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Ghost of LL

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Posts posted by Ghost of LL

  1. And by the way, there is a very interesting briefing article in The Economist this week about the electrification of heavy industry.

    Spoiler

    Basf is in the business of molecules. As the world’s biggest chemicals firm, with operations in more than 90 countries, it makes a lot of them. When those molecules contain carbon atoms (and a great many do—they are a wonderfully versatile resource) those carbon atoms tend to come from fossil fuels. When their manufacture requires high temperatures, which is also often the case, that heat comes from burning fossil fuels. Until recently basf’s massive plant in Ludwigshafen in Germany accounted for 4% of the country’s entire consumption of natural gas.

    Conventional wisdom has it that such a firm cannot really hope to lower very much the number of carbon-dioxide molecules it creates in the course of its business. The path to decarbonisation will come instead from gathering up those molecules and disposing of them underground, a process known as carbon capture and storage (ccs). The same conventional wisdom holds that if basf were to swear off burning molecules of gas to create heat, the obvious green alternative would be to burn hydrogen molecules instead. Those molecules would have to be manufactured, too, in an energy-intensive process.

    That is why the recent declaration by Martin Brudermüller, the boss of basf, that “the decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries can only be achieved through electrification” sounds, to many ears, like heresy. Electricity is for houses and light bulbs and maybe even for cars, but not for heavy industries built around burning heroic quantities of fossil fuel. Yet Dr Brudermüller is not alone.

    basf has joined a consortium including sabic, a Saudi chemicals firm, and Linde, a European engineering firm, to develop an electric furnace that can generate heat intense enough for the chemical reactions that are their bread and butter. These firms are not the only recent converts to the electrification of industry. On February 8th Rio Tinto and bhp, both gargantuan mining firms, announced a joint effort to build Australia’s first electric smelter for iron ore. Fortescue, another mining giant, is introducing all-electric excavators and mining lorries, while Spain’s Roca Group recently unveiled the first electric industrial tunnel kiln for ceramics. Such innovations offer a new path to slowing global warming which may in many cases prove quicker and easier than approaches based on ccs and hydrogen.

    Industrial fail

    According to the International Energy Agency (iea), a research body, industry consumes a third of all global energy, with the generation of heat accounting for three-quarters of that. A staggering 90% of that heat is made by burning fossil fuels. All this makes industry a bigger source of greenhouse-gas emissions than power generation or transport. What is more, whereas carbon-dioxide emissions from power generation appear to have peaked and, if electric vehicles continue to proliferate, emissions from transport may soon stop growing, too, industrial emissions are projected to keep growing indefinitely (see chart 1).

    20240217_BBC423.png image: the economist

    Aware that this is impossible to square with their commitments to slash emissions, governments in advanced economies have showered subsidies on hydrogen and ccs as the technologies most likely to help decarbonise industry. Both, however, have so far disappointed. Electrification, meanwhile, had long been dismissed for two reasons. First, it was argued, the very high temperatures and steam required by heavy industry would be difficult or at least uneconomic to produce with electricity. Second, the standard ways of making cement and steel require carbon as an input, which means emitting carbon dioxide is unavoidable even if clean electricity were to replace the burning of fossil fuels.

    Yet McKinsey, a consultancy, predicts that 44% of the decarbonisation it foresees in Europe by 2050, should the eu stick to its net-zero targets, will come from electrification, more than double the share of hydrogen and ccs combined. Why is it so optimistic about an unheralded technology?

    Electrification is suddenly getting a second look for several reasons, argues Jeffrey Rissman in a new book: “Zero-Carbon Industry”. Most obviously, green electricity has become much cheaper and more widely available thanks to the remarkable decline in the cost of wind and solar power. Another factor is growing wariness of reliance on natural gas, thanks to the global price shock that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Supplies of gas ran so low in Germany, for example, that the government considered rationing it for industrial users like basf.

    But the best reason for reconsideration is innovation. Making things hot with electricity is not that hard; think of an electric kettle. Such technologies can scale: if you want ten times as much boiling water, get ten kettles or one bigger one. But if you want to get to 1,000°C instead of 100°C, until recently there were few electric options. That is now changing.

    Electric avenue

    For temperatures of up to 200°C, the technology attracting most attention is not the electric kettle but the industrial heat pump. Heat pumps, like refrigerators, move heat from one place to another. In a fridge the heat is removed from the inside (keeping the contents cooler) and dumped outside (making the kitchen a little warmer). Heat pumps, which are becoming increasingly common for domestic heating, take heat from outside and move it inside. Because the amount of energy needed to move heat this way is lower than the amount needed to heat things up directly, this can lead to big energy savings. And as the technology improves and sales increase, prices are falling.

