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evilweasel posted:That is actually what Hugh Hewitt does. He publishes a column every day about how what happened yesterday was Good News For Republicans no matter how insane you need to be to think that. Yeah, it's going to be a struggle getting any of my lazy millennial friends to vote next time. It was like pulling teeth this time, now they'll really be all "my vote doesn't count."
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Jan 14, 2019 16:37
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My sincerest hope is this man drops dead before November 2020. One less Turnip voter. Edit: I'm leaving that autocorrect. It's too amazing. 
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Jan 14, 2019 16:46
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mdemone posted:And to complicate matters immensely, re-enfranchisement is going to make modeling Florida impossible for at least two cycles. And the inevitable - and already happening - state government digging in its heels to make re-enfranchisement as slow, difficult, and incomplete as humanly possible.
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Jan 14, 2019 16:54
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Cythereal posted:And the inevitable - and already happening - state government digging in its heels to make re-enfranchisement as slow, difficult, and incomplete as humanly possible. I'm going to guess that DeSantis is going to try to make it drag past 2020 elections if at all possible.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:13
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https://twitter.com/UtilityDive/status/1084846047007043584 Turns out, cutting costs until you burn down several forests and an entire city and killing several dozen folks is not a great long term business model.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:46
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Relentless posted:https://twitter.com/UtilityDive/status/1084846047007043584 After a long sigh I reluctantly cross it off my list of ideas.
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Jan 14, 2019 17:59
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Relentless posted:https://twitter.com/UtilityDive/status/1084846047007043584 well, the third leg of the tripod was "force california to continually grant you liability waivers through the threat of filing for bankruptcy" which was pretty effective until now but that got sawed off and whoops a two-legged tripod doesn't work so well though you don't usually announce "guys in a week or two we're filing for bankruptcy" because then nobody will give you poo poo unless you pay cash up front (this helped kill Toys R Us - it leaked that they were prepping for a bankruptcy filing, so everyone stopped doing business with them unless they paid cash up front, so things went south real loving fast and wound up with the company liquidated instead of reorganized), so this announcement may be the final attempt at a liability waiver evilweasel fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 18:00
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Relentless posted:https://twitter.com/UtilityDive/status/1084846047007043584 Edit: Oh wait, it's publicly traded? Nobody cares about poor people investors.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:03
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Relentless posted:https://twitter.com/UtilityDive/status/1084846047007043584 Not to mention diverting money from safety ops to pay executive bonuses, and then having it come back to bite them in the rear end when their gas line blew up a neighborhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion quote:On January 13, 2012, an independent audit from the State of California issued a report stating that PG&E had illegally diverted over $100 million from a fund used for safety operations, and instead used it for executive compensation and bonuses.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:04
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evilweasel posted:though you don't usually announce "guys in a week or two we're filing for bankruptcy" because then nobody will give you poo poo unless you pay cash up front (this helped kill Toys R Us - it leaked that they were prepping for a bankruptcy filing, so everyone stopped doing business with them unless they paid cash up front, so things went south real loving fast and wound up with the company liquidated instead of reorganized), so this announcement may be the final attempt at a liability waiver Yeah, Cali is special like that: "Under California law, companies must give employees at least 15 days notice of a bankruptcy filing" Their safety record has been a problem for a long time, but this seems to be the final straw.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:05
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Relentless posted:Yeah, Cali is special like that: Wow, that's a law I'd never heard of before. That's good to know. Odd law though, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me given how bankruptcy works (employee wages post-filing continue to be paid as normal, and employees have a priority claim up to a cap for back pay that generally is enough to cover the paycheck before the filing that they may not have received, so courts will typically allow a debtor to just pay them their pre-petition paycheck as normal despite it technically being an unsecured (but priority) claim) and the disruption of business operations caused by everyone knowing you're filing for bankruptcy but not actually having filed yet (since if you deliver goods or services post-petition you get paid in full, but if you deliver pre-petition you might get only an unsecured claim and get hosed).
