Inherent Contempt

by wj

No, this is not about the contempt for others, or contempt for the law, that seem inherent in the personality of certain public figures. At least not directly. Rather, it is about Contempt of Congress and how it plays out.

As you may be aware, the House Judiciary Committee is in the process of finding Attorney General Barr in contempt. The cogent question is: What happens next?

Normally, when someone is found in contempt of Congress, the United States Attorney takes them before a grand jury. But there is some reason to doubt that this will happen in this case. Which is unusual, but not unheard of the past few years. In which case, Congress usually moves to Plan B:

Alternatively, the Congress can launch a civil suit to compel compliance. This can result in a court order – something even the more recalcitrant individuals are generally unwilling to blow off. The down side is, if the defendant stalls and launches appeals, it can take months before the matter is resolved. And if the delay extends past the next election, the case gets dropped.

But, it develops, there is a third alternative. It hasn’t been used in decades, but there is solid case law, including Supreme Court decisions, upholding it. It’s called “inherent contempt”. In this, the House (or Senate) Sergeant-At-Arms (or his deputy) acts as a police officer to arrest and detain the individual in contempt. I’m not sure exactly where the Congress would detain him, but presumably they can find some place suitable.

But the question that leaps to my mind is this. Suppose the issue is the refusal of an individual to produce records in response to a subpoena. Does inherent contempt extend to having the Sergeant-At-Arms physically seize the subpoenaed records?

I can see where this would be straightforward, at least in principle, in the case of Congress wanting an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report. Finding a copy at the Justice Department shouldn’t be that difficult, and even at a few hundred pages it should be easy enough for one person to pick up and carry out. Getting Mr. Trump’s tax returns could be more of a challenge. But it should still be possible to find out where the IRS has them, rent a truck, and send a couple of guys to load them up. Wouldn't that be fun?

Open Thread (because we're overdue for one)

Comments

[John D. Thullen]

I've read the IRS keep the tax returns in lockers.

In p's case, meat lockers.

[wj]

I look at the sudden (to me) flood of articles. like this one
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/05/house-democrats-could-arrest-william-barr-contempt/588976/

And I wonder if Mark Twain wasn't right. Maybe it's steamboat time.

[Nigel]

On its own, it’s not enough, by some distance - but it is nevertheless encouraging that the market is now on the side of addressing global warming:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/Three-shifts-in-Chinese-clean-tech-recast-climate-villain-as-savior

Most of the large Asian banks are now refusing to fund new building of coal fired power stations.

[cleek]

seems strange that nobody has leaked a copy of the full report to Congress. surely there's a PDF of it floating around the White House that someone could thumb drive out of there.

[CharlesWT]

On the other hand...

"Yet China's overseas ventures include hundreds of electric power plants that burn coal, which is a significant emitter of the carbon scientifically linked to climate change. Edward Cunningham, a specialist on China and its energy markets at Harvard University, tells NPR that China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines."
Why Is China Placing A Global Bet On Coal?

[JanieM]

seems strange that nobody has leaked a copy of the full report to Congress

I'm not sure we'd necessarily know if they had. Maybe whoever sent/received it wanted to capitalize on a certain timing for the reveal.

Wishful thinking, I suppose.

[Nigel]

The two stories are hardly incompatible, Charles.
Hence my "not enough, by some distance" qualifier.

What remains true is that there is a very strong economic case for making the transition (which does not rely on adopting anything which might be labelled as 'socialism') - which might help persuade those in denial about the serious danger we are in.

Investing in (as your story describes it) a "50 year asset" is far from smart if it is going to be utterly obsolete in ten.

[Nigel]

Britain had its first coal free day of power generation in nearly 140 years:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48215896

[CharlesWT]

Until if and when a technological fix is found, solar and wind will have to be backed up by fossil and/or nuclear.

[Nigel]

True if were are talking about immediately, but on a three decade view it would be possible to do without fossil fuels entirely, without any heroic technical developments:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320934766_Global_Energy_System_based_on_100_Renewable_Energy_-_Power_Sector

To illustrate the possibilities (though this is for now slightly fanciful), a new coal fired station costs around $3000 per kW of output capacity.
A Tesla has a battery capacity of around 60-75 kW for a cost of perhaps $35k - so you could get 10 hours of continuous 6 -7.5 kW output: ie $5000 per kW of output capacity.

With sufficient free marginal cost solar or wind, it would be nearly as cheap to buy half a million Teslas as a new coal fired power station, for pretty well the same output.

Obviously that would depend on a huge amount of new build wind and solar - but that is exactly what we are starting to do now.

[bobbyp]

Until if and when a technological fix is found, solar and wind will have to be backed up by fossil and/or nuclear.

This assertion cannot be taken at face value absent some clarifications of the assumptions that underlay it.

[byomtov]

Until if and when a technological fix is found, solar and wind will have to be backed up by fossil and/or nuclear.

