Joe Biden gave a farewell address from the Oval Office tonight. So sad that there is such hyper-partisanship running rampant in this country. Just read thru some comments. The blindness of some people is just sad.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Sunday, January 12, 2025
lithium plant
The story below was posted in MiningWeekly.com. It really chaps my ass that Musk is poisoning another area in Texas, while sucking out about all the freshwater in the area. His lithium plant near Corpus Christi will need up to 8 MILLION gallons of water per day. That area has been in a bad drought for a long time now. The two lakes in the area are very low on water: Lake Corpus Christi is at 25% of capacity and Choke Canyon Reservoir is at 16%. But you know how it goes: The billionaires get what the billionaires want, especially when there are Republicans in charge. No wonder he left California.
And then we have Boca Chica in deep South Texas, where Musk has built up his "Starbase." Another unincorporated area. The two reservoirs that supply the Rio Grande Vally (RGV) are also very low because of a long-running drought. Falcon Lake is at 14% capacity and Lake Amistad is around 26%. This area is still in a Stage 2 Water Restriction, and we're close to going to Stage 3.
Early on, Musk didn't even plan on a fire trench or water system for his rockets, and one of them really chewed up his launch pad. Having a fire trench and water deluge system is practically a requirement for rocket launches, but I guess Musk didn't think those rules applied to him and his "new thinking." Until a rocket without a trench or water deluge system totally destroyed the launch pad. Reluctantly, he added a water deluge system. However, he now uses up to 150,000 gallons of freshwater for every launch. And the "static fires" where he tests the engines without launching, uses up another 75,000 gallons. And he wants to launch 25 times per year from Boca, and no doubt each launch will be preceeded by a static fire or two. You do the math. Ok, I will. 25 launches will use around 3.75 MILLION gallons of scarce freshwater. Add in 50 static fires, using 75,000 gallons each, and you have another 3.75 MILLION gallons of water. Total? 7.5 MILLION gallons of freshwater. If Musk is such a genius, why can't he figure out how to use saltwater instead? There are BILLIONS of gallons of saltwater available.
Musk’s massive Tesla lithium plant hunts for water in drought-hit Texas
8th January 2025
By: Bloomberg
Twenty miles outside Corpus Christi, Texas — an area so dry the local water company distributes shower timers at high school football games — the world’s richest man is nearly done building a lithium refinery that could require as much as eight-million gallons of water per day.
In a rare public update on the $1-billion project, Tesla in December said it was starting to test the ability to process lithium through the new factory. But the carmaker still doesn't have a contract for the water needed to operate the facility, presenting a hurdle for CEO Elon Musk’s goal of turning lithium into chemical products used to make electric vehicle batteries.
The factory, where Tesla aspires to start production this year, is part of a broader effort by Musk to ease bottlenecks and build a more robust domestic supply chain of the critical raw material. It has also set off alarm bells among some in the small Texas town who are worried about having enough water to live on, let alone help supply a big factory.
In 2022, Tesla estimated it would need 400,000 gallons per day to run the lithium plant, rising to 800 000 gallons per day at peak usage. Two years later, a Tesla employee told a consulting firm, Raftelis, that the forecast has spiked to as high as eight-million gallons per day, according to South Texas Water Authority records obtained by Bloomberg News through a public records request.
South Texas Water Authority controls the water but doesn’t sell it directly to Tesla, which is negotiating a water contract with Nueces Water Supply, a water utility company. Nueces Water Supply didn’t respond to requests for comment. South Texas Water Authority didn’t provide a comment for this story.
It’s difficult to determine what kind of drain Tesla’s factory would have on the area’s water supply. But the average American family uses about 300 gallons of water per day or 109 500 gallons per year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
For Robstown, which had 3 804 households as of 2023, that would equate to about 1.1-million gallons a day. At the high-end estimate of 8 million gallons per day, Tesla would be using eight times Robstown’s average residential water use. That’s enough water to fill eight ten-foot-deep swimming pools that are nearly the size of a football field, according to the US Geological Survey.
DROUGHT LEVELS
It’s always been dry in this hot corner of South Texas best known for its beaches and energy exports — but there’s even less water to go around today than when Tesla first broke ground in May 2023. The area’s drought status was just upgraded to stage 3 — urgent — meaning turning off non-essential water use across facilities and parks and adding new restrictions on washing cars, watering lawns and operating decorative fountains.
“They’re telling us to take shorter showers and turn the faucet off when we’re brushing our teeth,” said Marie Lucio, a resident of the nearby Lost Creek neighborhood. The area already has frequent problems with water quality, including low pressure and a milky-like tint, and she’s worried the area’s aging water pipes won’t be able to keep up with new demand like the Tesla factory. “We’re not equipped to handle getting water to these industries.”
