johnzo

Wikipedia has a breakdown of recent generation trends in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States#Electricity_generation Coal and natural gas each account for about a third of our total generating capacity as of a couple years ago. Coal is trending downwards and gas is trending upwards. Coal is getting hammered from all sides: it has to compete with both cheap natural gas and politically sexy renewables. And it's ugly, when its burned it pollutes like crazy and mountains are literally destroyed to mine it. There's a lot of news down here about coal miners being a perfect Trump constituency: entire towns in the US coal belt are dependent on a failing industry that government has been eager to regulate.

I'm sure you know that government interventions -- mileage requirements, subsidies, tax credits, emission regulations/targets -- are a major driver in electric vehicle development. The EPA is the agency that designs and enforces a lot of those interventions. Also, George Soros is a Tesla investor, and the US government is helping to prop up Tesla right now, giving their buyers a $7500 tax credit. More tax money funneled into his pockets! Tho I don't know how Al Gore gets his cut.

It amazes me that it got to a free vote. I am no Canadian political scientist, but from what I remember you wouldn't see the caucus defying the leadership like that in a Harper or Chretien government. Yeah, this looks pretty evil. Good on the MPs who voted for it.

Today's big Stateside news is that the CBO* says that the pending American Health Care Act, aka "Trumpcare", aka "repeal and replace" will result in 24 million fewer insured Americans in the next decade. It will cut about a trillion dollars in spending over that period and balance that with ~$800B tax cut, the vast majority of which will benefit American with family incomes over $200K -- the top two or three percent. * Congressional Budget Office, a bunch of accountants and economists who determine the deficit and economic impacts of bills that Congress is pondering. Congressional rules require that the CBO score the final impact of bills under serious consideration by the House. They are officially non-partisan, and the current director of the office was appointed by the republican congress of 2015.

Reading Young's wikipedia article, damn there is some baggage there, and a bunch of mediocre numbers in the NFL. Add in five years out of football to dull his instincts, him not being in game shape ... and this has big dud written all over it. Wonder if they'll use him as a wildcat runner? Ease him in as a change-of-pace QB? If he's got any giddy-up at all maybe he can push some CFL LBs around, but then the Riders' interior OL is pretty weak, probably not great to run behind. I think the best scenario for Kevin Glenn is to be #2 out of camp and then pick up the pieces when Young flames out. Otherwise, if he hits any kinda rough patch, the calls for Young are gonna be deafening. I remember when the Ottawa Rough Riders parachuted Andre Ware (another Leigh Steinberg guy) in to save the franchise. The first game he dressed, the Riders' starter (was it Sammy Garza?) was stinking it out, the whole crowd started chanting WE WANT WARE. And eventually Ware went in, scored a touchdown off a turnover / short field, and that was his brightest moment in the CFL.

Don't we already have a thread for news from around the league?

from the linked article... Each of the 300 players on that list gets a 25-play highlight reel? Am I reading that right? My god, that's a huge huge huge amount of film for not a lot of staff to assemble and evaluate. It's unbelievable the amount of work they do to add 6-7 guys to the team. I guess if their CFL gigs don't pan out, everyone in the Bomber football operations org will have a fallback career in video production...

I have heard speculation that a special tax on foreign remittance would be a funding mechanism for the trump wall. Foreign workers sent about $25B from the USA to Mexico in 2015. It was Mexico's largest source of foreign income, beating oil.

I think there's been plenty of attention paid to the Ryan health care agenda these past couple weeks ... lots of protests, hassling lawmakers, news coverage, etc, but that's from within my Seattle bubble. The goal for the political folks in my circles is to not let the outrages pile up into fatigue. Fight where we can -- in Congress, against the AHCA and similar awful ****. In a lot of cases, there is a disconnect between the Republican agenda and the interests of their voters. That's a wedge that can be exploited. Trump's platform was essentially socialism for white people. Everyone gets coverage, everyone gets jobs, it'll be just like the fifties (absent the 90% federal tax rate on incomes over $1M, which no one seems to remember) Gotta stay hopeful, engaged, and win in 2018.

And yet another chapter in the saga of Kevin "No Respect" Glenn. Signs a place where he'd be the undisputed starter, team goes out and gets high-profile NFL retread.

Week 1, Game 1: Saskatchewan is in Montreal. CFL schedulemakers FTW. Real interested to see what Durant plays like when he's got a chip on his shoulder.

Here's a thing that's not about Trump that may be pertinent to Manitobans who are in farming / agriculture. Nebraska and Minnesota and several other states are pushing "right to repair" laws that requires manufacturers to make repair documentation and tools available to their customers. This has been precipitated by John Deere, who purposefully design their equipment so that it can't be repaired in the field. In order to operate John Deere equipment, you are obligated to have it serviced by official John Deere people. This is super lucrative for John Deere, but is a giant pain in the ass for farmers who need to run their gear 24x7 during the busy times of year -- the time of year when everyone needs service and John Deere's service people are spread thin. Lobbyists for John Deere and tech companies like Apple have descended upon Nebraska to try and kill the law. Apple doesn't want people opening up their stuff either. This is the rare case where I'm rooting for Republicans -- the Nebraska government is Republican and is representing the interests of its constituency over the interests of big multinationals. If this happens in Nebraska and survives the inevitable flurry of lawsuits, the entire USA will become more free. So, yay Nebraska Republicans! more at https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/industry-and-apple-opposing-right-to-repair-laws/

What do you see as the real agenda? (honest question. there's so much going on right now. I have my own thoughts about the bedrock principles and goals of the Trump administration, but curious to hear if others are on the same wavelength.)