Is it so much a "technological fix" as capacity for large-scale manufacturing of say, solar panels?

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "backed up." Are you talking about occasional outages, managing peak loads, or just ongoing, gradually decreasing, output?

[wj]

Batteries are necessary to deal with the fact that solar doesn't generate at night. And we are certainly heading in the direction of having that. Even if the details (the particular technological improvements) are still being worked.

What is a lot further away is dealing with winter. Especially in the parts of the world closer to the poles, which have both longer nights and lots of days without much sunshine to generate power from. How we deal with that remains unclear -- batteries that can hold massive amounts of power for 6-9 months are a whole different level from those which deal with 10-14 hours. Without that, some nuclear or fossil looks unavoidable.

[CharlesWT]

True if were are talking about immediately, but on a three decade view it would be possible to do without fossil fuels entirely, without any heroic technical developments

I have very strong doubts that this can be accomplished in three decades even if the whole world took China's approach to governance. Putting aside physical and technical challenges, in western countries there would be endless environmental impact, eminent domain, NIMBY, etc. lawsuits.

[CharlesWT]

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "backed up."

The problem with electricity is that supply has to exactly match demand. Oversupply has to be ran into the ground increasing the cost per unit used. Undersupply creates problems for users. Some method is needed to keep supply/demand balanced. Batteries are one approach. But is everyone prepared to rip the planet apart to get all the elements necessary to create the mountains of batteries needed to do so?

[russell]

Rather, it is about Contempt of Congress and how it plays out.

I'm not sure they need to send the Sergeant of Arms to go fetch him, and I'm not sure where they'd keep him if they decided to arrest him.

Handcuff him to the radiator in the coat closet? Not that I would object, but I don't think they have an actual Congressional jail anymore.

All of that said, it makes sense to me for Congress to keep this in-house - inherent contempt, rather than garden-variety. Because the guy they are holding in contempt runs the organization that would need to pursue the garden-variety kind.

As far as the power thing goes, I don't see a way to address any of that without some kind of concerted public effort. The upside is too long-range, and the downside too immediate, to rely on invisible hands to make it happen.

In the case of the US, we've lost our understanding of how to do stuff like that. We used to know how, more or less, now we don't.

In the case of China, it seems like they see the present moment as their time to step forward and assume what appears to them to be their rightful place as a leader among nations. And they are going for it. If that requires burning coal to make power for another 50 years, then that's what they're going to do.

I imagine they'd prefer to not wear the "world's biggest polluter" hat, but I also imagine they are willing to do so, for some period of time, if that will gain them regional or even global pre-eminence.

There are no technological fixes for stuff like that. You have to persuade people that using the technological fix, whatever it is, is actually in their best interest. The problem is, it might not be, and then you have to persuade people to do it anyway.

There aren't any trivially easy solutions to any of this stuff. Any technology capable of replacing our use of fossil fuels is going to have issues of its own, simply due to scale if nothing else.

We have to decide that not fncking up the world is a goal that deserves some amount of sacrifice. 'We' here meaning everybody, and 'sacrifice' here possibly meaning nothing more than inconvenience. Maybe not even that, maybe just change.

And a lot of folks are already barely bumping along, so to the degree that actual sacrifice may be required, all of us at the top of the food chain are probably going to be required to give up, or at least forgo, more than some others will.

Bon chance. I honestly have no idea how this is going to turn out. Humans don't have a good track record in this area.

[John D. Thullen]

bobbyp and other golfers here might find this "fascinating".

http://ok-cleek.com/blogs/?p=29049

How is it that a hockey game has never broken out on the course when p is cheating his way thru the front nine?

And American conservatives whine that "manhood" is under assault in this country.

Teach your children to lie, cheat, and steal.

It's how we get ahead in pigfucker America, losers.

Would a Big Bertha driver catching him right in the larynx violate the gentlemanly spirit of the game?

[Michael Cain]

Until if and when a technological fix is found, solar and wind will have to be backed up by fossil and/or nuclear.

Nuclear's biggest problem right now is cost: the only new plants that are being built today are the two units at Vogtle in Georgia, which are coming in at just about $12.5B per GW of capacity. At least in the US Western Interconnect, overbuilt wind/solar plus pumped-hydro storage plus transmission to tie the whole thing together can be built for a fraction of that. I admit that my interests are parochial: how the eastern US solves its (much harder) problem is their concern.

[bobbyp]

Some method is needed to keep supply/demand balanced.

It strikes me that most discussions on this matter implicitly assume some kind of demand growth going out to the infinite horizon.

That is like constructing a grand plan for putting out a fire and not ever considering the use of water.

[bobbyp]

Would a Big Bertha driver catching him right in the larynx violate the gentlemanly spirit of the game?

Only in the panhandle can you get away with that statement, folks.

[bobbyp]

bobbyp and other golfers here might find this "fascinating".

I do, but I don't know how Reilly made a whole whole book about it. That's some cheating.