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Jan 14, 2019 18:10
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Even though I know it's not us (I work for a utility with the same initials minus the ampersand), I still did a double take on that headline.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:37
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Charlz Guybon posted:This is literal insanity. I feel like they're trying to gaslight us. I just don't know how the NYT manages to write an article that asserts that Florida is becoming a red state, and does so without ever mentioning the actual percentage electoral margins. The only time they actually substantiate anything is when they mention that the Democrats came within 10,000 and 32,000 votes of victory, which come out to about a .2% and .4% margin respectively. That is an incredibly close margin by any standard. They differentiate the Democrat "pragmatists" from the "progressives" without any substantiation at all, and basically spend 2,000 words chatting up Florida politicos. It's a dumb fluff piece, and it's appalling that the NYT has come to the point that this sort of unserious work is becoming, frankly, typical of their paper.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:40
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highme posted:Even though I know it's not us (I work for a utility with the same initials minus the ampersand), I still did a double take on that headline. Personally, I hope they get sold and renamed, but mostly so I will never confuse PG&E, PGE and PSE&G ever again. Also, I wouldn't be heartbroken if either ConEd or ComEd screwed up and got sold and renamed.
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Jan 14, 2019 18:43
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Kaal posted:I just don't know how the NYT manages to write an article that asserts that Florida is becoming a red state, and does so without ever mentioning the actual percentage electoral margins. The only time they actually substantiate anything is when they mention that the Democrats came within 10,000 and 32,000 votes of victory, which come out to about a .2% and .4% margin respectively. That is an incredibly close margin by any standard. They differentiate the Democrat "pragmatists" from the "progressives" without any substantiation at all, and basically spend 2,000 words chatting up Florida politicos. It's a dumb fluff piece, and it's appalling that the NYT has come to the point that this sort of unserious work is becoming, frankly, typical of their paper. losing by 10,000 when you are the incumbent in a wave year going your way means it's not a swing state, it's a red state that you can possibly compete in when everything lines up your way - but that you can't when it doesn't. that's only a swing state under the very generous definition of the term of "a state that could possibly swing" instead of a tossup state
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Jan 14, 2019 19:03
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Dead Reckoning posted:First, I'm not entirely convinced that this isn't a strategic decision on Trump's part to force the issue while the news cycle is otherwise bad for him. Senate voted 100-0 to open the government without funding the wall in December. There's a little more going on here than "the Democrats only won't fund the wall to spite big daddy Trump"
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Jan 14, 2019 19:22
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Dead Reckoning posted:The democratic party doesn't seem to have a coherent immigration policy at this point, and most of the big asks they would want in exchange (blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants, "abolishing ICE") don't have a broad consensus behind them and couldn't survive a republican senate under McConnell, but they can all agree they want Trump to lose on the wall. the democratic party has absolutely had a coherent immigration policy for a decade and has signed onto numerous immigration reform efforts nearly unanimously, that were ultimately torpedoed by the far right. there is broad democratic agreement on key elements; there is disagreement on how much farther to go once you provide a pathway to citizenship for long-time residents. this is you projecting; the republican party has, since the Bush II years, been schitzophrenic on the immigration issue because they cannot reconcile their business wing (which agrees with Democrats) with their racist wing (which wants all non-whites out) "border security" has always been a sop to see if you could peel off just enough of the racist wing to get them to consent, and it became clear in the Obama years it's not. it's wasted money that was being spent solely to try to placate them on the theory they were just you are correct, however, that the entire fight over the wall is mostly symbolism: a $25 billion monument to "gently caress non-whites" vs not having a $25 billion monument to "gently caress non-whites". that it's symbolic, however, doesn't make it any less meaningful about what kind of a country we are and the fight any less important. evilweasel fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 19:25
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Kaal posted:I just don't know how the NYT manages to write an article that asserts that Florida is becoming a red state, and does so without ever mentioning the actual percentage electoral margins. The only time they actually substantiate anything is when they mention that the Democrats came within 10,000 and 32,000 votes of victory, which come out to about a .2% and .4% margin respectively. That is an incredibly close margin by any standard. They differentiate the Democrat "pragmatists" from the "progressives" without any substantiation at all, and basically spend 2,000 words chatting up Florida politicos. It's a dumb fluff piece, and it's appalling that the NYT has come to the point that this sort of unserious work is becoming, frankly, typical of their paper. with its 2016 voter composition, FL is absolutely not a swing state at this point except by the broadest definition of that term; it would never be the 270th EV, because it's clearly trending rightwards and will take wave elections to win from here on out for the next generation. the good news is re-enfranchisement is clearly going to make a tangible difference - no matter what barriers are raised it's 1.7 million potential votes, and even with a 10% voting rate it would be enough to swing the state back - but that alone won't hold for more than 1-2 more cycles. the better news is that with re-enfranchisement, FL's drift to the right will probably be slower than the TX drift to the left.
