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Ward From Cali's avatar

"By the way, I'm a big fan of solar."

Says the man who spends a small fortune on makeup to make him look tanned, because he never actually goes out in the sun.

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Megan Macomber's avatar

Donald Trump's mind: "terribly literal" while simultaneously totally illiterate!

Top that, "she" or "her" or whatever you call yourself, Black (not Black) lady!

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Daniel O'Riordan's avatar

What the kids these days can't comprehend is that we used to do these big things all the time, and we did them well.

It helped that, during those years, the top tax rate was 91%, dropped to 70% by JFK.

It also helped a whole fucking lot that, if there was any way to tie the big project into a Cold War issue, you could get the Republicans on board to spend federal money like it was a war (without the waste, fraud, and abuse of the Pentagon).

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marcus816's avatar

“[T]he factories won’t start producing chips until they’re actually built, and by then undocumented migrants may have eaten all the silicon and engineers, how would you like that?“

That will have to after they’ve undergone their mandatory gender-reassignment surgery, there are, after all, priorities.

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Daniel O'Riordan's avatar

Let's see, 20 million immigrants coming across the border every year, all of them criminals, of course, so, yeah, we're going to need a shitload of silicon.

As for the engineers, we might as well transgender them as well. Waste not, want not.

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LuluBean12 StarGeezer's avatar

I just want to say as a PA person since birth, that I am sick and tired of the Commonwealth being ever ruined by the extraction industries and I know many who do not want fracking to be increased at all.

Even some who signed onto leases are disenchanted, mainly because of getting screwed over by the fracking companies.

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Birb-General of the US's avatar

I am still trying to figure out the whole problem of solar taking up acres of empty desert. What was the point? By the way solar does have the possibility of greening deserts a little bit by shading the ground enough for some organisms to survive. If they have enough tilt for water to run off, they can concentrate rain and dew on the ground enough for grass to grow. And solar arrays up on stilts so you can grow farm stuff under them is a real thing, Agrivoltaics.

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Biff52 Lost Canadian's avatar

We need to develop methods that don't strip the land of native vegetation in the land prep process. Once gone, they don't readily grow back. Noxious weeds do grow in disturbed soil, though, and native critters that depend on native plants have stubbornly refused to adapt and evolve to eat Russian thistles instead of globe mallow or cactus.

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Littorally Speaking's avatar

Just going to point out here that as anybody who even casually watches the national news is aware, the three mountain ranges surrounding the SoCal basin—Angeles, San Ber’dino, and Santa Ana—are currently on fire, with little to no containment; if the wind was blowing the other way—which it often does, at near hurricane-force—the *entire basin* of approximately 20 million people might well be ablaze, and all the fire fighting resources in the country wouldn’t be able to stop it.

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Biff52 Lost Canadian's avatar

Many of our volunteer fire departments here in the Owens Valley have sent crews and water tenders to the Line Fire in SBD County. We're kinda nervous back on the home front because we're left short-handed if something happens. That's the mutual aid compact, though. The others would jump in to help us, too.

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Littorally Speaking's avatar

Saw on the news one city FD, engine and all, is out here from New Jersey!

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Biff52 Lost Canadian's avatar

And every year we get crews from Australia pitching in!

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Liminal's avatar

People can look out their windows and see the results of climate change. I'm in the pacific north west and for 5 years or so we've had fire season, when the air gets ugly and chewy and hard to breathe. Thank crom that we're still mostly green and juicy out here on the coast, that smoke is the only problem we have with fire season SO FAR, but still.

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Gary Seven in Space's avatar

Pray for rain. We are getting a Thunderstorm right now.

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bjkeefe's avatar

>>> ... and how’s *that* for a metaphor.

Well done. Sad reality, pointed out very succinctly.

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Mathew Reuther's avatar

Said it yesterday in the megathread but I'll say it again: we just got non-renewed for reasons of fire risk and we're NOT in a rural home, we're in a suburb. It's not an exaggeration to say that insurers are giving up on California in large part due to changes in weather patterns that drive inflated risks. (Which, instead of raising premiums for they're just washing their hands of.)

We needed to do better decades ago and we damn well need to do better now, so ON TOP OF ALL OTHER THE REALLY VITAL STUFF the environmental considerations in the job need a laser focus. Last time TFG was in, he pulled out of the Paris Agreement. We can't afford a hiccup at this point, having pushed so far with our inaction.

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Biff52 Lost Canadian's avatar

Terrible, I hope you can come up with a solution other than the FAIR Plan. I'm in rural CA. If my house was paid off, I could assume the risk of going uninsured, but my lender won't let me take that risk. Without insurance, I'd have to sell and move, but where? Probably to a van down by the river.

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Mathew Reuther's avatar

We did get another insurance company so didn't have to resort to FAIR. But the fact that insurers are just calling it quits is indicative of how real the changes are. They're not ideological, they're risk-averse. If the risk is rising so much they really don't want to do business, it's because there's a real issue. Pretending climate change is a hoax (which Trump does) is just so dumb. So, so dumb.

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Biff52 Lost Canadian's avatar

They've been pulling out of Florida even longer. It really is a crisis.

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Gary Seven in Space's avatar

Sorry for this....

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Gary Seven in Space's avatar

Hey, Dok...missed you last night at the watch party...I wrote "Wonkette" on the back of my Bingo card and held it up a few times, but no response.

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Whale Chowder's avatar

Hey Dok, given the news in today's Tabs, have you considered moving out of Boise? I hear Detroit is nice.

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Miss Grundy's avatar

Energy comments from the German Foreign Office:

https://x.com/GermanyDiplo/status/1833808396618764327

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Eileen's avatar

Dok, thanks VERY much for this: "...they’re leaving home, bye bye, meeting some Chinese man on the motorway...."

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Mike's avatar

Looks like Comrade Kamala won one for the home team! I'll be playing "The Internationale" very loudly while I'm out by the pool. Long live the revolution!

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Gary Seven in Space's avatar

My SOROSBUX finally came!!! THank you Komrade Kamala!

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Littorally Speaking's avatar

Aw, isn’t that cute; Shitler and J. Divans wore the very same outfits!

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Richard S's avatar

I'm liking the warmth being shown by OHJB to that little convo (it's like he knows he can trust Harris on all the little things of leadership).

And the little wink and chuckle shared with Sen. Schumer just afterwards.....you have to wonder what they were saying....

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