I thought the President was required to play golf every other day?
Well, it was nice while it lasted.
If you need an argument for ending the filibuster, here it is.
Did you notice this song was part of the celebration last night?
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I have been really annoyed the last couple days with news coverage of this issue because everyone keeps saying that McConnell wants Schumer to codify the filibuster as part of the power-sharing agreement but no one has said what the alternative is: if Schumer and the dems stick to their guns, what is the outcome?
ETA: apparently one result of not having an organizing resolution is that all the president’s nominees have to have unanimous consent in order to get a vote. This is a mess already.
Right now, McConnell is trying to do what he would’ve done if he was still the majority leader.
Yes, it’s a mess, but it’s not a new mess, it’s the old mess. There is a solution to it.
In case anyone thinks that blowing up the filibuster is anti-democratic…
That’s how many more Americans are represented by the 50 Democrats than the 50 Republicans.
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If you have seen the reports of the National Guard being kicked out of the Capitol and literally left out in the cold on the streets; turns out that was the decision of the Capitol Police, whose leadership apparently isn’t tired of tasering their own nuts.
The Presidents message to us here in the Fed was very encouraging:
After this story was pushed on social media, the troops were all moved back into the Capitol and none of them spent the night on the streets. 
Thanks for sharing that. I imagine that comes as a bit of fresh air.
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It’s quite a thing to have a president who has some measure of interest in actually doing the job, not to mention a passing familiarity with the workings of the federal government and a belief in its capacity to function in service of the citizenry.
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Almost makes you think about moving back. HaHaHA GOP is still active.
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I wonder if a thread dedicated to energy and the future of the industry would be popular?
Anyway, the cancelling of the Keystone pipeline is one of the more public of President Biden’s actions and deserves some discussion. First, it’s important to understand the purpose for which the Keystone pipeline was intended, and thats to transmit dilbit from Alberta, Canada to refineries on the U.S. Gulf coast. Refineries which had been refitted with hydrotreaters and delayed coker units specifically to upgrade and refine the dilbit. This is not crude oil, it is diluted bitumen (dilbit). Fine particles of bitumen (basically coal) conveyed in a medium weight oil. The oil is returned once the bitumen is stripped out via parallel pipeline and “reloaded” with bitumen for another journey. The U.S. refineries invested in the hydrotreaterrs and delayed coker units before the extent of U.S. tight oil production capacity was known. It is important to note that U.S. produced tight oil is almost uniformly light and sweet and not suitable for refineries equipped with hydrotreaters and delayed coker units.
When the market became awash with light sweet crude, the U.S. refinery fleet was out of sync, having been fitted to refine thick Venezuelan or Canadian, or, in California, thick Kern County crude. Now, many U.S. refineries have been refitted for the light, sweet, tight oil as their feedstock and the economics of the Keystone pipeline have become very suspect. Neighboring provinces to Alberta will not allow the pipeline through their territory, so the U.S. route became the only path to market. The demand for dilbit has collapsed, as reduced overall petroleum demand coupled with plentiful, lower cost to refine, light sweet crude oil dominates the market.
President Biden scored points with environmental groups by stopping Keystone officially, but I think it had long since stopped being an economically viable enterprise. I doubt it would have been completed anyway.
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Thanks for that.
Any more such informative posts will likely see you booted from the interwebs .
Exactly. Tight sands production and the response of Middle Eastern producers to it is what killed the Keystone Pipeline. Continued transition to renewable energy (see GMs announcement that it will phase out all gas/diesel engined vehicles by 2035) will keep it killed.
It’s the market in action, which should have Republicans creaming their pants, but instead they will howl about job-killing regulations. However, the construction of the pipeline was expected to create fewer than 5,000 short term jobs, while permanent jobs created for the ongoing operation would’ve been less than 50.
I’ve seen forecasts that don’t show O&G demand returning to pre-plague levels until 2026 or so. They don’t project growth beyond that. While predictions are very difficult, especially about the future, transportation will continue to electrify. Electric motors are 90+% efficient and provide maximum torque at any rotational speed. Once batteries are good enough for the application, the internal combustion engine becomes obsolete for that application. In my view, once EVs are at price parity in the used car market, new I.C.E. vehicle sales will collapse. The E.U. and CA have set 2030 for the end of new I.C.E. sales, which may be a bit optimistic, but there will be a great increase in availability of vehicles over the next two years, so maybe combined the E.U. and CA have enough market muscle to force the hand of tradition manufacturers.
Last mile delivery and mid-range trucking will be significantly electrified by 2025 as Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and now the USPS will go in big for EVs. These are also ideal applications for EVs and will slash the cost of delivery.
Electrical power generation will have to replace petroleum for transportation and that means more solar, more wind, more energy storage, and more combined cycle gas fired power plants. Combined Cycle means it uses both a gas turbine and a steam turbine and is an extremely efficient way to make electricity from natural gas. Coal cannot compete economically with this mix.
Despite what Trump promised - you might want to sit down for this - coal isn’t coming back. There’s only about 20,000 jobs total in coal, so propping it up is insane, when there’s soooo much cheap gas that’s so much cleaner. (Another fall-off-chair revelation is that “clean coal” is complete bollocks).
The frustrating thing about fossil fuels, is how they are allowed to pollute without penalty. They put their waste into the air and water, and do not pay us anything to use our stuff. If you have a water bill from the city, they charge you for water in and water out. If fossil fuel generators had to pay for the cost of disposing of its waste, the cost of such would skyrocket. If they passed that on to the consumer, watch how fast everyone switches to renewable sources only*.
- I completely understand that we cannot do that right now, but the absurdity of hanging on to fossil-fueled power generation because of cost is a complete - and dangerous - fallacy.
Ok but what does this have to do with the price of breakfast cereal?
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Not much at all.
I really need to go back and read the Towlie thread
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