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Friday, February 19, 2021

Dems Play Politics, Repubs Play Pocket Pool


Silverfiddle Rant!
Casey Stengel is up there with fellow baseball great Yogi Berra for colorful quotes. Here are a couple that could apply to the fumble-fingered GOP:

"Been in this game one-hundred years, but I see new ways to lose 'em I never knew existed before."

"Can't anybody here play this game?"

Democrats know how to play the game.  Sandy Cortez scored bigtime and helped the beta boy in the process:
"Wow. We officially raised $1 million for Texas relief at 9:17pm.," she tweeted. "Thank you all so much. Folded hands I'm at a loss for words. Always in awe of movement work."

By Friday, she tweeted, that figure had risen to $2 million and she announced she was going to fly to Houston to join with Texas Rep. Sylvia Garcia to distribute supplies.
Meanwhile, Ted Cruz hit himself in the head with a ball bat... while striking out...
After returning to Houston on Thursday afternoon, Cruz told reporters outside his home it was "obviously a mistake" and that "in hindsight I wouldn't have done it."
Love her or hate her, Sandy knows how to play the game.

Meanwhile, the GOP can't catch a break.  Can they catch a clue?

35 comments:

  1. I'm more irritated by Cruz' claim that the power outages were caused by wind turbines.

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    Replies
    1. It was true. Just look at the graphs, especially ther second one showing how gas had to "step up" and fill the void.

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    2. Stick to arguments that can't be coraborated with data, jez.

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    3. Not sure how far either graph goes towards demonstrating that the variability of the wind supply (surely a very well understood facet of wind generation) "destabilised" the Texas grid. I think your work in that regard is largely ahead of you. But I think I may have misattributed some other Texan republicans' statements to Cruz, so sorry for that.

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    4. On a normal day Texans relied on wind for 20% of their power. All that power had to be replaced by gas. The graph showed it. Unreliable and costly, thy name is Green Energy

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    5. The wind never stopped blowing, jez, THAT's the point.

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    6. Officials for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages most of Texas’ grid, said the primary cause of the outages Tuesday appeared to be the state’s natural gas providers. Many are not designed to withstand such low temperatures on equipment or during production according to the Texas Tribune- the Texas grid unlike the eastern and western, stands alone, and
      gas pumps, fittings and infrastructure does not meet the
      standards of the rest of the country. Frack away and blame windmills, if it makes you feel good.

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    7. That's a very different point to the one about destabilising the grid.

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    8. Taking 20% away wasn't destabilizing? Who knew?

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    9. That is the nature of your unstated assumption, yes.

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    10. If that extra 20% from wind power had been available, would Texas' grid have collapsed?

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    11. ...because natural gas stepped in and not only filled the missing 20%, but added ANOTHER 50% on top of that to the grid.

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    12. I believe the things that caused gas to fail in Texas would have happened regardless of what happened to wind. What would working turbines have done to keep the pipelines flowing?

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    13. What cause gas to fail was the ERCOT order to supply residences and nursing homes with gas prioritized over electricity generating and industrial plants followed by the need to get the EPA to authorize suppliers to operate the extra generators and exceed their emission limits.

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    14. Notice the priorities established for the emergency by ERCOT:

      NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED BY THE RAILROAD COMMISSION OF
      TEXAS that Rule 2 of Docket 489 is temporarily amended as follows:

      RULE 2.
      Until such time as the Commission has specifically approved a utilities curtailment program, the following
      priorities in descending order shall be observed:

      A. Deliveries of gas by natural gas utilities to for residences, hospitals, schools, churches and other human
      needs customers, and deliveries to Local Distribution Companies which serve human needs customers.

      B. Deliveries of gas to electric generation facilities which serve human needs customers.

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    15. You're like an ipod set to shuffle. I can't think of any good reason to point to these issues ahead of eg. ercot's tiny reserve margin. But to your points: 1) would they have exceeded limits anyway just meeting the 50% extra demand? 2) Are you saying it is better to use gas to generate electricity to heat dwellings than it is to supply gas directly for for heating?

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    16. 1) yes, because the permits were granted based upon the availability of wind generated energy

      2) I'm saying that electric customers were thrown under the energy bus in favour of gas customers.

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    17. ERCOTs "reserve margins" weren't based upon all the solar and wind energy output to be zero (which was nearly the case in this storm). If so, it would be an admission that green energy is NEVER needed or reliable and is simply a "luxury".

