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Overnight News Digest for March 1, 2023 (Both sides of March edition - Lion? Lamb? Opinions differ") [1]
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Date: 2023-03-01
This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, eeff, rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
Even as the New York Times elevates “bothsiderism” to a frothy mix of… never mind… If you were wondering how things are going over at their competitor “Fox News”, this is how strongly they insist on presenting both sides of an issue:
Not at all.
Election company Dominion has been dancing in the discovery for their defamation case against Fox, and boy do they have the receipts. They actually have emails of Fox executives excoriating their reporters for having the temerity to present both sides on air as “disrespecting their audience”
On November 7, Fox—like the other networks—called the overall election for Biden. But there continued to be a great deal of hand-wringing inside the company about the Arizona call. Around that time, Tucker Carlson texted his producer, “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real….an alternative like newsmax could be devastating to us.” And on November 9, he texted Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott: “I’ve never seen a reaction like this, to any media company. Kills me to watch it.” ...Scott told Briganti that Bill Sammon, then a senior vice president at Fox and the managing editor of the Washington bureau, did not understand “the impact to the brand and the arrogance in calling AZ,” which she found “astonishing” given that as a “top executive,” it was Sammon’s job “to protect the brand.” It is worth dwelling on that point for a moment: In his role at Fox News, perhaps Bill Sammon did have a corporate responsibility “to protect the brand,” but in his role as the managing editor of the Washington bureau, he had a higher responsibility—a responsibility to deliver the news in a timely and accurate way, with integrity. Those roles will always have some tension between them. In this case, it’s clear that Suzanne Scott cared little for the integrity of the news side. The same goes for Fox chair Rupert Murdoch: “Maybe best to let Bill go right away,” he said—which would “be a big message with Trump people.” By November 20, Sammon was told his days at Fox were numbered. Two months later, he was axed, along with fellow Decision Desk editor Chris Stirewalt.
(Note: That article for The Bulwark was written, not by a hard-core leftie, but by Amanda Carpenter — “a former communications director to Sen. Ted Cruz, and a former speechwriter to Sen. Jim DeMint”)
Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year, according to four people familiar with the discussions. Prosecutors argued that new evidence suggested Trump was knowingly concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Fla., home and urged the FBI to conduct a surprise raid at the property. But two senior FBI officials who would be in charge of leading the search resisted the plan as too combative and proposed instead to seek Trump’s permission to search his property, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation. On one side, federal prosecutors in the department’s national security division advocated aggressive ways to secure some of the country’s most closely guarded secrets, which they feared Trump was intentionally hiding at Mar-a-Lago; on the other, FBI agents in the Washington field office urged more caution with such a high-profile matter, recommending they take a cooperative rather than confrontational approach.
One of the reasons I have stuck with Twitter despite how… Musky… it has gotten, is that it is an amazing place to get primary source reactions in realtime. Like when former FBI agent and trump nemesis Pet Strzok calls BS on FBI dithering, and one of the article’s (theoretically neutral) authors trolls him back…
(Twitter Free version:” The article points to a damning fear in the FBI stemming from political fear, not from fact.“The FBI agents’ caution also was rooted in the fact that mistakes in prior probes of Hillary Clinton…had proved damaging to the FBI”Really? Name one. I’ll wait.”
x Agreed. Where else can you find a national news reporter trolling a person he’s covered with his reporting? — Pete Strzok (@petestrzok) March 1, 2023
x “They also heard from top FBI officials that some agents were simply afraid”
You know what would go a long way to erasing that fear?
Leadership that protected agents from political blowback, allowing them to do their job. pic.twitter.com/sR7GppMN4a — Pete Strzok (@petestrzok) March 1, 2023
(One more, Twitter-free version from New York Times Pitchbot — “Whether it’s the left promoting Black History Month, or the right promoting a National Day of Hate, both sides are adding divisive cultural events to our nation’s calendar.”
x Whether it’s the left promoting Black History Month, or the right promoting a National Day of Hate, both sides are adding divisive cultural events to our nation’s calendar. — New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) February 24, 2023
Meanwhile, in happier news:
The government’s top Supreme Court lawyer may have saved President Joe Biden’s $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan from what experts considered all but certain defeat. Experts lobbed praise on Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the lawyer who represented the Biden administration in front of the nine justices Tuesday. … Prelogar argued that the president was acting squarely within the law to avoid borrower distress during national emergencies and that plaintiffs had not shown in any way that they’d be harmed by the policy, which is typically a requirement to establish so-called legal standing.