    Some companies are betting that what works in the home can work in the factory, too. One such is AtmosZero, a startup that aims to reduce emissions at New Belgium Brewing, an American beermaker. AtmosZero is installing a heat pump that will soon replace one of the gas-fired boilers at New Belgium’s brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado. Like most industrial firms over the past 150 years, New Belgium burns fossil fuel to produce steam, which in its case then heats the ingredients required to make beer. AtmosZero’s heat pump will allow it to produce that steam without any burning. Since the electricity used to run the pump will be renewable in the future, that eliminates most greenhouse-gas emissions from the process. It is also more efficient, consuming less energy overall. And because the heat pump transfers warmth to water, just as in a conventional boiler, the equipment can be slotted into New Belgium’s existing factory, without the need for a complete overhaul.

    20240217_BBC408.png image: the economist

    Such heat pumps would allow a vast array of industrial processes that require heat of less than 200°C to be electrified, replacing fossil-fuelled dryers, stills, ovens and boilers. Using electricity to run a heat pump can be several times more efficient than using natural gas to heat a boiler. Using hydrogen, in contrast, is less efficient, because making hydrogen by splitting water molecules through hydrolysis powered by green electricity, although emission-free, involves a loss of at least 20% of the energy you started with (see chart 2).

    Some industrial heat pumps are in use in Europe and Japan, thanks both to subsidies and to a relatively high ratio of gas prices to electricity prices. Kobe Steel, a big Japanese industrial firm, sells commercial heat pumps capable of producing high-pressure steam at 165°C very efficiently. Heaten, a Norwegian startup boasting investment from the venture arm of Shell, a British oil giant, has developed a durable, low-maintenance heat-pump that can harness waste industrial heat to reach temperatures of up to 200°C. That makes it attractive for industries from pharmaceuticals to textiles that need middling heat.

    Even in developing countries in Asia, electrification of relatively low-heat industries is making headway, despite the region’s abundance of cheap coal and lack of subsidies, which makes it harder for heat pumps and the like to compete. rmi, a think-tank, calculates that some four-fifths of the increase in industrial electrification globally since 2014 has taken place in Chinese light industries. The iea predicts that the share of heat used in industry that is generated with electricity will rise from 4% in 2022 to almost 11% in 2028. China will account for almost half of that growth, boosting its use of renewable electricity to generate industrial heat more than five-fold.

    In America, electrified solutions are making inroads even though natural gas is comparatively cheap. A study published in January by the Renewable Thermal Collaborative (rtc), an industry consortium, finds it costs no more to run a heat pump than a gas boiler when trying to attain temperatures below 130°C. That would make heat pumps competitive for 29% of industrial demand for heat, without any subsidy or technological improvements. The rtc expects heat pumps for temperatures of up to 200°C to become competitive by 2030. Harald Bauer of McKinsey expects that, in time, heat pumps will be able to reach temperatures of 500°C.

    For the time being, however, higher temperatures require different technology. “You are looking at the future of industrial energy infrastructure right here!” declares John O’Donnell, the head of Rondo Energy, a startup developing “thermal storage”. At first glance, the future does not seem that remarkable: the object of his enthusiasm is a big metal box.

    It mainly contains bricks. Wires use electricity to heat the bricks, much as a toaster does bread, to temperatures over 1,000°C. The bricks, helped by extremely effective insulation, can then retain heat for days with only minimal losses. When it is needed, the heat can be released in controlled doses at variable temperatures. Air is blown through channels in the bricks, transferring heat.

    Rondo’s thermal batteries are cheaper to manufacture than electric ones that require cobalt or lithium. The heat stored is intense enough to power a lot of heavy industry. As with AtmosZero’s heat pumps, they can be slotted into existing factories without a complete redesign. And since each battery is so efficient, it can consume electricity to heat the bricks when power is cheapest but dispense heat any time.

    The box is generating lots of enthusiasm. Rondo recently raised $60m in financing from the venture-capital arms of such corporate titans as Microsoft, a software colossus, Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, and Rio Tinto. It counts various luminaries of tech investing among its backers. After a widely viewed ted talk and a recent lecture to the great and the good at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr O’Donnell chuckles, he is known as “the brick guy”.

