Wind energy prices are now less than 2 cents per kWh in long-term Purchase Price Agreements. These prices are competitive with natural gas and solar. Coal is dead going forward. It can’t compete on price or cost of construction for a new plant. Stick a fork it it. And before some woke libertarian has a hissy fit because renewable energy is partly subsidized by the government, why yes, it is. So is oil, natural gas, and coal. Insuring the country has reliable sources of energy and doing so through subsidies, investments, and R&D is absolutely what governments can and should do.

Ignore Trump’s senile and comically ignorant meanderings about how “windmills” cause cancer, the turbines “kills all the birds” and most ludicrously “And then, all of a sudden, it stops; the wind and the televisions go off.”

Let’s unpack Trump’s rubbish babblings. No, of course wind turbines don’t cause cancer, that’s tinfoil hat bonkery.

Turbine operators currently go to elaborate measures to avoid harming birds. The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates an average 234,012 birds were killed by turbines in 2017. Contrast that with 599,000,000 killed by flying into windows with a total of 2,019,218,024. Turbines are 0.0011 of that total, so they aren’t killing all the birds at all.

Finally, just like with non-renewable energy sources, if one plant goes offline another one immediately ramps up, insuring the grid stays in balance between supply and demand. Trump clearly doesn’t understand how the grid works, but then he’s ignorant on so many things that this isn’t surprising.

Wind energy prices are at historic lows and the installed cost of wind contines to drop too. Solar PV is the same.

Oh, guess which state has the most installed wind by far, with no other state even close. Hint. It’s a red state.

Texas. Yes, Texas.

We are still are not being told specifics of how Jeffrey Epstein died. Why? Instead, we are hearing lots about overworked guards and how they just somehow just couldn’t do their job to protect an extremely well-known prisoner who was the focus of worldwide attention. Apparently everything that could have gone wrong did in MCC and now Jeffrey is dead. Authorities go boo hoo, vow to figure out what happened, yet will not release any relevant information. Right.

There is no official explanation saying how Epstein hung himself. Which is very curious. Also, why was he taken off suicide watch, something which requires a report to the warden, who appears oddly comatose.

A former warden says “But this is a hyper-exaggerated situation. It’s Jeffrey Epstein. You simply have to be involved as the warden.”

It is unclear if the July 23 incident was a suicide attempt by Epstein or an attack on him.

MCC told Justice they would follow certain procedures and then didn’t.

Guards didn’t check on him. Because they are overworked and understaffed. Which is certainly true. However, Epstein was the most visible and important inmate on the planet. And no special procedures were instituted for him?

Epstein was left alone in his cell in violation of prison rules. Imagine that.

The cameras supposedly only monitor common areas so no one saw nothing. Nothing, I tell you.

A Gotti associate says AG Barr visited MCC two weeks before Epstein’s death. Ok, it’s from a mobster. Just passing it on.

Accelerationism in fringe politics loosely means “burn it all down.” Then, in their derangement, their fringe group believes they will assert supremacy and build a new society. Such nihilist gibberish is authoritarian at core, whether it is left or right wing. The fringe group wants to impose its will on society, and if others suffer and die, oh well. Onward for the cause! This belief in accelerationism is true for extreme Marxists as well as for white supremacists. Many may suffer and die but then their glorious society will be built. With them in charge, of course. None of this is even remotely a democracy.

Such derangement seems to be a common thread between the El Paso, Dayton, and Gilroy murderers. The El Paso shooter is a Timothy McVeigh-type. He had a military mission to perform, which was killing Hispanics, and that’s what he did. He has expressed no remorse, and almost certainly hopes what he did will trigger an uprising. The Gilroy killer is being investigated by the FBI for domestic terrorism. He posted a link to an extreme white supremacist book. Yet he is Italian-Iranian and there ain’t no way Aryan supremacists would ever accept him. The Dayton shooter was completely upfront about accelerationism. That’s his tweet in the image for this post, Flowers for Atomsk.

When you just want to burn it down, traditional politics have no meaning. The Dayton shooter was a KKK counter-protester with antifa and The Party for Socialism and Liberation. He was armed. His social media was incoherent rage and in mindset he’s not much different from the far right El Paso and Gilroy shooters. Just destroy everything.

We need to learn how and where they get the ideas and who does the recruiting. Mostly they are deranged Lost Boys. But let’s not blame this on mental illness. We don’t know if they were diagnosed as such. Also, mentally ill people are not known for slaughtering people. Murderers are getting radicalized online. Accelerationism is their current rationale to justify slaughter of innocents.

