The Right-Wing Disinformation Machine

[Scarlet]

9 hours ago, Archy1221 said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-spins-into-the-wind-11613605698?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

 

Thanks for posting that in the right thread but....

 

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wind-turbines-texas-power-outages/

 

“Half of Texas Wind Turbines Freeze, Hurting Electricity Output,” while technically accurate, did not show the full picture. 

Half of the wind turbines did go offline, but power loss from that source was a mere fraction compared to the losses from natural gas, coal, and nuclear sources.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Dan Woodfin, senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state’s power grid, said that while ice forced some turbines to shut down just as a brutal cold wave drove record electricity demand, that was the least significant factor in the blackouts. Woodfin also told Bloomberg that the main factors behind the power failures were frozen instruments at natural gas, coal, and nuclear facilities, as well as limited supplies of natural gas."

 

"Turbines can be “winterized,” or made snow-ready, given that wind turbines have been operating in regions like Antarctica. Turbines can be “winterized,” or made snow-ready, given that wind turbines have been operating in regions like Antarctica."

 

Sounds like the Republican leadership in Texas wasn't prepared.

 

 

 

 

[suh_fan93]

 

 

[RedDenver]

1 hour ago, Notre Dame Joe said:

A nice summary of Obama's role in the hoax.  https://archive.vn/V9fgw

 

Behind the Scenes, Obama Never Left

Lee Smith

 

November 17, 2020 Updated: November 18, 2020

 

 

[TGHusker]

Peggy Noonan comments on Rush's death.  Quoted in part below

 

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/rush-limbaughs-complicated-legacy-11613692155

 

Quote

 

There were downsides, flaws that over the years became ingrained. There was a growing attitude of conservatism, c’est moi, which crowded out newer, sometimes more complicated strands of thought. He was too quick to do the bidding of those he considered powerful. He was too much the cigar-chomping head of the He Man Woman Hating Club. He could credibly be accused of bigotries and blindnesses. And in his last years what had always seemed at least one kind of conservatism looked more like nihilism.

To have a show such as his you had to be The Guy With the View, and knock down others’ views. In the past 15 years my views on important issues diverged from his; he came to see me as an apostate and attacked me for my criticisms of Iraq policy, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush and Donald Trump. His attacks turned personal: I was an elite fancy person, an establishment character of rarefied background who looked down on honest people like him and his listeners. His criticisms were at odds with the facts of our lives, and he knew it; for one thing he was damning me from his vast Palm Beach, Fla., estate. Like many male conservative media figures he made a game of pretending to class sensitivity and implying he’d had to scrap his way up. The radio station where he got his start was co-owned by his father.

In the past dozen or so years, I came to think he was not trying to lead people through thought but simply to divine where his followers were going and rushing to the head of the line so he could look as if he was leading them.

Everyone in public life has a base. The talkers on radio and cable TV, left and right, have one, and Rush had one. And they don’t want to get crosswise with them because they are afraid of them. They constantly have to be alert to where the base is and giving it what it wants, or it may leave. All this degrades and damages public attempts at honesty. It also feeds political polarization.

In 2006, when Mr. Bush’s White House led the party to a devastating congressional defeat, Rush said on his show that, now, “I no longer have to carry the water” for the people who’d just lost.

It actually shocked me when he said that. In supporting the president and the GOP on Iraq and immigration, he was carrying their water? But if you have class and self-respect, you carry no one’s water. And you don’t follow the base; you respect them, tell them what you actually think, and take the blows.

Rush Limbaugh had a groundbreaking career and a big one, but his legacy is mixed. Conservatives after him were less lonely and more aggressive. I think maybe they were at their best when they were lonely, when they didn’t have an echo chamber, when they had to be more deliberative and steelier, when they had to think it through, argue it through in their heads. Now they have the further iterations of Rush, who talk about conspiracy theories and stolen elections as they try, each in competition with the other, to hold on to their base.

What made Rush Limbaugh’s show possible was the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, which, starting in 1949, mandated that holders of broadcast licenses must both give airtime to important issues and include opposing views. It asserted a real public-interest obligation from broadcasters.

By the 1980s it was being argued that the doctrine itself was hurting free speech: It was a governmental intrusion on the freedom of broadcasters, and, perversely, it inhibited the presentation of controversial issues. There were so many voices in the marketplace, and more were coming; fairness and balance would sort themselves out.

