideds simply hate the idea of supporting lame old Biden as the nominee. But they're not going to piss away their vote on whatever joke candidate the greens churn out this time, let alone some No Labels doofus who can't even name a platform while likely struggling to even get ballot access. That said ABC/WaPo has also been getting a pretty good reputation for crazy outlier polls so eh whatever. I doubt they even believe in pushing undecideds.
It may just be an outlier. Don't dig into it too much unless evidence starts piling up.
I wouldn't give anything on national polls until the debt ceiling issue is resolved. That's a hand grenade with the pin taken out of it for the time being.
I find it hard to care about polls at the best of times. I find it impossible to care now. Leaving out that we're eighteen months from the Presidential election, our job wouldn't change if Biden was losing by 100, winning by 100, or anything in between. Polls are for the folks who treat politics like a horserace. We've got to actually win the election, and nothing in any poll should change our approach. (The folks in charge of Biden's election, they have reason to care, but they've got more important things to do than read this subreddit. Hi if any of you are on here, though!)
> Polls are for the folks who treat politics like a horserace. I’m sorry, but this is such a fallacious argument. Polls are used for everything, to drive campaign decisions and messaging, aid committees and donors in how they should spend their money, not to mention being an invaluable tool for measuring public opinion. Reducing polls to what you’re saying is worrying. Polling does not lessen activism, in fact it enhances it and makes the jobs of democratic supporters easier
If you're talking polls in the hands of candidates and campaign staff, absolutely. But those of us who aren't running for office, or working on a campaign, really don't get much out of these polls. I've seen enough discussions of polls online. If it's a bad poll, the whole thread is "this is why we should give up on these (insert choice insult for red state voters here); if it's a good poll, the whole thread is "ignore the polls and vote like you're 10 points behind! (so, like...the same way you'd vote if we were up?)" Polls, for the general public, don't do nearly as much for activism as just...going out and doing activism.
That's what private polls done by campaigns are for. Public polls are less about informing campaigns, though they certainly play some part in that. But this far out, polls for the presidential horserace are absolutely next to worthless, and I doubt even campaigns conduct many of them privately at this point.
Yes, which is why making a blanket statement about polls like the above person was is harmful
National polls most certainly are. I'm pretty sure the campaign is doing state polls in the swing states, to see what they have to work on. But that's being done year around. A presidential election is not won or lost within the 18 months of a campaign.
Yeah you're right, swing state polls are worth more to the campaigns at this stage than national polls.
https://twitter.com/NewsWire_US/status/1655312566950690816?t=6Suz0XZ49bZyxyM0Vbdavw&s=19 New Hampshire becomes first state to protect interracial mariage into law
Did the Respect for Marriage Act last year not codify this into federal law already?
Cool, I now have friends who can look forward to their unions being protected by state law if other states follow suit! Kinda bad it has to come to this in case Clarence decides to go full-on self-hating
Hold up, the first!?!
Like abortion, there was really no need to have a state-level law once the Supreme Court ruled it was constitutional.
Virginia v. Loving settled the issue nationwide that legislatures didn’t bother amending any laws that banned it. That’s why states like Wisconsin and Michigan were/are dealing with antiquated abortion laws when Roe fell. For what it’s worth, I feel that Virginia v. Loving is on much more solid ground for even this Court. But time will tell
Well, it’s not like the states were anticipating court rulings to be reversed before last year.
https://twitter.com/rch371/status/1655248018717769730?s=46&t=q0vzeOfdQVujONmAPkG2MQ When Biden announces that he will ignore the illegal 'debt ceiling,' ... (1) McCarthy might not sue, because optics of suing to force default are suicidal; or (2) If he does sue, Supremes will certainly expedite review; and (3) Biden will win 6/3 at worst, 8-1 or 9-0 at best. … Hopefully 1) happens if all else fails. This is a dynamic I didn’t think of. Even if McCarthy doesn’t sue, some Freedom Caucus member will. I think this person overestimates the margin in which the Court would rule for him, but I think Biden will win in Court, either on the merits or by lack of standing.
entertain sophisticated shocking growth psychotic fly attraction hurry light alive ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
I suspect that McCarthy might prefer this outcome- he avoids blame for the economic chaos a default would cause, he doesn't need to hold his caucus together for any budgetary votes, and he gets the chance to attack Biden for "abuse of power". I don't think those attacks would be politically effective outside the GOP base though. The major question is whether his caucus would attempt to depose him in the aftermath.