    Mr O’Donnell is planning a big global expansion. With the help of Thailand’s Siam Cement Group, an investor with plenty of experience making bricks, Rondo hopes to manufacture enough boxes each year to store 90gwh of electricity—double the capacity of Tesla’s “gigafactory” for batteries in Nevada.

    Other companies are developing variations of these “rocks in a box”. Brenmiller, an Israeli firm funded in part by the European Investment Bank, uses volcanic rock as a storage medium. Antora, a Californian startup, uses big cubes of solid carbon to store heat as intense as 1,800°C. Boston’s Fourth Power uses molten tin flowing through a system of graphite bricks (and graphite plumbing) to provide storage at 2,400°C. Because the tin glows white hot, specialised photovoltaic cells inside the system mean that energy can be withdrawn in the form of electricity as well as heat. In areas with variable power prices, it can run at a profit simply by storing heat when power is cheap and dispensing electricity when the price rises.

    The hardest industrial processes to electrify are those that require intense heat around the clock, especially if they use fossil fuels not only to generate heat but also to provide some sort of chemical necessity—such as the carbon used in steelmaking. This is the most experimental end of the spectrum of electrifying industry, but also potentially the most rewarding, since steel, chemicals and cement together account for more than half of industrial heat and thus for a similar proportion of industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.

    Several well-funded startups are pursuing radical innovations in aspects of steelmaking, one of the world’s most polluting industries. Electra, which is backed by Amazon and bhp among others, has found a way to make pure iron in a fire-free furnace. A picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—who met a molten end in a steelworks—glares down at researchers at its laboratory in Colorado as they dissolve iron ore in a chemical cocktail and zap it with electricity. This “electrowinning” technique produces pure sheets of iron without using any coking coal or fossil fuels and so emitting hardly any greenhouse gases. The firm is chasing rivals including ssab, from Sweden, which plans to commercialise green steel by 2026.

    Illustration of the aerial view of an Oil refinery plant with power extension cords making up some of the buildings image: ricardo tomás

    A more tried and tested method of reducing the carbon emissions from steelmaking replaces blast furnaces with electric-arc furnaces. These typically use electricity to melt and recycle scrap metal, rather than making steel from scratch using iron ore and coking coal. That makes the most sense in places with a carbon price, plenty of scrap and relatively stable demand for steel—rich countries, in other words. In January Tata Steel announced it would shut down blast furnaces and shift to electrified steelmaking in Britain. Wood Mackenzie, a research firm, predicts investment of $130bn in electric-arc furnaces in the coming years. That would allow low-emission steel production, currently 28% of global output, to rise to 50% by 2050.

    Cement is another tricky industry to decarbonise because, like steelmaking, its emissions come from the chemical reactions involved, as well as from burning fossil fuels to generate heat. Sublime Systems has found a way to obtain the necessary chemicals without emissions at room temperature, using electrolysis—a process in which chemical reactions are stimulated by running an electric current through a solution. “We are basically replacing the kiln,” explains Leah Ellis, the firm’s co-founder. Investors including Siam Cement poured in $40m last year.

    The third giant, sooty industry is chemicals. One radical form of electrification involves feeding chemical precursors into a super-speedy rotor, spinning at more than 20,000 revolutions a minute. Coolbrook, a Finnish firm, is pioneering this sort of “roto-dynamic reactor”. It is backed by Braskem, a Brazilian firm, Cemex, a Mexican one and sabic, a Saudi one. In December it announced it had used this technique to crack (break down) naphtha, a common process for the industry.

    Some chemicals firms are also looking at nuclear power as a source of electricity and heat. Dow, an American one, plans to build four small modular reactors made by x-energy, a startup, at a plant in Texas. These will replace gas-fired boilers that currently provide electricity and steam.

    Amping up

    Even if such technologies work as advertised, electrifying industry will take time. Frederic Godemel of Schneider Electric, a big French manufacturer of industrial equipment, reckons existing technologies can in theory electrify 30% to 50% of heavy industry. In practice, however, he thinks only 10% is electrified now. That is because, even when new electrical kit is competitive over the long run with existing equipment, factory bosses often resist switching because it involves high upfront costs, disruptive stoppages, training on the new gear and so on.

    Carbon pricing or other incentives to cut emissions would obviously help. So do technologies that minimise the disruption. Addison Stark, the chief executive of AtmosZero, has explained that his firm explicitly set out to overcome managers’ objections by designing its electric boiler to slot into existing factories easily and so reduce the hassles of installation. “Steam powered the first Industrial Revolution,” he declares, “and decarbonised steam will power the next one.”

