Author Archive: Stephen Green
January 31, 2017
TRUMP SEEMS MORE NORMAL EVERY DAY: PETA Wants Toymaker to Remove Plastic ‘Fur’ From Plastic Figurines.
AA DENSE-PACK: Tesla’s Battery Revolution Just Reached Critical Mass.
Three massive battery storage plants—built by Tesla, AES Corp., and Altagas Ltd.—are all officially going live in southern California at about the same time. Any one of these projects would have been the largest battery storage facility ever built. Combined, they amount to 15 percent of the battery storage installed planet-wide last year.
Ribbons will be cut and executives will take their bows. But this is a revolution that’s just getting started, Tesla Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel said in an interview on Friday. “It’s sort of hard to comprehend sometimes the speed all this is going at,” he said. “Our storage is growing as fast as we can humanly scale it.”
The new battery projects were commissioned in response to a fossil-fuel disaster—the natural gas leak at Aliso Canyon, near the Los Angeles neighborhood of Porter Ranch. It released thousands of tons of methane into the air before it was sealed last February.
With all due credit to Elon Musk for his partly taxpayer-funded battery revolution, batteries are merely a means of storing energy. Somebody, somewhere still has to do the sometimes unpleasant business of producing energy — a business California progressives want no realistic part of.
So they’ll take the batteries and the tax credits that come with them, but actual energy producers are “Not our kind, dear.”
REPORT: Trump bringing Supreme Court favorites to Washington.
The two judges who have been considered the top finalists to be President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court — Neil Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman — are being brought to Washington ahead of tonight’s White House announcement, sources tell CNN.
The move comes as there were increasing indications that Gorsuch will be Trump’s choice, sources briefed on the White House deliberations tell CNN.
One source said that Gorsuch was told it was likely him. Those close to the process warn that until it is announced, Trump could change his mind.
Gorsuch is in Washington, according to one source close to the process. Hardiman was seen by a CNN producer leaving his Pittsburgh neighborhood Tuesday morning and driving east towards Washington.
Another one of the sources, familiar with the White House plans, said the administration is taking extraordinary measures to build suspense and keep the final selection under wraps for as close to the 8 p.m. EST announcement as possible.
Well, he’s certainly accomplished that much.
LESS THAN IT SEEMS: Dems Try to Stop Trump’s Order in Congress, Rally at Supreme Court.
In the House, Republicans blocked immediate consideration of an effort by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and John Conyers (D-Mich.) to defund Trump’s executive order; they named their bill the Statue of Liberty Values Act.
Lofgren said her bill “states that President Trump’s executive order will have no effect or force of law and states that no funds or fees shall be used to implement the order.”
In their evening rally outside the highest court in the land, congressional Dems surrounded by a crowd of demonstrators sang “This Land Is Your Land” while waiting for someone to fix the microphones.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the video.
Watch: Oops! That was awkward… Pelosi, Schumer lead a protest against Trump, and it doesn't quite go as planned pic.twitter.com/HhuzXCKig2
— TV News HQ (@TVNewsHQ) January 31, 2017
UPDATE: Please clap.
ANOTHER UPDATE (From Glenn): My favorite part is “Where are the real people?”
A GOOD START: Trump Halted $181 Billion in Regulatory Costs on First Day in Office.
“On day one in office, President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, signed a memo to all executive agencies imposing a regulatory moratorium,” wrote Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy for the American Action Forum. “This may sound like an extraordinary action, but President Obama’s then-Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, penned an almost identical memo eight years ago.”
“According to American Action Forum (AAF) research, this memo put a hold on $181 billion in total regulatory costs, including $17 billion in annual costs, and 5.5 million hours of paperwork,” Batkins wrote. “This moratorium freezes 22 rulemakings with annual costs above $100 million and 16 measures with more than $1 billion in long-term costs.”
The Trump administration memo stopped the publication of new rules in the Federal Register, withdrew regulations that were sent for formal publication so they can be reviewed, and postponed recently finalized regulations for 60 days.
Longer, please.
IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN OBAMA DOES IT: Dem Congresswoman Forced To Face Her Own Voting History After Calling Trump’s Travel Ban ‘Horrifying’
Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Esty from Connecticut launched a tweetstorm Monday afternoon against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, but quickly backtracked after followers confronted her on her visa-related voting history.
Esty co-sponsored H.B. 158 on Dec. 3 2015, a bi-partisan bill that enabled the executive branch led by the the Department of Homeland Security to severely limit or curtail visas from countries like Iran and Iraq.
If it weren’t for double standards…
ANDREW MCCARTHY: Thank Obama for Iranian Missile Tests.
No, really — he’s done enough already.
UPDATE (From Ed): I’m so old, I remember when Alter had to be reminded of the language of the Constitution – by Tom Brokaw and the late Tim Russert, when Alter became Bush Derangement Syndrome Patient Zero at the end of the interminable election night of 2000.
QUESTION ASKED: Can the TV Industry Sustain Falling Prices?
Last year we bought the biggest TV we’ve ever owned, with four times as many pixels as our eyes can discern at a comfortable viewing distance, for about the same price as a much smaller set with a second-rate screen from just a few years ago.
QUEBEC SHOOTER UPDATE: Alexandre Bissonnette charged with 6 counts of 1st-degree murder.
Bissonnette made a brief court appearance around 6 p.m. ET Monday. He will remain in custody until his next court appearance on Feb. 21.
Provincial police are treating the attack as a terrorist act.
RCMP spokeswoman Camille Habel said Bissonnette could later face terrorism-related charges, depending on the outcome of the ongoing investigation.
Six men were killed and five people remain in hospital with injuries.
And that second suspect, reportedly from Morocco? Wrong man:
Another man, Mohamed Belkhadir, was arrested outside the mosque within minutes of the shooting. He was released after police confirmed he was a witness and not involved in the shooting.