In 1987 the doctrine was abolished, a significant Reagan-era reform. But I don’t know. Let me be apostate again. Has anything in our political culture gotten better since it was removed? Aren’t things more polarized, more bitter, less stable?

I’m not sure it was good for America.

And that’s a base, too.

 

 

[Archy1221]

On 2/17/2021 at 1:39 PM, knapplc said:

 

Amen. I'd donate to turn up the thermostat if I could. 

I will send you my Venmo 

[Archy1221]

8 hours ago, Scarlet said:

 

Thanks for posting that in the right thread but....

 

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wind-turbines-texas-power-outages/

 

“Half of Texas Wind Turbines Freeze, Hurting Electricity Output,” while technically accurate, did not show the full picture. 

Half of the wind turbines did go offline, but power loss from that source was a mere fraction compared to the losses from natural gas, coal, and nuclear sources.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Dan Woodfin, senior director for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state’s power grid, said that while ice forced some turbines to shut down just as a brutal cold wave drove record electricity demand, that was the least significant factor in the blackouts. Woodfin also told Bloomberg that the main factors behind the power failures were frozen instruments at natural gas, coal, and nuclear facilities, as well as limited supplies of natural gas."

 

"Turbines can be “winterized,” or made snow-ready, given that wind turbines have been operating in regions like Antarctica. Turbines can be “winterized,” or made snow-ready, given that wind turbines have been operating in regions like Antarctica."

 

Sounds like the Republican leadership in Texas wasn't prepared.

 

 

 

 

Looks that way.  Two small TX grids weatherized after 2011 and were not affected much.  
 

Wind output went from 43% of energy down to 8% and the coal/natural gas base power couldn’t keep up at that point because weatherization issue too.  Hopefully a lesson they learn from 

[RedDenver]

1 minute ago, Archy1221 said:

Looks that way.  Two small TX grids weatherized after 2011 and were not affected much.  
 

Wind output went from 43% of energy down to 8% and the coal/natural gas base power couldn’t keep up at that point because weatherization issue too.  Hopefully a lesson they learn from 

They didn't learn after 1989 or 2011, so I think we'll see this again in a decade or so.

[Notre Dame Joe]

On 2/19/2021 at 2:39 PM, TGHusker said:

Everyone in public life has a base. The talkers on radio and cable TV, left and right, have one, and Rush had one. And they don’t want to get crosswise with them because they are afraid of them. They constantly have to be alert to where the base is and giving it what it wants, or it may leave. All this degrades and damages public attempts at honesty. It also feeds political polarization.

Ms Noonan is vaguely aware that Rush stated "You don't write the show for people who don't listen."

[RedDenver]

 

[RedDenver]

 

[Scarlet]

Why do Republicans hate facts?

[TGHusker]

Florida's Ag Commissioner says no to Governor's instructions to lower the flags for Rush.

 

 

 

[TGHusker]

This is pretty amazing... kind of cult like don't you think

 

 

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/trump-epoch-times-presidents-ronald-reagan/2021/02/23/id/1011169/

 

•  

  Quote

   

  • Donald Trump came out on top in an Epoch Times poll asking readers for their five favorite presidents.

    Here are how the poll results, published Tuesday, break down:

  • 95% of the readers included Trump as one of their top five.
  • 83.5% included Ronald Reagan.
  • 77.4% included George Washington.
  • 74.5% included Abraham Lincoln.
  • 36% included Thomas Jefferson.

   

The five least favorite -   can you guess what party??    Yep, the last 5 Dem presidents.    They are an educated group those  Epoch Times readers.

 

• Quote

   

  • 94.9% included Barack Obama.
  • 89.3% included Joe Biden.
  • 73.3% included Bill Clinton.
  • 54.5% included Jimmy Carter.
  • 42.4% included Lyndon Johnson.

   

   

[BigRedBuster]

16 hours ago, TGHusker said:

This is pretty amazing... kind of cult like don't you think

 

 

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/trump-epoch-times-presidents-ronald-reagan/2021/02/23/id/1011169/

 

•  

The five least favorite -   can you guess what party??    Yep, the last 5 Dem presidents.    They are an educated group those  Epoch Times readers.

 

•  

It's pretty telling when someone who has been in office for one month is second on the list of least favorite Presidents.  So much for seeing what they do as President and making formulating an educated answer.

[RedDenver]