[Nigel]

There are no technological fixes for stuff like that. You have to persuade people that using the technological fix, whatever it is, is actually in their best interest. The problem is, it might not be, and then you have to persuade people to do it anyway.

Read the report at the link I posted above.
It’s around 150 pages, but it is interesting.

[Nigel]

The problem with electricity is that supply has to exactly match demand. Oversupply has to be ran into the ground increasing the cost per unit used.

Not true.
With renewables, the marginal cost once the plant is in place is effectively zero, which opens up a lot of possibilities. Oversupply can be used for useful stuff.

[Michael Cain]

Oversupply can be used for useful stuff.

Key word here is "used". The amount of electrical power delivered to the grid in the next few seconds has to match very closely the amount removed from the grid, or Bad Things happen.

Charging batteries or pumping water uphill are both fast-responding useful things that let us time-shift consumption. Trying to run an aluminum smelter on momentary oversupply isn't.

[Michael Cain]

One of the few bright spots during the Trump administration is the FERC ruled utilities can bid "negawatts" in the power supply markets. Chances are good that once they have plans in place and arrangements made with their customers, utilities will be able to reduce peak demand spikes for less than generators can produce power.

[russell]

Read the report at the link I posted above.

I don't know when I'll have time to get through 150 pages, but I will surely take a look at it. And, thanks for sharing it.

I don't doubt that technological fixes are available for stuff like electrical power generation and distribution. Which is, actually, a huge win.

The stuff I'm talking about is more along the lines of what we eat, how we grow the food we eat, how we move ourselves from one place to another. How much stuff we use just to wrap up the stuff we buy.

The three top selling vehicles in the US now, and for years, have been the Ford F series pickup, Chevy Silverado pickup, and Dodge RAM pickup. 11 of the remaining 17 top 20 are either pickups or SUVs.

Because Americans like to drive big-ass trucks and SUVs. Not need to, like to. And if you tell them they need to change that, they'll tell you to bugger off and quit interfering with their freedoms.

Americans like to eat beef. They like to live in unattached homes surrounded by yards. They like to drive everywhere, including to the gym where they will walk on a treadmill.

Things like that, at least some of them, also need to change. That's a harder lift than the technology.

[wj]

Handcuff him to the radiator in the coat closet? Not that I would object, but I don't think they have an actual Congressional jail anymore.

They may not have a jail. But they do have a lot of conference rooms where he could be confined, with a guard on the door. (It's not, after all, likely that he's the type to assault a guard.) Not as nasty at the typical jail cell, but then just being confined is likely to be a shock to his system.

Which is why I suspect that it will only take one or two such arrests for Barr, Mnuchin, etc. to fold up. They have, so far, had actions without personal consequences -- some reputational degradation, but perhaps not with the people whose opinions they really care about. But walked out in handcuffs? Suddenly, consequences get really real.

[John D. Thullen]

Declare the NRA a domestic terrorist organization and cuff them to the same radiators the p republicans are shackled to.

Remove their pants and turn up the thermostat:

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/10/instagram-letting-nra-encourage-harassment-and-threats-against-one-gun-group-s-biggest-critics/223681

All of the Democratic Presidential candidates, all 20-something of them, need to start traveling abroad and huddling with foreign governments who would like to see all American conservatives defeated and destroyed.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/marc-lotter-giuliani-ukraine

Guiliani's plane should be shot down by our patriotic military when it re-enters American airspace.

How does this crap get stopped without savage violence against the perpetrators.

Elections?

Patooey!

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"Declare the NRA a domestic terrorist organization and order drone strikes on gun shows terrorist arms depots"

Coulda, shoulda, but Obama didn't. even. try.

SAD.

[Nigel]

Only proof of concept so far, but this is the kind of thing I (and the study I linked) had in mind:
Continuous Production of Ethylene from Carbon Dioxide and Water Using Intermittent Sunlight
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acssuschemeng.7b02110

The reason it might take three decades to get to 100% renewables is that it will take a good couple of decades to develop and deploy such technologies on a commercial scale.
It is entirely doable.

[Nigel]

A good report on the current state of play with existing technologies:

Levelized cost of CO2 mitigation from hydrogen production routes
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/ee/c8ee02079e

[John D. Thullen]

These are what will be physically slaughtered and butchered in America. There are tens of millions of them. All things republican and conservative:

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/trumpen-juden.html

It's gotta be stopped.

[russell]

Nigel,just want to say I am appreciating the stuff you are sharing here. Thank you.

[John D. Thullen]

The unfortunate case for very very very very very late term abortion and a deadly measles epidemic in red states:

https://juanitajean.com/the-louie-gohmert-honorary-goofy-award/

This 245 pound (not including the weight of the popgun strapped around his ample Texas-sized fat ass) bolus of corrupted fetal tissue (Rosemary's Scabies*) is 35 years old. That's roughly 420 months and well past the term when a fetus can be diagnosed as brain-dead.