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    18. Variable sources like wind must be backed by storage or with standby capacity from other sources. While I don't think this is the fatal flaw you do, it certainly must be accounted for. But this is so well understood, it did not (or should not have) caught ercot by surprise.
      It looks to me as though ercot would have been making the same request of the EPA and prioritising the same gas customers if Texas did not have any wind turbines hooked up to its grid.

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    19. No, the emission permits would have been much higher without the windmills.

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    20. ps - Have you ever fired up a cold oil fired steam plant from zero? It literally can't be done without exceeding EPA limits.

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    21. I haven't, but I understand that cold starts use a lot of fuel. Have you, btw?

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    22. Yes, I have. We paid the fines. The point is, if it was going to be a short term violation, they wouldn't have asked permission, they would have paid the fines. Bunker C doesn't burn well at first. It takes a while to get the air- fuel mix just right.

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  2. Last I heard Cruz wasn't a lineman for the county. He is a Senator. Sure bad optics. Meanwhile 5 Governors bumped off Grandma and Grandpa in nursing homes and unless you have a "weather girl" to go to bat for you, you will hear nothing. Frankly I don't give a damn about Cruz.

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    Replies
    1. You've summed it up quite nicely. Cuomo is lionized as a hero after killing all those old people. The Democrat Party should have to claim dollar amount to the Federal Election Commission for the billions in rosy North Korea style propaganda they receive from the Infotainment Media Complex

      The game is rigged, and Repubs need to realize that and adjust accordingly.

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  3. Cortez can't take care of her own district, denying them Amazon jobs, but I guess they don't care.
    She is not the representative of her district.
    She is a "representative-at-large" of leftism.
    It's all marketing, and the marketing is done for free by the soviet style media that supports the left.
    How else to explain Biden's vote tally, even after discounting the fraudulent ones?

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    Replies
    1. As I missed in your comment til now, Silver.
      "The Democrat Party should have to claim dollar amount to the Federal Election Commission "

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    2. ++

      @ Ed: "She is a "representative-at-large" of leftism."

      Astute comment. And yes, the voters in her district punch that ticket.

      She's also a crafty politician with a preternatural ability to play to her global constituency.

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  4. Bunkerville made a great comment, and Joe Concha agrees with her...

    Cancun Cruz deserves to be dragged, but media's selective outrage is painfully apparent


    Principles can't be applied only when convenient. You hit Cruz, as CNN and MSNBC did almost wall-to-wall Thursday and Friday, fine. But what American audiences - the majority of whom aren't represented by mobs on Twitter - ultimately want is consistency and integrity.

    Oct. 2020, Gallup: 86 percent of U.S. adults felt the media was biased.

    So, sit back and watch Ted Cruz morph into a human pinata for the foreseeable future.

    He deserves it.

    But so does Andrew Cuomo. So do the founders of the Lincoln Project.

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    Replies
    1. Cruz polling among Republicans down to 72%. The Lone Star State deserves better, IMO.

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    2. I guess Cruz had a choice, send them alone or keep them home.

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  5. What did Ted Cruz do wrong and what should he have done that would have made ANY difference?
    He Isn't a Mayor. He Isn't a Governor. He isn't in the State house or State Senate.
    Outside of standing outside an electric facility with tools to warm the State, or frozen pipes there is literally NOTHING he could do differently than what he did that would have made any difference to anyone anywhere in Texas.

    I find the complaints about Cruz to be the most childish political complaints I have seen in years, maybe even ever
    I guess that maybe he should have drove around in a SNOW PLOW clearing the peoples driveways, and then they would have been happier.

    The only logic I can draw from it is this keeps Andrew Cuomo out of the limelight and to damage Ted Cruz at the same time.

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    1. Its politics, Frankie. Cuomo can send thousands of senior citizens to their death, and the press lauds him.

      This was a stupid thing for Cruz to do, and he's paying for it.

      He could have used his power as senator to swing some help to Texas, but "optics" as they say, was horrible for him: Scurrying off to safety while is fellow Texans froze, starved and watched their pipes burst. Hell, quietly sending his family to DC would have been better.

      The Dems know how to play politics, and they beat Cruz like bongo drums on this one. Where was Sandy Cortez with aid during the California wildfires? There was no political gain on that one, no way to rub Repubs' noses in it.

      Politics. GOOPers better learn how to play or they'll never see a majority again.

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    2. It all starts with language, because Dictionaries, unlike the sexes, are social constructs, and so the nation's laws and Constitutions don't have a lasting chance...

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