About a year into construction, Tesla’s plant manager Jason Bevan told a county judge that the company had “struggled to advance the discussion” on water agreements, an email obtained by Bloomberg News shows. “I’m at a stage now where we need to escalate the urgency around getting this agreement complete,” he wrote at the time. Tesla didn’t reply to a request for further comment.
Even without a water agreement, Tesla has plowed ahead. In true Musk fashion, the billionaire has pushed forward with building other infrastructure and held an event last month showcasing the plant for the community.
Musk is known for pushing back against regulations, often saying they slow projects down. And he now has a new political ally in President-elect Donald Trump, who has joined the Tesla CEO in railing against government regulation. Trump recently proclaimed that any person or company investing a billion dollars in a US project should receive expedited approvals and permits. Musk reposted the idea with an American flag emoji, a rocket ship emoji and three words: “This is awesome.”
One way he’s been able to expedite projects has been to build factories in Texas’ city buffer zones or unincorporated areas that have fewer rules and government oversight compared with bigger cities.
Musk’s Robstown site fits the bill. The factory sits on former farmland in an unincorporated portion of Nueces County in South Texas. The area is industrializing, with the Port of Corpus Christi and other companies buying up space in the area and driving up water needs.
Even at the lowest estimated demand, Tesla’s water needs are raising concerns for local residents. “It’s just upsetting that we still give water contracts out when we’re in such dire straits,” said Myra Alaniz, a Nueces County resident who lives just outside of Robstown.
Despite the complaints, local officials have made little public pushback.
The facility is expected to bring around 250 permanent jobs, with average salaries around $80 000 in an area where the average income is less than half that. To spur investment, county commissioners in 2022 voted to make the site a tax increment reinvestment zone, a designated area that bookmarks a portion of property taxes for redevelopment. The same year, the Robstown Independent School District passed its own tax abatement extension.
In December, South Texas Water Authority passed an infrastructure deal that will allow Nueces Water Supply to sell rights to the pipe Tesla will need to obtain water, which was one of the hold-ups for a water deal. In a meeting last month, Nueces Water Supply’s board authorized management to “take any and all actions necessary or convenient” to reach an agreement to provide Tesla with the water it needs.
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Eugene Robinson
I see that Eugene Robinson is still with the Washington Post, while many other WaPo writers have fled the organization in favor of The Atlantic or The New York Times in the wake of Jeff Bezos Trump ass-kissing and heavy-handed tactics. If Bezos starts stifling Eugene, I wonder how much longer he will stay where he is?
by Eugene Robinson
Time caught up with Biden. It will also prove him right.
Biden inherited a mess. He leaves the U.S. in far better shape, at home and abroad.
by Eugene Robinson
Jan 10, 2025
It is easy to forget how desperate things were on Jan. 20, 2021, when Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. became the 46th president of the United States.
Just two weeks earlier, thousands of President Donald Trump’s supporters had stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to keep Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory. The nation was at the height of the coronavirus pandemic; in that month, 3,000 Americans died daily from covid-19. There were newly developed, lifesaving vaccines, thanks to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed— but there was no viable plan to distribute them. Schools and workplaces were shuttered; hotels and airlines had no customers; restaurants tried to survive by offering take-out. The U.S. economy and the world economy were on life support.
Four years later, the country is in vastly better shape, at home and abroad. The economy, though still recovering, is the envy of the developed world; U.S. stock markets are at or near all-time highs. Our political system has survived. We have made overdue investments in infrastructure and technology. And in a world full of conflict and danger, American troops are not at war for the first time in a generation.
History may fault Biden for the way his term in office ended. By any objective standard, however, he was a very good president whose accomplishments will benefit the nation for many years to come.
Biden’s critics find it convenient to look past what may be remembered as his biggest success: He guided the country through, and ultimately out of, the pandemic. The virus has not entirely gone away, but getting vaccinated is as easy as dropping by one’s neighborhood pharmacy. And regardless of what Republican polemicists want us to believe, it was during Trump’s presidency when government officials imposed draconian anti-covid rules that sent us into dour isolation — and during Biden’s when we regained the freedom to go about our lives as we pleased.
On the economy, Biden’s record is remarkable. The pandemic shutdown in the spring of 2020 had caused unemployment to peak at 14.8 percent. When Biden became president, joblessness had eased considerably but was still elevated at 6.3 percent. Unemployment declined steadily during Biden’s first year in the White House until, in December 2021, it dipped to just 3.9 percent — and remained at or below 4 percent for 30 straight months. Biden’s was a “jobs, jobs, jobs” economy.