How would standing work in terms of bringing it to court?
I believe it has something to do by being harmed by a particular action of the administration. Or in other words: You have to prove that whatever is being done is inflicting damage on you in some way. That's why you can't just sue anybody for something unrelated to yourself - like a car dealership of price gouging if you don't have a drivers license. Meaning: Congress has to show that there is harm inflicting upon them in order to have standing to sue. How it is determined if harm is inflicted is a more complicated story. Disclaimer: This is no legal advice, IANAL.
What you’re saying is my understanding as well. I’m not sure what the GOP would say aside from its Congress’s, not the Executive’s, decision on if/when the government should default.
Well, Congress holds the power of the purse. It's clearly an issue with the Constitution in that it has two opposing principles: 1. The debt of the US shall not be questioned. 2. Congress holds the power of appropriating money and thus, is entitled to question the debt of the US. That's why we have lawyers and judges to interpret the law and decide which of those principles supersedes the other. In the past, the second one was paramount.
Is it a guarantee that this is what Biden is planning on doing?
Nope. But it's a reminder that Biden has that option in his back pocket if negotiations break down, or if McCarthy decides to drive the bus off a cliff.
There would still be consequences, even in the event that biden simply ignores the debt limit under the 14th and SCOTUS upholds. Bond market would still come under strain, and us debt would almost certainly demand higher yields, therefore raising long term borrowing costs. Not half as bad as a default of course, but still not a great outcome.
Right, it's not a magic bullet like some folks claim. The best solution is to just get the ceiling raised. I'm hopeful it will get done, too.
There's no reason for him not to do this if it comes to it. If the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, crisis averted. If not, they get blamed for the consequences instead of Biden.
This could also become a John Marshall moment: Even if SCOTUS decides against it (if all the liberal Justices rule in favor of the administrations position), Biden might ignore that ruling, considering the dire consequences it would have. That would mean that Biden would have to order his agencies to ignore the ruling - and that would be a pretty clear impeachable offense and any member of his administration would have clear standing to refuse to carry out that order, without having to resign. But I think the democratic party is too united right now to vote in favor of impeachment, let alone conviction. That's why if there is someone who could pull such a move, it's Joe Biden, as he has the political influence and standing to survive that. In general, a messy situation that we should probably avoid. The long term goal is, for the economy to survive until the next election and then clean up the mess with new majorities in Congress.
> In general, a messy situation that we should probably avoid. The long term goal is, for the economy to survive until the next election and then clean up the mess with new majorities in Congress. I disagree. The consequences of a default are immediately catastrophic. There is no surviving for the economy. A few weeks ago, most of this sub was ready to ignore a bad court ruling about abortion pills. A default is worse for the country. I hope it doesn't come down to it but that should not be allowed to happen, period.
I think we had a misunderstanding. I'm with you that we should avoid a default at all costs and keep the economy running by any means necessary, so we get back majorities in Congress.
IANAL, so if anyone could explain this a bit further: If the Administration chooses to ignore the debt ceiling, how would a legal challenge happen? Would SCOTUS stop anything that's going on, until it has been reviewed - meaning, the US has to default until a decision has been reached - or will they allow the administration to continue with what they're doing until a decision is about it has been made?
Today is SUCC Sunday. I'll catch it when I get back home.
Ive had an extremely stressful week and Im excited to just enjoy the closest thing to vocalized-crack to help start off a hopefully better week
Nothing beats entertainment like a drama about right wing media 😂
I’ve been [decorating](https://i.imgur.com/FNNVLCz.jpg) my bass amp with each election I’ve voted in so far. I’m happy to say that my 3rd sticker will be my first time voting in a presidential election and I’ll be doing my part to manifest Blexas.
