Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The scales have forever in our body politic been between We the People and Money and Corporate Greed and any time a party is on the side of the people they are considered Left.

Lincoln recognized the rights of a million enslaved people above the corporate plantations of the south… that leftist ideal of humanity caused the Civil War.

Even though we in name got rid of slavery we didn’t impose many restrictions of corporate greed. Theodore Roosevelt turned his gaze on the rights of workers above that of the Steel Mills, Railroads, and Oil Companies and supported unions. Another leftist ideal hurting corporate profits.

FDR brought in Social Security so that seniors could retire with dignity. Even Eisenhower supported unions and he was a Republican.

Since Reagan the role of government has been viewed as trying to harm the people which is 100% opposite of the truth . The bias has been spewed for so long the public believes that corporations and the ultra wealthy need to have more breaks because they are the only ones that can save us.

The scales have been tipped so far to the right that even ideas that would have been considered in the center, 50 or 60 years ago are considered ultra leftist. So when Republicans want Democrats to move more to the center that Center is no longer in the middle. If you took a ruler and saw the center was at 6 inches the Democrats were 6 to 12 inches and the Republicans were 0 to 6 inches. That scale has been moved now the Republicans are 0 to 9 inches on the conservative side and the Democrats only have 2 inches of wiggle room so if we try to get toward the center, the center is actually very much still in the conservative realm. 

Bernie Sanders is considered to be ultra left-wing in today’s body politic but in reality Bernie is right of the ideas that Eisenhower had in 56 so it’s hard to justify moving to the center when the center doesn’t even balance the scale anymore. 

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I hate to even use the word illegal when it comes to immigration because people are not illegal they may be undocumented, but they are not illegal. We don’t have any legal worker issue if we didn’t have employers actually soliciting people in Mexico or Central America to come work in their fields or food processing plants, so let’s prosecute the employers not the employees that are just trying to support their families.

Sadly, this will never happen because we never prosecute the wealthy that are trying to take advantage of a situation where they can increase their profits and decrease their overhead.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

We are still the USA but the U isn’t want it used to be.

Starting with breaking trade agreements with partners that have been going on for decades, we’ve become untrustworthy and our allies no longer want to deal with us. Believing the he holds all the cards Donald has entered peace talks over territory with the aggressor party and excluding the party that had their country invaded. Ukraine is not involved in the peace talks with Russia, even though Russia was the invading party. even though Hamas was the party that first took lives in Israel the Palestinians aren’t being included in the peace stocks with Israel, even though all Palestinians are not Hamas.

As we all learned as teenagers, trust, it’s very hard to get back once you’ve broken it, and I feel that we have broken all of our promises and blown any trust that we have with the rest of the world. Anyone who has had a spouse cheat on them, knows that you may forgive, but trust may never come back. 

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

“Elbows up” is a hockey term describing an effective way to protect yourself from an opposing player. The phrase was coined by Canadian hockey legend Gordie Howe, who was famously called Mr.Elbows, for his signature way of keeping at a distance on the ice.

King Donald the Spray Tan Slug and his imperial expansionist wet dream have turned one of our closest allies against us. The wanna be King looks at his pal Putin and his territory grabbing ideology and want to emulate his actions. The United States hasn’t been in an expansionist way for quite a long time and the most recent territorial expansion wasn’t done by force like our initial western expansion but it appears that Donald thinks he is Alexander the great or Genghis Khan and wants to expand US borders by force. The Canadians our northern border country will not put up with this expansionist rhetoric or nonsense. So elbows up Canada I’m with you. We don’t need to expand our borders. We need to increase our friendships. 

Texas broke its solar, wind, and battery records in one spring week

Renewables and batteries are playing an increasingly crucial role for the state in the shoulder season, when coal and gas plants fall offline in large numbers.

By Julian Spector

10 March 2025

As winter turns to spring, Texas is setting new records with its nation-leading clean energy fleet.

In just the first week of March, the ERCOT power grid that supplies nearly all of Texas set records for most wind production (28,470 megawatts), most solar production (24,818 megawatts), and greatest battery discharge (4,833 megawatts). Only two years ago, the most that batteries had ever injected into the ERCOT grid at once was 766 megawatts. Now the battery fleet is providing nearly as much instantaneous power as Texas nuclear power plants, which contribute around 5,000 megawatts.

“These records, along with the generator interconnection queue, point towards a cleaner and more dynamic future for ERCOT,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist studying the energy system at The University of Texas at Austin.

The famously developer-friendly Lone Star State has struggled to add new gas power plants lately, even after offering up billions of taxpayer dollars for a dedicated loan program to private gas developers. Solar and battery additions since last March average about 1 gigawatt per month, based on ERCOT’s figures, Texas energy analyst Doug Lewin said. In 2024, Texas produced almost twice as much wind and solar electricity as California.

When weather conditions align, the state’s abundant clean-energy resources come alive — and those conditions aligned last week amid sunny, windy, warm weather. On March 2 at 2:40 p.m. CST, renewables collectively met a record 76% of ERCOTdemand.

