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Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

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Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#461
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the big nefarious power in the background whipping the liberal mob into a frenzy? I get that you want to come off as an enlightened centrist here but you’re gonna have to be specific. What’s the liberal Koch brothers and what’s the liberal Tea Party?

George Soros and BLM? The funny thing is that "whipping the liberal mob into a frenzy" is a literal thing that happened this year that resulted in riots, looting, civil unrest and a full on "autonomous zone" in Seattle. To my knowledge, the only real harm the Tea Party accomplished was rolling back environmental/emissions regulations.

LOL George Soros. It's like hearing someone who still believes in the Tooth Fairy.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#462
"After using vast amounts of money to completely tear apart the civic fabric of this nation I think I may have done an oopsie" is not really going to cut it. The only real mistake here is that these guys weren't Ceausescued when America could have still been saved from them.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At one point I had a chance to speak with the candidate by phone, and I spoke about my concerns about the divisive rhetoric. > The candidate said it was only something they had to do to "fire up my base" and that they would not govern in the way they had campaigned. Now I'm currently, what sort of power do you hold that would cause a politician to speak to you in private and not try and pass the same indirection an…

I hold no special power they could likely have been aware of. I got an sms message from her campaign asking if they could count on my vote. I replied “stop” to all political SMS except this one. The worker and I shared a few exchanges about specific rhetoric their candidate had used. I let them know I had voted for the candidate during the primary but would not in the general. The person offered me a 10 minute call w…

> In Oregon it is legal to record telephone conversations with the consent of at least one party, but recording in-person conversations requires the consent of all parties except for in certain circumstances, such as when all parties reasonably should have known they were being recorded. Illegal recording is a misdemeanor that can also give rise to civil damages.

OR Rev Stat § 165.540 (definition & penalty), § 133.739 (civil damages)

source: https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-call...

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#464
post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us following along from outside Portland, who are you referring to?

(Presumably) Sarah Iannarone, who declared herself "the Antifa mayor" during her campaign. She lost to incumbent Ted Wheeler.

This is correct.

I was trying to separate the individuals from my anecdote on the upstream point. Also, not draw in daemons for these keywords.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#465
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to polls, Trump had been making inroads into black and Latino communities as well, with approval rising from 2016 to 2020 from 5% to 9% in black communities and rising from 28% to 44% in Latino communities.

That is still considered a landslide in the world of politics. Despite the attempts by conservatives to see some light at the tunnel, the conservative ideology will always be a rump party in communities of color.

I made no comments regarding whether it is a landslide or not. I am pointing out that your correction of the GP comment that "the Republican party is making inroads into the working class" should be "to the white working class". I feel that increases of 80% and 57% are significant enough to count as making inroads. Other data includes Vietnamese support increasing from 32% to 48%, handily beating the 36% Biden support. Approval from 44%~48% of a community may not be the majority, but complacent attitudes such as yours is the way that such percentages continue to increase.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The impression I get is that people are still hung up on nuclear not getting widely adopted decades ago when it was the best option. So they're still trying to make that argument now despite there being better options because they feel wronged.

Or that we do not believe that full renewable grids are viable yet. Every single non-carbon solution (solar, wind, tidal) I have heard hand-waves away baseload and storage as something that will be solved soon(tm) by liberal application of technology(tm). Either by magical storage solutions or massive continental / intercontinental "smart" grids that are politically unviable (No country will give up energy security b…

There's a variety of non magical storage solutions which are already being used (pumped water storage, molten salt) but demand shifting and overproduction will probably handle the majority of the variability. Thermal storage heaters will make a comeback, industrial users will vary when they consume electricity and car chargers will be programmed to listen to the price and charge when prices are low/free/negative.

A market driven response combined with upgrading grid infrastructure and finer grained pricing will be more than enough and will be cheaper than binge building nuke plants.

Meanwhile we can gradually ramp down usage of natural gas as markets adapt to the new reality.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#467
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grid needs consistent power that is transferrable and responsive to load. Point sources like nuclear plants add baseload, but are not flexible in supply. A more resilient grid will have much more interconnection between sources and sinks and much more dynamic control and feedback loops. Solar power is currently the cheapest form of new power available, it is limited by the hours of daylight. Wind power is weather…

I should have phrased that differently; my understanding is that the problem isn't whether renewable energy is relatively affordable, it's whether it beats natural gas plants, and that so far the generation part does but the storage does not--the reason Germany's removal of nuclear energy resulted in an increase in fossil fuel use.

Germany's increase of fossil fuel use was temporary. It's been going down since about 2017.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#468
post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Republicans seem to love their mostly meaningless and unsurprising performative doxologies. You need to update your views for today's political scene. These conditions were true up til around 2008. Since then, the Democrats are now the party that engages in the performative doxologies. Need I remind you of all that tone-deaf BLM kneeling crap in DC? Or how about the mask mandates? The face masks are the Democrats'…

The face masks are a public health prophylactic that works. Arguments against spreading diseased aerosols based on politics or some personal liberty are simplistic and ignore physical reality.

Huh? I didn't say anything about the efficacy of wearing face masks. All I did was point out that:

1) there is a political party in the US, who are using the face mask issue to shame and politically attack another party.

2) this is a reversal of the roles these two political parties played just a decade and change earlier.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I'm being overly cynical - but isn't this just a tactic to consolidate the gains he managed to win by discouraging the other side from using his methods? Similar to how challengers decry bureaucracy, but once they become incumbents, wield it as a cudgel to swat down upstarts.

We saw this in the Portland mayoral race. The only on-ballot challenger to the incumbent used political tactics that overcame what would normally be exclusionary credentials. It was so successful, I was taken aback by it. At one point I had a chance to speak with the candidate by phone, and I spoke about my concerns about the divisive rhetoric. The candidate said it was only something they had to do to "fire up my ba…

What were the political tactics used? I'm not familiar with the race and didn't see anything on my first search. That's some political-drama-level honesty from the candidate.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that what all the republicans are saying now that their presidential candidate has lost? FYI, the Koch network did not actively support Trump in either 2016 or 2020. So calling Trump as “their presidential candidate” could be misleading. Charles Koch talked about Trump vs Hillary in 2016 as cancer vs heart attack and said publicly hillary might be a better president.

> > Isn't that what all the republicans are saying now that their presidential candidate has lost? > FYI, the Koch network did not actively support Trump in either 2016 or 2020. So calling Trump as “their presidential candidate” could be misleading. Sure, they didn't support Trump directly. But they really only supported GOP candidates, and whether those candidates in turn supported Trump doesn't seem to have ever be…

Yes, they didn’t actively support Trump opponents either.

Had a non-Trump candidate won the 2016 GOP primary, they would have backed him or her in the presidential race - they canceled their plans to do so when Trump won.

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