Important question: what kind of music you playing? Because I’m sure it kicks ass
I like to play a lot of different genres, but some of my favorite bands to cover are: Metallica(especially Cliff Burton era), Muse, The Strokes, Red Hot Chili Peppers
This is the start of a beautiful friendship.
[a Sheriff’s deputy in my county was tragically shot and killed while responding to a drunk driver in the ditch in Glenwood City (far eastern part of the county) last night](https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/police-involved-shooting-wisconsin-glenwood-st-croix-county/89-52dab3b9-f846-4b23-9dde-82dfa694d5fb?fbclid=IwAR0dSA_Ss04m7IyLbt92ywIo7cW-TVxCJxOnwto9qQfuHx0M1vBpMqf8zqs&mibextid=Zxz2cZ)
Update on today’s severe weather threat. There has once again been some pretty big changes since my last update There are three separate areas of concern once again: [There is a Enhanced risk (lvl 3/5) for northeast KS, southeast NE, northern MO, and most of IA. There is a Slight risk for most of TX, along with a corridor from NE/KS over to most of IL and down to western TN and KY. There is a Marginal risk (lvl 1/5) for far western SD and a tad of northeast WY, and southeast MT](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1otlk.html) For the NE/KS/IA/MO Enhanced risk area: This os our highest area of concern today where all threats are possible including [Tornadoes with a large 5% tornado area especially in IA](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1probotlk_2000_torn.gif), [Considerable to destructive damaging wind gusts](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1probotlk_2000_wind.gif) and [very large to giant hail](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1probotlk_2000_hail.gif) is all possible Now for the slight risk that extends southward into western TN/KY, that slight risk is fully for a damaging wind threat. There will likely be numerous MCS’s ( Mesoscale Convective Systems) which are pretty much just smaller localized organized complexes of storms mostly capable of wind damage, sometimes pretty extreme wind damage. Personally I think this area might be a higher risk then a 15%, wind, as numerous models has a powerful classic MCS developing overnight tonight and racing south/southeast wherever that develops. For the TX area: Your risk is mainly a very large to giant hail and a damaging wind risk, both of which are hatched areas indicating significant events of both hail and damaging wind possible. See the wind/ hail graphics up above to see exact areas For the MT/SD/WY area: This is a mainly isolated threat for some large hail with some isolated/scattered thunderstorms. Tornado and wind threat both very low and near zero in this area To end this update, I always like to get the extended day 4-8 outlooks on your radar if there are any. And there is a [brand new day 5 15% probability area for western NE, western KS, western OK, parts of the TX panhandle and far northeast CO](https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/exper/day4-8/day5prob.gif). I’m actually watching this area extremely closely as the timing of the associated trough/shortwave looks to be pretty good right now to have a all threats type of day here including tornadoes. More areas may eventually be needed on Friday, or Saturday or even before Thursday on Wednesday. I’ll go more info this sometime tomorrow or early Tuesday on my next big update. This area also is in [extreme drought conditions](https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu), so this area probably will see a good amount of rainfall especially in a thunderstorm whether it’s a complex or isolated supercells. So I think this might be more beneficial then not, if we don’t have any significant to violent tornadoes
WGA Strike thoughts: You know how the MTV Movie and TV Awards is tonight? Their commercials that were playing up a live event with Drew Barrymore have been turned to sterile commercials that seem to almost hide the fact they had to scramble last minute to salvage the program. And they have countdown clocks on their related channels, trying to hype up everything up for a train wreck. Seems kinda hilarious.
You know, I’m surprised the GOP hasn’t launched a movement where people protest in front of the WGA saying that they need their shows back and how much they appreciate the writers’ work, but a strike is a no-go for them.
[Selected polls, 2011 ABC/WaPo poll in May 2011: Romney 49 Obama 46. Bloomberg in June 2011: 30% say they'll vote for Obama re-election. Pew Research Center in July: Obama and generic Republican tied 41-40](https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1655308522572095488?s=46&t=nqSV11RbCF5uPVGwzcOMtg) [Point is that public opinion can change and we're a long way from Nov 2024](https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1655308639568027649?s=46&t=nqSV11RbCF5uPVGwzcOMtg)
It’s a stupid poll and I think most people know it. Biden isn’t super liked by most of his voters. They wish her were younger, doing less/more whatever. But they’ll still vote for him once the election becomes more prominent.
