Comments

1

Yesterday was H-Day.

The first mass produced and practical zero emissions car was leased in California -- a Hyundai fuel cell CUV.

Here's a twitpic of the lucky drivers:

https://twitter.com/ANativeAngeleno/stat…

2
On a positive note, well get to watch this freshman politician suffer from foot in mouth disease when someone asks him non-economic questions. Will he act the fool when asked about photo ID for registered uterus's? Gay therapy rights? Birth control unions? I say yes! yes! yes! yes!
3
@2 Hopefully he's bad enough to lose in the general election, but gerrymandering will carry him far.
4
Is it April 1st already?
5
Apparently some Fox News personalities were in Brat's corner.
Sounds like Cantor just ran a staggeringly lazy campaign.
7
I love the paragraph beginning with "I Looked and There Are No Other..." I HEART Christopher! May it become the template for future mornings, or Cultural News, the segment that Constant sticks his dick into at the end of the day.
8
I like the Hilary Clinton spin. On MSN last night, Chis Hayes actually suggested a loss in a primary to a tea party candidate might be a referendum on immigration reform. To believe that for a second, is mindboggling.
9
Not surprising that there's no campaign news on his taxpayer funded House office site (your link).

More notable that there's nothing at www.ericcantor.com - his FEC-regulated campaign site or his ericcantor facebook profile ... and there's nothing there but a 3-day-old "Vote for Eric" blog post and "Vote Today" facebook message.

On the watch list, this unprecedented jolt puts WA-5 Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers squarely on the short list for House Majority Leader ... and Speaker!
11
I woke up sobbing in the middle of the night.
12
I think most folks prefer the morning news without onions.
13
Wasn't Cantor one of the architects of the govt shutdowns? Didn't he then try to deny involvement right after when it proved unpopular?
It's not too surprising if you consider that there was a big "anyone but Cantor" feeling that kept normal voters unmotivated and the tea baggers fired up. I suspect that this primary doesn't reflect the general voters too well so it will be interesting to see how this plays out (at least if there's a decent candidate on the D side).
14
@10, Hardly. Sawant won in a general election and was polling well going into it. Brat won in a primary with low turnout of the general population and a highly motivated fringe. Brat wouldn't have been able to pull this off in a general election.
17
Brat's Dem opponent, Jack Trammell, is also a professor at Randolph-Macon College, so this is going to be something of an intra-scholastic fight, like Homecoming Queen. Trammell's a good guy, an historian of the slave trade; Brat is a freaking lunatic who worships Ayn Rand.

The good news is, even if Brat wins (which he almost certainly will), he will be a powerless nincompoop instead of a Majority Leader and future Speaker. The Republicans will have to sit him down for The Talk, wherein they explain that nobody gives a shit about your philosophy or ideas; the Congress is about marshalling votes, and you will either do as you are told or you will disappear in the middle of the night.

The other plus, for Democratic candidates in 2014 and especially 2016, is that immigration reform is completely and utterly dead, which means zero Hispanic votes for Republicans ever again. Every other Republican congresscritter now knows exactly what unappetizing things he's going to have to say and do to get through his own primary (the Tea Party will be demanding that they actually kill a few Mexicans with their bare hands), which will reduce his chances in the general elections by a great deal.

The permanent extinction of the GOP proceeds apace. I sorta predicted this after Romney (the moderate wing) got slaughtered -- the kook wing took that as a sign to charge the cliff edge.
18
Phoebe: I love the morning news with onions :-P
19
Joe Lieberman lost the democratic primary in 2006. He ran as an independent and won re-election.
20
I wouldn't be so sure Brat will win in the general election. As we've seen before, anybody this extreme starts trends toward the middle with their idiotic statements. And the Dems occupy the middle.
21
@20, his district is R+10, which means ten points more Republican than the national average. The only way the Dem wins is if Cantor runs as a write-in, which he's not going to do.

I'll be pulling for Trammell, though. But a Brat win isn't that bad -- anything that gives these morons more rope is all right by me.

@19, he can't here. Virginia doesn't allow independents in the general, only primary winners. Cantor's name will not be on the ballot; he'll have to get write-ins. Won't happen.
22
@14
Also, Sawant knows her shit and keeps her cool.
23
I for one welcome President Warren and Vice President Biden
25
Re: Brat -- this is the best and most surprising political new story in a while. But ... I would not put too much stock in Brat's tea party bromides being the decider. The turnout in the primary was like 20% of the Republican electorate. And that district is old school conservative, not Reagan ex-Democrat or wacky west. The same folks who kept putting Helms up in the Senate. So, a Democrat would have to be pretty sharpish to get in, like LBJ sharpish. I guess the big upside is that this is a race between two Liberal Arts professors. Finally someone in DC who doesn't that anthropology is a waste of time.
26
Earlier today, Brat responded to a question about the minimum wage with "I don't have a well-crafted response on that one."

The man is an ECONOMIST.