    One indication that electrification may live up to its promise is the interest shown by oil and gas companies, whose products the technology is intended to supplant. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil firm, has long been electrifying its offshore rigs to reduce the emissions involved in pumping for oil. Its most efficient offshore operations emit less than 1kg of carbon dioxide for every barrel of oil produced (or for the equivalent amount of gas) compared with a global average of 15kg a barrel. Oil firms drilling in America’s Permian basin, under pressure from regulators to cut emissions, are spending billions to replace conventional equipment prone to leaking methane (a potent greenhouse gas) with electric alternatives. If even the natural enemies of electrification can see its worth, its prospects must be decent.

     

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  2. On 2/20/2024 at 9:51 AM, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

    Why Trump is going to win: people can't remember what they felt four years ago.

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/13/opinion/thepoint#trump-independent-voters-define

    There's a lot of truth to that.  The human brain has a remarkable ability to forget traumatic events as a coping mechanism.  And 2020 was an extremely traumatic national event.  It wasn't just Covid.  We had George Floyd and the whole Black Lives Matter movement.  And, oh by the way, we damned near went to war with Iran after droning the head of the IRGC.

    But that's not to say that those suppressed memories can't be recovered.

    4 hours ago, Snake Diggity said:

    I don’t think it’s effective to advertise that far in advance.  There’s downside; if he starts touting his economy now, then come Aug-Oct if the bottom falls out for whatever reason, he would lose the narrative.  Better to save all his ammo until summer then let out a deluge when his talking points are a little more reliable and people are closer to making their decisions.

    The only reason to advertise this far ahead of a November election is to define yourself or your opponent.  But these candidates are already well-defined.

    You're right that anything that tries to talk up the status quo is a waste, because the status quo will change between now and November (whether for good or ill remains to be seen).

    5 hours ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

    If you have a huge war chest, you're the known candidate, and you have a messaging problem, why the hell are you not already putting out an ad campaign to change the narrative?

    Seems like a steady drumbeat of "record high market, record oil production, record jobs, lower inflation" would do a lot of good right now to prime people for November. 

    Maybe they are and I just don't see them because I live in Texas?

    I hate to tell you . . . and I really do hate to say this, because I abhor this type of cynicism in politics . . . but this is not going to be a positive election focusing on Biden's accomplishments.  This is going to be a very negative campaign.

    And that is very good (albeit intensely cynical) politics.  Because while there is no conclusive evidence that negative campaigning helps the candidate undertaking the mudslinging (or hurts him/her due to an anti-negativity backlash), there is conclusive evidence that negative campaigning reduces turnout.  And that's what Biden and the Democrats have to want right now.  As reflected in the midterms and every special election, Democrats excel in low-turnout races.  That's because Democratic voters are (1) more educated, and (2) super-pissed about things like abortion.

    Biden has low approval ratings.  That's just how it's going to be.  But if he can convince marginal voters "they both suck, I don't want to vote for either of them," then that's probably a win for him.

    So buckle up, folks--we're probably going to see the most negative presidential election in our lifetimes.

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  3. 3 minutes ago, ftf82 said:

    Austin Biz Journal article today that Waterloo Records is expected to lose their location at the end of their current lease term (per the article, 3 years appx from now). Endeavor is planning on re-developing that site (although article mentions that they might be able to lease space in the new project, that never happens in my experience). When I first moved to town they were  just across Town Lake on South Lamar.  @YGIFS you know anything about this travesty?

    I mean, to precisely your point, that isn't Waterloo Records' forever home.  And a mundane strip center--even if we really like one of the tenants--is far from the best use of that particular piece of real estate.

    I really don't think they'll have a hard time securing a lease elsewhere.

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  4. 2 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

    Trump likes submissive servants. See Mike Pence bottom bitch. Tim Scott, Tulsi, or Kristi fit the bill

    Probably Noem, but Gabbard is also owned by Putin so definitely a sleeper. 

     

    I mean, c'mon--we all know it's Noem because Trump thinks if he puts her on the ticket she'd owe him and he'd be able to leverage that into sex.

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  5. Looks like Kristi Noem didn't get the message that the border isn't that great a GQP issue since they killed the border bill.

     

    But do take some time to reflect on the Gujaratis who have opened a dozen Hampton Inns, Four Points by Sheraton, and Homewood Suites in and around Eagle Pass over the last 18 months.  They're making an absolute killing.

    Good for them.

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  6. 2 hours ago, South Austin said:

    Ditto for Sherine.  And same for Karin Crump who's running in the primary for a seat on the Austin Court of Appeals.