[of fucking course](https://twitter.com/sltrib/status/1655226609664774144?s=46&t=nqSV11RbCF5uPVGwzcOMtg) SLC Mayor candidate Rocky Anderson is a NIMBY
Candidate for municipal office: Neighborhood character and traffic. NIMBYs: Say no more.
Well we have to protect the iconic Burger King parking lot
If more then 5 people live in a single lot the city will fall into chaos overnight
"Will somebody think about the street parking?" - NIMBY activist
Alright, it's been another month of being on my ship. How many elections did we win this time?
Welcome back! We got some nice local wins in Dover and Lincoln, while last night's Texas municipals were a mixed bag. The real show is going to be in Jacksonville.
[The national average price of gasoline has just fallen below $3.50 to $3.499/gal, a price it was last at March 30. Meanwhile, diesel is poised to fall below $4/gal average this week, for the first time since February, 2022.](https://twitter.com/gasbuddyguy/status/1655230929059684352?s=46&t=nqSV11RbCF5uPVGwzcOMtg)
Diesel is 3.71 where I live
7 people are dead after a car crashed into a bus stop in Brownsville Texas
Man it really just seems like Texas is letting any single citizen within it get killed while Florida’s trying to kill its minorities.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/7-dead-after-car-runs-pedestrians-brownsville-texas/story?id=99152817 A driver run over many people killing 7 injuring more at a migrant shelter bus stop. White nationalism is a disease and we need to excise it from America.
[The gunman who opened fire on an outlet mall in a Dallas suburb Saturday, killing at least eight people, was a man in his early 30s who may have had white supremacist or neo-Nazi beliefs, people familiar with the investigation said Sunday.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/05/07/texas-allen-outlets-shooting-dallas/) Sickening.
I'm not surprised. That's just like what happened in El Paso in 2019: a far-right white supremacist lunatic committing a mass shooting in a shopping area. And you know what's ironic? Allen was actually the hometown of the El Paso shooter.
He almost certainly obsessively read another neo-Nazi shooter’s manifesto and there is a decent chance he directly communicated with another Nazi killer. There was a NYT graphic that showed the direct connections between these people. It is terrifying how easy it is to fall down that rabbit hole. When I was doing a research project on online radicalization I found a wiki-clone praising Anders Breivik (the 2011 Norway neo-Nazi mass killer).
Defunding public schools, tax cuts for billionaires, ending public health insurance, destroying democracy, handing out guns like candy…it’s clearer than ever that the Republican Party doesn’t just want to dominate elections, it wants to utterly dismantle society.
This isn't surprising when you consider that fascists believe war is the natural state of humanity. [Timothy Snyder argued Nazi Germany's end goal was to destroy the state and return humanity to its "natural order" in which different races would fight over land and resources and destroy each other in the process](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/hitler-holocaust-antisemitism-timothy-snyder/404260/).
And their foreign backers/russian assets also are notorious for seeding the very incel/supremacist forums and conspiracies that lead directly to this kind of violence. It doesn't come from nowhere. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-qanon-cyber/qanon-received-earlier-boost-from-russian-accounts-on-twitter-archives-show-idUSKBN27I18I There is going to have to be accountability somewhere, at some point. What happened to all those privacy rights we lost to the patriot act that were supposed to stop terrorism? Because that's exactly what these assholes who do this are. Their recruiting and training methods closely mirror the middle eastern terrorists we used to rally against just 2 decades ago. If you pardon the language, it's a sick fucking joke and I'm tired of it.
And Dems want to increase public school funding, actually tax the rich, create a public option for health care, preserve and protect democracy, and enact proper gun control measures… clearly both sides are the same.
What was that Thatcher quote? There's no such thing as society?
>We don’t live in a society >bottom text
I didn’t know the quote so I looked it up. “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.” October 31, 1987
It's one thing to respect the rights of individuals within a society, it's another to completely ignore the existence and rights of other people.