Then, on Wednesday evening, solar production started to dip with the setting sun. More than 23,000 megawatts of thermal power plants were missing in action. Most of those were offline for scheduled repairs, but ERCOT data show that nearly half of all recent outages have been “forced,” meaning unscheduled.

At 6:15 p.m. CST, batteries jumped in and delivered more than 10% of ERCOT’s electricity demand — the first time they’ve ever crossed that threshold in the state.

“Batteries just don’t need the kind of maintenance windows that thermal plants do,” said Lewin, who authors the Texas Energy and Power newsletter. ​“The fleet of thermal plants is pretty rickety and old at this point, so having the batteries on there, it’s not just a summertime thing or winter morning peak, they can bail us out in the spring, too.”

At some level, the March records show clean energy excelling in the conditions that are most favorable to it. Bright sun and strong winds boosted renewable generation, while temperate weather kept demand lower than it would be on a hot summer or a cold winter day. But those seemingly balmy circumstances could belie a deeper threat to the Texas energy system.

“One thing that I don’t think is talked about nearly enough is the potential for problems in shoulder season,” said Lewin.

If unusually hot weather struck during a spring day with lots of gas and coal power plants offline, ERCOT could struggle to meet demand, even if it was much lower than the blistering summer peaks. In fact, this happened in April 2006, when a surprise heat wave forced rolling outages, Lewin noted. Texas officials don’t talk much about climate change, but that kind of hot weather in the springtime is becoming more common.

Last summer produced ample data on how the surge in solar and battery capacity reduced the threat to the grid from heat waves and lowered energy prices for customers. This spring, batteries and renewables are showing they can also fill in the gaps when traditional plants step back.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

How is it possible for Musk to stop Social Security checks? He is not an elected official, not a properly appointed official, and his status is basically illegitimate, over indulged,rich boy with and attitude problem. He needs to be sent back to Sout Africa and fed to a Great White. This entire situation is just so stupid. Our government was set up with 3 equal parts and it seems that one part does nothing, another has given away all its power and the other part is being contolled or at least manipulated by someone with the metal capacity of a spoiled 4 year old. There must be a loop hole in this someplace that will allow saner minds to take the spoiled part out. The talk for years has been about drain the swap and all that has really been done is to stock the swamp with worse types of preditors. The appointed cabinet members will hopefully be held accountable for their crimes when we are able to remove them from their current positions. It will need to happen before any pardons can be issued, or just like Trump, have it decided that the pardons are of no value. The nation has come to a standstill in many places in order for people to protest the actions of this President and his lackies. When the Republican half of Congress thinks about whether to stand with the people who have the vote or the 1% with the money it would behove them to realize that choice matters. Yes wealth can pay for efforts to remove you from office but it would appear that when public oppinion is against what the money wants then money does not make much difference. Life is becoming difficult for a large segment of our people with cuts to social services and social programs, the withholding of money that was earned legally, etc, and when all these people get together life may get very uncomfortable for the 1%. These policies have affected people around the globe negatively and that has consequences. If the rich think that they can run away from hostility on the streets where they live they need to be aware that people in other places may not choose to be nonviolent with their dissatisfaction. So where are you going to go to enjoy your tax breaks and bask in the approving smile of your leader? The time is overdo when we reinstate laws that forbid wealth having influence in our political process. Inovation and inventiveness should be rewarded but those qualities should not bestow such greatness that allows dominance of others. Being rich or famous should not be the ticket that allows anyone to violate anyone else, in other words you can't grab any woman by her pussy. It is sad that we have become so divided in our views of what is happening, and that it is no longer possible to trust the media to be honest with what is reported. The reporting of everything negative they could find on Biden and the silence on Trump make believing what is being reported to be complete and honest extremely difficult. Mainstream media is run by very wealthy individuals that have supported Trump because they know they can get him to do their biddding. That fact alone, is enough to cause reason for distrust of what is being reported. If independent media sources are seeing and reporting so much that is negative and it is not being reported on the other side we have reason to question and for those of us that depend on some of the targeted agencies, a reason to fear. The media seems to be covering their heads rather than report the truth. It is no wonder they are hiding, look at the pictures of those that are putting people on airplanes to fly to a concentration cmp in South America. Everything this administration does is either covered by a mask or hidden behind a lie.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

A kakistocracy is a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. The word was coined as early as the 17th century, and is derived from two Greek words, kákistos and krátos, with a literal meaning of ‘government by the worst people’.

This is a big $20 word that absolutely describes the government that we are dealing with currently. We have a group of people put into positions that have absolutely no experience in the position they put in. We have the wife of WWE entertainment running the department of education who has zero experience in education was never a teacher, never administrator never had anything to do with education. Pete Hegseth, who was a lower level officer in the guard, running the department of defense, who has never run anything larger than the department with 10 to 12 people in it now in charge of the largest department in the government. I could continue to list all of the clowns that he has in apartments. Well, let’s just point out one more RFK Junior, who was an environmental lawyer now in department in charge of health and human services. He has been a vaccine denier for 20+ years has even caused deaths by having Aries in Africa stop giving measles and other vaccines.

This is the group of circus freaks that we’re leaving in control of our country and our reputation and our treasure for the next four years. I am disheartened and terrified.