    I mean, sure--if you're a Republican.

    Putting Judge Crump on the Court of Appeals means that her seat on the district court bench becomes vacant.  Abbott would fill that.  And you know he would fill it with the most loony-toons GQP nutter the Office of the Attorney General has to offer.

    Karin Crump is a good district judge.  Keep her there.  Keep Tom Baker on the Court of Appeals.  Keep Abbott's loony MAGAt off the Travis County bench.

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  7. I would just recommend doing the North Rim of the Grand Canyon if you're hitting the Utah parks.

    We did a huge Western United States during Covid, and Zion was our favorite.  We really liked Kanab, which is really kind of in between Zion, Bryce, and the North Rim.  It's a cool little town with a number of old roadside motels that have been refurbished and are pretty nice.  And out of Kanab, we did a dune-buggy tour that was a real highlight.

    The North Rim is nice because it's about 1,500 feet higher than the South Rim, so it is a lot cooler in the summer.  And, as an added bonus, it's a lot less crowded.   

  8. On 2/12/2024 at 10:28 PM, bluto said:

    Just recently had Dan Patrick endorse Morgan Meyer primary challenger. It’s hard to keep track of these alliances, like a season of mtv the challenge. 

    That's hilarious, because Morgan is literally the only Republican who can win that district.  If a primary challenge is successful, that's the same as handing that seat over to the Dems.

  9. 38 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

    1. A jar(?!) of cheez wiz? It comes in jars? I thought the whole point was cheese you could spray?

    2. 8 ounces of cheez wiz may be more cheez wiz than I have had over my entire life. Yes, I was deprived as a child. 

    It's definitely not more than I've had in my life, because I like a good cheesesteak.  And this is very important--Cheez Whiz is the proper cheese product to put on a cheesesteak.

    But it has no business anywhere near an enchilada.  The proper cheese for an enchilada of the cheese variety is, as everyone knows, Land O Lakes Extra Melt Shredded Processed Yellow American Cheese.

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  10. On 2/13/2024 at 12:44 AM, texastough said:

    Makes me want to move to ND to vote for her

    Eh, . . . can I maybe just visit for a few hours?  Like fly into Fargo, cast a ballot, and then fly right back out?

    • Like 1
  11. 1 hour ago, bolverk said:

    Last weekend, I was fooling around with demographic figures to assess the likelihood that a state would swing Democratic and picked four traits, which, if a high enough share of the population exhibited, would favor going Blue. These are 1) the percentage of adults (25+) with a Bachelor's degree, 2) the percentage of people living in urban areas (as defined by the Census), 3) the percentage of people who are not Anglo (white non-Hispanic), and the percentage of people who are non-Evangelical (used a dated Pew survey). 

    After doing some sorting of each and comparing it to the percentage of the vote that Biden got in 2020, I tried to pick the tipping point for each and shaded everything above that blue. If it didn't seem to matter, I left the numbers black. And, if they clearly favored Republicans, I shaded the numbers red.

    The overall results composite score in the TOTAL column (sum of each percentage) that should serve as a predictor for the likelihood of voting Democratic holds up pretty well. If a state got 2.40 or greater, then it *should* vote Democratic. If it scored below 2.00, then theoretically, it should be a Republican state, according to these indicators.

    It's not perfect because there are some outliers, such as Vermont, Maine, and Utah (the Pew Survey I looked at didn't have Mormon as a religious group). Vermont and Maine are largely rural and very white, but they're both irreligious and educated, especially Vermont.

    For the Democrats, Texas scores very well, with our population being pretty urbanized on the scale and very well on non-Anglo. We do so-so on education but poorly on the share of our population that's non-Evangelical. After reflecting on these scores, I think what would tip us into the Democratic column would be more college graduates, as we're already Brown and Black enough.

    North Carolina's problems are that it's still pretty rural, White, and Evangelical.

    With these four factors, it's pretty easy to see why Iowa and Ohio have gone GOP and why Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia are swing states. Nevada and Arizona *should* be blue from here on out, but the latter needs a few election cycles to prove it.

    Texas and Florida, man. Those are the two really tough ones to figure out. They have the numbers to be Democratic.

    image.png.d0c5889aa90511c75b50d3dfc42fdf6e.png

    image.png.f0d18a9238a4e8c58a21994cb88ae260.png

    I think people sleep on Alaska, and your overview kind of reflects that.