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Jan 14, 2019 19:43
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Well the fight is also about small-d democratic governance: whether the President can force the passage of any legislation he wants by shutting down the government until the country cries uncle even if two thirds of us don't want it. I assume the people saying "oh what's the big deal just give him what he wants every time he shuts down the government" would have somewhat different opinions if Obama had shut down the government until Republicans agreed to pass whatever he wanted.
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Jan 14, 2019 19:47
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Yeah, I didn't really mention it, but if the democrats give in to this particular instance of hostage-taking, it's going to happen again and again, and frankly that itself is a good enough reason for them to hold the line. evilweasel posted:the democratic party has absolutely had a coherent immigration policy for a decade and has signed onto numerous immigration reform efforts nearly unanimously, that were ultimately torpedoed by the far right. there is broad democratic agreement on key elements; there is disagreement on how much farther to go once you provide a pathway to citizenship for long-time residents. this is you projecting; the republican party has, since the Bush II years, been schitzophrenic on the immigration issue because they cannot reconcile their business wing (which agrees with Democrats) with their racist wing (which wants all non-whites out) evilweasel posted:you are correct, however, that the entire fight over the wall is mostly symbolism: a $25 billion monument to "gently caress non-whites" vs not having a $25 billion monument to "gently caress non-whites". that it's symbolic, however, doesn't make it any less meaningful about what kind of a country we are and the fight any less important.
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Jan 14, 2019 21:51
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Dead Reckoning posted:
Republicans had full control of the government for two years and never could get 51 Senate votes for a wall. They could have voted for it at any time but they couldn't agree, and even voted unanimously in December to keep the government open without a wall. The symbolism in the shutdown is the other way, now that Republicans have lost the House they can pretend like it's Democratic opposition and not internal Republican divisions that's stopping The Wall, but it was never true and is not true even now (in fact if McConnell held a vote they'd reopen the government yesterday, so they won't be allowed even to vote on it in order to avoid exposing the chaos in their immigration positions and deflect it all onto an external enemy)
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Jan 14, 2019 22:01
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Dead Reckoning posted:I would disagree with your opinion that the democratic position on immigration is less fractured than the republican one. They may have been more unified in the past, but since Trump forced the issue with zero tolerance, there has been division on the democratic side. On the one hand, you have Rep. Mark Pocan and the progressive caucus calling for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and on the other, you have Hillary Clinton telling European leaders that they should cut off further immigration because it is causing voters to embrace the far right. While they may agree on some issues, like amnesty for the DREAMers, they haven't offered a coherent vision beyond that of what exactly our immigration laws should be and what enforcing those laws should look like. Democrats have not found a way to reconcile the views of their progressive wing, which seem to indicate that they view any enforcement of our immigration laws against the poor and minorities (beyond the deportation of violent felons and national security risks) as constituting a human rights abuse, and the more centrist elements of the party who worry that amnesty for illegal immigrants or an explicit policy of non-enforcement of our immigration laws would be deeply unpopular with voters. You're confusing the debate over how much farther from the Democratic consensus people should go with a debate over the democratic consensus - there is basically zero debate anymore over the idea of a "path to citizenship" for anyone who has been here for some amount of years because that's just a standard position nobody quibbles with anymore (note: this is not just DREAMers). If you do that, you eliminate, like, 90% of the immigration debate because net illegal immigration has slowed to a crawl. That's much, much more unified than the Republican position, which cannot reconcile the pro-legalization wing with the pro-"deport them all" wing and has been trying for fifteen years. There's not a huge amount of consensus on how you rationalize our immigration system, to my knowledge, but there's also not as much of a pressing concern to fix it on the Democratic side because "well it's not working very well" isn't as pressing an issue as the "IT IS ALLOWING IN NON-WHITES AT UNACCEPTABLE LEVELS" which is the Miller wing's primary issue with our current immigration laws. But nobody on the Democratic side is afraid of the "amnesty" label anymore - they were afraid of it bursting the bipartisan compromise they were aiming for (correctly, and it basically eliminated the ability to get a bipartisan deal done) but nobody besides Joe Manchin really has a constituency that needs to worry about that. Republicans are gonna get the votes of anyone who dislikes undocumented immigrants pretty much no matter what. It's possible if you get a Democratic trifecta the debate over how much farther you should go beyond legalizing everyone who has been here long enough that could threaten the consensus position, but I think that'll get split off - there's no reason to have the Abolish ICE bill be the same as the Pathway to Citizenship bill. The Pathway to Citizenship bill, which would be something along the lines of "if you have been residing in the US for [5] years, you may register for permanent status and work authorization and be eligible for a green card after [2] years, provided you pay any back taxes and have not committed [a violent felony]", would have basically zero serious Democratic opposition (though there'd probably be debate over the bracketed numbers, how you prove how long you've been here, what level of criminality disqualifies you, etc). evilweasel fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Jan 14, 2019 |