And it's not even a human fetus. His own mother begs for the relief. He's an itch she can't scratch*.

*https://www.google.com/search?q=scabie&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS774US774&oq=scabie&aqs=chrome..0j69i57j0l4.5585j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I'm awful, but as long as this guy is accepted as sentient among decent people of voting age, I'm looking not half bad.

[russell]

It's gotta be stopped.

These people are the progeny, spiritual if not literal, of the folks who gathered together with their picnic lunches to watch public lynchings as a kind of civic holiday.

Blacks, Jews, Catholics. Hang them, mutilate them, set fire to their corpses, pass body parts around as souveniers. And invite the whole family to watch.

The last lynching of a black man by white supremacists in this country was 1981. Not 100 years, not even 40 years ago. James Byrd, not lynched, merely chained to a truck and dragged to death, was 1998.

There is nothing whatsoever new about the toxic, malevolent, murderous bullshit these kids are into. Nothing. It is as much a part of what America is as the words of Jefferson in the Declaration, or the words of Madison, Adams, and others in the Constitution.

What is different now is that we thought we were beyond it. We aren't. And what is different now is that we have a POTUS, and a significant political party, that embraces and panders to it, whether at arms length or not, and relies on it for its power and influence.

Conservatives, clean your damned house. The people in this video are not, remotely, an anomaly. They are becoming an acceptable norm.

It is on responsible conservatives in this country to make it unacceptable. That means Trump has to go, along with his cabinet and his entourage including creeps like Miller and Gorka. That means the Steven Kings and the Louis Gohmerts and the whole long list of bigots and boneheads have to go.

They have to go. They are unacceptable. They have no place in positions of public responsibility. Get them the hell out.

And all of the people who vote for them need to be made to understand that bigotry and malice are not acceptable, and have no place in public life. That requires constructive leadership. Which does not appear to be on offer. Stop filling your people's heads with lies and hate, even if that means you lose some elections. Just fucking stop it.

There will always be rats, human vermin like the punks in the video. What we don't want are rats and human vermin to be seen as acceptable or even normal or laudable.

There is damned little I can do about. Conservatives are the ones who put these people in positions of power. Conservatives are the ones who accept Nazis - literally Nazis - racists and bigots into their fold. Conservatives are the ones who benefit from the evil bile spewed out every damned day by the likes of Fox News, and Rush, and Alex Jones, and the rest.

Clean your damned house. It's doing profound damage to the nation. Make it stop. It is on you to change it.

Just fncking get it done.

[Pro Bono]

A Tesla has a battery capacity of around 60-75 kWh [my edit] for a cost of perhaps $35k - so you could get 10 hours of continuous 6 -7.5 kW output: ie $5000 per kW of output capacity.

With sufficient free marginal cost solar or wind, it would be nearly as cheap to buy half a million Teslas as a new coal fired power station, for pretty well the same output.

Curiously, the cost per kWh of a Tesla Model 3 car is similar to the cost per kWh of a Tesla Powerwall, designed for storage and nothing else. Which suggests that the Powerwall, or its competitors, will get cheaper.

However, Nigel's calculation based on ten hours of storage seems not to the point. If you want 100% renewal energy in, say, California, you need months of storage.

[Donald]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/books/review-our-man-richard-holbrooke-george-packer.html

To me Trump is just a natural extension of the crap that was always there. A really large extension, admittedly. In DC I think he is hated because he is a funhouse mirror image of what many of them know themselves to be.

[cleek]

wind blows at night, too.

[Nigel]

The lengthy study I cited addresses precisely those issues, Pro Bono.
My Tesla example was merely an illustration of what’s possible with current commercial technology.

Clearly for some locations, insulation of pretty good for the entire year, and in others, wind energy is considerably more plentiful in the winter.
The study I linked is quite explicit that without electrical conversion of CO2, water etc into fuels and chemical feedstocks, 100% renewable energy is simply not possible - and enveloping economic production will take decades. It runs through scenarios of how fast we might be able to reduce CO2 emissions during that period of development, and what it is likely to cost.

Even today, it is surprising what is possible:
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-energy-required-co2-valuable-resources.html

Ironically, the gulf oil states are likely to be the big future solar energy states.
And Patagonia could be a wind energy giant.

[Michael Cain]

However, Nigel's calculation based on ten hours of storage seems not to the point. If you want 100% renewal energy in, say, California, you need months of storage.

A lot less, though, if you do things on a regional (Western Interconnect) basis. Southern California already gets, via HVDC, large amounts of hydro power from the Columbia dams and large amounts of coal-fired power from Utah. The Utah plant is converting to NG, and a new solar farm is going in next door. Within a few years there will be an additional HVDC line that will be able to deliver up to 3GW from the east downslope of the Rockies in Wyoming, one of the most reliable onshore wind resources in the country. The California legislature and CAISO are already looking at how to set up excess power exchanges across the region that are in everyone's interests (the biggest hurdle will be getting the feds to play nice).