    Alaska has stayed Republican because, well let's face it, it's a reasonably new state and a lot of its partisan alignment is the direct result from the issues over statehood and the personal brand of certain long-serving officeholders (Hawai'i is the same way).  Alaska is hugely supported by the federal government.  So nobody has really cared whether Ted Stevens or Don Young or Frank Murkowski is a Dem or a Rep; all that matters is whether they bring home the federal money.

    But the fundamentals don't completely favor the GQP.  As noted above, it has an enormous non-white population.  And it is actually surprisingly urban.  And while the percentage of the population with a bachelor degree is low, there are comparatively few Evangelicals.  

    So when Don Young died, it's not particularly surprising that Peltola won.  And she's now the most popular figure in Alaska politics.  And that's the model.  It's the Arizona model.  Get the Native American population on board and mobilized for voting Democratic.  And then blend that with the urban and educated suburban electorate.  Oh, and weird thing--they really like weed in rural Alaska.  So that's another occasional base for Democratic support (particularly in the bush).

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  12. 5 minutes ago, Viper said:

    So this doesn't seem good. Wonder if it's the gps jamming in Königsberg that's been going on for the last few months or something more to do with online hacking and/disinformation campaigns or maybe new nuclear testing going on? 

     

     

     

    This seems . . . not ideal.

     

    eta: Oh, fun--it looks like "Cuban Missile Crisis II: Nukes in Space" is coming.  

    I kinda think I'm not going to like this sequel.

     

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  13. 19 hours ago, jdhorn92 said:

    Well this solves my 2025 problem of not getting into Delta SkyClub

    https://about.americanexpress.com/newsroom/press-releases/news-details/2024/American-Express-To-Open-Largest-Centurion-Lounge-at-Hartsfield-Jackson-Atlanta-International-Airport/default.aspx

     

    With Delta's '25 change to Skyclub access, having the Amex Platinum will get you in free (well $500 technically, iirc).  Wonder if this will ease 2024 overcrowding in ATL Skyclub? 

    26K square feet, in E concourse, so a bit of hike if you connect in B, but their plane train is very efficient and I usually just walk anyway, as the ATL has done a great job with the walking museums, art etc.. between several of the terminals.

    Ok.  But they just changed the admission rules on the Centurion Lounge.  I can't remember what the deal is exactly, but they've imposed some spending requirements to get the access you used to have just by being a member.

    But if you meet those spending requirements, then you also have access to the Delta SkyClub.  So that's nice.

  14. 1 hour ago, Js1 said:

    If the polls are constantly overrating the GOP by 4-5 points, then Biden is likely winning by 3-4 points nationally and probably just repeating 2020’s results. Not much seems to have changed since 2020, really 

    The polls are broken because there's a bunch of people who only fucking come out when Donald Trump is on the ballot.  They view politics as entertainment.  And they're not going to go to the show if Bette Midler isn't going to be on stage that night.  They're showing up for the star, not the fucking understudy.

    Polls of "likely voters" can't account for that.  So you're saying you voted in 2016 and 2020?  Well, you're probably a likely voter for purposes of the likely-voter screen.  But--and stay with me here--that person really isn't a likely voter in a special election in the middle of February if he didn't vote in 2022 or 2018 or any fucking presidential election before 2016.

    But is he a likely voter in November with Trump on the ballot?  My guess is "yes."

    11 hours ago, TheStoicPaisano said:

     

    So, Donald, you fucking moron, here's the real scoop: Souzzi won by the margin he did entirely BECAUSE OF YOU!

    Pilip went out and toed the GQP line in favor of killing the (formerly bipartisan) border deal.  And Souzzi fucking hung her with that.  He argued that immigration is a clusterfuck and the border is in crisis, and it is Republicans like Pilip who refuse to do anything about it.  They're imperiling national security for perceived political gain.  "Blame me," said Trump, and the voters fucking did.

    I don't think Souzzi could turn immigration into a positive for Democrats.  But he sure showed the gameplan for how to neuter the issue.  

    And the gameplan exists entirely because of Trump.  He's the one who took his own best issue off the field.  It's like having Reggie Bush on the fucking sideline for 4th and 2.  Fucking unbelievable (thanks, Sark).

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  15. Just now, Voldemort86 said:

    Man I hope one of their members suddenly gets extremely sick or hurt to where they can’t walk or there’s some kind of transportation issue that cancels flights or ices roads. Anything to make them hold off the vote until they just give up.

    I suspect they don't have a real good whip count because . . . well, they just really suck at it.  But even if they were good at it, this would be a challenging situation given the flight schedules and the weather.  

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