Dude. If you don't think there should be any kind of minimum wage, you might as well just admit it. You're just making yourself look unbelievably stupid.
27
Cantor is sot, the Tea Party's man in leadership. Though Ryan is a douche, at least he spells out what the long term agenda and thereby provides a good target. Plus he looks like Anthony Weiner. And Boehner gets by with his pseudo-Rat Pack hang dog demeanor, and the fact that he seems occasionally to want to get things done, like Congress use to. Cantor was the hard man and without any appealing aspects. And yet highest ranking observant Jewish congressman. Given Lieberman's example, that may not be a positive. His worse sine was being all in on the shutdown which, besides stupid politics, hurt the people most in need when they needed help the most. (So evil he makes people quote ridiculous songs.) And he was in good with Abramahoff with Delay. (Makes you think getting in leadership does mean you do the dirty work like Francis Underwood.) So, so long Eric, you will joyfully be forgotten. This loss does not mean the R's or congress will get any more reasonable, though. You gotta take pleasure where it is, and I look forward to Brat having to explain how Christians can learn from Nietzsche to his caucus.
28
It is, indeed a big deal. Cantor's loss marked the first time since 1899 that a majority leader has lost in a primary. (According to the Washington Post, anyway.)
29
@17, I think people are reading this wrong in regards to immigration.

I live in Maryland and much of Brat's attack came in the form of Cantor's ties to big business and Wall Street. Terry McAuliffe was attacked the same way in Virginia's recent gubernatorial election. This definitely appealed to Republican voters here. And even his anti-immigrant stuff was framed as anti-big biz.

This kind of anti-crony capitalism political attack doesn't just resonate with Stranger readers, but teabaggers as well. Anybody who thinks big money or corporate dominance of politics is bad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonk…

30
Brat has a really big problem now. People are actually going to listen to what he has to say.
31
Heh...Ok, I confess...I live in VA's 7th District. I voted for Brat yesterday, because we have open primaries. This is just awesomesauce.

Oh, and Brat and Randolph-Macon are the epitome of the old south and the tea party, despite the fact that the Dem. sacrificial lamb is a sociology professor there.
32
"Dollars do not vote, you do"

Those dollars are telling those people anything they want to hear to get them to vote though. If someone comes along and tells you sweet nice things you're going to be persuaded.
33
Brat needs to lose in the generals. But given the R+10, he'll probably win. That will scare the fuck out of most GOP legislators who might have considered compromising on *anything*. @31, I worry you might have just contributed to the death of immigration reform (although it might have been DOA anyway).
34
@33 - it is a very solid district, so it' won't flip. It is literatlly crawling with tea-tards (which is why I spend so much time hanging out here). Brat is representative of the soul of the GOP and the country is overdue for a bit of re-alignment anyway. The GOP will double down in abeyance to the Nativists, because they can't do anything else in the short term, even if they know it's terrible for the GOP in the long term. Which is what I want: the GOP in the wasteland again for 40 years. People like Brat force others to make tough choices. He'll help Democrats nationally by saying (or having said in the past) nutter things and he'll help by driving the rest of the GOP further right.
35
@1: So tell me, where was this hydrogen produced without any emissions? You might as well say that electric lawnmowers are zero-emissions. Hell, such lawnmowers have lower emissions than a hydrogen-powered car! Fuel cells still emit water, which is a pretty decent greenhouse gas itself in vapor form.
Where was that hydrogen made? And what from?
36
@1, as @35 points out, there ain't no free lunch. And as I have also previously pointed out to you, there ain't no free hydrogen, not on this planet, anyway. If you want any, it has to get made from something, using energy made from something. The end-to-end process, from energy in (to make hydrogen) to fuel-cell energy out (to the driving wheels) is about 50%, which makes it much less efficient than electric storage batteries (95%+). Most of the processes they make hydrogen with release CO2 into the atmosphere. (Except electricity from nuke, hydro, solar and wind used for electrolysis of water.)

Then, there's the issue of storage. Hydrogen doesn't weigh anything and takes up a lot of space and seriously doesn't like being liquified. It's very hard to carry around any significant amount of it. It might have more energy per pound than gasoline, but if you can only carry two pounds of it, you ain't going far. In a practical automobile, you probably get less range than with batteries.
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@36, But dagnabbit! Bush was fer it!
38
@35, 36 A few months back I was stunned when a friend of mine went off on hydrogen fuel cell cars. He literally thought you just poured water in and the car ran, use sea water and you get table salt too I suppose.

It took me and another friend, an auto mechanic with 30yrs experience and a shit ton of accreditations, about an hour n half to get him to realize one needs energy to to separate out the hydrogen. (we all defer to Steve with regards to questions about cars, he's got the one-ness when it comes to cars. Personally I've been banned by Steve from opening the hood of my car.)

Yes fuel cells are very efficient once you've actually got the hydrogen.

Unfortunately there is that pesky, "you just pour water in" problem. I guess they figure once in the cell, the hydrogen just grabs it's luggage and splits from the oxygen. Or maybe you just concentrate flick your wand and say "expecto hydogenprotonum"
39
@38: "Expecto protium!"
If you have taken college-level chemistry, you should get it.

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