A little more than a decade ago, solar power was an also-ran in the global energy race. At less than 1 per cent, it had the smallest share of generation capacity of any major power source. But all that has changed. Next year, solar photovoltaic capacity will leapfrog that of hydropower, according to the International Energy Agency. In three years, it will overtake gas-fired generation. And, in four years, it will push past coal — to boast the largest share of generation capacity of any power source. “There is a boom, there is exponential growth, there is acceleration,” says Heymi Bahar, senior analyst for renewable energy markets and policy at the IEA. “Solar accounts for almost 60 per cent of every power installation that will be built in the coming five years.” x 'Solar, with its low costs and ability to be built at any scale — from a single panel on a rooftop to a sprawling multi-gigawatt array — will account for the bulk of the EU power additions in the coming years, according to S&P.'#renewables #solar
https://t.co/FGI7FRGPtB — Dr Paul Dorfman (@dorfman_p) March 1, 2023
And yet… “The largest banks in the world are still lending more money to fossil fuel projects than clean energy projects”
x The largest banks in the world are still lending more money to fossil fuel projects than clean energy projects. pic.twitter.com/EeKxQfvi9C — Michael Thomas (@curious_founder) February 28, 2023
And what about geothermal energy?
In 2009, geothermal energy was having a moment. Reports proliferated on tapping the massive potential of all that emissions-free energy deep within the Earth, which when brought to the surface can heat buildings or spin a turbine to generate electricity. President Obama listed geothermal right alongside solar and wind power in speeches; the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act sent $368 million in geothermal’s direction. Google started throwing millions of dollars at research and startup companies, going so far as to call new types of geothermal power “the ‘killer app’ of the energy world.” The search giant guessed that geothermal power could provide 15 percent of the country’s electricity by 2030. And then … crickets. ...Today there is undeniably an increasing amount of excitement and activity in the geothermal space, but its actual contribution to the world’s energy mix — and by extension, the fight against climate change — remains more or less flat. In 2012, geothermal accounted for a bit under half of one percent of American electricity generation, at 15.6 billion kilowatt-hours; in 2021, that number was 15.9 billion, and beyond a few demonstration projects no major geothermal construction is ongoing now. The U.S. leads the world in installed capacity, but that capacity is not all that different from what the country had 30 years ago. ...Enhanced or engineered geothermal systems (EGS) take advantage of those technological advances. Though the industry may be loath to use the word given its baggage, EGS is akin to fracking. It involves an injection well, into which cold water is pumped. The water then flows through induced fractures in the rock, heating up as it goes thanks to the ambient heat around it; the warmed water is then taken up in a separate pipe where it flows up to the surface, hot enough to turn a turbine and generate electricity or just heat a building. Fracking, but without the mess of chemicals that are brought back to the surface and not-so-occasionally spilled, and most importantly, without the end result of a hydrocarbon ready to be burned and emit greenhouse gases.
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to issue his first veto after two Democrats—Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana—partnered with the GOP on Wednesday to pass legislation that would block his administration's rule allowing retirement plan managers to consider climate and other factors in investment decisions. ..."The DOL rule simply restores the longtime status quo of allowing retirement plans to consider important financial factors like how a company is run, whether its practices match its values, and the risks it faces from global disruptions like climate change," said Rachel Curley, democracy advocate with the group Public Citizen, in a statement Wednesday. "Repealing a rule protecting retirement savings for millions of workers is irresponsible and puts personal political ambitions above long-term financial responsibility," Curley continued. "Leaving investors in the dark is a disservice to our entire economy. Anyone claiming to care about workers voting to overturn such a reasonable rule is clearly playing politics with workers' retirement savings in a way that flies in the face of common sense."
GOP hypocrite of the day:
x Nebraska's Attorney General Mike Hilgers recently wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about why he's suing the Biden admin over student debt forgiveness.
He had almost $300k in PPP loans forgiven. pic.twitter.com/PN1LVtieBC — Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) March 1, 2023
(For those without Twitter: “Nebraska's Attorney General Mike Hilgers recently wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about why he's suing the Biden admin over student debt forgiveness.He had almost $300k in PPP loans forgiven.”
x DOL Announcement: We’re in the midst of the biggest climate and clean energy job boom in history—we must be prepared to develop our workforce to meet the moment.
More on Biden’s pick for DOL Secretary from @EvergreenAction & @jamalraad ↓👷📈🧑🏭✊🏼🧑🌾 pic.twitter.com/WpPIEsZM1B — Elizabeth Cavalieri🌲🕰️ (@EMCavalieri) February 28, 2023
x 2023 Center for Native American Youth Champions for Change addressing multitude of issues across Indian Country
https://t.co/dksUxJL80J — ICT (@IndianCountry) February 23, 2023
And I did promise we’d go out like a lamb (although opinions may differ). So here goes:
x Goldman: Do you think there was fraud that had a material impact on the results of the 2020 election
Lamb: As a law enforcement official, I have seen zero evidence that would show me that pic.twitter.com/f7yGv8Yxjc — Acyn (@Acyn) February 28, 2023
What are you investigating tonight? Tell us in the comments!
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