First Trump and then Biden opened the spigots of government spending to keep Americans afloat during the pandemic. To be sure, the resulting inflation was not as “transitory” as the Biden administration said it would be. But the independent Federal Reserve brought rising prices under control — and did so without sending the economy into a recession. Such “soft landings” are rare, and Biden has one on his ledger sheet.
In an era of bitter partisanship and polarization, Biden succeeded with Congress where his predecessors had failed. The Trump administration repeatedly promised an “infrastructure week” but never delivered; Biden won approval of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. Another major piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, made the nation’s biggest investment ever in fighting climate change — more than $400 billion. Still another bill, the Chips and Science Act, marked $280 billion to boost scientific research and spur domestic manufacturing of cutting-edge semiconductors.
These initiatives will produce returns in the years and decades to come. When future presidents smile for the cameras at ribbon-cuttings, remember that it was Biden who laid the foundations.
In foreign policy, too, Biden and his team have ably acted in the national interest with an eye toward the future. Begin with the bottom line: For the first time in two decades, there are no U.S. troops deployed in combat anywhere in the world. President George W. Bush got us into wars; Biden finally got us out of them.
Without question, the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was chaotic and tragic. Thirteen American service members were killed in a terrorist attack amid a sudden collapse of public order in Kabul that Biden and his planners should have anticipated.
That mistake cost Biden dearly in public support. It also obscured the administration’s subsequent foreign policy successes.
Without putting boots on the ground, the United States and its allies fortified Ukraine with the arms and intelligence it needed to fight invading Russian troops to a stalemate. Effectively, Biden forced Russian President Vladimir Putin to pay a much bigger price in manpower and materiel than he had anticipated — weakening the Russian military at minimal cost to the United States.
Taking a broader view, prior administrations had talked about making a foreign policy “pivot” toward Asia as a way to counter the rise of China as a superpower. Biden actually executed the maneuver.
Two new alliances — the AUKUS security partnership, among Australia, Britain and the United States, and the Quad partnership, among the United States, Australia, India and Japan — greatly boost American influence in the region. Biden’s diplomatic envoys also helped reinforce the United States’ relationship with the Philippines and forge closer ties between South Korea and Japan, both of which are U.S. allies.
Chinese President Xi Jinping might still be considering an invasion of Taiwan, but now he has to recalculate the risk.
Many in Biden’s own party are sharply critical of his handling of the war in Gaza. The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and hostage-taking were atrocities, and Israel had the right to respond. Killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and reducing their homes, schools and hospitals to rubble are also atrocities. The fact is that U.S. officials have limited influence over how Israel conducts its military operations — and much less influence over Israeli public opinion, which generally supports the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been waging war.
It is true that the world has become messier on Biden’s watch. But he has kept us out of wars, strengthened our alliances and created obstacles for our strategic adversaries. Those count as successes.
Why, then, does Biden have an approval rating that struggles to reach 40 percent? Why did he have to end his campaign for reelection, abandoning a race he still thinks he could have won? What was his unforgivable sin?
Actually, there were two. One sin was political: Biden failed to address the crisis at the southern border — failed, even, to recognize it as a crisis — until far too late. By the time he finally took executive action that calmed the chaos, the immigration issue had become a millstone he could never remove.
The other sin was actuarial: Biden got old. Worse, he showed his age, reaching the point where he walked and talked unsteadily. None of that said anything about his thinking, but no matter. Voters had the right to decide he looked and sounded too feeble to be president for four more years.
But I am confident that historians, with the clarity of hindsight, will focus less on Biden’s softening voice and tentative gait — and more on all that he managed to achieve in a single term. He was a consequential and farsighted president who leaves the nation much better off than he found it.
Thursday, January 9, 2025
L.A. wildfires
Goddamn, the lies about everything are coming hot and heavy. That seems to be all Trump & the Muskrat know how to do, lie to people and keep them pissed off at the Democrats. Why can't they just deal with the truth? They have MAGA so brainwashed, they think Trump & the Muskrat speak the truth without fail. And everything now seems to be the fault of "diversity." See, cities, fire departments, etc, have been hiring women, blacks, or Hispanics for jobs that white men traditionally got, and so whenever ANYTHING goes wrong, the Conspiracy nuts claim that if a white guy got that job, all would be perfect and hunky-dory. It's such a stupid, racist, and sexist argument, but sadly, it resonates with a lot of stupid, racist sexists.
Lahaina in August 2023
Los Angeles in January 2025.
We are now learning that one person, so far, has been arrested for starting one of the fires. Arsonists have been with us forever. Some people just love fire. They love to watch it. I wouldn't be surprised if some MAGA asshole started one of the fires. They just hate California. After all, so many "libruls" live there. And they don't stop to think that millions of conservatives live there too.
Jeff Tiedrich had some things to say about the wildfires. His columns are too "busy" to transfer to here, but they are well worth a click.
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