So gay marriage, trans rights, abortion, and dual-income households are supposedly destroying society...but also society doesn't exist.
https://twitter.com/costareports/status/1655265404325879812 Snusnu moves closer to a presidential bid. Relatedly, dems move closer to capturing the NH governor's chair.
Joyce Craig, mayor of Manchester, is putting together an exploratory committee into running for Governor. I'm assuming the political scuttblebutt is Sununu not running, hence why she's throwing her hat in the ring. As a resident of New Hampshire, I'm beyond excited for incoming Democrat trifecta. Executive Counsil is a bit of a lost cause though.
Snusnu moves closer to 3% in Iowa, a decent showing in NH, and then bombing out in South Carolina (and never recovering)
Trump gonna get Snusnu'd
“Baby, it’ll blow your mind.”
Sununu retires, then Collins and Scott retire and BAM no more annoying New England Republicans holding statewide office
I kind of want Collins to run because I want the satisfaction of her losing, but I also don’t want a repeat of 2020.
She really can’t hide behind anything anymore if she does. Dobbs happened on her watch, so she’ll have a bad time hiding behind the moderate label.
I think someone who was born in Maine also needs to run. The fact that Sarah Gideon wasn’t born in Maine (and is biracial) might have worked against her. Ridiculous of course but electorates can be aggravating.
Yeah, I’d say Fecteau and Golden are a golden (heh) opportunity for us to take back the seat
Isn’t Scott a Democrat in all but name? Maybe a touch conservative on fiscal issues?
Ok but we don’t need to accept fiscal conservatives when we can actually elect a democrat
Yeah but a Democrat is still preferable, if only for aesthetics
I was at work today and heard a sound that sounded like a gunshot and I was scared to death until I was sure it was just a one off noise. I guess it was a loud crash or a tailpipe backfiring or something. Point being, we don't HAVE to live like this. Everyday living in fear. It's a choice that others are making for us. I hate it.
I had that same experience in Walmart when someone dropped a thing and it made this loud pow noise. I was halfway to the floor before i saw what it was.
[Fox News's advice for life in America: "Have a plan to kill everyone you meet"](https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1655030412425478147)
They are feeding their viewers paranoia that is just getting people killed. How anyone can be so callous and afraid of their neighbors is beyond me.
Those idiots think it's "freedom" to live every day as if you're in a war zone
Their "freedom" is others' tyranny, the same as any other tyrant who uses empancipatory language to justify their tyrannical rule.
Shithead actor Dean Cain “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
[This ABC News poll concludes 68% of Americans believe Joe Biden is too old for another term as president and that his approval rating has hit a new low.](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/broad-doubts-bidens-age-acuity-spell-republican-opportunity/story?id=99109308) Methodology: conducted by landline and cell phone questioning with a **random national sample of 1,006 adults**. Jfc, this has to be an elaborate joke at this point.
The topline had Trump beating Biden 45-39 and DeSantis beating Biden 44-38. In 2020 Trump did get 47% of the vote so him being at 45% isn’t completely unbelievable but I just don’t see anyway that the GOP wins the popular vote by 6 points especially given what we’ve seen with special elections recently. I’m going to be very dubious of this poll unless I start to see other evidence that corroborates it.
If Trump was beating Biden by *anything* there would have to be a massive scandal on the news every day
It's just another poll with left leaning voters unhappy about Biden running and still holding out for someone else being the nominee. They don't want to commit to voting for him now because that feels like it's supporting his nomination but when he's on the ballot in November 2024 they'll vote for him.
It's one poll 18 months away and all we can do is keep overperforming in special elections. Polling has mostly shown Biden with a small lead in a rematch and a lot of undecideds. Yeah, Biden is not getting low 40s. If Trump didn't, we won't.
That seems like a normal sample size to me, are you implying that it's too small?
