US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6374

On December 07 2016 02:22 Logo wrote:
I'm confused by the Air Force One Article, no where in the article does it say $4 billion other than from Trump. They say:



Which would be about .56b/yr or about 0.001% of the DoD's annual budget each year through 2021.

Even if they buy the planes for 4 billion, if they keep them for 25 years the cost of the planes in relation to the total DoD budget (never mind the total US budget) is absurdly small.

So good on him if he can negotiate it down with good terms, there's nothing wrong with getting such a win. A penny saved is a penny earned and all that.

But it seems like Trump is focusing a lot on high profile, but ultimately low impact things. Is that going to carry over into his actual presidency? I can totally see us in 2020 (or sooner) on the same course as we are now, but with Trump campaigning/arguing he's been a great success because of a trickle of small deals like Carrier or this Air Force One thing. Like hell the Carrier deal is really popular even with all the problems and even though it still means Carrier is cutting jobs that exist currently.

Basically I think Trump will favor easier High Profile small things over larger systemic gains that are harder to measure.

On December 07 2016 04:15 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
This is Trump wanting to upgrade his own personal plane on the taxpayer dime, count on it.

On December 07 2016 04:15 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
This is Trump wanting to upgrade his own personal plane on the taxpayer dime, count on it.

On December 07 2016 03:21 Nebuchad wrote:


I don't know what gave you the impression that I was trying to be subtle about it. And that's not really the type of answer I was looking for, btw, as it's vague and can still reasonably be argued to apply in most of the likely situations.

On December 07 2016 03:16 Gorsameth wrote:

Sometimes your sitting at home a little bored wanting for something interesting to happen to occupy your mind.
Getting attacked by a wild bear would fit that criteria. But its normally not something people wish for.


Your attitude is that of the well off white male who has (almost) nothing to fear.
You call it a spectacle but when your job, your pension, your health insurance or your gay marriage are affected by it your slightly less happy.

Congratulations and enjoy the spectacle in your silver tower. Just don't get mad that other people who's daily lives are effected by the 'spectacle' going on are a little cross.

MINCO, Okla. — Last year, Google consumed as much energy as the city of San Francisco. Next year, it said, all of that energy will come from wind farms and solar panels.

The online giant said on Tuesday that all of its data centers around the world will be entirely powered with renewable energy sources sometime next year.

This is not to say that Google computers will consume nothing but wind and solar power. Like almost any company, Google gets power from a power company, which operates an energy grid typically supplied by a number of sources, including hydroelectric dams, natural gas, coal and wind power.

What Google has done over the last decade, with relatively little fanfare, is participate in a number of large-scale deals with renewable producers, typically guaranteeing to buy the energy they produce with their wind turbines and solar cells. With those guarantees, wind companies can obtain bank financing to build more turbines.

The power created by the renewables is plugged into the utility grid, so that Google’s usage presents no net consumption of fossil fuels and the pool of electricity gets a relatively larger share of renewable sources.

“We are the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world,” said Joe Kava, Google’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure. “It’s good for the economy, good for business and good for our shareholders.”

Unlike carbon-based power, Mr. Kava said, wind supply prices do not fluctuate, enabling Google to plan better. In addition, the more renewable energy it buys, the cheaper those sources get. In some places, like Chile, Google said, renewables have at times become cheaper than fossil fuels.

Whether Google is the largest buyer of renewables would be difficult to verify, as many industries do not release data on how much energy they consume. There is no doubt, however, that Google’s large computer complexes, along with similar global operations by Amazon and Microsoft, are among the world’s fastest-growing new consumers of electricity.

Google hopes that success in working with large wind farms, like the 50,000-acre facility in Minco, Okla., which supplies Google’s large data center in Pryor, Okla., will spur development of the industry. NextEra Energy, which owns the wind farm, has about 115 wind farms in the United States and Canada.

About 25 percent of United States electricity goes to businesses, and companies like Google are now about 2 percentage points of that. Dominion Virginia Power, located in a state with perhaps the world’s largest concentration of data centers, last year had a demand increase from those customers of 9 percent, while overall demand was nearly flat, according to Dominion.

Google operates eight different businesses, including internet search engines, YouTube and Gmail, each of which has over 1 billion customers. They run on a global network of 13 large-scale data centers, each one a complex of many buildings containing hundreds of thousands of computers.

The 5.7 terawatt-hours of electricity Google consumed in 2015 “is equal to the output of two 500 megawatt coal plants,” said Jonathan Koomey, a lecturer in the school of earth, energy and environmental sciences at Stanford. That is enough for two 140,000-person towns. “For one company to be doing this is a very big deal. It means other companies of a similar scale will feel pressure to move.”

It moves the needle on costs to have a big consumer, Mr. Koomey added, since a larger market tends to allow for economies of scale and more innovation. “Every time you double production, you reduce the cost of solar by about 20 percent. Wind goes down 10 to 12 percent,” he said.