[wj]

However, Nigel's calculation based on ten hours of storage seems not to the point. If you want 100% renewal energy in, say, California, you need months of storage.

California is actually in relatively good shape for longer-term storage. That's because we build so much of our generation infrastructure as hydro. As a result, we can use peak power to pump up existing reservoirs -- reservoirs being a major capital expense (not to mention slow to build). All we need is to install the pumps.

Other places, especially further north and/or flatter, have more serious issues. Can't really do hydro in Minnesota.

[John D. Thullen]

I thought Janie would enjoy Susan Collins here.

It's so accurate that the word "satire" is pointless.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/snl-savages-gops-unconditional-love-for-trump-ride-or-die-bitches?via=newsletter&source=Weekend

Kate McKinnon's Lindsay Graham is so strangely, weirdly on point that I want to marry her and have her baby, if she'd have me, though I get why she wouldn't, plus Rod Dreher would quote his entire "The Benedict Option" ("as I wrote in my book" is the phrase that leads off at least two paragraphs in every one of his posts, which are basically just book signings) non-optional should Ms. McKinnon and I make a life together.

The only thing I would add to this SNL bit is a sound track of automatic gunfire bursts after each character speaks, comedy being what it is in whatever misbegotten country we are living in.

[John D. Thullen]

Wayne LaPierre and the National Ratfucker Association:

https://juanitajean.com/chica-chica-boom-boom/

$13,000 for a summer intern's nearby digs.

I hope she's carrying something large caliber to blow his head off when he inevitably and forcibly gets his weapon AND his gun entangled in the eiderdown.

[JanieM]

I thought Janie would enjoy Susan Collins here.

Yes indeed, in a depressing sort of way. She did a great job imitating Collilns! The best bit was Lindsay Graham late in the clip. But -- no spoilers.

Thanks, JDT.

[JanieM]

Where's my proofreader?

[John D. Thullen]

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/he-knows-everything-already-so-he.html

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/theres-reason-they-dont-keep-records.html

I'm partial to the term "rectally derived":

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/426514/is-there-a-non-vulgar-version-of-pulled-it-out-of-their-ass

America's head is shoved right up p's butt too.

He's an AHole in one, in golf parlance.

The coup can't come soon enough.

[wj]

John, when things start really getting to you, try playing this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRUjr8EVgBg

The man has put up with far more in his life than you or I. But he still manages to keep the faith. May we prove worthy of him!

[John D. Thullen]

What you say?!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Tiz6INF7I

[wj]

If only more of their ladies would send them that message. Might concentrate some minds.

[John D. Thullen]

More trumparency ... I would use the term that includes "trans" and "parent" but that word has been banned by the American Taliban:

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/trump-to-government-dont-publish-truth.html

Who was it here who claimed lo those many months ago that this Maladministration was transparent?

Whomever it was, your adoption privileges have been revoked.

p is considering establishing several new Cabinet level agencies, whose Secretaries (actual secretaries, maybe grocery clerks, not leaders) will report directly to where the sun don't shine: The Department of Hunh, Shinola, and WTF?, The National Bureau of STFU, and the Department of Alternative Facts and Parallel Realities.

A Liaison Interpretative Equivocator (LIE), Dr. Mendacity Jazzhands, and been appointed to perp walk the public thru the agencies' maze of new missions and her assistant, Taradiddle Eyewash, formerly the fifth runner-up beauty queen in a heterosexual free range barnyard animal contest, handed out dic pics to illustrate that in the new America of the Gospel of the Predator Pig Fuckers, size is all that matters, ah, but it's a game of centimeters on a non-metric conversion ... conservatives have all converted from metric to the Christian Prosperity Gospel, also known as the game of CRAPs .... device (Chapter Seven of Milton Friedman's dog-eared copy of Ayn Rand's memoir, "Dagny Taggart, The Early Years, Before She Learned To Reverse Cowboy The Shrugging Atlas", later folded into the well-known KGB instructional manual for the hometown secret agent: "Atlas Shagged").

White House Spokessubhuman, Hasnot A. Clue, who recently underwent radical dental surgery at taxpayer expense to expand the gaps in his teeth, the better to lie through, referred a reporter, the last and only FOX fellatrix with current press credentials, to a dumpster full of fresh dog shit, labeled "The Files" in the White House parking lot for deep background and in pidgin French mumbled, "Bon Appetite".

[John D. Thullen]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/trump-2020-second-term/585994/

2020 is the last national election in America.

[Michael Cain]

Open thread, so... I fear the Game of Thrones writers have put themselves in a corner with no way out that will satisfy anyone in the audience. Well, maybe the nihilists who think everybody is bad and it's just as well they all died.

[Nigel]

This is its own kind of contempt:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/stephen-breyer-hyatt-dissent-roe-v-wade-kavanaugh-supreme-court.html

Constitution and precedent don’t seem to figure.

