11 thoughts on “Get More Smarter on Tuesday (Jan. 26)”

1. Sorry still seems to be the hardest word for the former secretary of state, who refused to call her email arrangement an error in judgment — leaving her open to criticism from Republicans who have focused their fire on her while Sanders has risen in the polls.

   “No, I’m not willing to say it was an error in judgment because nothing that I did was wrong,” she told moderator Chris Cuomo. “It was not in any way prohibited.

   It's that lawyerly Clinton parsing that we all love so much. Like the meaning of "is". Lawyers always tell their clients never to say they're sorry because it implies guilt or liability. But this isn't a suit or trial and there's no reason to believe it's ever going to result in a prosecution so she doesn’t have to stick with the no apology thing for her own protection. HRC could easily say she’s sorry, that she realizes the decision to use her private server wasn't a good one even though it was legal and not wrong in that sense. Nobody's perfect and and a presidential candidate admitting a mistake isn't a deal breaker. In fact it can actually be more of a humanizer. Benghazi has been wall paper wth any but righties who aren’t voting for her anyway for a long time now. But nothing sticks in a Clinton craw like "sorry".

   Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/5-takeaways-from-the-democratic-forum-218217#ixzz3yMzPBET1

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2. We know what Andrew Carnegie and his minions have been up to.

   

   Gazette:

   A $250,000 grant from a local philanthropist will be used to help the Pikes Peak Library District advance its goal of providing 21st Century libraries and services.

   The donation from Lyda Hill is one of the largest donations to help complete the library's Tri-Building Project, which brings new technology to the Penrose and East libraries as well Library 21c.

   "The donation will help fund those infrastructure costs, including remodeling costs connected to areas like the maker spaces, support equipment like 3D printers and scanners, technology purchases like CAD software and programming like Simple Circuits and Minding Your Business," said Laura Muir Mellini, 21st Century Library Capital Campaign Co-chair.

   Hey, a rich person who cares about the locals and the least among us.Though I'd guess the $250K is chump change for Lyda.

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3. Perhaps it's time to remake the electric grid.  Research from our very own CU Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Studies

   “This study pushes the envelope,” said Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson, who commented on the findings in an editorial he wrote for the journal Nature Climate Change. “It shows that intermittent renewables plus transmission can eliminate most fossil-fuel electricity while matching power demand at lower cost than a fossil fuel-based grid – even before storage is considered.”

   Making a single US electrical system boosts renewables, lowers costs
   A nation-wide web of high-voltage DC lines could drop carbon emissions by 75%

   A new study released Monday looks into what would happen if that limitation were eliminated. It envisions a massive web of high-voltage, direct-current transmission lines, hooked up to 32 nodes spread across the US. This allows a massive spread of renewable power that could be dispatched anywhere in the nation. The result is a grid with dramatically lower carbon emissions and the bonus of lower costs to consumers.

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   1. And once again we come back to the fact that we have an antiquated, parochial and protected electrical infrastructure holding us back from truly improving our country.

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      1. One which the Republucan caucus will defend to their dying breath. 

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         1. The result is a grid with dramatically lower carbon emissions and the bonus of lower costs to consumers.  

            Well, we certainly can't allow this to happen, now can we?

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4. NY Times is Getting More Smarter about George W. Bush:

   Some telling micro-rhetoric, courtesy the Times,which really should know better, y'know?

   Mr. Cruz, now a Texas senator and a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, rarely invokes the 2000 race and recount. He has largely disavowed the comparatively moderate Bush wing of the Republican Party in pursuit of conservative ideological purity.

   Comparatively moderate? George W. Bush? The president that flew back to Washington to intervene on the side of rightwing religious lunatics during the Schiavo madness? That countenanced torture and went to war at the behest of far-right neocon ideologues?

   (why the heck you guys still micromanaging the comments under the covers?)

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   1. Most Repugs and conservatives hate GW Bush.  So, I wonder if they believe that Al Gore would have been a better choice.  I mean, how could he have possibly been worse?

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5. I wish we could institute a 25 cent per gallon gas tax that would be phased out if/when gas prices go back up to $3 per gallon.  Just like low interest rates, we should be taking advantage of low prices/rates to repair and improve our crumbling infrastructure.

   But, I know that would require a rational political system.  Not one run by "The Stupid Party".

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6. More signs of Colorado's economic success, courtesy of the New York Times:

   Precipitous Rents in Ski Country Push Workers to Edges

    

   Getting work at a day spa in this bustling ski town had been easy, but finding an affordable apartment this winter proved almost impossible. So Ms. Lilly, 34, bounced along an itinerant path of couches and borrowed bedrooms that has become a fact of life for workers in jewel-box tourist towns across the country. Nights in the Subaru got so cold that she shivered awake every few hours and ran the engine to thaw out.

   “I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” she said.

   The miners who once pried gold and silver from the heart of the Rocky Mountains would attest that living in paradise has never been easy. These days, soaring home prices and a shift toward weekend vacation rentals have created a housing crisis in ski country, one that has people piling into apartments, camping in the woods and living out of their trailers and pickup trucks.

    

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   1. Scuse' me, but Isn't that more evidence of Colorado's, and the nation's, ever growing inequality ???

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