Facebook has entered into similar deals with wind producers. Last week, Amazon reiterated its long-term commitment to power its machines entirely with renewable energy, though for 2016 it expects to be above about 40 percent of its goal. It has announced five more solar projects.

Microsoft says it has been 100 percent carbon neutral since 2014, but much of this comes from the purchase of carbon offsets, which are investments in things like tree planting or renewables projects meant to compensate for the fossil fuels a company consumes. The company hopes to have half of its electric power supplied from wind, solar and hydroelectric sources by 2018. Its data centers currently use about 3.3 million megawatt-hours of power a year.

On December 07 2016 04:32 xDaunt wrote:

Damn, dude. Where's the optimism? Your narrative above is hyperbole ad absurdum. You even threw gay marriage in there, which is a settled issue now and won't be affected by anything Trump does.

Something to shake up partisan gridlock and status quo? Well, we're getting that change now. We'll see whether any good comes of it, but the quality of the spectacle is undeniable.

On December 07 2016 04:44 Gorsameth wrote:

If you cannot see the problem with when the effect on peoples lives is very real then there its not worth discussing.

On December 07 2016 04:54 xDaunt wrote:

Yeah, but you're simply presuming that the net impact of what Trump does is going to be negative. I'm quibbling with your unduly apocalyptic outlook.

On December 07 2016 04:57 Gorsameth wrote:

I don't have to presume anything. I just having to look at the chance.

Rolling the dice because 'f*** it' is fine when your playing a game of starcraft where the worst result is a few lost ladder points.
This is real life. People suffer when shit fucks up. 'Lets roll the dice and see what happens' is not a position I find acceptable.
Its easy for you because you will be fine either way. It would be easy for me because I'm not even on the same continent.
Millions of others will not be 'fine' when the ACA gets overturned and they lose their healthcare again.

On December 07 2016 05:05 ticklishmusic wrote:
women are getting IUD's b/c they're worried birth control will be hard to get for the next 4 years. there is news about minority students being harassed by not only other students but also teachers because "its trump's america". i have a gay friend who had to be hospitalized for a little while after the election for reasons i won't go into. shit like this is already happening.

meanwhile, xdaunt's complains about how expensive daycare is.

On December 07 2016 05:26 biology]major wrote:


I'd consider your arguments fair if you showed the same amount of empathy (sympathy) to the working class voters who have had their jobs destroyed and infiltrated and replaced with drugs, while not even being a part of political discourse. Mention the violence against trump supporters too, that's where your pseudo morality ends however because politics.

On December 07 2016 05:02 xDaunt wrote:

Rolling the dice is a pretty damned easy decision to make when the current liberal-democrat order is fucking everything up. Your constant defense of the ACA is amusing because the ACA is an utter failure. Yes, everyone can get health insurance now. Specifically, everyone now has access to really shitty health insurance compared to what was previously available. The ACA is a turd and should not be held in any kind of esteem.

On December 07 2016 05:38 hunts wrote:


Please give some specifics with proof of how the "liberal-democratic order" is fucking everything up, and how ACA is so bad if you want your claims to be taken seriously, because you've made this claim before and have never provided any real proof, and it's getting old. To be honest so is your abrasive posting style where you try to call people dumb for questioning your nonstatements.

On December 07 2016 05:44 xDaunt wrote:


I'm not interested in rehashing and recompiling articles discussing the failures of the ACA. If you don't understand that it is financially collapsing on itself while offering inferior care at comparatively outrageous prices compared to what was available before its passage, that's on you for not being informed. Every policy enacted is going to create winners and losers. While some uninsurable people were winners in that they now have access to some degree of health insurance, many, many more people who previously had health insurance that they liked are now losers in that they are paying more for a worse product. The ACA is a disaster on this point, like many people who opposed it predicted at the time of its passage.

On December 07 2016 05:44 xDaunt wrote:


I'm not interested in rehashing and recompiling articles discussing the failures of the ACA. If you don't understand that it is financially collapsing on itself while offering inferior care at comparatively outrageous prices compared to what was available before its passage, that's on you for not being informed. Every policy enacted is going to create winners and losers. While some uninsurable people were winners in that they now have access to some degree of health insurance, many, many more people who previously had health insurance that they liked are now losers in that they are paying more for a worse product. The ACA is a disaster on this point, like many people who opposed it predicted at the time of its passage.

On December 07 2016 05:26 biology]major wrote:


I'd consider your arguments fair if you showed the same amount of empathy (sympathy) to the working class voters who have had their jobs destroyed and infiltrated and replaced with drugs, while not even being a part of political discourse. Mention the violence against trump supporters too, that's where your pseudo morality ends however because politics.

and replaced with drugs