[John D. Thullen]

"I fear the Game of Thrones writers have put themselves in a corner with no way out that will satisfy anyone in the audience. Well, maybe the nihilists who think everybody is bad and it's just as well they all died."

Turn the channel instead to this reality show:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sabotage-attacks-on-saudi-oil-tankers-puts-strait-of-hormuz-back-in-spotlight-2019-05-13?mod=mw_quote_news

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-trump-yet-another-us-president-provoking-a-war

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/john-bolton-on-the-warpath

Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Tonkin, wag the dog:

I hope this escalates quickly to a worldwide nuclear confrontation because I want to test what the murderous oaf who stole the White House learned in that hour and a half he spent studying all there is to know about nuclear weaponry and warfare years ago.

Especially the incinerating, vaporizing, mutual annihilation parts of the study and I want it up close and personal for the conservative, war-loving thug vermin infesting this globe in every country, particularly America, but killing conservatives and their governments in very country, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, and Europe must be carried out so what's left of the human race can spend the next million years of their radioactive half lives in relative miserable peace without conservative vermin to tell us they know better.

They ARE all bad.

[John D. Thullen]

There is no precedent is world history for the savage violence that is coming to the anti-American conservative movement.

All precedent for living among conservatives is hereby revoked.

[John D. Thullen]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-attacks-on-rashida-tlaib-are-dishonest-and-disgraceful

Rashida Tlaib should begin carrying a semi-automatic pistol and shoot to kill any American conservative who makes a threatening move in her direction.

[Donald]

Michael Cain—

There are plenty of morally good characters in GOT. But what they have done to Dany’s character arc is a crime against humanity. She was always ruthless and self righteous, but her actions in the last episode were nonsensical. They have been building up to this, but by making her petty and paranoid and last night’s episode still made no sense. I haven’t agreed with some of the feminist critiques of the show before, but in her case only a pair of male idiots like Benioff and Weiss could butcher a female character so badly.

[John D. Thullen]

Mattis is no longer there to slow-walk p's ravings or knee Bolton in the testicles as the latter is about to declare nuclear war.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/05/13/this-business-will-get-out-of-control-it-will-get-out-of-control-and-well-be-lucky-to-live-through-it-tanker-attack-rashomon-edition/

Not that I have any respect for asshole Mattis either after his agreeing to serve under p and his role in promoting another psychopath, Elizabeth Holmes and her utterly fraudulent blood-testing corporation, Theranos.

This is a parable of the rank bullshit that is now coursing thru the veins of bullshit America, and championed by a bipartisan selection of our nearest and dearest:

https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X

We are the marks of predators and we like it.

[wj]

Bolton and the Saudis may have their Reichstag Fire. But, as one would expect from this administration, it appears to have been exceptionally ineptly executed. Who sets off mines on empty tankers??? (Only the best people, of course.)

[cleek]

Viktor Orban!

oh well. at least Trump's not a Dem.

/TheStupidParty

[John D. Thullen]

Viktor Orban:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/george-soros-viktor-orban-ceu/588070/

Orban's government must be overthrown.

[John D. Thullen]

More on Orban:

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/trump-welcomes-europes-most-explicitly.html

[John D. Thullen]

Naturally, the shits over at TAC are full all up in there with Orban.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/viktor-orban-renewal-washington/

Dreher the Innocent runs with vermin white nationalists and anti-Semites. He thinks he can pick and choose among their "policies", as long as they let him discriminate against the fags.

They'll kill HIM once he turns his permanently revved up victimization hysteria machine on them, though the way he goes on about the Weimar Republic I get the feeling he would have liked the cut of Hitler's jib until deep into the 1930s.

[Nigel]

Another way to think about climate change is that someone is going to make an awful lot of money helping solve it.
And all those long term investments in oil exploration and coal fired power stations, which can take decades to pay off, will become purchases of stranded assets.

Even if we don’t transition to renewables fast enough to prevent climate disaster, we will do so quick enough to ruin the economics of fossil fuels (with the possible exception, for a couple of decades, of natural gas).

If you’re above all else a capitalist, do you want China to be reaping all of the profit ?

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"Another way to think about climate change is that someone is going to make an awful lot of money helping solve it."

There'll be a real opportunity for those who get in early on "buggy whip" makers.

Carbon-neutral transport, and they can be used on Trumpkins also, too.

[wj]

This one's for John Thullen, because everybody needs a bright spot in their day.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-own-the-red-hen-restaurant-that-asked-sarah-sanders-to-leave-resistance-isnt-futile/2019/05/14/125b4742-75a8-11e9-b7ae-390de4259661_story.html

Enjoy

[Girl from the North Country]

It's a bright spot for more than JDT, wj. What excellent news that is. And since I'm now on, I may as well inform ObWi that I had a hip replacement last Tuesday, have been home since Sunday, and am a) doing extremely well and b) extremely pissed off with life, the universe and everything (TM Douglas Adams). It's heck feeling semi-helpless, and having to plan your every move in advance to avoid wasted journeys, and carrying everything you might need with you in a bag on your crutches including a grabber claw. Which is just to say that as a boomer who has tended to enjoy pretty good health, and always had access to good medical care when I needed it, my entitled ass is once again getting a mild reality check on the basic human condition. Bah!