He said he had been shovelling snow when he heard gunshots — when they stopped he entered the mosque to call 911.
“I saw the image of someone with a firearm, I didn’t know it was police. I thought it was a shooter who’d returned,” Belkhadir told Radio-Canada.
The man fled and police arrested him. He was released Monday.
Shortly after noon Monday, provincial police said that man was no longer a suspect, but rather a witness to the attack.
Glad that’s cleared up.
STAY CALM AND CARRY ON: Leftists March in Britain, Want PM May to Cancel Trump Visit.
WELL, GOOD: Mattis Review Of F-35 Fighter Likely To Yield Lower Price, Faster Production.
This is going to be easier than many observers expect. The joint program office was already working with prime contractor Lockheed Martin and engine-maker Pratt & Whitney to implement a “blueprint for affordability” aimed at accomplishing precisely what the president wants. And the cost of the fighters is falling with each successive production lot — it declined 4.2% in Lot 7 and then another 3.6% in Lot 8. Lots 9 and 10 will exhibit similar progress.
Lockheed Martin has welcomed the review, issuing a statement that “smart buying strategies” could yield significant savings. That’s an under-statement. Lockheed contributes to my think tank and is a consulting client, so I’ve been listening to company engineers grouse for years about how excessive testing and regulatory requirements have driven up the cost of each plane. The company’s internal estimate is that at least 20% of program costs are driven by redundancy, oversight and the like.
It may not be feasible to eliminate all of these overhead factors — many are required by law — but it is easy to imagine getting the cost of each plane down significantly from current projections.
Faster, please.
(Link was broken, fixed now — sorry!)
HOW CAN WE MISS HIM IF HE WON’T GO AWAY? Obama weighs in as travel ban fury mounts.
After a weekend of chaos at airports, mass protests and diplomatic outcries, criticism of Trump’s proposal even came from Barack Obama, who broke his silence for the first time since leaving office.
“President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country,” Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said.
“Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake.”
To his credit, Obama did make it a week and a half before deciding we couldn’t go on without him.
HMM: Hill staffers secretly worked on Trump’s immigration order.
The work of the committee aides began during the transition period after the election and before Donald Trump was sworn in. The staffers signed nondisclosure agreements, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Trump’s transition operation forced its staff to sign these agreements, but it would be unusual to extend that requirement to congressional employees. Rexrode declined to comment on the nondisclosure pacts.
It’s extremely rare for administration officials to circumvent Republican leadership and work directly with congressional committee aides. But the House Judiciary Committee has some of the most experienced staffers when it comes to immigration policy.
And:
Since the staffers did not inform Republican leaders about their work, Hill leaders and the House Homeland Security panels were never given the chance to vet the order for potential problems — such as the issue with green card holders that caused authorized U.S. immigrants to be threatened with deportation at airports.
Even supporters of the administration believe the administration erred in its lack of communication. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, speculated that the administration could have given “people a heads up a week or so out and get them on the same page.” But he cautioned that the administration is “understaffed and Trump is impatient,” and the White House has a natural learning curve.
Newt Gingrich, who is close with Trump, said, “They could have waited a couple days, and they would have done better. I think some of this stuff is they’re learning how to roller skate. They can’t understand in advance, they have to do it for the first time.”
It appears for now that Trump was in a rush to fulfill a signature campaign promise, and maybe was also worried about leaks from the Hill and from his own high-level appointees — even SecState Rex Tillerson, Homeland Security Chief John Kelly, and SecDef James Mattis were reportedly cut out of the loop, too.
Whether this instance was just growing pains or an early sign of an Administration at war with Congress and with itself remains to be seen.
THE DEEP STATE STRIKES BACK: US Diplomats Consider Filing Dissent Over Immigration Ban.
In recent days, drafts of a dissent memo have been circulating among diplomats and associates abroad expressing concern that the new restrictions — which Trump said would help “keep America safe” — are un-American and will actually paralyze efforts to stop terrorist attacks in the U.S.
“This ban … will not achieve its stated aim to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States,” warned an early draft reviewed by ABC News.
Instead, the executive order will expand anti-American sentiment and “immediately sour relations” with key allies in the fight against terrorism, particularly many of the countries whose citizens are now blocked from traveling to the United States, according to the draft.
Now that’s just a draft memo, which somehow… mysteriously… accidentally… got leaked to ABC News.
But then there’s this, possibly only tangentially related headline from the WSJ: White House Fires Acting Attorney General Sally Yates After Defying Immigration Ban.
Details:
Ms. Yates learned of her firing Monday evening, in a letter from the White House hand-delivered to her office, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In a statement, the White House said Ms. Yates “has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States.”
Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, will be acting attorney general until Mr. Trump’s attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, which could happen next week.
We’ll see if this draft memo ever becomes finalized.
FLASHBACK: Calif. bans state travel to Kansas over LGBT discrimination concerns.
I’m old enough to remember when travel bans were all the rage.
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Anonymous Calls for BDS vs. U.S. to Take Down Trump.
BDS stands for “boycott, divest and sanctions.” Given that the U.S. dollar is the world’s major reserve currency, U.S. equities markets are the world’s largest, freest, and most dynamic, and that U.S. consumers are the world’s richest and most desired — Anonymous’ call barely even registers as virtue signaling.
January 30, 2017
HEALTH: France Fights Obesity By Banning Unlimited Soda Refills
I was going to order a second glass of wine, anyway.
21ST CENTURY DATING: I Wore Perfume Made From My Vagina to See If It Would Get Me Better Dates.
TYPICAL: Trump Protects U.S., World Gets Enraged.
Anger is easy. Doing stuff is hard.