If one has a soft enough heart, I suppose it’s possible to feel sorry for Trump supporters who collectively donated $250 million to a) a cause that was never the recipient of the money, and b) was fraudulent in the first place.
The best we can hope for here is that Trump is exposed as a conman, and that his erstwhile supporters figure all this out, learn from their mistakes, and move on with their lives.
Wait! What?
Well, those us of old enough to remember Watergate will recall how Nixon had the support of Republicans–until he didn’t. It looks like we have something similar going on here.
It appears that Congressional Republicans, tragically born without spines, have suddenly realized that their allegiance to Trump has shifted from an asset to a liability, and just that quickly, we have statements like the one here.
Recently, Justice Clarence Thomas voted against a Supreme Court decision to compel the release of Donald Trump’s records regarding the January 6 insurrection and attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
His wife has actively attempted to overthrow the U.S. government.
I know we have a lot “on our plates” when it comes to matters like these, but this is glaring. Every vote he casts holds the potential to cause a monumental miscarriage of justice.
A reader asks what I know about axial flux electric motors. He says:
For some time, they have been recognized as having potential to reduce motor weight, cut costs, and improve motor efficiency, however there was a problem – how to lose unwanted heat.
An Oxford based company Yasa – recently bought by Mercedes-Benz has changed that by working out how to keep these motors cool. Their latest motor weighs 24 kg and is capable of delivering 590lb ft of torque, 480 hp of power, has reached 98% efficiency.
I have some familiarity with the subject, and I just watched a cool video on it, but I’m not a go-to person on axial vs. radial flux motors. If there is some significant improvement in power/weight and/or torque/weight, that is a distinct advantage.
Keep in mind, however, that the total efficiency of charging and discharging batteries through our current-day electric motors is already very high, which means there is very little area for even theoretically possible improvement.
Here are a few thoughts from one of our founding fathers, who stood among the most enlightened and intelligent people of the day.
It’s hard not to read this and wonder: where along the way did we Americans lose our capacity to think?
Jefferson’s thoughts also underscore how completely indefensible “originalism” is, more accurately referred to as :original intent” and “strict interpretation.” When I used to read what Antonin Scalia wrote, it made me sick. IMO, no bright mind honestly believes that the Constitution can only be interpreted according to the way we understood the world in the 18th Century.
I will be surprised and deeply saddened if this ends poorly for her.
If this investigation stays on track and Trump goes down, she will deserve credit for having saved the United States from authoritarian rule. That makes her arguably the greatest hero that our nation has ever known.
Charles Lindbergh flew an air plane. Liz Cheney rescued our country.
It’s hard to remember how Liz Cheney comes down on any other issue than justice for Trump. As I recall, she is fairly conservative, meaning that most 2GreenEnergy readers don’t have too much in common with her politically.
Thank the Lord, however, that she’s taken the position she has here. She’s a person of honor, as well as great tenacity.
What she said here, during the first televised presentation by the January 6th Committee, is an example of another great characteristic, i.e., that she is articulate but not bombastic. She seems like she’s come by my place for a cup of morning coffee, and she’s telling me how it went in Congress the other day. Impressive.
The only change I would make here is to change the verb was to is. This is happening “as we speak.”
Trump has a significant level of support, both in Congress and in the electorate. When he says the election was stolen, most of the people who voted for him believe it, and most congressional Republicans pretend they do too. (more…)
At this point, few of us remember Shai Agassi and his enterprise “Project Better Place.” He proposed to place EV battery-swapping stations strategically across the nation, a concept that would have virtually eliminated “range anxiety” and made charging one’s car as quick and innocuous as filling one’s car.
Yet it’s been at least 10 years since Agassi folded his tent. He couldn’t even make Better Place work in his home country of Israel, one that has far better conditions than we have here in the U.S. (greater vehicle density per square mile, and more enmity towards oil).
What went wrong?
It’s a matter of speculation, but here are a couple of ideas:
Big Oil wants to delay the electrification of transportation as long as possible–preferably indefinitely. Charging solutions that are user-friendly are bad news.
Uniform cooperation. Each of the lower 48 states need to agree that this is the way to go, and, needless to say, each governor approaches things like this by asking “what’s in it for me?”
OEM buy-in. This may have been the final nail in the coffin; it requires each automaker to standardize the size and location of its battery packs. Certain car styles don’t lend themselves to any such standardization, which is why EV conversions (remember them?) are feasible only with certain makes/years of cars and trucks.
In any case, it wasn’t a horrible concept, but it was fatally flawed.
It’s common for Americans to lament that things like penmanship (cursive) are no longer taught in our schools. I’ve never been too sympathetic here, on the basis that there are only so many minutes in a school day, and everything we add in comes at the expense of losing something else.
And while we’re on that topic, the author of the meme here makes a good point: adding in training on dealing with active shooters means that our kids are receiving an even more lightweight education than they were before the proliferation of assault rifles into the hands of psychopaths.