Got horseshoes? Extreme left and extreme right are using terrorist tactics. How useful for those who want to destabilize the country.

Gilroy

Federal authorities on Tuesday said they had launched a domestic terrorism investigation into the shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival after officials discovered the gunman had a list of other potential targets.

Among the targets were religious organizations, courthouses, federal buildings and political institutions involving both the Republican and Democratic parties.

“We see that in the far right, but we also see it in anarchists,” he said. “Traditionally, what we’ve seen is some kind of curation about where aggression is directed, but there’s a whole cadre of extremists whose goal is really about bringing society to its knees. Violence is not just a means to promote an ideology. It’s become an ideology itself.”

Dayton and El Paso

Todd Wickerham, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Cincinnati field office, told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the investigation into the mass shooting in Dayton on Sunday had “uncovered evidence that the shooter was exploring violent ideologies.” He added that no evidence had been found suggesting a racial motivation for the shooting.
—
“We’re dealing with a tragedy with 22 people who have perished by an evil, hateful act of a white supremacist that has no bearing or no belonging in El Paso,” Mayor Dee Margo said at the Monday news conference. “It was not done by an El Pasoan. No El Pasoan would ever do this. I don’t know how we deal with evil. I don’t have a textbook for dealing with evil, other than the Bible.”

In 1979 16 yo Brenda Spencer opened fire at an elementary school across the street from her house in 1979, killing two. When asked why said “I don’t like Mondays” which inspired the Boomtown Rats song of same title. She didn’t get radicalized on the internet because there was no internet then. And was a nihilist mass murderer just like the El Paso and Dayton murderers.

“The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s going to make them stay at home

All the playing’s stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while
And school’s out early and soon we’ll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die.”

Seems to me the El Paso murderer saw himself as soldier carrying out a mission (like Timothy McVeigh) and was overtly and blatantly racist and white supremacist. By contrast the Dayton murderer was seriously twisted, his social media was confused leftie antifa and he was in a sickening misogynist band – and since he killed his sister – at least part of it was personal.

The big question though is how recruiting happens. Neither side wants garbage Lost Boys like these two who are unstable and unpredictable. But the saner ones do get recruited and we never hear about them. But pretty clearly they found support online for the derangement in their heads.

David Hines on Twitter found an unsettling similarity between the two. Read the whole thread. Here are a few excerpts.

“Per the manifesto, the El Paso perp was a white nationalist (w/ a side of environmentalism/ecofascism). The Dayton perp’s social media and people who knew him describe him as a Hard Lefty. He was a socialist, and an acquaintance from the music scene described him as antifascist.

So, assholes alike in deed, but different in philosophy and outlook.

Except they were both interested in accelerationism.

So, what’s accelerationism? The dumb version tl;dr is that everything’s going crazy faster and the only way out is through, so increasing the level of chaos will lead to a breakthrough (and, if you’re a political fanatic, bring about the world you personally want to live in).”

Accelerationism is a lot like bonkers Marxists wanting massive repression because then Glorious Workers Uprising. Which of course is completely nihilistic and uncaring about the masses they pretend to support because it means many will be tortured and killed first before the supposed uprising (which might take years to happen, if it happens at all.)

PS Brenda Spencer is still in prison.

Current rules for selecting who will be in the Democratic debates are nonsensical, unworkable, and easily gamed. They need to be changed.

1) Quality control is badly needed. Candidates with no political experience, like Yang and Williamson, should show much higher qualifications than candidates like Biden, Warren, and Harris, who have serious experience. This isn’t a race for dog catcher. Experience matters. Allowing candidates with no experience to compete because they are cult leaders with followers and / or gamed the system with contributions that probably weren’t from Democrats cheapens the entire thing and makes it like a reality show.

2) No multiple nights for Democratic debates. The first debate and all subsequent debates should have no more than the top ten candidates. That way it’ll just be one night. If a candidate isn’t in the top ten, they aren’t a serious contender anyway.

3) Basing the selection on x number of donors in multiple states can be gamed and manipulated, especially since the donations can be as little as a dollar. For the third debate, the criteria is at least 130,000 unique donors in twenty states, with at least 400 per state. It should be more like 30-40 states, with a minimum donation required, like $10. Someone like Andrew Yang with his army of 4chan followers can boost his donation numbers pretty easily, and they are almost certainly coming from the far right, and not from Democrats.

4) Moderators need to mostly shut up. It’s not about them. All candidates should get asked the same questions, with no interrupting allowed. Any candidate who interrupts loses their right to answer the next question.

5) Questions should include foreign policy and how they will beat the Republican.