Donald Trump flirted with the idea of being president for three terms – a clear violation of the US constitution – during a bombastic speech for the National Rifle Association in which he vowed to reverse gun safety measures green-lighted during the Biden administration....
His kids lack a great deal of his rizz. DT Jr is too weak, Eric is dumb as dishwater, and Ivanka has the girl cooties that sink every woman Republican candidate for the Presidency.
Not according to the last two election vote-counts. That’s been a problem for the GOP for a while. Anyone they throw up against Trump is too much of a corporate stuffed shirt or hick blowhard to top Trump’s NYC Diva Energy. He’s got a cult of personality in a way guys like DeSantis and Cruz and Romney could only dream of.
He spent less time campaigning for Hillary Clinton than Biden or Sanders and gave up fighting for his judicial nominees back in January. He’s been on permanent vacation ever since.
Sure, it gets his fans out in record numbers, but it also gets people who hate him voting in record numbers, too.
When Bidencrats are concentrated in a few large states and Trumpies are diffused across a larger number of pivotal swing states, the electoral math favors the Republicans. And as Biden’s own approval ratings crumble, people who would normally turn out to hate-vote against Trump are demoralized.
I don’t think we’d have had that 2020 turnout for Joe Biden without Trump.
Trump won more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. And Biden only clinched the nomination by 40,000 votes across three swing states (all three of which he’s currently trailing Trump in today). He was running a tighter margin than Hillary enjoyed in 2016.
Combine this with Republicans ramping up disenfranchisement efforts, fascist policing of minority communities, a chronically struggling economy, and a President whose declining health inhibits his ability to campaign, and I seriously doubt Biden will see 2020 turnout a second time. Meanwhile, Trump is once again poised to break GOP turnout records.
So, this is definitely good from an infrastructure perspective. But because the infrastructure is all privately owned and operated in pursuit of profit, the cost problem isn’t solved by the new capital.
Much like with all the new natural gas electric plants, these battery centers simply exist to exploit the short periods of time in which Texas electricity prices jump from $25 Mwh to $3000 Mwh. As the cartels sink their claws deeper into the retail market, the possibility of enormous price spikes increase, with base loads falling and surge pricing becoming much more common.
I would expect that a significant contributor to the surge prices is from HVAC units and similar needing to work harder/etc.
That’s one end of the equation. But the other end is in how we’re replacing coal plants with natural gas plants.
Coal plants are significantly slower to respond to market demand (on the scale of hours to increase/decrease supply), so they need to be run at a higher output on a longer time frame as electricity demands rise. Because ERCOT auctions electricity demand in 15 minute intervals, coal plants can’t meet a short spike in demand before its come and gone. Natural gas plants don’t have this problem. They can sit on their reserve fuel until the prices peak and then flood the grid with electricity on short notice.
As coal plant profitability sinks relative to gas plant cartels, the volume of electricity we produce becomes more and more easy to rig within the ERCOT auction markets. HVACs going into overdrive in the evening (typically between 3-7pm) signal a potential spike in demand. But gas plant operators get to wait until the electricity auction realizes those high prices, rather than producing electricity in advance and hoping you get to ride a wave through sunset.
do solar panels work better in warmer temperatures and does output of solar panels scale anywhere close to comparatively with ambient temperature and/or need for HVAC and similar systems?
A lot of the heat in cities like Houston comes from the humidity combined with the sun, so a bit of breeze can drastically impact the gross demand for electricity. Meanwhile, electric components of all sorts (photovoltaics included) perform worse in the heat. Breeze can also impact electricity available from wind turbines, which further shift prices.
Batteries can help renewable energy companies hedge against peak production relative to peak consumption. But, again, a private market maker still wants to chase the highest returns. So putting a bunch of quick-to-discharge batteries on a grid alongside quick-to-ramp-up natural gas turbines means… more cartel price fixing.
It’s not a cartel risk. It’s a supply and demand equation.
Cartels love industries with inelastic demand.
It’s just market prices.
Markets aren’t magic. Prices are a consequence of human decisions. And if you can withhold electricity from the grid to maximize returns (by forming a cartel with other producers) you can drive those prices up when people can least afford to reduce consumption.
It was in that fuzzy in between time right after Bush nationalized half the financial sector and right before Obama sold it back to the investor class at small profit/large loss (depending on how you weight the massive cut in interest rates as subsidy).
One reason Russia took over Crimea so easily was due to the high Russian-national identifying residents. Same with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. East Ukraine had an enormous Russia-aligned population, which drove the split that provoked the 2014 civil war and ended in the invasion.
And funny you bring up Afghanistan, USSR went down also because of invading it.
The USSR went down to perestroika. Gorbachev’s reform and opening of markets invited record rates of corruption and graft, leading to the oligarchs that installed Yeltsin and Putin a decade later. The Russian military was just about the only institution that survived the hollowing out of the national economy and the dissolution of the old republican system of governance.
A federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday blocked a new Biden administration rule that would prohibit credit card companies from charging customers late fees higher than $8....
good things the left-wing is trying to pass that the right-wing is stopping
When you can pass bills that can TikTok from the minority by stapling them to foreign military aid, but you can’t expand Medicare or sanction polluters or secure women’s rights to health care or enfranchise DC voters…
This isn’t “the right just sabotaged us!” it’s “the moderates just sided with reactionaries again”.
Caps on credit card fees? Left proposed, right killed.
So much of this boils down to Dems green lighting GOP judicial nominees while Repubs block Dem nominees without consequences.
What is the remedy for this obstruction other than to scream “Vote or things will get worse!” every two years?
The Dens won’t pack the court. They won’t use our majorities when we have them. They won’t stop giving their economic rivals tons of free money. They won’t stop sending cops into university campuses to crack heads.
Throwing up a rule so a Trump judge can skeet shoot it isn’t “doing anything” when you already know the outcome.
Don't like the sound of that (lemmy.world)
Trump floats idea of three-term presidency at NRA convention (www.theguardian.com)
Donald Trump flirted with the idea of being president for three terms – a clear violation of the US constitution – during a bombastic speech for the National Rifle Association in which he vowed to reverse gun safety measures green-lighted during the Biden administration....
Texas power prices briefly soar 1,600% as a spring heat wave is expected to drive record demand for energy (fortune.com)
Stock Buybacks (lemmy.world)
read more here
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy rejects Macron’s Olympic truce proposal (www.politico.eu)
Judge blocks Biden administration rule capping credit card late fees at $8 (www.cnn.com)
A federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday blocked a new Biden administration rule that would prohibit credit card companies from charging customers late fees higher than $8....
bUt BoTh SiDeS dA sAmE (lemmy.world)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sues Meta, citing chatbot’s reply as evidence of shadowban (arstechnica.com)