[wj]

GFTNC, get well soon!

From seeing my Mom thru that some years back, I know it's way short of instantaneous. But it's do-able. And we can try to keep you distracted.

[John D. Thullen]

GFTNC: You'll be fine, I'm certain. Rehab with all your might.

wj: Good on the Red Hen. Still, voracious p-ridden conservatives don't need lunch at the Red Hen, as they are eating the world's lunch. If I were the owner of the Red Hen, I would send coupons for Free Lunches to each of the haters, presuming they provided a return address (their parents' basement or maybe a mobile phone in Macedonia), which they don't, being cowards, but in exchange I would request they turn in their firearms for the amuse bouche, and IF they did I would point the same firearm at the their faces and tell them to get off the property.

But, nevertheless, your sunniness in the face of these dreary days is appreciated. You wouldn't believe how even-tempered I am in person. Except for that pulsating vein in my forehead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bphHHR2aVM0

As Anne Frank didn't say to her father: "PIM, look on the bright side. One day they will sell tickets to get into our humble hiding place here. We could franchise this thing.

[JanieM]

GftNC, get well soon.

I've heard that hip replacement is easier to rehab from than knee replacement, but either way, I hope you're back on nothing more than your own two feet without delay.

[John D. Thullen]

Oops there goes that vein again:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-white-house-iftar-dinner-shuns-american-muslims

But he allowed Saudi murderers to smuggle Jamal Khashoggi's hacked up body parts in duffel bags into the White House, so he could smirk at them in person.

[John D. Thullen]

More Red Hen and it's beyond time:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elizabeth-warren-turns-down-town-hall-request-from-hate-for-profit-fox-news-2019-05-14?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts

[John D. Thullen]

Throb:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/clarence-thomas-shows-how-supreme-court-would-overturn-roe-v-wade?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

[John D. Thullen]

Hemorrhage:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/05/blue-slips-are-really-most-sincerely-dead-now/

All of the other long-standing "lubricants" that have enabled us to live together as a polity with conservative vermin in a Republic need to be eliminated as well.

Public noise ordinances that prohibit automatic gunfire 24 hours a day seems a good place to start.

[wj]

It will be sadly ironic if bad behavior (and it was bad behavior!) by the California Franchise Tax Board is the path that results in the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade. Because even a Court willing to ignore stare decisis is going to want a relatively uncontroversial precident for overturning precedents. And this well may be it.

[John D. Thullen]

To save on overhead, we could use one pike to kill two heads ... Orban and Bolsanaro in a stack:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a27456314/jair-bolsonaro-amazon-conservation-protections/

[Girl from the North Country]

Many thanks, all. Am indeed doing all the exercising, rehabbing etc mandated. It's a considerable drag, but as I said, there are certainly far worse things in life/the world.

[wj]

At least you're ahead of my Mom's experience in one regard. She was stuck in a rehab facility with NO Internet access -- and furious about it. (Hey, it was the late '90s. Most 80+ year old women had never even tried the Internet.)

[sapient]

GftNC, a good friend of mine just came through it and is looking fabulous, and spry. Get better soon, and may you see similar results!

[cleek]

my wife did it about 3 years ago - she had had a bad hip from birth. and it was pretty tough going, because they ... lengthened her leg, intentionally. which stretched all the muscles and connecty bits.

she's better now.

[John D. Thullen]

I don't own a TV, so I miss a few things.

Perhaps you've seen it, but this is lay science the way I like it:

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/bill-nye-gets-very-salty.html

They even present a fat methane-belching cow, Laura Ingraham, to illustrate which end of the cow is the methane business end.

And Bill Nye, the Science Guy, resorts to very technical language to communicate the fact that he has had it up to his plastic pocket pen holder with dimwits.

Give yourself 20 minutes and have a larf.

[John D. Thullen]

The Democratic Party, China, the financial markets, and Mitch McConnell, if he only had a heart, seek an audience with The Wizard of Tweet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amclN9RG49c

Soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtUm8PKT1Aw

[John D. Thullen]

Rod Dreher's attorneys:

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/14/Alliance-Defending-Freedom-has-an-extremely-shady-network-of-thousands-of-attorneys/223702

[Donald]

My brother in law had a hip replacement a year or two back. He is doing fine.

[Nigel]

On energy storage...