Who did they think they'd find with an open tryout in a Canadian city? Could there be national cfl-level players flying under the radar? Seems unlikely.

The House intelligence committee is going to hold public hearings into Trump/Russia. First one is on March 20th. The directors of the FBI, NSA and the former directors of DNI and the CIA will be testifying under oath. That's interesting that the intelligence committee would hold public hearings, especially with high-powered guys like that testifying. Not sure if it's precedented or not. I wonder how many questions they will decline to answer on account of national security. I've heard that Sally Yeates will also be called to testify -- she was briefly the acting attorney general before getting fired for refusing to enforce the first Muslim ban. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/07/house-intelligence-committee-to-hold-open-public-hearing-on-russia-probe-on-march-20-rep-nunes-says.html

For anyone tempted to take Trump's tweeting seriously: ...then, six weeks later... Jason Chaffetz is a Republican leader in the House, he chairs the Oversight committee, and could investigate this if he wanted to.

Yeah, it's an article of faith in the GOP that being poor (like being gay) is a choice that people freely make.

This is why it's so frustrating to me to hear people say that all the US parties are the same. The Dems are frustrating in tons of ways, but they aren't trying to engineer society into a Hobbesian eighties action movie.

Yes, of course it is okay to have meetings with people. It is not okay to meet with them so you can conspire to break the law. I don't know whether the law was broken, but I think that there is ample grounds for suspicion. I've laid out a bunch of the specific oddities that have raised questions, and they go far beyond "a guy met with a guy." Like, for instance, how did Roger Stone know in September about the Podesta email drops in October? What was up with that? Why did Manafort lie about his Ukranian millions? Why did Sessions immediately deny meeting with the Russians when that wasn't even the question that Franken asked? What in hell is Carter Page's deal and why was he trying so hard to get himself subpoena'd on MSNBC last night? Why are intelligence committee Republicans calling for special prosecutors? Why are Republicans now calling for Trump to open up his tax returns? It's probably not super useful to reiterate all this, because you've got your worldview and your team and your dank talking points, but whatever.

^ photo is fourteen years old ^ As far as I know, Schumer has not exhibited a pattern of Russian collusion since 2003, when this photo was taken.

A fourth string QB jumps to a better situation and you want to change the rules to stop him? C'mon, man, that's just silly -- as is the idea that we would've passed on the Fever if only we'd still had Bennett's rights.

My wife (an attorney) thinks that Page is trying to get himself subpoenaed, with his "I know something that I can't talk about!" game.

Wow. And now CNN is reporting that Trump Campaign national security advisor J.D. Gordon, plus Sessions and several other Trump people, met with the Russian ambassador during the GOP national convention. Shortly afterwards, Gordon and others, acting on Trump's instructions, fought successfully to soften pro-Ukraine anti-Russian language in the Republican platform. These were the only changes that Trump's people requested in the Republican platform. (Compare that to the Democratic platform, which the Clinton and Sanders people wrestled over for weeks.) On top of that -- last year, during the campaign, Paul Manafort expressly denied that the Trump campaign was responsible for the change in the GOP Ukraine policy. And the White House has strenuously denied that the campaign had any Russian contacts. Why can't they keep their story straight? (the Gordon reporting is based on a conversation with Gordon himself, not on a leak from within the government, which is why I find this super noteworthy. This story is moving out of the shadow realm of leaks and into the stage lights of the news networks.)

(oh, and meanwhile, the proposed Trump EPA budget cuts Great Lakes restoration funds from $300MM to $10MM. As someone who grew up in Thunder Bay, this makes me pretty personally mad, though being at the upper end of the watershed, we won't feel it as bad there as they will down east. Anyone old enough to remember what Lake Ontario looked like in the seventies? Remember that scene in Paddle to the Sea where the little canoe guy floats past all the giant outflow pipes? That was when Lake Ontario was North America's septic pond.)

Then why have prominent Republicans resigned from the Trump campaign and the Trump administration in the wake of those meetings? Why did Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort lie about receiving $12MM from Putin's Ukrainian stooge? Why did Flynn tell different stories about his Russian meetings all over town, and then why didn't Trump stand by Manafort and Flynn when the mean ol' Democrats (who control precisely zero percent of the US government) called for their heads? Why did Sessions recuse himself when his boss publicly expressed full confidence in him? These are all proud, powerful men operating close to the apex of power in the USA, and they are being bullied about innocuous meetings, which seems odd. And most notably, why are other Republicans calling for investigations and special prosecutors? Alas, a Claire McCaskill twitter boner doesn't magic all that smoke away.