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Jan 14, 2019 22:02
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After 15 years of generally quite skillful republican political maneuvering wrt their press efforts, it's so weird to see them so adrift and completely on the wrong side of the narrative. I'm really curious what all changed that they got so out of lockstep. Obviously having a bunch of incompetent fuckups in the whitehouse is a lot of it, but there's clearly more to it, too. It also has looked like their echo chamber has started to really hurt them finally as a lot of their decision makers are firmly in the echo-chamber reality and not grasping the reality of the rest of the country.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:04
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Herstory Begins Now posted:After 15 years of generally quite skillful republican political maneuvering wrt their press efforts, it's so weird to see them so adrift and completely on the wrong side of the narrative. I'm really curious what all changed that they got so out of lockstep. Obviously having a bunch of incompetent fuckups in the whitehouse is a lot of it, but there's clearly more to it, too. It also has looked like their echo chamber has started to really hurt them finally as a lot of their decision makers are firmly in the echo-chamber reality and not grasping the reality of the rest of the country. It was posited, perhaps I’ve felt optimistically, back in 2016 that electing Trump would be the death of the GOP. Turns out it was basically true.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:07
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:It was posited, perhaps I’ve felt optimistically, back in 2016 that electing Trump would be the death of the GOP. Turns out it was basically true. I won't be persuaded until the GOP starts consistently losing elections on a large scale. People have been preaching about the death of the GOP for a decade or more.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:11
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Cythereal posted:I won't be persuaded until the GOP starts consistently losing elections on a large scale. People have been preaching about the death of the GOP for a decade or more. You're never going to see that until someone comes along with a party that most of the GOP agrees with ideologically that they can bail to. None of them are going to suddenly turn into democrats (and those that would probably did in 2018) They can run a teddy bear for office, and many of their voters will support it as long as they put the right stickers on it.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:49
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Inglonias posted:You're never going to see that until someone comes along with a party that most of the GOP agrees with ideologically that they can bail to. None of them are going to suddenly turn into democrats (and those that would probably did in 2018) They can run a teddy bear for office, and many of their voters will support it as long as they put the right stickers on it. And until that time, the party ain't dead.
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Jan 14, 2019 22:57
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Rednik posted:Except for maybe Ohio, other state moved towards the Democrats, and in some districts quite substantially. Meanwhile, The margins in Florida stayed relatively close to 2016 despite an infusion of cash and attention.
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Jan 14, 2019 23:25
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Charlz Guybon posted:1.4 million felons got enfranchised. Let's say they only have 20% turnout and vote D 2 to 1. That's a net gain of 94k votes. That would have flipped the senate and governor race. If you make those assumptions, that would make a Democrat incumbent (Nelson) eke out a narrow 1% win in a year when most districts and states swung strongly towards the Democrats. Even with the enfranchisement, which will certainly be slow-walked, there is a lot of reason to be concerned. If Dems lose by 0.1% in a great Democratic year, how do you expect them to perform during a more evenly matched election climate?
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Jan 14, 2019 23:59
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Rednik posted:If you make those assumptions, that would make a Democrat incumbent (Nelson) eke out a narrow 1% win in a year when most districts and states swung strongly towards the Democrats. Even with the enfranchisement, which will certainly be slow-walked, there is a lot of reason to be concerned. If Dems lose by 0.1% in a great Democratic year, how do you expect them to perform during a more evenly matched election climate? Why would you expect Republicans to do better in 2020 than they did in 2018?
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Jan 15, 2019 00:05
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Inglonias posted:You're never going to see that until someone comes along with a party that most of the GOP agrees with ideologically that they can bail to. None of them are going to suddenly turn into democrats (and those that would probably did in 2018) They can run a teddy bear for office, and many of their voters will support it as long as they put the right stickers on it. It's happened before, in the 30s the Republican Party was effectively dead for 20 years and mostly dead for 60. Of course I think it will take more than Trump to do that again, last time it took a Democrat actually sort-of somewhat taking a step towards good on at least some issues, and there's little hope of that happening again.