A manganese hydride molecular sieve for practical hydrogen storage under ambient conditions
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/EE/C8EE02499E#!divAbstract

>>A viable hydrogen economy has thus far been hampered by the lack of an inexpensive and convenient hydrogen storage solution meeting all requirements, especially in the areas of long hauls and delivery infrastructure. Current approaches require high pressure and/or complex heat management systems to achieve acceptable storage densities. Herein we present a manganese hydride molecular sieve that can be readily synthesized from inexpensive precursors and demonstrates a reversible excess adsorption performance of 10.5 wt% and 197 kgH2 m-3 at 120 bar at ambient temperature with no loss of activity after 54 cycles. Inelastic neutron scattering and computational studies confirm Kubas binding as the principal mechanism. The thermodynamically neutral adsorption process allows for a simple system without the need for heat management using moderate pressure as a toggle. A storage material with these properties will allow the DOE system targets for storage and delivery to be achieved, providing a practical alternative to incumbents such as 700 bar systems, which generally provide volumetric storage values of 40 kgH2 m-3 or less, while retaining advantages over batteries such as fill time and energy density. Reasonable estimates for production costs and loss of performance due to system implementation project total energy storage costs roughly 5 times cheaper than those for 700 bar tanks, potentially opening doors for increased adoption of hydrogen as an energy vector...<<

[Nigel]

And all the best to GFTNC and her recovery.

[Girl from the North Country]

Again, many thanks to all well-wishers.

[John D. Thullen]

"Another way to think about climate change is that someone is going to make an awful lot of money helping solve it."

Well, first, the dumbshit marketing genius lab rats in the private sector need to have the incentives and disincentives in their mazes reordered.

First thing we do is seal the exits:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lenders-scolded-climate-ignorance-insane-164435435.html

[John D. Thullen]

Once a fetus is out and about in the world, but subsidized by the state, even to the age of three years, we just might have to shoot the little socialist twerp.

Some of the small print in Alabama:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/05/the-devil-fools-with-the-best-laid-plan

Any Alabama physician who gets anywhere close, in the medical sense, to a woman's reproductive organs, except while wielding forceps, is looking at jail time.

[John D. Thullen]

How did drug and alcohol addict Kudlow participate in the conversation when his mouth was full of p's balls? And furthermore, how does Jim Cramer enunciate so well with Kudlow's pud down his throat?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-irritated-kudlow-acknowledging-us-consumers-pay-china-tariffs

[Nigel]

he dumbshit marketing genius lab rats in the private sector need to have the incentives and disincentives in their mazes reordered...

Of course.
The economy woull transition to renewables anyway if we left it to the market..... but around two or three decades too late.

Putting a large thumb on the scales now is simply common sense - and were we to do so, the business lobbies which benefit from the change would pretty soon ensure it didn't get undone.

[John D. Thullen]

Yet another nonsensical, goofball, hilarious, giggle-enabling, pants-wetting inducing, malarkey-piercing, stultiloquent, tom-foolering, jiggery-poking, hokum-jokum, a Conway before the Kellyannes and Georges fucked us, silly, kind light in the world is snuffed as serious, malign subhumans swarm to try to kill all of us.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/tim-conway-dies-carol-burnett-show-best-clips

Only two things might have saved us ... staying in bed like John and Yoko or Tim Conway running out the clock on Harvey Korman's ability to remain continent and in character simultaneously.

[John D. Thullen]

Conservatives continue to make the case for workplace Second Amendment violence, as my far-left views on guns continue to moderate:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/labor-secretary-alexander-acosta-chief-staff-fired

[hairshirthedonist]

Being fired from the DOL, no less, for being, simultaneously, too much of an a**hole in person and not enough of an a**hole on policy.

[John D. Thullen]

We can take conservative blood strapped down at the blood bank or in the streets.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-to-congress-its-none-of-your-business-if-i-break-the-law?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

[John D. Thullen]

The LGBT community needs to Google map all of the gun stores, fairs, and shows in their neighborhoods:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/state-department-to-lgbt-married-couples-your-out-of-wedlock-kids-arent-citizens?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

[wj]

You gotta understand. Obergefell notwithstanding, the State Department has simply decided to not recognize gay marriage.

And why should they? If the executive branch can ignore the legislative branch (e.g. on subpoenas), why shouldn't they be able to ignore the judicial branch as well? Seems perfectly consistent.

And suggests that even winning their cases in court may not get compliance with the various subpoenas from House committees. Bringing us around to the original post....

[John D. Thullen]

Let me be blunt:

“There is some negative connotation that is associated with the brand.”

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2019/05/15/schaden-meet-freude/

[John D. Thullen]

See this conservative ratfucker right here:

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

She will be executed, with all of the relevant judicial t's dotted and her eyes crossed, and her corpse repatriated to Russia.

The Rosenberg's want their lives back.

bobbyp is supposed to be the fucking commie around here.

[cleek]

for a nice taste of "Oh Shit", go and read Digby's first archived post.

https://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2003/01/lemmings-atrios-points-to-interview.html

with the change of maybe just one letter, it applies to today as it did in 2003.