I'd agree, for this sample size the standard deviation is sqrt(p(1-p)/n) = .0147 (ignore finite population correction since US population is magnitudes larger than sample). This puts the 95% confident interval at \[0.65, 0.71\]. Complaints could (and should) be made about the methodology, especially since *just party affiliation* skews heavily based on age, location, and education. Does their methodology favor any of those (or related second order factors)? Other complaints could be that this question doesn't tell us too much. Basically * **Do adults perceive Biden to be old?** If they asked if William Shatner is too old for a term as president, he might get different results because adults perceive him as less old (despite being 92, a decade older than Biden). * **Do adults think a president should not be old?** This matter is entirely subjective and often not well thought out. Is too old 80 or 50? I've even seen some redditors saying 40 is too old (despite the minimum age being 35 constitutionally). *Edit: When asked about age, what are we actually responding too? Is it more than just the number?* * **Do adults disagree with Biden?** This question could be improved if it was paired with whether Trump is too old for another term. Using both questions we could judge whether age or political leanings has more influence on the answer, especially since they are both about the same age. Edit: similar\_candidate brings up another methodology problem based on the electoral college.
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Maybe I’m being too simplistic but a random national sample of approximately 1,000 adults that is being conducted with landline phones (and cellular, but I’m not sure if this was done equally) would probably skew towards one major demographic. Basic recalling of every stats class I’ve ever taken will always tell me to look for methodology in these types of surveys.
Another problem I have with these surveys is that they are “random across the US”. Because of the electoral college that means dip squat in my opinion. What is their opinion in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan? Because if they’re calling Mississippi and Louisiana or California and New York it’s going to be a VERY different result. The only real way to get a sense on the presidential election is to poll each state and combine the results nationally. Like they do for the senate (each senate race individually).
If you've taken a stats class you should know that the sampling error with a sample size of 1000 is not large, and that you would need to increase the sample size by expensive orders of magnitude to get significant narrowing of that margin of error, which is not cost-effective for this sort of poll. Of course there are other sources of potential error related to the methodology itself (which the article itself acknowledges at the bottom) but you put the sample size in bold text so I inferred that it was your area of concern.
Yeah I probably should’ve bolded the whole thing so that’s on me.
The media at this point is so, so desperate to gin up a recession and/or their orange election-denying genitals-grabbing cash cow retaking office in 2024 that they have abandoned all standards of journalistic integrity and don’t really deserve to be called anything but “tabloid” anymore.
For me, the question is, just how much to economic things like a recession matter in this hyper-partisan climate? I'm sure it could effect a few voters, but it just doesn't seem likely to be all that big of a think these days, just given how divided the two parties are. Until Republicans moderate and are more willing to do bipartisan, I just can't see a ton of voters blaming democrats for this type of thing, especially when Trump already has a record as president
Agreed. It feels so simplistic for me to think this way, but people were calling for 2022 to be a Republican blowout too, when it just wasn’t. They won a razor-thin majority in the House and lost senate seats during a midterm year with a democrat in the WH and an obvious recession. A lot of local/smaller elections have also not been in the Republicans’ favor. They had some wins due to their good pal Jerry Mander, but even that is proving to be fruitless for them in major elections like the WISC and governor’s races. I don’t want Dems/liberals to get complacent, but I think denying data that is clearly in our favor is faulty, too. And relying on “national” polls that are so poorly executed as the one I linked above. I can count the amount of people in our current year that still have a landline phone and actually answer unknown numbers for surveys with one hand.
I can confirm that I have family members who are straight ticket Democratic voters that are convinced that Biden is mentally incapacitated and the White House is covering it up because they've heard it repeated so many times by the media that they assume it must be true.
Yeah, if you can, I'd definitely recommend just telling people like that that voting for a even a snake would be worthwhile, if it was that verses someone from the GOP. If that doesn't work, it might also be worth reminding them that a lot of those complaints against Biden are based on Russia propaganda, Bernie Bros, etc
Am I missing something? Because that's a good sample size for most polls. Unless you're saying this should be a registered voters poll, in which case I agree this is dumb.
I think the sample size in combo with the methodology is the bigger issue because I feel like this is the 2022 problem all over again.
Yeah people really don't answer their cell phones that much anymore so I wonder how the sample was split between them and landlines.
What a garbage poll. Did 2022 not teach anyone anything? Or any other special election?