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Jan 15, 2019 00:46
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VitalSigns posted:It's happened before, in the 30s the Republican Party was effectively dead for 20 years and mostly dead for 60. the GOP was pretty much dead after hoover horrible gently caress ups and only came back with Eisenhower then they came back in 68 and the late 70s when they made their various ruinous pacts with their various devils that gently caress the party to this day. i dont think the GOP will die because of trump, but they may get pushed out of national power for a decade while they try to realign themselves politicaly. i mean the evangelical wing has lost a ton of power outside hard red southern states and the suicide caucus is dead in the house and dying in the senate. trump also hosed them because he broke the dog whistle and that hurts the party a ton outside the chud type base. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jan 15, 2019 |
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Jan 15, 2019 01:04
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evilweasel posted:losing by 10,000 when you are the incumbent in a wave year going your way means it's not a swing state, it's a red state that you can possibly compete in when everything lines up your way - but that you can't when it doesn't. that's only a swing state under the very generous definition of the term of "a state that could possibly swing" instead of a tossup state Hillary Clinton lost by less than one percent in Florida, Barack Obama (2012) won by less than one percent. Neither result indicated anything other than Florida being a swing state. Griping that a .2% loss somehow presages a future of Republican dominance in Florida - particularly in the face of all the other changes occurring there - is just foolish and meaningless chaff. Maybe Florida really is a rock-solid red state due to all the retirees moving there to die, but that article offered absolutely no proof of that assertion.
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Jan 15, 2019 01:21
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Herstory Begins Now posted:After 15 years of generally quite skillful republican political maneuvering wrt their press efforts, it's so weird to see them so adrift and completely on the wrong side of the narrative. Roger Ailes is dead.
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Jan 15, 2019 01:22
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evilweasel posted:losing by 10,000 when you are the incumbent in a wave year going your way means it's not a swing state, it's a red state that you can possibly compete in when everything lines up your way - but that you can't when it doesn't. that's only a swing state under the very generous definition of the term of "a state that could possibly swing" instead of a tossup state That loss by 10,000 makes the Florida senate race easily one of the closest in living memory. Losing by 10,000 in Florida is the equivalent of Jon Tester holding his seat by 500 votes. Florida might not be the tipping point state in 2020 (I could believe that a map where Democrats win Florida would also have the Midwest putting them over 270 electoral votes) but it's way early to call Florida a red state. I don't think you can talk about 2020 without mentioning AZ/GA/NC/I guess TX, and Florida is more Democratic leaning than any of those.
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Jan 15, 2019 04:41
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An analysis of the current Steve King controversy that I think is important to remind people of: this is still the standard playbook for conservative types when called out on this stuff in public. They organize a public, minimally more than token censure and tell them to shut the gently caress up and stay out of the news for a few weeks then quietly let them back in. It's meant to look like a win, but unless they actually throw his rear end out, I 100% guarantee you that behind closed doors they are telling him 'it's cool, just wait out the outrage' Local electoral politics may make them a tiny bit more likely to get rid of him, but this is the standard play for bigots in charge of consequences for other bigots.
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Jan 15, 2019 12:20
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Just wanted to say thank you, PPJ - someone at work this morning trotted out the dumb "CA unfunded pensions" thing and since I saw it this morning before him I was prepared to counter it. Which I did, and he shut up and soon went away. Bless.
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Jan 15, 2019 16:07
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Rodenthar Drothman posted:Just wanted to say thank you, PPJ - someone at work this morning trotted out the dumb "CA unfunded pensions" thing and since I saw it this morning before him I was prepared to counter it. Which I did, and he shut up and soon went away. Wait, where was the rebuttal to Hewitt's take? Did you find a response article?
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Jan 15, 2019 16:30
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I haven't been watching the hearings but the news reports I'm getting suggest Trump may not have done a super job finding a loyalist for the AG position https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1085207784268939264 https://twitter.com/GarrettHaake/status/1085205482975961088 https://twitter.com/fordm/status/1085203623607443457 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1085203695845941250 basically: https://twitter.com/svdate/status/1085207918876786688
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Jan 15, 2019 17:15
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