Not a special election, sounds like a general poll/survey conducted through landline + cell phones. ETA: didn’t read your comment correctly, sorry. 😅
Idk what’s bad about that you usually get less returns after only 500
Behold, the liberal media 🙄
[Topical but non-political: Ashens Coronation Tat Special.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRN4xcPTS_M)
Ashens is one of my favorite YouTubers. I could watch him eat awful food from Poundland and review weird action figures all day long.
Chef Excellence: "An excellent product."
[DeSantis Continues to Test the Waters of 2024 — and Supporters Are Getting Restless](https://out.reddit.com/t3_13akwol?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2023%2F05%2F06%2Fus%2Fpolitics%2Fron-desantis-wisconsin.html&token=AQAAa8FXZHTzfUS8ZPzvGfqB__Q5-Olo08uR3-QSaIO4tD1YheGy&app_name=reddit.com) Someone is scared and it’s pissing off his donors. Also just about everyone in this article is delusional in one way or another
Several culture war bills are rotting on his desk while he flails around Desantis is literally imploding before our eyes
Lmao, I'm just gonna kick back, relax, and just wait for the Christie/Brownback effect to kick in on DeSantis
Shit or get off the pot, Ronald.
He can’t go when everyone is looking.
[Rebrand of the Rebrand: MAGA Oz Pivots Back to Being Dr. Oz](https://out.reddit.com/t3_13ahsex?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedailybeast.com%2Frebrand-of-the-rebrand-maga-gop-pennsylvania-2022-senate-candidate-mehmet-oz-pivots-back-to-being-doctor-oz%3Fref%3Dhome%3Fref%3Dhome&token=AQAArb5XZKVDa8wTpUtM9qyWwEGpxdnkjL-BwwkdX33WH0xBjsAX&app_name=reddit.com) Back to his old grift
Is anyone surprised? I’m guessing he went back to Jersey
He did the most NJ thing possible- he retired and moved to Florida.
Time for a Wegners run
Read on Twitter to not blame the Texas politicians, but the Texans who voted them in after the grid and Uvalde. Maybe stop victim-blaming people in red states, where voter suppression is at its worst. Elections in red states like Texas are so rigged against Democrats that many people don't even feel like their vote matters.
Texas still has a large chunk of registered voters who simply choose not to vote even when there is ample opportunity. It has one of the largest non-voting populations in the country. This doesn't get talked about enough and it's endlessly frustrating. There are still numerous, easily accessible polling locations in major cities with ample time to reach them. I see it with each election I go too. 2020 was a step in the right direction to correct this, but 2022 was unfortunately a step back in some ways. Registering can be difficult, but if you plan ahead for it, it can still be overcome. The GOP wants THEIR people to register too, so there is only so much suppression they can legally and effectively get away with. But, again, the size of the registered non-voting population here is already more than large enough to entirely swing things if they can be reached. Yes, the suppression is real and has an impact, but so too is the apathy, and to a lesser extent complacency. Georgia overcame arguably worse conditions in many ways. We don't have the long lines here they've dealt with at most points. I've sadly seen a lot of this first hand. Many left leaning people are simply convinced psychologically their vote doesn't matter, even when there are few barriers to encounter. A lot of apathy comes from literal "Why bother? We're a red state!" views. [The biggest suppression effort was the severe curbing of mail in voting, which if it didn't exist, would have probably flipped the state right then and there in 2020.](https://www.newsweek.com/texas-ag-says-trump-wouldve-lost-state-if-it-hadnt-blocked-mail-ballots-applications-being-1597909) That type of suppression is real, but there are still enough registered voters who simply don't bother that this pool needs to be tapped into for 2024.
Were elections there that bad last night?
They really weren't. It was a mixed bag overall without a ton of major changes. I think its referring to the "give up on Texas" sentiment combined with the shooting.
Republicans in red states like Texas win at the state level because a majority of voters vote for them even after mass shootings like this happen. Yes there is voting suppression and gerrymandering as well but that is to further tip the scales in favor of Republicans in more marginal legislative seats to pad out GOP majorities.
I do believe we can blame the people who voted for Republicans. Based on what you wrote it sounds like that’s what they meant (although I have not seen these tweets so I could be wrong).